A companion to television [Second edition.] 9781119269441, 111926944X, 9781119269458, 1119269458

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A Companion to Television

Wiley Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies

Advisory editor: David Theo Goldberg, University of California, Irvine This series provides theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within cultural studies, whether as single disciplines (film studies) inspired and reconfigured by interventionist cultural studies approaches, or from broad interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives (gender studies, race and ethnic studies, postcolonial studies). Each volume sets out to ground and orientate the student through a broad range of specially commissioned articles and also to provide the more experienced scholar and teacher with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions. An overarching Companion to Cultural Studies will map the territory as a whole. 1.  A Companion to Postcolonial Studies Edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray 2.  A Companion to Cultural Studies Edited by Toby Miller 3.  A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies Edited by David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos 4.  A Companion to Art Theory Edited by Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde 5.  A Companion to Film Theory Edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam 6.  A Companion to Literature and Film Edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo 7.  A Companion to Asian American Studies Edited by Kent A. Ono 8.  A Companion to Gender Studies Edited by Philomena Essed, David Theo Goldberg, and Audrey Kobayashi 9.  A Companion to African American Studies Edited by Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon 10.  A Companion to Media Studies Edited by Angharad Valdivia 11.  A Companion to Television Edited by Janet Wasko 12.  A Companion to Museum Studies Edited by Sharon Macdonald 13.  A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies Edited by George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry 14.  A Companion to Latina/o Studies Edited by Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo 15.  A Concise Companion to American Studies Edited by John Carlos Rowe 16.  A Companion to Sport Edited by David L. Andrews and Ben Carrington 17.  A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism Edited by Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani 18.  A Companion to Popular Culture Edited by Gary Burns 19.  A Companion to the History of American Broadcasting Edited by Aniko Bodroghkozy 20.  A Companion to Television, Second Edition Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan

A Companion to Television SECOND EDITION

Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan

This edition first published 2020 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Editorial Office The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Names: Wasko, Janet, editor. | Meehan, Eileen R., 1951- editor. Title: A companion to television / edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. Description: Second edition. | Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020. | Series: Wiley Blackwell companions to cultural studies ; 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019035551 (print) | LCCN 2019035552 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119269434 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119269441 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119269458 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Television broadcasting. | Television. Classification: LCC PN1992.5 .C615 2020 (print) | LCC PN1992.5 (ebook) | DDC 791.45–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035551 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035552 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Images: Tube televisions © Pongmanat Tasiri/Shutterstock, Decorative Background © Daytin/Shutterstock Set in 10.5/13pt Minion by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Notes on Contributors List of Tables and Figures

ix xvii

Part I  Introduction

1

Introduction Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan

3

Part II  Theoretical Overview

15

1 Critical Perspectives on Television from the Frankfurt School to the Politics of Representation Doug Kellner

17

Part III  History

39

2 Our TV Heritage: Tracing the Logics of the Television Archive Lynn Spigel

41

3 Locating the Televisual in Golden Age Television Caren J. Deming and Deborah V. Tudor

63

4 The Past Is Now Present Onscreen: Television, History, and Collective Memory Gary R. Edgerton

79

Part IV  Industry

105

5 Broadcasting in the Age of Netflix: When the Market is Master Sylvia Harvey

107

vi

Contents

6 The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis Giuseppe Richeri

129

7 Netflix, Inc. and Online Television Jane Shattuc

145

8 Television Advertising: Texts, Political Economy, and Ideology Matthew P. McAllister and Lars Stoltzfus‐Brown

165

9 Contested Connections: Public Broadcasting and Culture in Common Graham Murdock

183

Part V  Genres

199

10 Reality TV: Performances and Audiences Annette Hill

201

11 Revisiting the Trade in Television News Andrew Calabrese and Christopher C. Barnes

221

12 Twitter Watchers: The Care and Feeding of Cable News Flow in the Age of Trump Deborah L. Jaramillo

247

13 Television and Sports Michael R. Real and William M. Kunz

265

Part VI  Programs

285

14 30 Rock and the Satirical Representation of the Television Industry Lauren Bratslavsky

287

15 Nothing New Under the Sun: The Reimplementation of 80s Sitcom Tropes in NBC’s This is Us307 Novotny Lawrence Part VII  Audiences

325

16 Children and Television: A Special Audience for a Special Medium Dafna Lemish

327

17 Watching Television: A Political Economic Approach Eileen R. Meehan

345

18 The Female Television Audience Updated: Women’s Television Culture in the Age of New Media Andrea Press and Sarah R. Johnson

361

Contents

vii

19 Television as a Moving Aesthetic: In Search of the Ultimate Aesthetic – The Self379 Julianne H. Newton Part VIII  International Case Studies

403

20 Television in Latin America: Stages of Transition John Sinclair

405

21 Drama, Audiences, and Authenticity: Television Programming and Audiences in Post‐Apartheid South Africa Ruth Teer‐Tomaselli

423

22 Television in the Arab Region: History, Structure, and Transformations439 Joe F. Khalil 23 Sixty Years of Chinese Television: History, Political Economy, and Ideology in a Conflicted Global Order Yuezhi Zhao and Zhenzhi Guo

459

Index477

Notes on Contributors

Christopher C. Barnes is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research focuses on media institutions and audiences; race, gender, class, and sexuality in popular media; and social movements and their media use. His dissertation explores the communicative practices, structures, and texts  central to the resurgence in activist efforts to bring political legitimacy to democratic socialism in the current historical moment in the United States. Lauren Bratslavsky is an Assistant Professor at Illinois State University’s School of Communication, where she teaches in the mass media division. Her research interests focus on broadcast histories and the relationship to the construction of archives, as well as contemporary television studies and the hegemonic processes in sitcoms and other satirical media. Andrew Calabrese is a Professor of Media Studies, and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, in the University of Colorado’s College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI). His research and publishing focus on media and citizenship, media literacy, media policy, and uses of digital media for social justice activism. His recent research is about the intersections of media, culture, and food politics, including matters of public knowledge, welfare, safety, and risk associated with food systems, and includes a documentary film about political, economic, and cultural activism related to grain consumption in the United States. Caren J. Deming, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, taught courses in film and television history, criticism, and writing. Her research interests have included the study of “Golden Age” television through the pioneering family comedy The Goldbergs and a critical biography of its creator, Gertrude Berg. The chapter in this volume is partially drawn from research at the Bird Library at Syracuse

x

Notes on Contributors

University, the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, the Museum of Broadcasting in Chicago, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Gary R. Edgerton is Professor of Creative Media and Entertainment at Butler University. He has published 12 books and more than 85 essays on a variety of television, film and culture topics in a wide assortment of books, scholarly journals, and encyclopedias. He also co-edits the Journal of Popular Film and Television, is associate editor of the Journal of American Culture, and an editorial board member of five other academic journals. Moreover, he has delivered more than 100 scholarly presentations at various international, national, and regional conferences, including keynote talks at, among others, the University of Vienna and the US Embassy in Austria, le Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po at the Cité Internationale Universitaire of Paris, University of Aalborg, Denmark, Trinity College, Dublin, and la Conferencia de Las Américas, Universidad de Las Americas, Puebla, Mexico. Zhenzhi Guo is a Research Professor in the School of Television at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. She is the author of A History of Television in China (1991, in Chinese) and many other Chinese books and articles on Chinese television and international communication. She has also published articles in English language journals. Sylvia Harvey is a Visiting Professor in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. She taught film and media studies, mainly at universities in the north of England between 1975 and 2009. She chaired the Citizens’ Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting (2009–2010), was a founder member of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, and a trustee of the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (UK). Her publications include May ’68 and Film Culture; articles on broadcasting regulation, documentary, independent film, and Channel 4 Television; spectrum allocation; and the importance of free‐to‐air television. She edited Trading Culture and co‐edited with John Corner, Enterprise and Heritage: Cross Currents of National Culture, and with Kevin Robins, The Regions, the Nations and the BBC. Annette Hill is a Professor of Media and Communication at Lund University, and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. Her research focuses on audiences and popular culture, with interests in media engagement, everyday life, genres, production studies, and cultures of viewing. She is the author of eight books, and many articles and book chapters in journals and edited collections, which address varieties of engagement with reality television, news and documentary, television drama, entertainment formats, live events and sports entertainment, film violence, and media ethics. Her latest books are Reality TV (Routledge, 2015) and Media Experiences (Routledge, 2018).



Notes on Contributors

xi

Deborah L. Jaramillo is an Associate Professor of Television Studies in the Department of Film and Television at Boston University. She is the author of The Television Code: Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry (University of Texas Press, 2018), an examination of the circumstances that prompted the National Association of Broadcasters to craft a document to censor early television. Her first book, Ugly War Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept (Indiana University Press, 2009), analyzes how cable news channels narrativized, marketed, and merchandised the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Sarah R. Johnson is a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the reception of popular culture and young people’s political identity construction, addressing music, television, celebrity culture, and online cultures. Previous work has looked at new feminisms in popular culture, exploring the fandom of Game of Thrones as a site of competing feminist discourses. Doug Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA and is author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture. Kellner’s ­latest published books include Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush/Cheney Era (2010); Media Spectacle and Insurrection 2011 From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere (2013); American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism (2016); and The American Horror Show: Election 2016 and the Ascendency of Donald J. Trump (2017). A book co‐authored with Jeff Share, The Critical Media Literacy Guide: Engaging Media and Transforming Education was published in 2019. Joe F. Khalil is an Associate Professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. Prior to joining academia, he had a long professional experience in the media and communication sector as a television executive producer. He is engaged in researching youth cultures, alternative media, and media industries in the Arab world. In addition to numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, he is author of Arab Satellite Entertainment Television and Public Diplomacy, co‐author of Arab Television Industries, and co‐editor of Culture, Time and Publics in the Arab World. William M. Kunz is a Professor in the Division of Culture, Arts and Communication in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma. He received his Ph.D. in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon. His research focuses on ownership and regulation in television, including broadcast, cable and streaming. He is the author of Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and Television Industries, as well as various ­journal articles and book chapters. He has worked in sports television at the network level for over 30 years, most recently serving as a Coordinating Producer for NBC Sports for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

xii

Notes on Contributors

Novotny Lawrence is an Associate Professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, where he teaches courses focusing on race, media, and cinema. Lawrence’s research centers on African American mediated experiences and popular culture. He is the author of Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (Routledge, 2007), the editor of Documenting the Black Experience (McFarland, 2014), and the co‐editor of Beyond Blaxploitation (Wayne State University Press, 2016). Lawrence has also published work on The Twilight Zone, comedian Dave Chappelle, and C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. He currently serves on the Governing Board of the Popular Culture Association and is the chair of the Race and Ethnicity area of the Film and History Conference. Dafna Lemish is a Professor and Associate Dean at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, the founding editor of the Journal of Children and Media, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association. She is author and editor of numerous books and articles on children, media and gender representations, including recently Fear in Front of the Screen: Children’s Fears, Nightmares and Thrills (co‐authored); Beyond the Stereotypes: Images of Boys and Girls and Their Consequences (co‐edited); Children, Adolescents, and Media: The Future of Research and Action (co‐edited); Children and Media: A Global Perspective; The Routledge International Handbook on Children, Adolescents and Media (edited); Sexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers (co‐edited); and Screening Gender on Children’s Television: The Views of Producers around the World (Routledge, 2010). Matthew P. McAllister is Professor of Communications in the Department of Film‐ Video and Media Studies at Penn State. He also is the Graduate Programs Chair in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. His research focuses on political economy of media and critical advertising studies. He is the author of The Commercialization of American Culture (1996), and the co‐editor of Comics and Ideology (2001), Film and Comic Books (2007), The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader (2009), and The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (2013). He has published in such outlets as Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Eileen R. Meehan is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Radio, Television, and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University. She is the author of Why TV Is Not Our Fault; co‐editor with Ellen Riordan of Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in Media Studies; and co‐principal investigator and co‐editor with Janet Wasko and Mark Phillips of Dazzled by Disney?: The Global Disney Audiences Project. Her research addresses the political economy of television and film, with particular interests in the US television ratings industry and transindustrial media conglomeration. She is a founding member of the Union for Democratic Communication and of the Political Economy Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.



Notes on Contributors

xiii

Graham Murdock, Professor of Culture and Economy at Loughborough University, draws on insights from critical political economy and across the human and social sciences to explore the role of communication in sustaining and challenging systems of power and inequality. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Auckland, Bergen, California at San Diego, Curtin Western Australia, the Free University of Brussels and Stockholm, and a Visiting Fellowship at Fudan University in Shanghai. His work has been translated into 21 languages. His recent books include, as co‐editor, Money Talks: Media, Markets, Crisis (2015), New Media and Metropolitan Life: Connecting, Consuming, Creating (2015) (in Chinese), and Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Change (2017). He is currently a Vice President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Julianne H. Newton is a Professor of Visual Communication for the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Newton is an award‐ winning scholar who has worked as a reporter, editor, photographer, and designer for newspapers, magazines, and electronic media. She is author of The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality and co‐author (with Rick Williams) of Visual Communication: Integrating Media, Art and Science, which won the 2009 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in Media Ecology. Her research applies ethics and cognitive theory to the study of visual behavior. Andrea Press is currently William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Media Studies and Sociology, University of Virginia. She was founding Chair of the Department of Media Studies and Executive Director of the Virginia Film Festival, and has held faculty positions at the University of Michigan, the London School of Economics, Hebrew University, London’s Stanhope Center for Communications Policy Research, and the University of Illinois, where she produced the Roger Ebert Festival of Overlooked Films, was awarded the Beckman award for research, and appointed to the Center for Advanced Study. Awards include NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) Postdoctoral Fellowship and two National Science Foundation awards. Press has authored Women Watching Television, Speaking of Abortion, The New Media Environment, Media and Class, Feminist Reception Studies in a Post‐Audience Age, The New Feminist Television Studies, The Handbook of Contemporary Feminism, and the forthcoming Media‐Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism. She is incoming Chair of the Feminist Scholarship Division of the International Communication Association. Michael R. Real is Professor Emeritus at Royal Roads University. His books have included Exploring Media Culture (1996), Super Media (1989), and Mass‐Mediated Culture (1977). He has written scores of scholarly and general publications, directed local and international research projects, and hosted television and radio programs. The focus of his work has been media, culture, and social responsibility.

xiv

Notes on Contributors

Giuseppe Richeri is Professor Emeritus of the Lugano University, where he has been dean of the Communication Sciences Faculty and director of the Media and Journalism Institute and the Media in China Observatory. He also taught at Ecole National d’Administration (Paris), Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Bologna University, Peking University, and the Communication University of China. He is Overseas Member of the International Academic Committee of the School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai University, and member of the International Scientific Committee of the Maison de Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. He is the author of books and articles published in Italian, French, English, Spanish, Chinese, German, Russian, and Portuguese. Jane Shattuc is a Professor in Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. She has taught at the University of Vermont and University of Wisconsin‐Madison, and was a fellow at Bonn Universität, Bonn, Germany. She is the author of Television, Tabloids, Tears: Fassbinder and Popular Culture (University of Minnesota Press) and The Talking Cure: Television Talk Shows and Women (Routledge Press), and the editor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Cultures (Duke University Press). Her most recent book is The American TV Industry (co‐authored with Michael Curtin, British Film Institute). John Sinclair is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His published work covers various aspects of the internationalization of the media and communication industries, ­particularly advertising and television, and with a special focus on Asia and Latin America. His books include Latin American Television Industries, co‐authored with Joe Straubhaar; and two co‐edited works: Consumer Culture in Latin America and Media and Communication in the Chinese Diaspora. He has held visiting professorships at leading universities in Europe and the United States, is on the editorial advisory boards of various international journals, and is active in professional organizations, notably International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Lynn Spigel is a Professor of Film and Television at Northwestern University. She is author of TV By Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (Chicago UP, 2008), Make Room for TV, and Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago UP, 1992), and other books and anthologies on media and culture. Her  book, TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life is forthcoming with Duke University Press. Lars Stoltzfus‐Brown is a Ph.D. candidate in Mass Communications with a graduate minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. They have two primary research foci: feminist political economy of media and the impact of media on  identity formation among Amish and ex‐Amish individuals.



Notes on Contributors

xv

Lars’s political ­economic work is concerned with comics, popular culture, and how adaptations portray minoritized identities. Their research on former Amish, informed by their own subject‐position, deals with settler nostalgia, whiteness, and erased forms of queer and trans embodiment. Ruth Teer‐Tomaselli is a Full Professor and a Fellow of the University of KwaZulu‐ Natal. She holds a B‐rating from the National Research Foundation, and from 2002 to 2014, she held a UNESCO Chair in Communications for South Africa. She served as the Vice President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) from 2008–2012, and was a member of its International Council for several years. She served a two‐year period as President (2008–2009) of the South African Association for Communication (SACOMM), following two years as Vice President (2006–2007). Teer‐Tomaselli’s research interests cover the political economy of the media; broadcasting (both governance and content); South African and African media history; and memory studies with a particular emphasis on mediated‐memories. She has written on political cartooning and political communication. Deborah V. Tudor received her doctorate from Northwestern University College of Communication in 1992. She taught at DePaul University until 2006, when she joined Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU) as Chair of the Department of Cinema and Photography. Since November 2016, she has served as Dean of the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at SIU. She has published in journals including Jump Cut; Media, Culture & Society; and Cinema Journal. Her current research lies in the areas of culture and technology, and the political landscape of superhero films. Janet Wasko is the Knight Chair for Communication Research at the University of Oregon. She is the author of How Hollywood Works, Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy, and Hollywood in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen, and is editor of The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, A Companion to Television, and Dazzled by Disney? The Global Disney Audience Project, as well as other volumes on the political economy of communication and democratic media. She is currently President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Yuezhi Zhao is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy of Global Communication at the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, and a Specially Appointed Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University. She has written in both English and Chinese on the political economic and sociocultural dimensions of China’s rapidly transforming media and communication industries and the role of communication and culture in China’s global integration. Her publications include Communication and Society

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(in Chinese, 2011); Communication in China (2008), Global Communications (2008), Democratizing Global Media (2005), and Media, Market, and Democracy in China (1998). She is also the Founding Director of the Simon Fraser University– Communication University of China Global Communication MA Double Degree Program and Executive Director of the Heyang Institute for Rural Studies in Jinyun County, Zhejiang Province, China.

List of Tables and Figures

Tables  I.1 Time spent per week with traditional TV and TV‐connected 6 devices in the US, 2018  5.1 UK television channels’ shares of national television audience, 2017 120  6.1 Total resources for broadcast TV and pay TV: advertising, service charges and subscriptions, 2010–2017 (in billions of euros) 130  6.2 2010–2017 daily average television audience share 131  6.3 Main resources for financing Italian television, 2010–2015 131  6.4 Share of the six major TV channels in the United Kingdom (8/29/2016–9/4/2016) 133  6.5 Region of origin of movies offered in catalogs of 75 VoD services in the EU (2015) 135  6.6 Netflix catalog content in three European countries (October 2015) 136  6.7 Netflix subscribers (millions) 137  6.8 Netflix revenue (billions $) 138  7.1 Streaming services for seven US‐based companies in 2018 147 11.1 Born‐digital news sites with minimum of 10 million unique visitors234 13.1 US coverage and rights fees of the Summer Olympic Games 279 20.1 Millions of pay TV subscriptions, selected markets, 2018 412 21.1 The top 20 most watched programs over five channels 426

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List of Tables and Figures 

Figures 19.1 A tetrad for television. Source: adapted from McLuhan and McLuhan (1988) 19.2 A prototype of the television, stained glass panel, communications bay, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York, NY

395 399

Part I

Introduction

Introduction Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan

Television (tel•e•vi•sion.) Pronunciation /tɛlɪˈvɪʒ(ə)n//ˈtɛlɪvɪʒ(ə)n/ Origin Early 20th century: from tele‐ ‘at a distance’ + vision. 1. [mass noun] A system for converting visual images (with sound) into electrical signals, transmitting them by radio or other means, and displaying them electronically on a screen. a. The activity, profession, or medium of broadcasting on television. b. Television programmes. 2. A device with a screen for receiving television signals. – Lexico.com (Dictionary.com and Oxford University Press),  

 https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/television

What is television, how can we understand it, and why should we bother? Ultimately, these questions lie at the heart of this volume, which features chapters by an international collection of media scholars who have studied various aspects of television. But even these experts do not offer easy or conclusive answers to these key questions, for television presents a complex phenomenon that has become a ubiquitous feature of our world. In this second edition of A Companion for Television, additional questions must be asked: How has television changed with the introduction of digital technologies since the beginning of the twenty‐first century? And, in light of these

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

4

Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan

changes, is television dead or has it become so pervasive and delivered by so many technologies that it is almost inescapable?

What is Television? Television is a multifaceted apparatus. Most simply, it is a technological process, an electronic device, a system of distributing images and sounds. Although television as a form of mass communication did not emerge until the late 1940s and early 1950s, much of the technology for television was developed during the 1920s. As with many forms of media technology, the promises and expectations for the medium were optimistic and propitious. For instance, one of the often‐overlooked inventors in the United States, Philo Farnsworth, was clearly hopeful about television’s future. One of his biographers explains: Philo began laying out his vision for what television could become. Above all the … television would become the world’s greatest teaching tool. Illiteracy would be wiped out. The immediacy of television was the key. As news happened viewers would watch it unfold live; no longer would we have to rely on people interpreting and distorting the news for us. We would be watching sporting events and symphony orchestras. Instead of going to the movies, the movies would come to us. Television would also bring about world peace. If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings? War would be a thing of the past (Schwartz 2002, p. 113).

Obviously, Farnsworth’s full vision has not yet been realized, even though some parts of his dream have been more than fulfilled. Television has become a common household appliance that serves as a source of news, information, politics, entertainment, education, religion, art, culture, sports, weather, and music. Television is an industrial system that produces and distributes products, as well as (often) promoting other commodities and commerce. Hence, television is not only a technical device, but also a social, political, economic, and cultural force. Of course, the way television is produced and received has changed over the years with changing political and economic climates, as well as the introduction of newer technologies – videocassette recorders, cable systems, pay TV, satellite systems, digital, and high definition. In addition, other communication systems (such as computers and the internet) have challenged traditional television’s dominance as the primary mass medium, while often serving as a means for viewers to access television programming. Indeed, these variations and changes make television an enigmatic “moving target,” its future uncertain and contested. Nevertheless, we must still attempt to define its character and its influence. And because of these technological changes and the context in which they are emerging, we may need a new definition of television.

Introduction

5

Why Should We Still Bother to Understand Television? Television – in all its forms – continues to be a centrally important factor and an inescapable part of modern culture. Many would still call it the most important of all the mass media. As the television program Modern Marvels concluded: From its public marketing in the 1940s to the present day, television can be listed as one of the most profound, if not the most profound, influences on human history. Television has affected every aspect of our lives including history, science, politics, culture and social mores. It is impossible to imagine a world without television, and most of us take for granted the way television has shaped and defined our society, and our lives (The History Channel 1996).

The pervasiveness of television is hard to ignore. For instance, in the United States and Canada, television ownership reaches 99% of households, with an average number of nearly three sets per household. Despite the proliferation of individual digital screens, television is still a central presence in homes, with a high percentage of Americans still watching television while eating dinner. In addition, television sets are also prominent in other locations. We find them in bars, restaurants, shopping malls, waiting rooms, schools, hospitals, prisons … indeed, television sets still seem to be nearly everywhere and often difficult to avoid. Certainly, television ownership and viewing may vary around the world – but the prevalence of television is a global, albeit varied, phenomenon. We know that television in its various forms is a fundamental part of everyday life for many people, although accessing television data is complicated by inevitable methodological problems. Only a few years ago, it was claimed that the average American watches more than four hours of TV each day. With the growth of TV‐ connected devices (DVD/Blu‐ray devices, game consoles, and internet‐connected devices), it seems there may be even more overall television viewing. It is important, however, to note, the different viewing behavior between age groups. Nielson has reported that traditional TV time is much greater among older audiences, while connected TV time is much higher (and growing) among younger groups, but still trails traditional TV (see Table I.1.). Television is also still able to gather very large audiences at one time, evidenced by the 114 million viewers of the Super Bowl in February 2015. And some regularly scheduled programs also draw significant audiences, with Roseanne attracting nearly 20 million viewers in 2018 (Nielsen 2018). Although the internet may be increasingly providing citizens with news and information, traditional television remains a primary source of news for many people. Often, television covers an event while it is unfolding, while much of the news and information on the internet comes from television operations. In many countries, television is a key component in elections and political campaigns, thus becoming part of democratic and anti‐democratic processes.

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Table I.1  Time spent per week with traditional TV and TV‐connected devices in the US, 2018. Age Group

Traditional TV (hours : minutes)

Connected TV (hours : minutes)

12–17 18–34 35–49 50–64 65+

10 : 12 14 : 02 25 : 48 39 : 26 48 : 26

7 : 55 8 : 11 5 : 45 3 : 25 2 : 11

Traditional TV: all live, DVR/time‐shifted TV viewing. Connected TV: DVD/Blu‐ray devices, game consoles, and internet‐connected devices, including streaming media players and smart TVs). Source: Marketing Charts (2018) “The state of Traditional TV: Updated with Q2 2018 data,” http:// marketingcharts.com, 26 December. https://www.marketingcharts.com/featured‐105414. (http:// MarketingCharts.com analysis of Nielsen data.)

In addition to news and public affairs, television provides endless varieties of entertainment and diversion. Though the form and content may differ across time and space, the capacity of television to transmit sounds and images is potentially inexhaustible and seemingly unlimited. Thus, many have called television a storyteller, if not the storyteller for society. As Signorelli and Bacue (Signoreli and Bacue 1999, p. 527) explain: Television’s role in society is one of common storyteller – it is the mainstream of our popular culture. Its world shows and tells us about life – people, places, striving power and fate. It lets us know who is good and who is bad, who wins and who loses, what works and what doesn’t, and what it means to be a man or a woman. As such, television has joined the ranks of socialization agents in our society and in the world at large.

Importantly, television systems and content exist within social contexts and are shaped by a variety of forces. Through its distribution of information, entertainment, education, and culture, television inevitably is a fund of values, ideals, morals, and ethical standards. In other words, television is an ideological source that cannot be overlooked in modern societies. Nevertheless, opinions differ about television’s fundamental value. (Note the sampling of opinions in the quotes about television by public figures included at the end of this introduction.) Television has been praised as a wondrous looking‐ glass on the world, a valuable source of information, education, and entertainment. TV allows people to share cultural experiences, as well as allowing family members of all ages an opportunity to spend time together. Despite the disparaging comments about television’s impact on print culture, some would point out that TV may serve as a catalyst for reading, as viewers may follow up on TV programs by finding books on the same subjects or reading authors whose work was adapted for programs.

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As envisioned by Farnsworth, television does indeed provide news, current events, and historical programming that can help make people more aware of other cultures and people. It is argued that “good television” can present the arts, science, and culture. Furthermore, good television can teach important values and life lessons, explore controversial or sensitive issues, and provide socialization and learning skills. Good television can help develop critical thinking about society and the world. More simply, many point out that television provides people with pleasure, as well as being a welcome companion for lonely or isolated individuals. The economic impact of television might also be noted. Manufacturers often depend on commercial television to spread the word and encourage consumption of their products and services. But even the costuming, props, and setting of noncommercial programs often feature familiar products that add a dimension of “realness” to televised fictions. In 2019, TV ad revenue in the US was still expected to be over $41 billion. Revenues are also generated from programming production and distribution, subscriptions to pay television services, and hardware sales. It follows that television also provides employment – not huge numbers, but certainly a significant workforce that obviously plays an important role in economic systems. On the other hand, many commentators have also disparaged television as being valueless, vulgar, and vacuous. Indeed, the discussions of television as a negative force in society are so widespread and varied that they are difficult to summarize. Television is blamed for everything from passivity and obesity to stimulating aggressive and violent behavior. It has been singled out as leading an attack on literate culture, as well as shriveling public discourse (see Postman 1986). An early and often‐cited assessment of television acknowledged its potential value, but was damning of its current state. In 1961, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in the US, proclaimed: “When television is good, nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your TV set and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.” Today that wasteland may seem more massive given the proliferation of television channels featuring inexpensive genres, like game shows and reality programs, or rerunning movies, TV shows, or cartoons. If television has become “a teaching tool,” as envisioned by Farnsworth, this is not a positive development for many observers. For instance, in 1995, John Silber, president of Boston University, declared “Television is the most important educational institution in the United States today.” Silber went on to decry the … degenerative effects of television and its indiscriminate advocacy of pleasure… As television has ravenously consumed our attention, it has weakened the formative institutions of church, family, and schools, thoroughly eroding the sense of individual obedience to the unenforceable on which manners and morals and ultimately the laws depend (Silber 1995, p. 2).

The role of television in promoting consumption has been widely attacked, because commercial systems are fundamentally ruled by advertising and advertisements

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often imply that buying the product will make the purchaser sexier, more popular, and happier (Downs and Harrison 1985; Andersen 1995). Given the brevity of the message, ads often feature actors who fit within contemporary sexual and racial stereotypes, as Novotny Lawrence demonstrates in Chapter 15. But even without advertising, some have argued that television cannot be transformed or altered and that it is inherently destructive and detrimental. Former advertising executive Jerry Mander (1977) presented this viewpoint in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), when he argued that television is not a neutral technology and its very existence is destructive to human nature. There are different values and importance associated with television in difference cultures. Nevertheless, television’s key role in many societies – as well as its global prevalence and importance – is undeniable. That makes television a significant issue for research and reflection.

How Can We Understand Television Today? Since its inception, television has attracted a good deal of reflection and analysis. Within academia, television has been part of the ongoing study of mass media in general, which has been influenced by many disciplines, including (but not limited to) political science, sociology, economics, psychology, and literary studies. Scholarly research has concentrated specifically on television, insisting that the medium itself is a worthy focal point for academic research. While general approaches to television research might be characterized as social scientific or humanistic, areas of research specialization have also evolved. Several chapters in this volume offer general overviews of television research detailing different perspectives and approaches, while other contributors summarize specific areas of scholarly inquiry. Much early television research adhered to a media effects orientation, searching for quantitative measures of television’s impact on audiences, especially consumer behavior and the impact of violent content on behavior. For instance, according to one estimate, approximately 4,000 studies have examined TV’s effect on children. Still, no conclusive results have emerged. Meanwhile, other scholars have focused attention on television content from the purview of literary or dramatic criticism. The growth of television studies emerged mostly from cinema/film studies in the 1970s and 1980s and mostly drew on this orientation. This work has focused mostly on television texts and audiences, often integrating cultural studies and feminist analysis, while drawing on a range of qualitative methodologies. More recently, historical studies of television have blossomed, as well as work examining television’s structure, organizations, and ownership, its connections to the state and to other media, and its role in influencing public opinion and the public sphere. Indeed, debates continue to rage about what should be studied and what methods should be used to study television, as many (if not, most) studies of television still represent single perspectives or specific agendas. However, numerous authors argue

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that interdisciplinary, multiperspective approaches are needed. In the first edition of this collection, Horace Newcomb called for “blended, melded research strategies,” while Doug Kellner described “multidimensional” or “multiperspectival” approaches to understand television from a critical perspective. As Newcomb argued: “We can best understand television not as an entity – economic, technological, social, psychological, or cultural – but as a site, the point at which numerous questions and approaches intersect and inflect one another.”

Chapter Overviews The contributors to this volume contribute to such a multiperspectival approach, offering a wide range of expertise on the study of television. They present overviews of the extensive research, as well as original insights, on television’s development and significance in various regions of the world. Importantly, they also examine how and why television has changed. We begin with a theoretical overview for many of the discussions in this volume. In the first chapter, Douglas Kellner points to the Frankfurt School as an inaugurator of critical approaches to television studies. His overview considers the politics of representation and argues for a multidimensional critical approach to television that embraces the production and the political economy of television, textual analysis, and the study of audience reception. We then turn to several historical issues pertaining to television that have been studied by media scholars. Lynn Spigel speaks to television history by considering discursive factors and institutional relations involved in television preservation and asking important questions about why and how programs are saved. Meanwhile, Caren Deming and Deborah V. Tudor explore the variable constituents of the concept of “televisuality” by looking closely at a program from the “Golden Age” of television in the United States, The Goldbergs (1949–1956). And, Gary R. Edgerton considers the representation of history in his chapter on made‐ for‐TV history, identifying a wide range of general assumptions about the nature of this type of programming and pointing to implications for popular and professional history. The industrial nature of television is fundamental to its understanding and has been analyzed by scholars since its inception. In this volume, Sylvia Harvey examines the changes in traditional broadcasting in relation to new online providers. She especially focuses on the historical evolution of legislation and regulation in the US and UK and explores the implications for new television services. Giuseppe Richeri echoes many of Harvey’s points in his review of changing relationships and the involvement of the state in the European audiovisual industry, as well as discussing the behavior of consumers. Meanwhile, Jane Shattuc provides even more details about “the new Netflix order” by digging into the development of new streaming technologies. She concludes that the television industry may not be changing so dramatically, but has been experiencing a shift in technology, not companies.

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No discussion of old or new television can ignore the significance of advertising. Matthew P. McAllister and Lars Stoltzfus‐Brown present an overview of the critical literature on television advertising, focusing especially on the US system, which has been the model for commercial television systems around the world. On the other hand, public broadcasting has also had a rich history, but is facing challenges from new digital technologies and its goal of building “culture in common.” Graham Murdock offers a brief history of public broadcasting and outlines the challenges and possibilities for the future. The next section includes examples of the work that has been done on television genres and programming types. Annette Hill suggests that genre identification can be tricky, as she explores reality TV, which she points out is “a container for a range of diverse programs, series, formats, and events in which elements of documentary, talent shows, game shows, talk shows, soap operas, melodramas, and sport, mix together to produce subgenres.” She ultimately concludes that reality TV represents an “intergeneric space” between other genres and platforms. Andrew Calabrese and Christopher C. Barnes further complicate the concept of genre in their discussion of television news, which has experienced structural and technological influences that have affected its production, distribution, and consumption. Further changes have affected the cable news genre, as Deborah L. Jaramillo explains in her analysis of “breaking news,” drawing on examples from Trump’s Twitter flow. Meanwhile, another genre that has grown and changed with television is sports programming. As Michael R. Real and William M. Kunz point out, “the combination seems a marriage made in heaven.” However, they also note the “mutually parasitic” relationship that has led to heavy commercialization of most televised sports. Individual programs also have been a major focus in the academic study of television, as scholars have used various methods of analyzing popular (and unpopular) shows. Lauren Bratslavsky combines textual and political economic analyses to explore how the NBC series 30 Rock both criticizes and corroborates industrial media practices. The result is a critical portrayal of the status quo that mirrors the events surrounding one conglomerate purchasing another and satirizes some of the consequences and conditions of television’s industrial processes. A wide range of themes have been analyzed in studies of television programming, especially those pertaining to the representation of gender, race, class, etc. In his chapter, Novotny Lawrence traces the history of African American‐themed sitcoms from the 1950s to the 1980s and the various strategies that the networks implemented in creating black‐themed series. Lawrence focuses on the more recent program, This is Us, observing how the series echoes previous sitcoms, repackaging specific tropes and perpetuating problematic themes.

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The study of television audiences and effects have been well‐traveled paths for many television scholars, as well as industry and government researchers. This may not be surprising, given the dominance of effects research in communication/media studies and the marketing emphasis of commercial television. However, a wide range of approaches have been employed to understand audiences and audience sectors, as exemplified by the chapters in this section. Dafna Lemish presents a survey of work done focusing on children and television, children on television, and television for children. An important component of understanding television audiences involves the various television markets. Eileen R. Meehan considers the interlinked markets for programs, audiences, and ratings, and examines research on the political economy of programming, challenging claims that television “gives us what we want,” and that the industry represents competitive sectors. Andrea Press and Sarah R. Johnson trace the history of feminist audience research that has led to the study women and television in the new media context. Another integrative approach to studying television is represented by Julianne H. Newton’s chapter that argues for a moving aesthetic that “dances between convention and the transgressive, between established codes and the challenging of codes.” Newton points out that television epitomized the moving aesthetic, as it continued to invent itself, and is entering into a new era of “aesthetic exploration.” Many of the authors thus far in the volume have pointed out that they have focused mostly on US or European examples, often because these systems have often been the models for television in other parts of the world. This may indeed be the case in many situations. However, more attention must be given to how other systems have replicated, but also differentiated television structures, policies, and traditions. Several case studies are offered at the end of the book to exemplify some of these similarities and differences in different parts of the world. John Sinclair tackles the vast area of Latin America, addressing issues related to distinctions issues and technological transformations. Ruth Teer‐ Tomaselli presents a historical look at television in South Africa, and pays special attention to significant recent changes. Arab‐language television in 21 countries is considered by Joe F. Khalil, who emphasizes the political, economic, cultural, and religious differences that affect television in these settings. And finally, Zhao and Guo outline the context in which Chinese television has developed, leading to a “television culture with ‘Chinese characteristics’.” Overall, contributors to this volume have attempted to define television today, consider why it is still significant, and present overviews of how it has been studied. Despite the ongoing changes in television and the world, we must endeavor to answer a wide range of questions no matter how difficult. Welcome to the study of television in the early twenty‐first century!

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Quotes about Television It is interesting how many public figures have commented on the nature and significance of television over the years. Included here is a sampling of these quotes (many by people deeply involved in television) that may provide amusement or reflection, but are also relevant to the discussions that follow in this volume. richard p. adler:  “All television is children’s television.” fred allen:  “Imitation is the sincerest form of television.” chris bachelder:  “The old televisions had an off switch.” lucille ball:  “Television is the quickest form of recognition in the world.” clive barnes:  “Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want.” erma bombeck:  “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” ray bradbury, fahrenheit 451:  “The television is ’real’. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’” roald dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.” umberto eco:  “If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.” bill hicks:  “Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.” alfred hitchcock:  “Seeing a murder on television … can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.” stephen king, on writing: a memoir of the craft:  “I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.” john lennon:  “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.” robert macneil:  “Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”

Introduction groucho marx:  “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” david mccullough:  “However little television you watch, watch less.” donald miller, blue like jazz: nonreligious thoughts on christian spirituality:  “I feel guilty because for a long time I didn’t allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I  thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I  ­visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher ­talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon.” edward r. murrow:  “If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.” david niven:  “Watching too much TV can triple our hunger for more possessions, while reducing our personal contentment by about 5 percent for every hour a day we watch.” chuck palahniuk:  “I haven’t had a TV in 10 years, and I really don’t miss it. ’Cause it’s always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.” neal pollack:  “Television characters live inside our minds as though they’re actual people. In fact, we know more about them than we do about most people in our physical lives.” radiohead:  “Most people gaze neither into the past nor the future; they explore neither truth nor lies. They gaze at the television.” dan rather:  “An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger.” jess c. scott, literary heroin (gluttony): a twilight parody:  “People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.” daniel r. thorne:  “Modern broadcast television, with its digital boxes and fiber optics and orbiting geosynchronous satellites, has become a perfectly engineered slaughterhouse of time.” gore vidal:  “Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.” bill watterson, calvin and hobbes: sunday pages 1985‐1995: an exhibition catalogue: calvin:  “it says here that ’religion is the opiate of the masses.’ … what do you suppose that means?” television:  “…it means that karl marx hadn’t seen anything yet.” michael wolff, fire and fury: inside the trump white house:  “He was postliterate – total television.” paramahansa yogananda, conversations with yogananda: stories, sayings and wisdom:  “Television has a satanic influence.” Sources: www.quotegarden.com, www.basicquotations.com, http://en.thinkexist. com/quotations, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/television, and Alison Bullivant (2003).

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References Andersen, R. (1995). Consumer Culture & TV Programming. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bullivant, A. (ed.) (2003). The Little Book of Humorous Quotations. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. Downs, A.C. and Harrison, S.K. (1985). Embarrassing age spots or just plain ugly: Physical attractiveness stereotyping as an instrument of sexism on American television commercials. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 13 (1): 9–19. Mander, J. (1977). Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Harper Collins. Marketing Charts (2018). The State of Traditional TV: Updated with Q2 2018 data. marketing­ charts.com 26 December. https://www.marketingcharts.com/featured‐105414. Nielsen (2018). Tops of 2018: Television. Nielsen.com, 18 December. https://www.nielsen. com/us/en/insights/news/2018/tops‐of‐2018‐television.html Postman, N. (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books. Schwartz, E.I. (2002). The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television. New York: HarperCollins. Signoreli, N. and Bacue, A. (1999). Recognition and respect: a content analysis of prime‐time television characters across three decades. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 40 (7–8): 527–544. Silber J. (1995). The media and our children: who is responsible? https://web.archive.org/ web/20060929185053/http:/www.johnsonfdn.org/winter96/media.pdf. The History Channel (1996). Modern Marvels, Television: Window to the World. https:// images.history.com/images/media/pdf/television_study_guide.pdf.

Part II

Theoretical Overview

Chapter 1

Critical Perspectives on Television from the Frankfurt School to the Politics of Representation Doug Kellner

Paul Lazarsfeld (1941), one of the originators of modern communications studies, distinguished between what he called “administrative research,” that deployed empirical research for the goals of corporate and state institutions, and “critical research,” an approach that he associated with the Frankfurt School. Critical research situates the media within the broader context of social life and interrogates its ­structure, goals, values, messages, and effects. It develops critical perspectives by which media are analyzed, contextualized, and evaluated. Since the 1940s, an impressive variety of critical approaches to the media and television have developed. In this chapter, I will first present the Frankfurt School as an inaugurator of critical approaches to television studies and will then consider how a wide range of theorists addressed what later became known as the politics of representation in critical television studies, engaging problematics of class, gender, race, sexuality, and other central components of media representation and social life. Then, I discuss how a postmodern turn in cultural studies contested earlier critical models and provided alternative approaches to television studies. I conclude with some comments that argue for a critical approach to television and media ­culture that embraces production and the political economy of television, textual analysis, and investigation of audience reception. As this study will indicate, such a multidimensional approach to critical media and television studies is found initially in the Frankfurt School and was developed by many other television theorists in diverse locations and from often‐conflicting perspectives, ranging from British ­cultural studies to a diverse range of feminist theory, critical race theory, queer ­theory, and other critical approaches.

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The Frankfurt School and the Culture Industries From the classical Frankfurt School perspective, commercial television is a form of what Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno and their colleagues called the “culture industry.” Moving from Nazi Germany to the United States, the Frankfurt School experienced at first hand the rise of a media culture involving film, popular music, radio, television, and other forms of mass culture.1 In the United States, where they found themselves in exile, media production was by and large a form of commercial entertainment controlled by big corporations. Thus, the Frankfurt School coined the term “culture industries” to call attention to the industrialization and commercialization of culture under capitalist relations of production. This situation was most marked in the United States where there was little state support for film or ­television industries. To a large extent, the Frankfurt School began a systematic and comprehensive critical approach to studies of mass communication and culture, and produced the first critical theory of the cultural industries.2 During the 1930s, the Frankfurt School developed a critical and transdisciplinary approach to cultural and communications studies, combining a critique of the political economy of the media, ­analysis of texts, and audience reception studies of the social and ideological effects of mass culture and communications. The critical theorists analyzed all mass‐­ mediated cultural artifacts within the context of industrial production, in which the commodities of the culture industries exhibited the same features as other products of mass production: commodification, standardization, and massification. The ­culture industries had the specific function, however, of providing ideological ­legitimation of the existing capitalist societies and of integrating individuals into the framework of its social formation. Key early studies of the culture industries include Adorno’s analyses of popular music (1978 [1932], 1941, 1982, 1989), television (1991), and popular phenomena such as horoscopes (1994); Leo Lowenthal’s studies of popular literature and magazines (1961); Hedda Herzog’s studies of radio soap operas (1941); and the perspectives and critiques of mass culture developed in Horkheimer and Adorno’s famous study of the culture industries (1972 and Adorno 1991). In their critiques of mass culture and communication, members of the Frankfurt School were among the first to systematically analyze and criticize mass‐mediated culture and television within critical social theory. They were the first social theorists to see the importance of the culture industry in the reproduction of contemporary societies, in which so‐called mass culture and communications stand at the center of leisure activity, are important agents of socialization and mediators of political reality, and should thus be seen as major institutions of contemporary societies with a variety of economic, political, cultural, and social effects. Furthermore, the critical theorists investigated the cultural industry in a political context, conceptualizing it as a form of the cultural‐ideological integration of the working class into capitalist societies. The Frankfurt School was one of the first



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neo‐Marxian groups to examine the effects of mass culture and the rise of the consumer society on the working classes, which were to be the instrument of revolution in the classical Marxian scenario. They also analyzed the ways that the culture industry and consumer society were stabilizing contemporary capitalism and accordingly sought new strategies for political change, agencies of social transformation, and models for political emancipation that could serve as norms of social critique and goals for political struggle. This project required rethinking the Marxian project and produced many important contributions – as well as some problematical positions. The Frankfurt School provides television and media studies with a model that articulates the dimensions of production and political economy, text analysis, and audience/reception research. The school addresses all of these dimensions and at its best depicts their interrelationship. Indeed, Frankfurt School critical theory ­provides the “Big Picture,” analyzing relationships between the economy, state, society, and everyday life (Kellner 1989). Thus, a critical theory of television would articulate the relationships between the economy, the state, and television, analyzing television’s production process, texts, and sociopolitical effects and audience uses within the context of its institutional role in specific types of social organization (see Kellner 1990). I will accordingly discuss the classical Frankfurt School model of television and some specific attempts to provide analyses of television within the Frankfurt School tradition before turning to other critical approaches. In their Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno anticipate the coming of television in terms of the emergence of a new form of mass culture that would combine sight and sound, image, and narrative, in an institution that would embody the types of production, texts, and reception of the culture industry. Anticipating that television would be a prototypical artifact of industrialized culture, Adorno and Horkheimer wrote: Television aims at a synthesis of radio and film, and is held up only because the ­interested parties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the thinly veiled identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly out into the open, derisively f­ ulfilling the Wagnerian dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the fusion of all the arts in one work. The alliance of word, image, and music is all the more perfect than in Tristan because the sensuous elements which all approvingly reflect the surface of social reality are in principle embodied in the same technical process, the unity of which becomes its distinctive content … Television points the way to a development which might easily enough force the Warner Brothers into what would certainly be the unwelcome position of serious musicians and cultural conservatives (1972, pp. 124, 161).

Following the model of critique of mass culture in Dialectic of Enlightenment, a Frankfurt School approach to television would analyze television within the ­dominant system of cultural production and reception, situating the medium within its  institutional and political framework. It would combine the study of text and

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audience with an ideology critique and a contextualizing analysis of how television texts and audiences are situated within specific social relations and institutions. The approach combines Marxian critique of political economy with ideology critique, textual analysis, and psychoanalytically inspired depth‐approaches to audiences and effects. T.W. Adorno’s article “How to Look at Television” (1991) provides a striking example of a classic Frankfurt School analysis. Adorno opens by stressing the ­importance of undertaking an examination of the effects of television upon viewers, making use of “depth‐psychological categories.” Adorno had previously collaborated with Paul Lazarsfeld on some of the first examinations of the impact of radio and popular music on audiences (see Lazarsfeld 1941). While working on The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1969 [1950]), Adorno took up a position as director of the scientific branch of the Hacker Foundation in Beverly Hills, a psychoanalytically oriented foundation, and undertook examinations of the ­sociopsychological roots and impact of mass cultural phenomena, focusing on subjects as diverse as television (Adorno 1991) and the astrological column of the Los Angeles Times (Adorno 1994). In view of the general impression that the Frankfurt School makes sharp and problematic distinctions between high and low culture, it is interesting that Adorno opens his study of television with a deconstruction of “the dichotomy between ­autonomous art and mass media.” Stressing that their relation is “highly complex,” Adorno claims that distinctions between popular and elite art are a product of ­historical conditions and should not be exaggerated. After a historical examination of older and recent popular culture, Adorno analyzes the “multilayered structure of contemporary television.” In light of the notion that the Frankfurt School reduces the texts of media culture to ideology, it is interesting that Adorno calls for analysis of the “various layers of meaning” found in popular television, stressing “polymorphic meanings” and distinctions between latent and manifest content. Adorno writes: The effect of television cannot be adequately expressed in terms of success or failure, likes or dislikes, approval or disapproval. Rather, an attempt should be made, with the aid of depth‐psychological categories and previous knowledge of mass media, to  crystallize a number of theoretical concepts by which the potential effect of ­television – its impact upon various layers of the spectator’s personality – could be studied. It seems timely to investigate systematically socio‐psychological stimuli typical of televised material both on a descriptive and psychodynamic level, to analyze their presuppositions as well as their total pattern, and to evaluate the effect they are likely to produce … (1991, p. 136).

Adorno’s examples come from the early 1950s TV shows and he tends to see these works as highly formulaic and reproducing conformity and adjustment. He criticizes stereotyping in television, “pseudo‐realism,” and its highly conventional forms and meaning, an approach that accurately captures certain aspects of 1950s television, but which is inadequate to capture the growing complexity of contemporary



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television. Adorno’s approach to “hidden meanings” is highly interesting, however, and his psychoanalytic and ideological readings of television texts and speculation on their effects are pioneering. Adorno’s study is one of the few concrete studies of television within the Frankfurt School tradition that addresses the sort of text produced by network television and the audience for its product. While Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, and other major Frankfurt School theorists never systematically engage television production, texts, or audiences, they frequently acknowledge the importance of ­television in their development of a critical theory of society, or in their comments on contemporary social phenomena. Following the Frankfurt School analysis of changes in the nature of socialization, Herbert Marcuse, for instance, noted the decline of the family as the dominant agent of socialization in Eros and Civilization (1955) and the rise of the mass media, like radio and television: The repressive organization of the instincts seems to be collective, and the ego seems to be prematurely socialized by a whole system of extra‐familial agents and agencies. As early as the pre‐school level, gangs, radio, and television set the pattern for conformity and rebellion; deviations from the pattern are punished not so much in the family as outside and against the family. The experts of the mass media transmit the required values; they offer the perfect training in efficiency, toughness, personality, dream and romance. With this education, the family can no longer compete. (p. 97)

Marcuse saw television as being part of an apparatus of administration and ­domination in a one‐dimensional society. In his words, With the control of information, with the absorption of individuals into mass ­communication, knowledge is administered and confined. The individual does not really know what is going on; the overpowering machine of entertainment and entertainment unites him with the others in a state of anesthesia from which all detrimental ideas tend to be excluded (p. 104).

On this view, television is part of an apparatus of manipulation and societal domination. In One‐Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse claimed that the inanities of commercial radio and television confirmed his analyses of the individual and the demise of authentic culture and oppositional thought, portraying television as part of an apparatus producing the thought and behavior needed for the social and cultural reproduction of contemporary capitalist societies.

Critical Perspectives From/After the Frankfurt School While the classical Frankfurt School members wrote little on television itself, the critical theory approach strongly influenced critical approaches to mass communication and television within academia and the views of the media of the New Left

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and others in the aftermath of the 1960s. The anthology Mass Culture (Rosenberg and White 1957) contained Adorno’s article on television and many other studies influenced by the Frankfurt School approach. Within critical communication research, there were many criticisms of network television as a capitalist institution and critics of television and the media such as Herbert Schiller, George Gerbner, Dallas Smythe, and others were influenced by the Frankfurt School approach to mass culture, as was C. Wright Mills in an earlier era (see Kellner 1989, pp. 134ff). From the perspectives of the New Left, Todd Gitlin wrote “Sixteen Notes on Television and the Movement” that contained a critique of television as manipulation with resonances to the Frankfurt School in 1972 and continued to do research and writing that developed in his own way a Frankfurt School approach to television, focusing on TV in the United States (1980, 1983, 2002). A 1987 collection Watching Television contained studies by Gitlin and others that exhibited a neo‐ Frankfurt School approach to television, and many contemporary theorists writing on television have been shaped by their engagement with the Frankfurt School. Of course, media culture was never as massified and homogeneous as the Frankfurt School model implied and one could argue that its perspectives were flawed even during their time of origin and influence. One could also argue that other approaches to cultural critique were preferable (such as those of Walter Benjamin (1969), Siegfried Kracauer (1995), Ernst Bloch (1986) and others of the Weimar generation). The original Frankfurt School model of the culture industry did articulate the important social roles of media culture during a specific regime of capital. The group provided a model, still of use, of a highly commercial system of television that serves the needs of dominant corporate interests, and that plays a major role both in ideological reproduction and in enculturating individuals into the dominant system of needs, thought, and behavior. Today, it is more fashionable to include moments of Frankfurt School critique of television in one’s theory than to simply adopt a systematic Frankfurt School approach. It would be a mistake, however, to reject the Frankfurt School tout court as reductive, economistic, and representative solely of a one‐dimensional “manipulation theory,” although these aspects do appear in some of its writings. Indeed, the systematic thrust of the Frankfurt School approach that studies television and other institutions of media culture in terms of their political economy, text, and audience reception of cultural artifacts continues to be of use. Overcoming the divide between a text‐based approach to culture and an empiricist social science‐based communication theory, the Frankfurt School sees media culture as a complex multidimensional phenomenon that must be taken seriously and that requires multiple disciplines to capture its importance and complexity. Within the culture industries, television continues to be of central importance and so critical theorists today should seek new approaches to television while building upon the Frankfurt School tradition. From the 1970s to the present, other critical television studies have researched the impact of global media on national cultures, attacking the cultural imperialism of Western media conglomerates or the creeping Americanization of global media



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and consumer culture (Schiller 1971; Tunstall 1977). Schiller and others focused on the political economy of television and its role, both nationally and globally, in promoting corporate interests. In Mass Communications and American Empire (1971), Herbert Schiller traced the rise of the commercial broadcasting industry in the United States, its interconnection with corporate capitalism and the military, and the use of communications and electronics in counterrevolution, such as Vietnam, and in promoting a global capitalist economic empire. Political economy approaches to television charted the consequences of dominance of TV production by corporate and commercial interests and the ways that programming was geared toward concerns of advertisers and securing the largest possible mass audience. Herman and Chomsky (1988) presented “filters” by which corporate, advertising, media gatekeeping, and conservative control excluded ­certain kinds of programming while including less mainstream and conservative material. Scholars studying media imperialism traced how the importation of US programming and broadcasting institutions and structures impacted broadcasting on a global scale.3 Mainstream television studies scholars looked at production from the standpoint of the producer and TV series (Newcomb and Allen 1985), TV genres and narratives (Newcomb 1974; Bianculli 1992; and Mittell 2004 and 2015), and production studies encompassing the complex process of production and distribution (Mayer et  al. 2009; Meehan 2005). As television became more popular, books of varying scholarly depth and quality began appearing about specific TV series, creators, and genres, and today television studies is a booming field (see, for example, the studies in Kaklamanidou and Tally 2017; Miller 2002). Some early critical approaches focused on the social effects of television, often decrying excessive TV violence. On television and violence, some literature continued to assume that violent representations in the media were a direct cause of social problems. A more sophisticated social ecology approach to violence and the media, however, was developed by George Gerbner and his colleagues at the Annenberg School of Communication. Gerbner’s group studied the “cultural environment” of television violence, tracking increases in representations of violence and delineating “message systems” that depict who exercises violence, who is the victim, and what messages are associated with media violence. A “cultivation analysis” studies effects of violence and concludes that heavy consumers of media violence exhibit a “mean world syndrome” with effects that range from depression to fearful individuals voting for right‐wing law and order politicians, to the exhibition of violent behavior (Gerbner 2003).4 Another approach to violence and the media is found in the work of Hans J. Eysenck and David K.B. Nias (1978) who argue that recurrent representations of violence in the media desensitize audiences to violent behavior and actions. The expansion of youth violence throughout the world and media exploitation of sensational instances of teen killings in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and elsewhere has intensified the focus on the interplay of media and violence and the

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ways that rap music, video and computer games, television and film, and other types of youth culture have promoted violence.5 In addition to seeing television as a social problem because of growing societal violence, from the 1960s to the present, left‐liberal and conservative media critics coalesced in arguing that mainstream media promote excessive consumerism and commodification. In the 1960s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow described TV as a “vast wasteland” and the term was taken up by both conservative and left‐liberal critics to assail what was perceived as the growing mediocrity and low cultural level of television. This view is argued in sociological terms in the work of Daniel Bell, who asserts in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1978), that a sensate‐hedonistic culture exhibited in popular media and promoted by capitalist corporations was undermining core traditional values and producing an increasing amoral society. Bell called for a return to tradition and religion to counter this social trend that saw media culture as undermining morality, the work ethic, and traditional values. In Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986), Neil Postman argued that popular media culture – and, in particular, television – has become a major force of socialization and was subverting traditional literacy skills, thus undermining education. Postman criticized the negative social effects of the media and called for educators and citizens to intensify their critique of the media. Extoling the virtues of book culture and literacy, Postman called for educational reform to counter the nefarious effects of media and consumer culture. Indeed, there is by now a long tradition of studies that have discussed the effect of media such as television on children (see Luke 1990). Critics like Postman (1986) argue that excessive TV viewing stunts cognitive growth, creates shortened attention spans, and habituates youth to fragmented, segmented, and imagistic cultural ­experiences and that television and other electronic media are thus a social problem for children. Stanford Children’s Health offers research and counseling to counter negative effects of TV on children (see https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/ default?id=television‐and‐children‐90‐P02294). Defenders stress the educational benefits of some television, suggest that it is merely harmless entertainment, or  argue that audiences construct their own meanings from popular media (Fiske 1987, 1989a). Negative depictions of the media and consumerism, youth hedonism, excessive materialism, and growing violence were contested by British cultural studies that claimed the media were being scapegoated for a wide range of social problems. In Policing the Crisis (Hall et al. 1978), Stuart Hall and colleagues at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies analyzed what they took to be a media‐ induced “moral panic” about mugging and youth violence. The Birmingham group argued for the existence of an active audience that was able to critically dissect and make use of media material, arguing against the media manipulation perspective. Rooted in a classic article by Stuart Hall titled “Encoding/Decoding” (1980 [1973]), British cultural studies began studying how different groups read television news,



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magazines, engaged in consumption, and made use of a broad range of media. In Everyday Television: Nationwide, Charlotte Brunsdon and David Morley (1978) studied how different audiences consumed TV news; Ien Ang (1985) and Liebes and Katz (1990) investigated how different audiences in Holland, Israel, and elsewhere consumed and made use of the US TV series Dallas; and John Fiske (1987, 1989a, b) wrote a series of books celebrating the active audience and consumer across a wide range of media throughout the world. Yet critics working within British cultural studies, individuals in a wide range of social movements, and academics from a variety of fields and positions, began criticizing the media from the 1960s and continuing to the present for promoting ­sexism, racism, homophobia, and other oppressive social phenomena. There was intense focus on the politics of representation, discriminating between negative and positive representations of major social groups, and harmful and beneficial media effects – debates that coalesced under the rubric of the politics of representation.

Oppositional Social Movements and the Politics of Representation During the 1960s, much television criticism was somewhat unsophisticated and underdeveloped theoretically, often operating with reductive notions of political economy, simplistic models of media effects, and one‐dimensional models of media messages. Yet from the 1960s to the present, a wide range of critical theories have circulated globally and many working within television studies appropriated the advanced critical discourses. The groundbreaking work of critical media theorists within the Frankfurt School, British cultural studies, and French structuralism and poststructuralism revealed that culture is a social construct, intrinsically linked to the vicissitudes of the social and historically specific milieu in which it is conceived and that gender, race, class, sexuality, and other dimensions of social life are socially constructed in media representations (see Durham and Kellner 2012). Media and cultural studies engaged in critical interrogations of the politics of representation, which drew upon feminist and gay and lesbian approaches, as well as critical race and multicultural theories, to fully analyze the functions of gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual preference and other key issues in television and the media. The social dimensions of media constructions of axes of difference and ­subordination are perceived by critical television studies as being vitally constitutive of audiences who appropriate and use texts. These approaches were strongly influenced by the social movements of the era. The feminist movement opposed media representation of women and criticized representations claimed to be sexist and inadequate, while calling for more positive representations of women and the participation of  more women in the culture industries. Black and brown power ­movements criticized representations of people of color and militated for more ­ epictions. inclusion in television and other media, as well as more realist and positive d

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Likewise, gay and lesbian movements criticized the media for their neglect or misrepresentations of alternative sexuality and more representation. All of these oppositional movements developed critical perspectives on television and often produced new forms of TV criticism, positioning the politics of representation as a crucial part of television studies.6 Developments within British cultural studies are representative of this move toward a more inclusive politics of representation and TV criticism. While earlier British cultural studies engaged the progressive and oppositional potential of working‐class and then youth culture, under the pressure of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, many adopted a feminist dimension, paid greater attention to race, ethnicity, and nationality, and concentrated on sexuality. During this period, assorted discourses of race, gender, sex, nationality, and so on developed within now global cultural studies. An increasingly complex, culturally hybrid and diasporic global culture and networked society calls for sophisticated understandings of the interplay of representations, politics, and the forms of media. Although a vigorous feminist film and cultural criticism had begun to emerge by the 1970s, little feminist TV criticism emerged until the 1980s.7 As with feminist film criticism, early efforts focused on the image and representations of women, but soon there was more sophisticated narrative analysis that analyzed how television and the narrative apparatus positioned women and the ways that television constructed femininity and masculinity. There was also more sociological and institutional analysis of how TV functioned in women’s everyday life and how the institutions of television were highly male‐dominated, patriarchal and capitalist in structure. Tania Modleski (1982), for instance, followed a groundbreaking essay by Carol Lopate (1977) on how the organization of the TV day followed the patterns of ­women’s lives. Soap operas present a fragmented ongoing narrative that provides distraction and fantasies for women at home, while ideologically positioning women in traditional stereotyped roles. The moral ambiguities and openness of the form provide spaces for multiple viewers, make possible varied readings, and provide predictable pleasures for its audiences. Addressing the alteration between the soap narratives and those of commercials, Modleski suggests that these modes address women’s dual roles as “moral and spiritual guides” and “household drudges,” thus reproducing the values and subject positions of patriarchal capitalism. Many gay and lesbian theorists decried the ways that media representations promoted homophobia by presenting negative representations of gay sexuality. Larry Gross’s “Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media” (1989) argues that corporate media culture defines and frames sexuality in ways that marginalize gay and lesbians, and “symbolically annihilate” their lives. Stereotypic depiction of lesbians and gay men as “abnormal, and the suppression of positive or even ‘unexceptional’ portrayals, serve to maintain and police the boundaries of the moral order” (1989, p. 136) in Gross’s view. He argues for alternative representations – a call that has to a certain degree been heard and answered by gay and lesbian media



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producers coming to prominence in the contemporary era, with even US network television eventually presenting gay and lesbian characters. A variety of critics of color have engaged racist representations in film, television, and other domains of media culture.8 Herman Gray (1995), for example, scrutinizes the related trajectory of black representation on network television in an analysis that takes into account the structures and conventions of the medium as well as the sociopolitical conditions of textual production. Gray’s examination of race and representation highlights the articulations between recent representations of blacks and much earlier depictions. He argues that “our contemporary moment continues to be shaped discursively by representations of race and ethnicity that began in the formative years of television” (1995, p. 73). Contemporary cultural production is still in dialog with these earliest moments, he writes, and he is aware of the regressive as well as the progressive aspects of this engagement. Importantly, Gray identifies certain turning points in television’s representation of blackness, situating these “signal moments” within the cultural and political contexts in which they were generated. His analysis brings us to a confrontation with the possibilities of mass cultural texts engaging the politics of difference in a complex and meaningful way. Many critics have emphasized the importance of connecting representations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other subject positions to disclose how the media present socially derogatory representations of subordinate groups. Bell hooks (1992) has been among the first and most prolific African American feminist scholars to call attention to the interlocking of race, class, gender and additional markers of identity in the constitution of subjectivity. Early in her career she challenged feminists to recognize and confront the ways in which race and class inscribe women’s (and men’s) experiences. In “Eating the Other” (1992), hooks explores cultural c­ onstructions of the “Other” as an object of desire, tying such positioning to consumerism and commodification as well as to issues of racial domination and subordination. Cautioning against the seductiveness of celebrating “Otherness,” hooks uses various media ­cultural artifacts  –  clothing catalogs, films, television, and rap music  –  to debate issues of cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation, and to uncover the ­personal and political cross‐currents at work in mass‐media representation. Elaine Rapping has written a series of books engaging dynamics of gender, race, and class while relating television to current social and political issues. The Looking Glass World of Nonfiction Television (1986) provides a study of local and national news, game shows, national rituals, beauty pageants, and presidential politics, as well as studies of TV documentaries, special reports, and soft news. Her studies of made‐for‐TV movies was expanded into The Movie of the Week (1992), a groundbreaking analysis of TV movies, which had hitherto been somewhat ignored by both film and television scholars. Her Law and Justice As Seen on TV (2003) traces the history of crime drama and courtroom drama and the ways that actual crimes and problems of justice are represented in TV frames and dramas from the Menendez brothers trial, to the O. J. Simpson murder trials, and Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing case.

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TV representations often construct women, people of color, and members of various minorities and their social problems as victims and objects, and mainstream television rarely presents positive representations of women’s movements or collective forms of struggle, rather focusing on women as individual examples of specific social problems like rape or domestic violence. Likewise, television series featuring people of color often appropriate groups such as African Americans or Latinos into typical white middle‐class American behavior, values, and institutions, rather than articulating cultural specificity or showing oppressed groups voicing criticisms or organizing into political movements. Just as critical television critics came to insist on the interaction of the politics of representation in race, gender, class, sexuality, and other key dimensions, so too did critical television scholars begin to integrate studies of the TV industry, texts, audiences, and social context into their work. For instance, in a groundbreaking work on Cagney and Lacey, Julie D’Acci calls for an “integrated approach” that analyzes how the politics of representation play out in the television production process, on the level of the construction and unfolding of TV texts and narratives, on the level of audience reception, and within the context of specific sociohistorical environments (1994, 2002). Such “modern approaches,” however, were criticized by a postmodern turn in television and cultural studies.

The Postmodern Turn Within Critical Television Studies During the 1980s and 1990s, many noticed a postmodern turn toward cultural ­populism that valorized audiences over texts and the production apparatus, the pleasures of television and popular culture over their ideological functions and effects, and that refocused television criticism on the surface of its images and spectacle, rather than deeper embedded meanings and complex effects (see Best and Kellner 1997; Kellner 1995; and McGuigan 1992). If for most of the history of television, narrative storytelling has been the name of the game, on a postmodern account of television, image and spectacle often decenter the importance of narrative. It is often claimed that in those programs usually designated “postmodern”  –  MTV music videos and other programming, Miami Vice, Max Headroom, Twin Peaks, high‐tech ads, and so on – there is a new look and feel: the signifier has been liberated and image takes precedence over narrative, as compelling and highly artificial aesthetic spectacles detach themselves from the television diegesis and become the center of fascination, of a seductive pleasure, of an intense but fragmentary and transitory aesthetic experience. While there is some truth in this conventional postmodern position, such descriptions are in some ways misleading. In particular, the familiar account that  postmodern image culture is fundamentally flat and one‐dimensional is ­problematic. For Fredric Jameson, postmodernism manifests “the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal



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sense – perhaps the supreme formal feature of all the postmodernisms” (1984, p. 60). According to Jameson, the “waning of affect” in postmodern image culture is replicated in postmodern selves, who are allegedly devoid of the expressive energies and individualities characteristic of modernism and the modern self. Both postmodern texts and selves are said to be without depth and to be flat, superficial, and lost in the intensities and vacuities of the moment, without substance and meaning, or connection to the past. Privileging Jameson’s category of the waning of affect, Gitlin (1987), for example, claims that Miami Vice is the ultimate in postmodern blankness, emptiness, and world‐weariness. Yet, against this reading, one could argue that it pulsates as well with intense emotion, a clash of values, and highly specific political messages and positions (see Best and Kellner 1997; Kellner 1995). Grossberg (1987) also argues that Miami Vice and other postmodern culture obliterate meaning and depth, claiming: “Miami Vice is, as its critics have said, all on the surface. And the surface is nothing but a collection of quotations from our own collective historical debris, a mobile game of Trivia. It is, in some ways, the perfect televisual image, minimalist (the sparse scenes, the constant long shots, etc.) yet concrete” (1987, p. 28). Grossberg goes on to argue that “indifference” (to meanings, ideology, politics, and so on) is the key distinguishing feature of Miami Vice and other postmodern texts, which he suggests are more akin to billboards to be scanned for what they tell us about our cultural terrain rather than texts to be read and interrogated. Against these postmodern readings, one could argue that Miami Vice is highly polysemic and is saturated with ideologies, messages, and quite specific meanings and values. Behind the high‐tech glitz are multiple sites of meaning, multiple subject positions, and highly contradictory ideological problematics. The show had a passionately loyal audience that was obviously not indifferent to the series that had its own intense affective investments and passions. I have argued that reading the text of Miami Vice hermeneutically and critically provides access to its polysemic wealth and that therefore it is a mistake to rapidly speed by such artifacts, however some audiences may relate to them (Kellner 1995, p. 238ff). One‐dimensional postmodern texts and selves put in question the continued ­relevance of hermeneutic depth models such as the Marxian model of essence and appearance, true and false consciousness, and ideology and truth; the Freudian model of latent and manifest meanings; the existentialist model of authentic and inauthentic existence; and the semiotic model of signifier and signified. Cumulatively, postmodernism thus signifies the death of hermeneutics; in place of what Ricoeur has termed a “hermeneutics of suspicion” and the polysemic modernist reading of cultural symbols and texts, there emerges the postmodern view that there is nothing behind the surface of texts, no depth or multiplicity of meanings for critical inquiry to discover and explicate. From this view of texts and selves, it follows that a postmodern television studies should rest content to describe the surface or forms of cultural texts, rather than seeking meanings or significance. Best and Kellner (1997) have polemicized against

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the formalist, anti‐hermeneutical postmodern type of analysis connected with the postulation of a flat, postmodern image culture and have delineated an alternative model of a “political hermeneutic,” which draws on both postmodern and other critical theories in order to analyze both image and meaning, surface and depth, as well as the politics and erotics of cultural artifacts. Such an interpretive and ­dialectical analysis of image, narrative, ideologies, and meanings is arguably still of importance in analyzing even those texts taken to be paradigmatic of postmodern culture – though analysis of form, surface, and look is also important. Images, fragments, and narratives of media culture are saturated with ideology and polysemic meanings, and therefore – against certain postmodern positions (Baudrillard 1981; and Deleuze/Guattari 1977; Foucault 1977) – ideology critique continues to be an important and indispensable weapon in our critical arsenal.9 Another problematic postmodern position, associated with Baudrillard (1983a, b), asserts that television is pure noise and a black hole where all meaning and messages are absorbed in the whirlpool and kaleidoscope of the incessant dissemination of images and information to the point of total saturation, where meaning is dissolved and only the fascination of discrete images glows and flickers in a mediascape within which no image any longer has any discernible effects. On the Baudrillardian view, the proliferating velocity and quantity of images produces a postmodern mindscreen where images fly by with such rapidity that they lose any signifying function, referring only to other images ad infinitum, and where eventually the multiplication of images produces such saturation, apathy, and indifference that the ­telespectator is lost forever in a fragmentary fun house of mirrors in the infinite play of superfluous, meaningless images. Now, no doubt, television can be experienced as a flat, one‐dimensional wasteland of superficial images, and can function as well as pure noise without referent and meaning. One can also become overwhelmed by – or indifferent to – the flow, velocity, and intensity of images, so that television’s signifying function can be decentered and can collapse altogether. Yet people regularly watch certain shows and events; there are fans for various series and stars who possess an often incredible expertise and knowledge of the subjects of their fascination; people do model their behavior, style, and attitudes on television images and narratives; television ads do play a role in managing consumer demand; and many analysts have concluded that television is playing the central role in political elections, that elections have become a battle of images played out on the television screen, and that television is playing an essential role in the new art of campaigning and governing (Kellner 1990, 1992, 1995, 2001, 2003a, b, 2018). Indeed, one could argue that Donald Trump won the 2016 US Presidential election, despite having no previous political experience or qualifications, because he was a television star on a popular show, The Apprentice, and had mastered television and new media like Twitter in his campaigns (Kellner 2017, 2018). As British cultural studies have long argued, different audiences watch television in different ways. For some, television is nothing more than a fragmented collage of



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images that people only fitfully watch or connect with what goes before or comes after. Many individuals today use devices to “zap” from one program to another, channel hopping or “grazing” to merely “see what’s happening,” to go with the disconnected flow of fragments of images. Some viewers who watch entire programs merely focus on the surface of images, with programs, ads, station breaks, and so on flowing into each other, collapsing meaning in a play of disconnected signifiers. Many people cannot remember what they watched the night before, or cannot provide coherent accounts of the previous night’s programming. And yet it is an exaggeration to claim that the apparatus of television itself ­relentlessly undermines meaning and collapses signifiers, which themselves have no signified, into a flat, one‐dimensional hyperspace without depth, effects, or meanings. One could also argue that television in the twenty‐first century has attained new cultural heights and power both from the tremendous expansion of cable TV and from new television channels that have increased the quantity of television and the dramatic expansion of television that critics have deemed of high quality. David Bianculli has argued in his book, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to The Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific (2017), that the expansion of quality TV with the expansion of cable channel production of acclaimed series like The Sopranos in the twenty‐first century, along with expanded network and cable channel production of quality TV, like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Good Wife, has produced a new type of quality television. Bianculli provides sketches of the major TV genres that evolved to provide the high‐quality TV programs of the contemporary era, along with profiles of the key creators (writers, producers, show runners). Thus, against the postmodern notion of culture disintegrating into pure image without referent or content or effects – becoming at its limit pure noise – many critics argue that television and other forms of mass‐mediated culture continue to play key roles in the structuring of contemporary identity and shaping thought and behavior. Television today arguably assumes some of the functions traditionally ascribed to myth and ritual (i.e. integrating individuals into the social order, celebrating dominant values, offering models of thought, behavior, and gender for imitation, and so on; see Kellner 1979 and 1995). In addition, TV myth resolves social contradictions in the same way as traditional myth and idealizes contemporary ­values and institutions, thus exalting a society’s established way of life (Kellner 1979 and 1982). Consequently, much postmodern cultural analysis is too one‐sided and limited, either in restricting its focus on form, on image, and on spectacle alone, or in abandoning critical analysis altogether in favor of grandiose totalizing metaphors (black holes, implosion, excremental culture, and so on). Instead, it is preferable to analyze both form and content, image and narrative, and postmodern surface and the deeper ideological problematics within the context of specific exercises which explicate the polysemic nature of images and texts, and which endorse the possibility of multiple encodings and decodings.

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Thus, I would conclude that critical perspectives developed by the Frankfurt School, British cultural studies, and other scholars who focus on dissection of television production and political economy, texts, audience reception, and sociopolitical context in a multiperspectivist framework provide the most comprehensive and flexible model for doing critical television studies. For some projects, one may choose to intensely pursue one perspective (say, feminism or political economy), but for many projects articulating together salient critical perspectives provides a more robust approach that helps to grasp and critique television’s multifaceted production, texts, effects, and uses. To avoid the one‐sidedness of textual analysis approaches, or audience and reception studies, I propose that critical television studies itself be multiperspectival, getting at culture from the perspectives of political economy, text analysis, and audience reception, as outlined above. Textual analysis should utilize a multiplicity of perspectives and critical methods, and audience reception studies should delineate the wide range of subject positions, or perspectives, through which audiences appropriate culture. This requires a multicultural approach that sees the importance of analyzing the dimensions of class, race, and ethnicity, and gender and sexual preference within the texts of television culture, while also studying their impact on how audiences read and interpret TV. In addition, a critical television studies attacks sexism, racism, or bias against specific social groups (gays, intellectuals, and so on), and criticizes texts that promote any kind of domination or oppression. In short, a television studies that is critical and multicultural provides comprehensive approaches to culture that can be applied to a wide variety of artifacts from TV series to phenomena like Madonna, from MTV to TV news, or to specific events like the 2000 or 2016 US presidential elections (Kellner 2001 and Kellner 2017), or media representations of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and the US response (Kellner 2003a). Its comprehensive perspectives encompass political economy, textual analysis, and audience research and provide critical and political perspectives that enable individuals to dissect the meanings, messages, and effects of dominant cultural forms. A critical television and cultural studies is thus part of a media pedagogy that enables individuals to resist media manipulation and to increase their freedom and individuality. It can empower people to gain sovereignty over their culture and to struggle for alternative cultures and political change. A critical television studies is thus not just another academic fad, but can be part of a struggle for a better society and a better life.

Notes 1 On the history of the Frankfurt School, see Jay (1973) and Wiggershaus (1994); for Frankfurt School readers, see Arato and Gebhardt (1982) and Bronner and Kellner (1989); for appraisal of Frankfurt School social and media critique, see Kellner (1989) and Steinert (2003).



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2 For critical analysis and appreciation of the Frankfurt School approach to media and television studies, see Kellner (1989, 1995, and 1997), and Steinert (2003). 3 For useful overviews of political economy research in television studies, see Sussman (2002) and for a contemporary take see Meehan (2005) and her contribution to this ­volume (Chapter  17); for an excellent overview of discourses of media imperialism, including analysis of how the concept has become problematic in a more pluralized and hybridized global media world, see in Sreberny (2002). 4 For a survey of studies of television and violence, see Morgan in Miller (2002). 5 See the studies depicting both sides of the debate on contemporary television and its alleged harmful or beneficial effects in Barbour (1994) and Dines and Humez (2003). 6 For examples of studies of the politics of representation, see Gilroy (1991), McRobbie (1994), Ang (1991), and texts collected in Durham and Kellner (2012) and Dines and Humez (2015). 7 For an excellent account of the genesis of feminist TV criticism by one of its major ­participants, see Kaplan (1992). For an anthology of feminist TV criticism, see Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel (1997), and for overviews of feminist TV criticism, see the studies ­collected under Gender in Miller (2002) and the many articles in Dines and Humez (2015). 8 On race and representation in television, see Jhally and Lewis (1992), Hamamoto (1994), Gray (1995), the 1998 anthology edited by Torres, Noriega (2000), and Dines and Humez (2015). 9 See Kellner (1995) for discussion of the issues at stake here and a program for combining ideology critique with formalist analysis, sociological interpretation, and political ­critique. On ideology critique in television studies, see White (1986).

References Adorno, T.W. (1941). On popular music (with G. Simpson). Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1): 17–48. Adorno, T.W. (1978 [1932]). On the social situation of music. Telos 35 (Spring): 129–165. Adorno, T.W. (1982). On the fetish character of music and the regression of hearing. In: The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (eds. A. Arato and E. Gebhardt), 270–299. New York: Continuum. Adorno, T.W. (1989). On Jazz. In: Critical Theory and Society. A Reader (eds. S.E. Bronner and D.M. Kellner), 199–209. New York: Routledge. Adorno, T.W. (1991). The Culture Industry. London: Routledge. Adorno, T.W. (1994). The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. London: Routledge. Adorno, T.W., Frenkel‐Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J., and Sandford, R.N. (1969 [1950])). The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton. Ang, I. (1985). Watching Dallas. New York: Methuen. Ang, I. (1991). Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. New York and London: Routledge. Arato, A. and Gebhardt, E. (eds.) (1982). The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum.

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Barbour, W. (ed.) (1994). Mass Media: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press. Baudrillard, J. (1981 [1973]). For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis, MO: Telos Press. Baudrillard, J. (1983a). Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J. (1983b). In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext(e). Bell, D. (1978). The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations. New York: Schocken. Best, S. and Kellner, D. (1997). The Postmodern Turn. New York: The Guilford Press. Bianculli, D. (1992). Teleliteracy. Taking Television Seriously. New York: Continuum Publishing Company. Bianculli, D. (2017). The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific. New York: Anchor Books. Bloch, E. (1986). The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bronner, S. and Kellner, D. (eds.) (1989). Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge. Brunsdon, C. and Morley, D. (1978). Everyday Television: “Nationwide”. London: British Film Institute. Brunsdon, C., D’Acci, J., and Spigel, L. (eds.) (1997). Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Acci, J. (1994). Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney and Lacey. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. D’Acci, J. (2002). Cultural studies, television studies, and the crisis in the humanities. In: The  Persistence of Television (eds. J. Olsen and L. Spigel), 418–446. Durham, NC: Duke University. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1977). Anti‐Oedipus. New York: The Viking Press. Dines, G. and Humez, J.M. (eds.) (2003). Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader, 4the. London: Age Books. Dines, G. and Humez, J.M. (eds.) (2015). Gender, Race, and Class in Media, 4e. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Durham, M.G. and Kellner, D. (eds.) (2012). Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks, 2e. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Eysenck, H.J. and Nias, D.K.B. (1978). Sex, Violence and the Media. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Fiske, J. (1987). Television Culture. New York and London: Routledge. Fiske, J. (1989a). Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Fiske, J. (1989b). Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Foucault, M. (1977). Language, Counter‐Memory, Practice. New York: Cornell University. Gerbner, G. (2003). Television violence: at a time of turmoil and terror. In: Gender, Race, and Class in Media (eds. G. Dines and J.M. Humez), 339–348. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gilroy, P. (1991). “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gitlin, T. (1972). Sixteen notes on television and the movement. In: Literature and Revolution (eds. G. White and C. Newman), 335–356. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gitlin, T. (1980). The Whole World Is Watching. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gitlin, T. (1983). Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon.



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Gitlin, T. (2002). Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. New York: Metropolitan Books. Gitlin, T. (1987). Watching Television. New York: Pantheon. Gray, H. (1995). The politics of representation in network television. In: Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for “Blackness”, 70–92. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gross, L. (1989). Out of the mainstream: sexual minorities and the mass media. In: Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power (ed. E. Seiter), 130–149. New York: Routledge. Grossberg, L. (1987). The in‐difference of television. Screen 28 (2): 28–46. Hall, S., Crichter, C., Jefferson, T. et al. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Hall, S. (1980 [1973]). Encoding/decoding. In: Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79 (ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies), 128–138. London: Hutchinson. Hamamoto, D.Y. (1994). Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Herman, E. and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon. Herzog, H. (1941). On borrowed experience: an analysis of listening to daytime sketches. Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX (1): 65–95. hooks, b. (ed.) (1992). Eating the other: desire and resistance. In: Black Looks: Race and Representation, 21–39. Boston: South End Press. Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T.W. (1972). Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder. Jameson, F. (1984). Postmodernism – The cultural logic of late capitalism. New Left Review 146: 53–93. Jay, M. (1973). The Dialectical Imagination. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Jhally, S. and Lewis, J. (1992). Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. San Francisco: Westview Press. Kaklamanidou, B. and Tally, M. (eds.) (2017). Politics and Politicians in Contemporary US Television: Washington as Fiction. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, E.A. (1992). Feminist criticism and television. In: Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism (ed. R.C. Allen), 247–283. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Kellner, D. (1979). TV, ideology and emancipatory popular culture. Socialist Review 45 (May–June): 13–53. Kellner, D. (1982). Kulturindustrie und massenkommunikation. Die kritische Theorie und ihre folgen. In: Sozialforschung als Kritik (eds. W. Bonss and A. Honneth), 482–514. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Kellner, D. (1989). Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity. Cambridge, UK, and Baltimore, MD: Polity and Johns Hopkins University Press. Kellner, D. (1990). Television and the Crisis of Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kellner, D. (1992). The Persian Gulf TV War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kellner, D. (1995). Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. London and New York: Routledge.

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Kellner, D. (1997). Critical theory and British cultural studies: the missed articulation. In: Cultural Methodologies (ed. J. McGuigan), 12–41. London: Sage. Kellner, D. (2001). Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kellner, D. (2003a). Media Spectacle. New York and London: Routledge. Kellner, D. (2003b). September 11 and Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Kellner, D. (2017). The American Horror Show: Election 2016 and the Ascendency of Donald J. Trump. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Kellner, D. (2018). Donald Trump as authoritarian populist: A Frommian analysis. In: Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (ed. J. Morelock), 71–82. London: University of Westminster Press. Kracauer, S. (1995). The Mass Ornament. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lazarsfeld, P. (1941). Administrative and critical communications research. Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX (1): 2–16. Lopate, C. (1977). Daytime television: You’ll Never Want to leave home. Radical America 11 (1 (January–February)): 33–51. Lowenthal, L. (1961). Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall. Liebes, T. and Katz, E. (1990). The Export of Meaning: Cross‐cultural Readings of Dallas. New York: Oxford University Press. Luke, C. (1990). TV and Your Child. London: Angus and Robertson. Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H. (1964). One‐Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press. Mayer, V., Banks, M.J., and Caldwell, J.T. (eds.) (2009). Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries. New York: Routledge. McGuigan, J. (1992). Cultural Populism. London and New York: Routledge. McRobbie, A. (1994). Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London/New York: Routledge. Meehan, E.R. (2005). Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who’s Really in Control. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, T. (ed.) (2002). Television Studies. London: BFI Publishing. Mittel, J. (2004). Genre and Television Storytelling: From Copy Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York and London: Routledge. Mittel, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: New York University Press. Modleski, T. (1982). Loving with a Vengeance: Mass‐Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden, CT: Anchor. Noriega, C. (2000). Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Newcomb, H. (1974). TV: The Most Popular Art. New York: Doubleday Anchor Press. Newcomb, H. and Alley, R.S. (1985). The Producer’s Medium: Conversations with Creators of American TV. New York: Oxford University Press. Postman, N. (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking. Rapping, E. (1986). The Looking Glass World of Nonfiction Television. Boston: South End Press. Rapping, E. (1992). The Movie of the Week. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.



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Rapping, E. (2003). Law and Justice as Seen on TV. New York: New York University Press. Rosenberg, B. and White, D.M. (eds.) (1957). Mass Culture. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Schiller, H. (1971). Mass Communications and the American Empire. Boston: Beacon Press. Sreberny, A. (2002). Media imperialism. In: Television Studies (ed. T. Miller), 21–23. London: BFI Publishing. Steinert, H. (2003). Culture Industry. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Sussman, G. (2002). The political economy of television. In: Television Studies (ed. T. Miller), 7–10. London: BFI Publishing. Torres, S. (ed.) (1998). Living Color: Race and Television in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tunstall, J. (1977). The Media Are American. New York: Columbia University Press. White, M. (1986). Ideological analysis of television. In: Channels of Discourse (ed. R.C. Allen), 134–171. London: Routledge. Wiggershaus, R. (1994). The Frankfurt School. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Part III

History

Chapter 2

Our TV Heritage: Tracing the Logics of the Television Archive1 Lynn Spigel

In the last decade of his life, Andy Warhol taped huge amounts of television ­programs. The remains of his television past – from Father Knows Best to Celebrity Sweepstakes  –  are preserved at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and his ­collection has also been donated to other film and TV archives. In his usual fashion, Andy managed to create a counterpractice out of popular culture by rearranging banal commercial objects under the banner of his trademark name. Indeed, there is nothing out of the ordinary about Andy’s collection. It is the kind of stuff one might find – if saved under any other name – in the local thrift store bargain bins or in digitized files on YouTube. What makes Andy’s collection important is therefore not the programs, but the fact that they were saved by a unique collector; the programs are deemed worthy insofar as they shed light on Andy’s viewing practices and, by extension, his psychic and artistic investments in the everyday commercial culture of twentieth‐century America. To be sure, Andy’s TV archive is a highly personal diary of the programs he taped – a kind of homemade archive – and for this reason it is a useful foil with which to begin a discussion of the institutional logics through which museums, academies, and the industry itself have historically deemed TV programs worthy of collection. What is the logic of the TV archive? Why has TV been saved by public and private institutions? How have nostalgia networks like TVLand, personal recording systems like the digital video recorder, and online sites like YouTube or Netflix affected the archive and the ways in which people encounter the TV past? And how does television’s preservation relate to the kinds of questions that historians ask about the medium?

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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In The Archeology of Knowledge (1972), Michel Foucault observes that history (as  a narrative form and discursive mode) makes the archive (Foucault 1972). Rather than assume there is a preexisting “collection” of facts waiting to be accessed, Foucault argues that the archive is preceded by a discursive formation that selects, acquires, and arranges words and things. Certainly, film and television historians engage with a complex system of image classification that has its roots in modern archival systems. The evidence we find – whether paper or moving image – is saved and arranged according to technologies of filing, and as John Tagg (1988)2 demonstrates in his history of photography, the archive files images according to the power dynamics and beliefs of the larger social system. Historians enter the archive with fantasies and hunches; they search for something they imagine – or hope – was once real. That reality, however, turns out to be at best elusive, accessible mainly through deductions and interpretations of incomplete evidence. Instead of finding the “truth” of the past, what we find in the end is the rationale (or lack thereof) for the filing system itself. For this reason, it seems useful to think about the apparatus of the television archive – its strategies for collection, the reasons why people saved certain television programs, and the reasons why so many other programs are lost. To this end, I want to trace the discursive formation, and corresponding institutions and bodies of power, through which a television archive has been formed in the United States. When considering television preservation, archivists typically focus on pragmatic issues of space, financing, copyright laws, donors, and advances in recording technologies, and they also consider general methods of preservation, cataloging, and selection. Yet, we know very little about the reasons why programs were saved in the first place. The fact that I will be writing only about the US is itself revealing. Nationalist rhetoric and the logic of governmentality have been a primary force in historical research on television, particularly because broadcasting was historically bound to nationalist agendas. Yet, despite the national character of broadcasting, the US government showed little interest in archiving television in its formative years. While the Library of Congress (LOC) now holds the largest public television archive, it was slow to realize the medium’s value. The LOC isolates several practical factors that led to what it calls its “eclectic” and “uneven” collection practices in the early period, including live television’s ephemerality and the fact that early television did not initially require copyright registration (“Television…,” 2017). But the LOC also admits its cultural bias: There was an attitude held by Library of Congress acquisitions officers toward television programming which paralleled that of the scholarly community in general. The Library simply underestimated the social and historical significance of the full range of television programming. There was no appreciation of television’s future research value. So before the mid‐1960s, few programs were acquired for the collection (“Television…,” 2017)



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By 1966 the Library had expanded its television collections; but it was not until the passing of the Copyright Act of 1976, “which gave the Library the awesome responsibility for establishing the American Television and Radio Archives” that a national center was created to “house a permanent record of television and radio programs” (Murphy 1997). But if the national library was slow to show an interest in the new medium, in the early decades of commercial television (the 1950–1960s), there were other people who did want to save it.

Storing Waste: The First TV Archives In US universities, it was in Journalism, Speech, and Mass Communication Departments – and secondarily in Theater Departments – that television was first studied and arranged as an historical object. These were purviews in which the first generation of historians (most notably, Eric Barnouw) worked. Given their institutional homes, it is perhaps no surprise that, for this generation, television history was based on print media and rhetorical models. The documents collected were largely paper – network memos, scripts, performer bios, materials relating to censorship or rulings of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The programs that comprised TV history were primarily documentary and news formats. While entertainment programs were sometimes discussed as evidence for larger political mood swings, they were mostly archived in memory (the historian speaks from recollection) or else in scripts. Although some programs (especially news) were preserved on film, kinescope, or videotape in university contexts, television’s first generation of historians did not use textual analysis as a method; the programs weren’t considered as narratives to be interpreted, but rather as documents to be cited and summarized. In general, then, this first archive is based on the written word, not on the moving image. Television’s first historians were writing in the aftermath of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s (it was discovered that the shows’ producers had been unfairly helping contestants) and FCC Chair Newton Minow’s 1961 “vast wasteland” speech, both of which had enormous effects on the national debates about television at the time (Minow 1964). Blaming the television industry for producing a “steady diet” of commercial pap, Minow established a way of speaking about television’s failed promise, while also envisioning its higher national purpose for education and culture. In this context, the project of saving TV was part of the moment’s preoccupation with restoring television’s national worth by memorializing its “golden age” programs (such as the 1950s live anthology dramas) that were darlings of the TV critics. In the early 1960s a variety of cultural institutions tried to weed through trash in the wasteland and preserve the golden nuggets. Paradoxically in this sense, the history of the television archive is bound up with TV’s status as “waste.” Television’s preservation was spearheaded by institutions that collected television through intertwined statements about public service, art, commerce, and public

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relations. Among these groups the television industry itself was a major force, and for this reason the history of television’s preservation is also a history of the industrial logic through which it was saved. In particular, that logic was rooted in public relations efforts to promote the industry by proving that television programs had an aesthetic and cultural value beyond crass commercial gain. Secondarily, although via synergies with the industry, art museums and universities took an interest in saving television. And, finally, the project of saving television was intimately tied to urban planning and local tourism. While there were a number of groups that sought to save TV, I want to isolate three of the most prominent institutions that epitomized a particular founding vision for the TV archive. Notably in this regard, I am interested not simply in the success stories, but also in the spectacular failures.

TV Archive as Public Relations: The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Television Academy) grew to become television’s premier archivist. Although its plans to build a permanent library never materialized, its collection is now on permanent loan at the UCLA Film and Television Archive (the single largest non‐governmental archive in the nation).3 The Television Academy collection is composed of programs nominated for the organization’s annual Emmy Awards, and in this respect, it represents a particular ideal (or shifting ideals) for “quality TV” as selected by the industry itself (Spigel 1998). Founded in 1949 by Hollywood TV reporter Syd Cassyd, along with a UCLA professor and an engineer at Paramount Studios, the Television Academy operated as the public relations wing of the industry, representing the highest ideals of television art, science, and culture. Its educational and cultural missions were nevertheless embedded in television’s commercial function, so that its public service and public relations endeavors were flip sides of the same coin. The Television Academy’s effort to build what was alternatively called a television library or museum was part of its non‐profit educational wing known as the Academy Foundation, which was formed in 1959. The Foundation was a practical solution to the problems that the Television Academy had getting tax‐exempt status for donations. But the Foundation also envisioned its library as part of the Television Academy’s broader effort to rectify TV’s image in the wake of the quiz show scandals and Minow’s speech. Along these lines, at an April 1966 meeting, board members noted that the press was “generally hostile to television,” and recommended that “through its public relations, the Academy should establish itself as the industry organization speaking for its highest ideals through such activities as the publication of [its academic journal] TELEVISION QUARTERLY, its many forums and seminars, its fellowship and scholarship program, the National



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Library of Television and such services as the ETV [educational television] Committee…” (National Minutes 1966. Hereafter referred to as Academy Archives. Emphasis in original.). In 1959, the Television Academy hired public relations executive Peter Cott to direct the Foundation, and virtually all Foundation board members had ties to the television industry. In that same year, Cott outlined a plan that served as the basic architecture for the library, and he informed members of the need to “establish criteria” for selecting programs to preserve (Minutes 1963). The selection criteria were influenced by coastal warfare between the Television Academy’s Los Angeles and New York chapters. Almost from the start, there were battles over the way this Los Angeles‐based organization was representing itself as the official site for the production of national standards for television. Its Hollywood locale angered the New York newspaper critics, especially Ed Sullivan, host of the popular Sunday night show, Toast of the Town, and an influential Broadway columnist. Sullivan fought to get control of the organization away from the Hollywood chapter, and to do so he rallied support from local chapters across the country that were equally bitter about what they perceived to be the Hollywood bias of the Emmy Awards. By 1957, the original Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was transformed into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), and Sullivan was elected as its first president. Yet, despite the national reorganization, the Television Academy continued to be embroiled in bitter battles between the New York and Los Angeles chapters, which domineered all other local chapters. More than just a geographical split, the coastal wars were a culture war that involved arguments over taste. For example, when commenting on Sullivan’s initial takeover, Dick Adler of the Los Angeles Times wrote, There have always been rumblings of discontent inside the television academy since it began as a Hollywood‐based organization … New York appears to have always looked upon Hollywood as the sausage factory, the place where canned comedy and cop shows come from. Hollywood’s attitude toward its eastern colleagues was equally derisive: They were… snobs who thought that their involvement in news and live drama gave them special status. (O’Neil 1992)

To be sure, the Hollywood–New York culture war was never so simple in practice. Even while Cassyd developed the pomp and pageantry of the Emmy Awards, he was committed to educational pursuits. Meanwhile, Sullivan was the quintessential showman, hawking Lincoln sedans and featuring popular performers (Elvis, the Beatles), even as he adorned his stage with the Russian ballet and Italian opera. The Hollywood–New York split, then, was more myth than reality. It came to represent a pleasing explanation for the very messy and chaotic indeterminacy surrounding critical judgments of television and its national purpose. Nevertheless, the struggles between New York and Los Angeles were an immediate site of contention in the plans to build a library.

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Insofar as the Academy collection was (and continues to be) primarily culled from Emmy nominations, the award selection process had an enormous impact on what was saved. To resolve, or at least temper, potential conflicts, in 1963, Cott recommended that the Academy Foundation’s library committee split off into two “Entertainment Program Criteria Sub‐Committees” – one operating in New York and one in Hollywood (Nubytesm 1963). In addition to this plan, the more general Emmy Award process already suggested a compromise between New York and Hollywood notions of quality TV. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, programs produced in New York, such as the critically acclaimed Playhouse 90, Omnibus, and See It Now, shared the honors with Hollywood telefilm fare, such as the highly popular and critically esteemed Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, and Disneyland. Yet, as all these programs suggest, the primetime Emmys favored national network series, and in this respect the selection process undermined the achievements of local television producers across the country. Despite the fact that many local broadcasters construed “quality” to mean “in the public interest” of local markets (criteria firmly established in the 1946 Blue Book distributed by the FCC), Hollywood board members often expressed disdain for local productions.4 In the 1970s, when local academy chapters grew in number and influence, the Hollywood chapter became hostile. Larry Stewart, president of the Hollywood Chapter, complained that “a news cameraman in Dayton, Ohio, had a vote equal to the cinematographer on Roots,” and that “Bobo of Seattle’s morning children’s show was voting for best actor” (O’Neil 1992, p. 11). By 1977, these disputes resulted in the formal division of the Television Academy into the Hollywood‐ run ATAS, which presided over primetime Emmys (and now streaming series) and the New York‐run NATAS, which became responsible for sports, news, documentaries, international, local, and daytime Emmys. For contemporary researchers, therefore, the Television Academy’s “Golden Age” collection is based on a national network bias and rooted in the internal struggles between Los Angeles, New York, and the “rest of the country.”

TV Archive as Art Museum: The Museum of Modern Art A second model for the TV archive is best represented by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which displayed, arranged, and aimed to preserve television in the context of the fine arts. While its efforts did not pan out, during the 1950s and 1960s, MoMA aggressively sought to incorporate the new medium into the museum. In 1952, MoMA received a three‐year grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for its Television Project, which explored television’s potential for the museum. The plans included in‐house productions of “experimental telefilm” series made for commercial distribution; the use of television for museum outreach and publicity; and the creation of a Television Library parallel to (and housed within) its Film Library.5 Despite some successes (such as the children’s program Through the Enchanted Gate, which aired nationally on NBC in 1952), MoMA’s attempts to



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produce TV were short‐lived. Central among the problems was the museum’s own ambivalence toward television and the fears on the part of museum officials that their traditional art patrons would reject TV as the ultimate crime of vulgarization. Commenting on the museum’s refusal to air some of the telefilm pilots produced by the Television Project, one internal report noted, “By affixing its signature to … the films the Museum would be thought to be … lowering its intellectual level” (“Point of View” n.d. [herafter referred to as Television Project]; and, Macagy n.d.). By 1955, MoMA ended the Television Project. But its plans for a television library lived on. As with the larger Television Project, the television library was plagued by ambivalence and conflicts between esthete and popular tastes. Perhaps because their medium was closest to television, the people in the Film Library, including its Director Richard Griffith, were especially cautious. One internal memo, written in 1952, noted that Griffith said the film people “hate TV,” but would tolerate its inclusion “as long as it is not [in] the same department as the film library” (Chamberlain 1952). Despite this initial antipathy, the Film Library, and MoMA officials more generally, recognized the economic value that television had for the library with regard to rental requests from television networks and other media outlets. Moreover, the Film Library had to respond to the wishes of the museum’s founding family, the Rockefellers. As early as 1952, Nelson Rockefeller wrote to MoMA Director René D’Harnoncourt, suggesting that the museum put on an exhibit featuring “the best in TV (films or kinescopes).”6 Upon hearing of Rockefeller’s suggestion, Griffith acknowledged that the museum might consider using some television films or kinescopes in a film retrospective to be held at MoMA. But, in keeping with his fear of vulgarization, Griffith specifically suggested that TV programs selected should be “only the best, very short, and constituting the museum’s explicit endorsement of the kinds of art film‐making they represent, with an implicit denouncement of other kinds” (Griffith 1952). In other words, Griffith wanted to make sure that television would not pollute the Film Library’s image as a “tastemaker.” By 1955, Griffith had tempered his views, and in a museum report he even spoke of the “obvious need for a central television archive analogous to the Film Library” (Griffith 1955). While speculating on various obstacles, including copyright permissions and funding, he argued the library’s mission would lie in “preserving the history of the art” and “disseminating representative films of the past to qualified educational institutions throughout the country” (Griffith, Appendix 3). In the 1956 museum Bulletin, Griffith reported, “As an experiment, the Film Library has acquired for its collection the kinescope of a single ‘live’ television production, Horton Foote’s The Trip To Bountiful, with Lillian Gish, which later was translated to Broadway with the same star” (Griffith 1956, p. 14). This first acquisition is characterized by a set of qualities that are consistent with more general critical hierarchies already established by the leading East Coast critics of the 1950s. These criteria included “live” production; the presence of well‐known stage talent (especially playwrights and Broadway stars); and/or a New York production context.

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In 1963, these Golden Age criteria resurfaced in MoMA’s Television USA: 13 Seasons, the first museum retrospective of television programming. Mounted by the film library, Television USA established criteria by which MoMA would endorse programs worthy of collection and display. The retrospective appeared just one year after Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech and resonated with the prevailing evaluative discourses about when and how the degraded medium of television might ever approximate art. Griffith formed a committee, headed by television director and set designer Jac Venza, to select programs for the show. The program book for Television USA began with a mission statement from Griffith, who outlined criteria for aesthetic judgment: It seemed to us what the Museum could most usefully provide would be a look at first‐ class work which many of our public had missed because they are in the habit of looking at television only at certain hours (or not at all). With the exception of historical milestones, included to make the record as complete as possible, every program in the exhibition has been selected because we thought it used the medium to the top of its capacity. (Griffith 1962, pp. 3–4)

In this respect, Griffith reinforced the Golden Age discourses of the times, but did so in the context of MoMA’s larger struggles to valorize its own tastes. First, the criteria are stated in relation to the taste proclivities of his presumed highbrow patrons  –  those who watch little or no TV at all. Second, Griffith defines artistic worth in relation to fine art values of media specificity (i.e. programs that “use the medium to its capacity”). As in the case of the Television Academy, MoMA’s selections demonstrate a geographical bias. Given MoMA’s New York location, and the presence of New York critics, executives, and talent on the selection committee, it is not surprising that almost all of the programs chosen for the exhibit were produced in New York. These included live anthology dramas such as Goodyear Playhouse; documentaries and public affairs programs like See It Now; programs on the arts such as NBC Opera Theater; variety shows like Your Show of Shows; and a smattering of programs chosen for their formal experimentalism (an attribute that both resonated with Golden Age critical discourses concerning media specificity and with MoMA’s own bias toward various modernisms). The only Hollywood‐produced telefilm series that MoMA included in the exhibit was an episode of Gunsmoke, and it “was chosen because it is an almost perfect adaptation of the genre to the medium” rendered in “almost a classical manner” (Television USA n.d., p. 23); in other words, it too fit with the fine art criteria of media specificity. Although East Coast‐centric and steeped in a preference for live theater over telefilm fare, MoMA’s aesthetic criteria were not entirely coherent. Instead, judgments shifted between extreme investments in theatrical realism (“If there were a Golden Age, it was when television drama concerned itself with real problems, real issues, and real people”) and a desire for modernist experimentation (programs such as



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Danger, the Ernie Kovacs Show, and Adventure are praised for their formal innovations).7 So, too, MoMA’s attitude toward commercialism was inconsistent. On the one hand, the program catalog for Television USA defined the industry as art’s enemy, stating that television was divided into “two camps”: the industry that is concerned with money and “artists and journalists whose standard of ‘success’ is the degree to which television realized its potentialities as an art form.”8 On the other hand, Television USA embraced commercials as the apex of TV art. The program catalog stated, “Almost everything has been tried to create original commercials. As a result, radical avant‐garde experiments which would be frowned upon in other areas of television are encouraged in this field.”9 Television USA exhibited everything from Brewer’s beer ads to Rival dog food ads as proof of television’s potential avant‐ garde status. Why did MoMA reject commercialism, but honor commercials? It seems likely that MoMA’s embrace of commercials was based not only on its historical willingness to display industrial and commercial design, but also MoMA’s embrace in this period of popism and assemblage art (a broad term for three‐dimensional collage or collage sculpture, often featuring “junk” castoffs like billboards and hollowed out TV sets). In 1961 MoMA mounted William C. Seitz’s “Art of Assemblage” and by 1962 MoMA held a symposium on pop. In this respect, although MoMA operated on enlightenment ideals of cultural edification, the museum also responded to the shifting nature of art discourses and practices, particularly the leveling of “high” and “commercial” genres that was so important to pop aesthetics. Television USA reflected the museum’s competing claims to pop art’s aesthetic embrace of the commercial and the wasteland era’s anti‐commercial ideals. After Television USA, MoMA’s Junior Council (a group of young volunteers) continued to explore the possibilities of a television archive. However, they narrowed the focus to television documentaries about artists, endorsing a more art historical canon. With help from the major networks, as well as New York’s Channel 13 (WNDT) and National Educational Television (NET), they established a Television Archive of the Arts in 1967. In 1968, CBS Chairman William S. Paley (who had previously sat on the board at MoMA) became president of the museum’s Board of Trustees. But the presence of the CBS chairman seemed to have had little impact on the growth of the television archive. Instead, as I discuss further on, in the 1970s Paley turned his attention to establishing his own privately funded TV museum. Meanwhile, MoMA’s early conception of TV as art, and even its more limited vision for an archive devoted to art documentaries, quickly vanished. Instead, by the early 1970s, MoMA had embraced the emerging world of video art, engaging a more narrowly defined “art” public. In 1972, MoMA staged “Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television,” which brought together artists, museum officials, and critics who spoke almost exclusively about emerging video art forms. Despite the conference’s subtitle, MoMA might as well have left television out of the future altogether, because after that time, video art had usurped TV as the preferred object for preservation and display in the art world.10

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TV Archive as Tourist Site: The Hollywood Museum A third model for the TV archive is rooted in the tourist trade. In fact, even at MoMA, tourism was a key consideration. Television USA was staged in the context of urban planning for the 1963–1964 New York World’s Fair, and MoMA officials thought they would attract popular interest by presenting the event as a public festival across a summer schedule. However, by far the most sustained effort to launch a TV tourist attraction took place back in Hollywood, where industry people got the city of Los Angeles to front seed money for the never‐to‐ be‐realized Hollywood Museum.11 In 1959, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors formed the Museum Commission, chaired by producer Sol Lesser, with an advisory council that included such industry luminaries as Desi Arnaz, Jack Benny, Frank Capra, Walt Disney, and Jack Warner. Their plan was to memorialize television, movies, radio, and the recording arts with a thrilling touristic experience that also included a state of the art media library. Like the Television Academy, the Hollywood Museum was largely conceived as a public relations tool for the industry. According to the founding document, “The goal is to portray these four communicative arts as having a justification not only as entertainment media but also as important contributions to humanity … the Museum will be of aid in a positive way in overcoming the damaging effect of the constant and growing criticisms of the industries by numerous private and public groups” (Lesser 1962). Although the Hollywood Museum was never built, the plans were nothing short of spectacular. Designed by prominent California architect William Pereira (who had previously designed CBS Television City), the architectural plans display a cutting edge California Modern concrete structure with floating platforms (connected by ramps and escalators), a glass façade, and an “education tower.” Rather than just collecting programs or films, the Hollywood Museum collected objects (kinescopes, early TV sets, costumes, etc.). In this regard, television was imagined not simply as a text, but also as a technological artifact like those exhibited in a museum of science and industry. Moreover, the building was one of the first to use television monitors as a feature of the museum architecture. Designed in sculptural “video bank” forms, the monitors adorned the reception hall, providing closed circuit TV instructional resources, or what the museum planners called a “television index” that showed “every activity of the museum” and allowed visitors to “choose” their own program tour.12 The entire installation resonates with what media historian Fred Turner calls the “democratic surround,” a tactic he sees as symptomatic of the ideology of American liberalism underpinning midcentury multiscreen exhibition strategies in museums and fairs. These multiscreen installations promoted forms of popular pedagogy through individual participation and choice across a visual field (as opposed to the mass media of fascist propaganda). Indeed, the television index imagined television not as a mass medium, but as a participatory educational experience of one’s own making (Turner 2013).13



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The monumentality of the design is best evidenced in a 1964 promotional film titled Concept that was made to attract donors. Narrated by actor/art collector Edward G. Robinson, the film depicts the museum as what Robinson variously calls “one of the most exciting showplaces of the world”; the “first international center of audio‐visual arts and sciences”; and a “research center,” that will serve as a “living memorial to [the] media.” The film then segues to architectural sketches depicting a tourist class of patrons who interact with elaborate immersive exhibits. A bevy of Hollywood stars narrate these segments. Gregory Peck shows tourists experiencing the “synthesis show,” which uses the “magic of rear screen projection” to transport visitors back to a virtual film set of Imperial Rome. Bing Crosby takes a walk on the “discovery ramp” where visitors learn about entertainment history. Bette Davis leads a tour through the cafeteria, where tourists can dine in replicas of movie sets donated by Hollywood studios. Demonstrating the film and TV costumes in the wardrobe hall, Doris Day models a gown she wore in a recent film. Jack Benny explains that the museum’s two sound stages will not only be exhibition halls where visitors can see how movies or TV shows are made; they will also serve as laboratories for advertising agencies that will use the visitors gathered there as test markets and perform studies in audience psychology, motivation research, and ratings. Throughout, the film creates a subtle balance between the museum’s value for industry, its touristic function as an architecture of nostalgia, and, finally, its aura art and education. The museum’s educational value comes to a climax in the final segment when Mary Pickford displays a space‐age “information center” that links the Hollywood Museum via computer to universities and museums worldwide. As Pickford says, the research library is rendered in a world‐of‐tomorrow “World’s Fair fashion”; the sketches show families (not researchers) walking through the planets while futuristic music plays on the soundtrack. Pickford promises that the museum’s “computer oriented library” will be a “truly international center.” Although it is not clear that the planners of the Hollywood Museum knew this, their computerized library emerged during the same years that J.R.C. Licklider and his colleagues at the engineering firm BBN first envisioned a computerized Library of the Future for the Council of Library Resources.14 In any case, the Hollywood Museum library was, as far as I know, the first vision for a computer‐based worldwide media archive  –  a forerunner to the online media archives of the present. At the time, however, the Museum’s vision was cut short. In 1965, in the wake of local disputes, funding problems, and its Chairman’s failing health, plans for the Hollywood Museum ended.

From Enlightenment to Nostalgia The Academy, MoMA, and the Hollywood Museum demonstrate a variety of ­historical rationales through which television came to be collected, organized, and displayed. While each represents a dominant vision for collecting (public relations, art museum, and tourist attraction), they each also contained elements of all three,

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and all three institutions justified their efforts with claims to public service. Although they did not always succeed, their strategies and rationales did help to form a ­context for future collections. Most concretely, these institutions influenced the establishment of early television program collections and the archival missions at two of the nation’s most prominent sites  –  the UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Paley Center for Research. In 1960, UCLA began holding materials for the Television Academy; in 1968, the Television Academy put its collection of Emmy‐nominated network programs on temporary loan at UCLA, and it remains there on permanent loan today. Meanwhile, in 1976, the dream of a museum for the general public was realized when CBS Chairman William S. Paley opened the Museum of Broadcasting in New York. (In 1991, in response to cable, the museum changed its name to the Museum of Television & Radio [MT&R]. In 2007, in the context of the digital era, the museum rebranded with its current name, The Paley Center for Media.) When it opened in 1976, the Museum of Broadcasting appealed to the general public through blockbuster festivals, celebrity signings, and star‐studded panels, and most of all (like the Hollywood Museum before it), it appealed to nostalgia. As opposed to the Television Academy and MoMA, which preserved TV (and thus produced its value) within coastal battles around geographical place (and taste), the nostalgia mode encouraged a ritualistic relation to time. Audiences were convened around generational memories, mythic pasts, and retro aesthetics, and although Paley’s museum endorsed “quality” TV, it was not constituted around the high seriousness of MoMA’s fine art appeals. As with the Television Academy and Hollywood Museum, the Trustee boards at the Museum of Broadcasting were composed mostly of industry insiders, but the nostalgia mode is rooted in corporate synergies that far surpass the PR functions of the previous decade. Like its processors, in its first iteration, Paley’s museum attempted to restore ­television’s image in the “wasteland.” As the only network indicted for its questionable practices during the quiz show scandals, CBS was particularly prone to critical attacks of crass commercialization. Throughout the 1960s, CBS aggressively tried to uplift its image with appeals to education and the scholarly community (Spigel 1998, pp. 67–70). In 1967, the William Paley Foundation commissioned Dr. William B. Bluem to study the possibility of creating a master collection of broadcast ­programs.15 That study was the springboard for the museum. In its initial incarnation, the Museum of Broadcasting incorporated and expanded all of the earlier collection rationales, including publicity for industry, education, urban tourism, and the elevation of broadcasting (both TV and radio) to art. Robert Saudek, the executive producer of the critically acclaimed 1950s cultural affairs program Omnibus, served as the museum’s first President, lending the museum the aura of the Golden Age. Nevertheless, the museum’s view of television art was different from MoMA’s esthete conception. Rather than selecting only the “best” programs, the Museum of Broadcasting was catholic in its tastes, compiling a more diverse sample of program genres that represented “historical significance,” “social relevance,” and “artistic



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excellence as evidenced in awards” (Murphy 1997, p. 16). The collection was – and still is – secured through contractual agreements with networks, studios, producers, and private donors. The museum’s mission was to provide an interpretation of the broadcast past, and “Paley himself saw museum interpretation as one of the greatest benefits for the general public” (Murphy 1997, p. 60). The interpretive strategies relied heavily on nostalgia, with daily screenings of vintage shows aimed at the general public, and especially families. Harking back to Television: USA, the museum staged festivals, and it also mounted popular attractions, such as costume exhibitions and celebrity panels. In 1979, The New York Times reported that the museum was so crowded that in the two years since it opened, it had to turn away “three‐quarters of its visitors” (Shepard 1979). Like the Hollywood Museum, Paley’s museum invested heavily in architecture as an urban attraction. In 1991, the New York site (then renamed as the MT&R) moved from its West 52nd Street location to a limestone‐clad tower designed by architect Philip Johnson. The value placed on modern architecture became even more apparent when the MT&R opened its Beverly Hills site in 1996. Designed by “starchitect” Richard Meier (who also designed the nearby Getty Center), the Beverly Hills MT&R is finished in enameled white metal panels with expansive walls of glass and a circular‐shaped glass‐plated rotunda entranceway. This investment in architecture is consistent with a more general postmodern logic where the museum’s monumental architecture is as – if not more – spectacular than the documents it contains. In fact, the Beverly Hills site boasts no new program acquisitions; its holdings are identical to those in New York. When it comes to the TV museum, this postmodern logic was tied to changes in the media industry since the mid‐1980s. The rise of cable (and especially nostalgia networks like Nick at Nite and TVLand), home video, DVDs, and (now) streaming services makes it easy for the public to see and store vintage TV shows at home. In this context, the TV museum increasingly lost its value in relation to its holdings per se. Although it still serves educators, in its current manifestation, the Paley Center has shifted away from its popular function as a vintage TV “palace” (the daily screenings have been eliminated), to include more publicity events (for example, celebrity‐studded previews of new TV shows) and a greater focus on industry outreach (such as the Paley Media Council, “an exclusive memory community for media industry leaders”). And, in keeping with its emphasis on spectacle architecture, it rents its buildings as event space.16 To be sure, the Paley Center’s location in the media hubs of New York and Los Angeles has been central to its survival. Its current board of high‐powered moguls (from Disney’s Robert Iger to 21st Century Fox’s James Murdoch) attests to the importance of industry synergies and proximities for television archives since the start. Chicago’s more modest Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC), which was founded in 1987 with a mission similar to Paley’s, has had a much harder time surviving in current times. Despite its effort to mirror the Paley experience (in fact, in 2012 its founder, Bruce DuMont, opened a new modern building with a glass façade and lobby atrium), the MBC has witnessed major drops in attendance. Largely due to that and its excessive mortgage debt, it is on the verge of becoming an urban ruin.17

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DYI Archives and Archives in the Cloud Currently, there are a variety of television archives in physical sites, the most prominent of which include the LOC and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, as well as more narrowly focused archives such as the University of Georgia’s Peabody Award Archive, the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television, and Vanderbilt University’s News Archive. These sites serve mostly academic and industry researchers, and while they do engage their larger communities (for example, with film screenings or educational programs), they primarily focus on preservation and acquisition projects, and they are arranged as quiet spaces of study for specialists.18 Meanwhile, in the post‐network TV age, the dream of a public library or TV museum aimed at the general public, persists in institutions like the Paley Center or the MBC, but as mentioned above, these institutions are in decline or have changed their focus in the context of the devices and new media environments that have emerged since the 1980s. Recording technologies and digitization have turned TV into a machine that archives itself.19 Meanwhile, while not intended as archives, commercial streaming services like HULU, Netflix, and Amazon, as well as share sites (especially YouTube) have become major resources for scholars. Today, the TV archive is ubiquitous, available on demand and on the go through streaming services and share sites. Like other regions of the internet, online archives are sociable places that encourage viral circulation, creative mash‐ups, participatory chats, and amateur curatorship. To be sure, sociable archives like YouTube are not archives in the traditional sense (for example, they are not engaged in preservation missions of traditional archives, nor are they immersed in the ethical issues and practical concerns of library science).20 Instead, much of what is online is a do‐it‐ yourself archive where people can download and save their own TV without ever going to a physical library. These sociable, creative, and do‐it‐yourself modes of making television history now mingle with the more “official” practices of scholarship and archival collection. Traditional brick and mortar archives have responded in kind, offering online searches and data bases. The Paley Center and MBC offer (limited) streaming content, online seminars, and/or participatory online chat rooms. The Smithsonian Museum’s Internet Archive streams a large collection of early television programs and commercials on its “classic television” portal (free to wired publics). Certainly, online sites serve a valuable resource for anyone interested in television’s past. Yet, despite their advantages, they pose challenges for historians. Today’s seeming “everywhereness” and “anytimeness” of old TV can occlude the fact that digitized materials do not just appear out of the blue – as if the dust heap of TV history suddenly bundled itself as a neat organization of data. Instead, just like brick and mortar archives, digital archives and online collections on commercial sites like Netflix operate through techniques of storage, selection, filing, and data/metadata arrangements that are subject to larger cultural processes and technical procedures as well as legal (copyright), political, and economic forces. And while there are a



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variety of websites and fan‐based blogs that feature local station histories, the major digital streaming sites with vintage TV collections (HULU, Netflix, Amazon) favor national network or nationally syndicated shows – thereby reasserting the national, big city (vs. local) bias of the early TV collections in the midcentury period. Commercial streaming sites often showcase programs that are part of syndication libraries and corporate archives – that is to say, programs that were routinely rerun on broadcast stations after the 1950s, and have later been rebranded as “classic” or “vintage” TV for cable nostalgia networks since the 1980s. Viacom, which began as a syndication company in the 1970s and has since become one of the world’s major media conglomerates, has aggressively marketed its library of network series since the early cable era (it is the parent company of Nick at Nite and TVLand, which now both have online websites). Beginning in the 1980s, these nostalgia networks carved out a market for old TV shows like The Donna Reed Show and Leave It to Beaver by inflecting them with a camp sensibility that ran through paratexual materials (promos, program marathons, and product tie‐ins). Today, as cable and broadcast networks create their own streaming services, the vintage programs from their libraries (or the libraries of their affiliated stakeholders) are bundled with their new series online. CBS All Access, for example, features episodes of Golden Age hits and cult phenomenon such as I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, and various iterations of Star Trek (perhaps getting people in the mood for its new Star Trek: Discovery series). Such programs reflect contemporary tastes and fandoms rather than the larger range of programs that comprise TV’s past. For example, even while programs like December Bride or My Friend Irma were popular CBS programs in the 1950s, they lack contemporary “vintage value” and are not on the CBS site. While once a utopian dream of public access, even share sites have become subject to corporate logics. After Google purchased YouTube in 2006, YouTube’s classic TV content has increasingly been monetized through advertising or has migrated to consumer streaming services such as Amazon Prime. All of this affects the practical cost of doing TV research (historians need access to fast‐speed broadband and streaming services). Digital archives also influence how scholars experience and interpret programs. Streaming sites (and DVD box sets) ask historians to view old television through new media protocols (such as “bingeing” on whole series or “snacking” on clips), and in this sense they distance historians from the original temporal practices of linear TV and the TV “season.” So, too, the entire practice of watching vintage television on streaming networks involves searching through metadata, a kind of everyday archival practice different from channel surfing or dial switching. Commercial sites also stream programs according to new advertising modes. When viewed on YouTube, I Love Lucy, Good Times, or Golden Girls appear in the context of bite‐size commercials, film trailers, program promos, and ad banners. In other words, TV’s original historical flow has been replaced with the ad streams of the present. In this sense, despite the ubiquity of television, and its availability on demand, we need to attend to trade routes and infrastructures through which digital libraries operate and are maintained.

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Other Televisions: Storage and the Politics of Memory Beyond these political economic issues, cloud archives raise more fundamental ­theoretical and philosophical questions about what an archive is with regard to history‐ writing, the historical imagination, and the politics of memory. The sheer abundance of old TV stored in the cloud encourages fantasies of total accumulation and historical mastery that can make us forget that archives are never complete or eternal. As Jacques Derrida argues with respect to the storage of images, “Today, we can at least pretend (in a dream) to archive everything, or almost everything.… But because it is not possible to preserve everything, choices, and therefore interpretations, structurations, become necessary.” And for this reason, “whoever is in a position to access this past or to use the archive should know concretely that there was a politics of memory, a particular politics, that this politics is in transformation, that it is a politics” (Derrida and Stiegler 2002, pp. 62–63). For Derrida, archives are not just places of historical recovery. Instead, as he argues in Archive Fever (Derrida 1998), they are riddled with loss, absence, trauma, and even a “radical evil” that erases histories, such as the histories of people forced from their homelands. (Derrida’s book was first delivered as a lecture for the opening of the Freud Museum in London, which is also the home from which Freud was exiled in the Nazi era). The archive in this sense is not just an empirical holding place, but also a spectral space haunted by ghosts neither fully absent nor present in material terms. In a more materialist fashion, Foucault approaches the archive as a technical apparatus (or “dispositif ”) that stores the “positivities” of the past – things that are said and documented, as opposed to all utterances and acts. As opposed to the historian’s positivist fantasies of completion (the desire to find every artifact), in a counterintuitive move Foucault argues that the archive exposes the “rarity” of statements it was possible to speak in the discursive formations of their times (Foucault 1972, pp. 118–131).21 In that sense, as discursive systems, TV archives give voice only to what was speakable – and, I would add, only what was recordable and savable – in the institutional, industrial, and cultural contexts I have discussed throughout. Paradoxically, in this respect, the archive preserves absence. For example, most TV archives predominantly save network rather than local TV, even while people experienced television as a mix of locally produced programs and network fare. Although archives do include collections of locally relevant programming (for example, UCLA has a large collection from station KTLA and the MBC houses programs associated with the postwar Chicago School of Television), most archives do not offer a broad cross‐section of local programs from across the nation. The Peabody Awards Archive stands out as an outlier vision (roughly 30% of its collection is comprised of programs produced by a wide variety of local stations since 1949). The bias toward network TV is in large part due to the historical practices of the institutions that I have discussed, and this is also a function of TV history writing itself (scholars generally have focused on the rise of TV as mass/network medium). In addition, without space or resources, local stations tended not to save their shows (for one thing, videotape was expensive and many local stations recorded over tapes). Historians therefore, need to



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consider what is not in the archive, and to track those pasts that did not necessarily materialize as documents. This is where the archive ends and historical interpretation starts – in the ethereal pasts we can find only by speculating on the gaps left behind. In recent years, archives have become increasingly interesting to media and cultural historians such as Ann Cvetkovich, Sean Vogel, and Marsha Gordon and Allyson Nadia Fields, who use the term “archive” not only to mean a physical or digital means of storing media, but also with respect to theoretical concerns regarding the relationship of media to memory, trauma, absence, rarity, and loss – and with respect to people whose lives were not recorded in official archives (Cvetkovich 2002, pp. 107–147, 2003; Vogel 2009; Gordon and Fields 2016). In much of this work, the archive is something the researcher creates through a bricolage of traces, affects, and clues left behind – things not necessarily recorded in the metadata of traditional archive filing systems or searchable in the newer online systems. In this vein, Cvetkovich traces a history of lesbian culture through an “archive of feelings” and trauma that she finds in ephemeral performance art, videos, films, music, poetry, and photographs. Gordon and Fields explore the experience of 1960s Watts through the eyes of a young girl, Felicia, as she is recorded in a rare 16 mm educational film of that title. Research on local television by scholars, such as Mark Williams (1998), Linde Murugan (2015), Devorah Heitner (2013), and Gayle Wald (2015), explores largely forgotten archives that insert new dimensions into television’s past. Wald’s It’s Been Beautiful explores 1970s era Black Power programming aired on New York City local stations, which featured black performances and political discussions not seen on major networks; and Wald argues that the programs elicited forms of collective affect, political resistance, and community building for viewers. Such scholarship offers models of interpretation capable of grasping the diversity and multiplicity of media and its publics, as opposed to tracing dominant teleologies (of either progress or decline). Yet, because much of local television was not preserved, such research often also highlights the challenges of TV’s ephemerality, questioning exactly what any one television program represents when so many others are lost. In the end, my history of the television archive provokes a range of methodological and theoretical problems regarding the writing of television history. Despite the historical attempts to give order to it, television is an unwieldy object. All the archives I have mentioned (whether brick and mortar or online) tend to save TV as “programs” – as discrete texts like paintings, novels, or films. But, in this respect, archives really don’t save TV as an experience at all. Throughout the broadcast era, audiences primarily viewed television as what Raymond Williams famously called “flow,” a procession of programs, commercials, graphics, and other interstitial materials. Today, flow still constitutes much of broadcast and basic cable, while the new terminology of “streaming” provides an alternative language of experience for digital networks. Perhaps all the watery imagery points to TV’s status as what Zybmunt Bauman (speaking about broad social and political change) called “liquid” modernity, which he characterized as a shift away from a “heavy” and “solid,” hardware‐focused modernity of the machine age to a fluid software‐based modernity (Bauman 2000). As a liquid medium of flows and

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streams, television, it seems to me, defies the hard boundaries of any modern filing system. Or to put this another way, much of what aired on television is often on the other side of what Cornelia Vismann calls the “wall” of the archive, the territorial building boundary that also symbolically separates what is a savable artifact (everything inside the wall) from what is perceived as mere “trash” (Vismann 2008). In practical terms, for TV researchers, the archive is a filing system that lacks what collectors, donors, and scholars have considered TV trash, which often meant the interstitial materials that was part of the original flow. Or if these materials do exist, they are often not cataloged in archival metadata. For example, my own research on the history of TV title art and graphic design is “needle in haystack” labor, and often all I find is a trace (a cut or some static) indicating erasure, the likely editing out of commercials or graphics. This means historians need to speculate on the missing (or negative) aspects of the TV artifact, rather than just the positivities of what remains. Finally, although I have highlighted the various rationales and discursive systems that govern TV’s archive, there is an important factor this kind of inquiry leaves out, namely: much of what remains of our TV past exists largely through accidents. Given its ephemeral nature, television is still largely viewed as disposable culture, and what is saved is in large part based on what happens to be recorded, what happens to be in someone’s basement, a thrift store, flea market, someone else’s flight of fancy. So, once again, we are back to Andy Warhol’s archive. With the advent of the VCR and the newer digital TV systems, much of what remains of the TV past is really just what someone else’s machine recorded. And in this sense, television history often winds up being an attempt to give reason to – to arrange and systematize – these recording accidents of the past. For example, the promotional film for the Hollywood Museum that I have discussed in this chapter was not saved because anyone thought it was particularly important for media history. Instead, I found it in the now defunct underground Los Angeles video store Mondo Video A‐Go‐Go, which, for the most part, sold porn videos alongside cult movies and a spattering of TV programs. I found the Hollywood Museum film preserved on a film reel tape in the “shockumentary” section. According to the owner, it was stored there not because of its content, but because of its context; the film was found at the murder site of an octogenarian porn producer, amid his rotting corpse and rumpled in a mound of old Hustler magazines. I will end there, hoping to convince you that despite the archive’s search for reason, the reason things are saved are never as reasonable as they appear.

Notes 1 This is an updated version of my previous essay, “Our TV Heritage: Television, the Archive, and the Reasons for Preservation,” in Volume 1 of J. Wasko (ed.) (2008) A Companion to Television, London: Blackwell, pp. 67–102. 2 Tagg discusses photography’s relationship to police records and the identification of criminals.



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3 In the 1980s, the Television Academy renewed its midcentury plan to build a public library. The Academy Plaza opened in the early 1990s and contained the Television Academy business office and space for a library; an apartment complex (adjacent to, but not owned by, the Television Academy); and a “Television Hall of Fame” courtyard adorned with bronze statues of TV stars and a 15‐foot‐tall replica of an Emmy Award. The library never materialized. 4 The “Blue Book” is the colloquial name for the FCC report titled, “Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees,” 7 March 1946, reprinted in Kahn, 1968, pp. 125–206. 5 For a history of MoMA’s Television Project, see Spigel (2008). 6 Richard Griffith described Rockefeller’s request in Griffith, “Memo to Douglas Macagy,” 1952. 7 Lewis Freedman, cited in Television USA, p. 17. Freedman produced the CBS documentary series Twentieth Century, and was a member of the festival’s selection committee. 8 Jac Venza, cited in Television USA, p. 15. 9 Abe Liss, Television USA, p. 38. Liss was president of Elektra Film Productions, Inc. (which made TV commercials) and a member of the festival’s selection committee. 10 For the conference proceedings, see Davis and Simmons (1978). 11 For a history of the Hollywood Museum, see Trope (2011), chapter 2. 12 The television index is featured in the promotional film, Concept, discussed herein. 13 The choices created through this formation of the “democratic surround” are not just a free‐for‐all nor are they just the opposite of propaganda. Instead, the kind of popular pedagogy promoted through multiscreen installations needs to be unpacked for their own ideological agendas. 14 For more on Licklider and the Library of the Future, see Lisa Gitelman (2006, p. 98). 15 The Bluem report cited in Murphy (1997, p. 16). 16 See https://www.paleycenter.org/mc‐media‐council?_ga=2.233693660.396480166. 1503602883‐224334201.1500743619. And https://www.paleycenter.org/rental‐space (both accessed 20 July 2017). 17 The MBC had been closed for about a decade as DuMont struggled to raise capital for the new building. Bertagnoli (2017). Note that DuMont is the son of the TV tycoon, Alan B. DuMont. 18 While not intentionally exclusive, public archives are often underfunded and must abide by copyright and restrictive usage policies. Murphy, “Television and Video Preservation,” p. 9. 19 For scholarship on TV nostalgia, TV/video collectors, archives, and memory see, for example, Holdsworth (2011), View (2013), and Hildebrand (2009). 20 Archivist and librarians have argued against calling online sites “archives” in the traditional sense, particularly because they don’t usually engage in practices (such as preservation) or the same ethical concerns. For a discussion, see Kessler and Shafer (2009, pp. 276–277). 21 For an illuminating discussion of Foucault and the dispositive, see Agamben (2009).

References Agamben, G. (2009). What Is an Apparatus? (trans. D. Kishik and S. Pedatella). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

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Bertagnoli, L. (2017). “Is it curtains for the Museum of Broadcast Communications?” in Crains Chicago Business, 1 July. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20170701/ ISSUE01/170639979/is‐it‐curtains‐for‐museum‐of‐broadcast‐communications (accessed 20 August 2017). Chamberlain, B. (1952). Memo to René D’Harnoncourt, 11 April, Series III. Box 18: Folder 3, Television Project. Cvetkovich, A. (2002). In the archives of lesbian feelings: documentary and popular culture. Camera Obscura 17 (1): 107–147. Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Davis, D. and Simmons, A. (eds.) (1978). The New Television: A Public/Private Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Derrida, J. (1998). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. and Stiegler, B. (2002). Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge (trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith). New York: Pantheon. Gitelman, L. (2006). Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gordon, M. and Fields, A.N. (2016). “The other side of the tracks: nontheatrical film history, pre‐rebellion Watts, and Felicia” (with Marsha Gordon). Cinema Journal 55 (2): 1–24. Griffith, R. (1952). Memo to Douglas Macagy, 24 July. Series III, Box 18: File 2a, Television Project. Griffith, R. (1955). “Appendix 3: Prospect for a television archive,” in D. Macagy, The Museum Looks in on TV, Series III. Box 14, Television Project. Griffith, R. (1956). A report on the film library, 1941–1956. Bulletin XXIV (1): 14. Griffith, R. (1962). Television and the Museum of Modern Art. Introduction in Television USA: 13 Seasons, Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue, designed by Mary Ahern. New York: The Museum of Modern Art Film Library and Doubleday, pp. 3–4. Heitner, D. (2013). Black Power TV. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hildebrand, L. (2009). Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Holdsworth, A. (2011). Television, Memory, and Nostalgia. London: Palgrave, Macmillan. Kessler, F. and Shafer, M.T. (2009). Navigating YouTube: constituting a hybrid management system. In: The YouTube Reader (eds. P. Snickars and V. Patrick), 276–277. Lithuani: National Library of Sweden. Lesser, S. (1962). Untitled document, n.p., Papers of August Heckscher, White House Staff Files, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Boston, MA. Liss, A. (n.d.). Television USA: 13 Seasons. Macagy, D. (n.d.). The Museum Looks in on TV. Report, p. 205, Television Project. Minow, N.N. (1964). The vast wasteland. In: Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, 45–64. New York: Atheneum. Minutes (1963). National Board of Trustees Meeting (13, 14, 15 September 1963) p. 36, Box 1: Folder 1963–67, Academy Archives. Murphy, W. T. (1997). Television and video preservation: A report on the current state of American television and video preservation, Volume 1. Prepared for the Library of Congress, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, October, p.13



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Murugan, M. L. (2015). Exotic television: Empire, technology, and entertaining globalism. PhD dissertation. Northwestern University. National Minutes (1966). Academy Archives, on permanent loan at Doheny Library, 15, 16, 17 April, p. 14, Box 1: Folder 1963–67, University of Southern California, CA. O’Neil, T. (1992). The Emmys: Star Wars, Showdowns, and the Supreme Test of TV’s Best. New York: Penguin. Point of View report (n.d.) Series III. Box 20: Folder 16b.b, Television Project, Museum of Modern Art Archive, New York. Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees (1946) reprinted in F. J. Kahn (ed.), Documents of American Broadcasting, New York: Meredith Corporation, 7 March, pp. 125–206. Shepard, R. F. (1979). Tune in soon for best of yesteryear. New York Times 22 July Spigel, L. (1998). The making of a TV literate elite. In: The Television Studies Book (eds. C. Geraghty and D. Lusted), 63–94. London: Arnold. Spigel, L. (2008). TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television, 144–177. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tagg, J. (1988). The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Television in the Library of Congress. http://loc.gov/rr/mopic/tvcoll.htmllcweb.loc.gov, pp. 1–4 (accessed 6 March 2017). Trope, A. (2011). Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth University Press. Turner, F. (2013). The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. View (2013). Special issue: European Television Memories, 2(3). Vismann, C. (2008). Files, Law, and Media Technology (trans. Geoffrey Winthrop‐Young). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Vogel, S. (2009). Closing time: Langston Hughes and the queer poetics of Harlem nightlife. In: The Scene of the Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance, 104–131. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wald, G. (2015). It’s Been Beautiful: Soul! And Black Power Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Williams, M. (1998). Entertaining ‘difference’: strains of orientalism in early Los Angeles television. In: Living Color (ed. S. Torres), 12–35. Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Chapter 3

Locating the Televisual in Golden Age Television Caren J. Deming and Deborah V. Tudor

What the televisual names then is the end of the medium, in a context, and the arrival of television as the context. What is clear is that television has to be recognised as an organic part of the social fabric; which means that its transmissions are no longer managed by the flick of a switch. (Fry 2000, p. 13)

Introduction American network television’s apparent decline following the rise of cable, videogames, and the internet fuels an intensifying debate over the definition of an aesthetics of the televisual. Serious engagement with “the problem” of defining a televisual aesthetics unsettles long‐standing assumptions about the technology that enables “seeing at a distance” and what it means to do so by watching television. Assumptions about the nature of the medium, production practices, industry contexts, and the larger social forcefield in which television operates – all come to bear on the problem. This chapter organizes prevalent claims about the televisual into five categories: temporality, spatiality, aurality, femininity, and hybridism. Such a list reflects the variability of the television literature in purpose, method, and critical orientation. The concepts subsumed in these categories comprise a formalist, economic, discursive, and ideological mix seasoned with a little each of phenomenology and physics. Viewing televisuality as a synthesis of stylistic, technological, and ideological ­characteristics, this study reveals the concept’s resistance to being fixed in time or in relation to other media. A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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This exploration of the constituents of the televisual is motivated by curiosity about the “Golden Age” of television in the United States. Ultimately, our purpose is to search for the televisual there. If the traits identified and described begin to distinguish television as a medium, and if those traits can be seen, in retrospect, to have emerged in the early days of television, we may view the Golden Age as the beginning of the televisual. Recognizing the cultural freight borne by the term and tracing its origins to the earliest days of television, then, dispels nostalgia for some prelapsarian state preceding commercial, aesthetic, and sociopolitical degradation. There is everything to gain by looking back now that television is old enough to afford a longer view. In television years (where series longevity may be defined in a few episodes), 50‐something is very long indeed. The case selected is The Goldbergs (1949–1956), a series whose production run is virtually homologous with the Golden Age. In the decade from 1948 to 1958, television drama went from “apprenticeship to sophisticated anthologies to series, from New York to Los Angeles, and from live dramas to recording on film or videotape” (Hawes 2001, p. 2). The Goldbergs reflects the interest in experimentation and innovation characteristic of a period when new technologies attract the attention of major artists of all fields. Series creator Gertrude Berg worked with Lee J. Cobb, Cedric Hardwicke, and Sidney Lumet, among others. The programs she produced, wrote, and starred in contain the residue of theater and film experience these figures brought to the new medium of television. The productions of the time were seldom beautiful. They were, as Hawes (2001, p. 1) points out, the product of a period of experimentation, rather than of a mature period of achievement. Nonetheless, as the study of The Goldbergs reveals, those productions can contain moments of astonishing televisuality. After a brief review of the categories of the televisual, we will deploy those categories in an illustrative reading of The Goldbergs. This reading demonstrates the complexity of the concept and challenges the popularly held notion that the convergence of television with other technologies and their associated styles is a recent development. It argues instead for the longitudinal study of entertainment technologies in relation to one another rather than in the technologically defined divisions that have tended to characterize the academy’s encounter with them.

Constituents of the Televisual Before embarking on a brief review of the concepts constituting the televisual, it is important to be clear about the term. We mean “televisual” to refer to a complex of formal tendencies that shape television works and their reception. For the purposes of this project, we focus on narrative television. Other modes of presentation (news and advertising, for example) obviously participate in the televisual, though they cannot be dealt with here. We are not limiting our use of “televisual” to a narrowly defined aesthetic, such as Caldwell’s (1995) “excess of style over substance” or



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Redmond’s (2004) “videographic frames,” inasmuch as our purpose is to identify traits synthetically and to look for roots or precursors in early television.

Temporality: Commoditized Flow Television is inescapably about time. The sense of immediacy originating from simultaneous “seeing at a distance” arose from genuine excitement about television as a new technology. Television’s capacity (if not its dominant practice) to deliver events in real time remains its most salient claim to importance. As the unfolding events of 11 September 2001, demonstrated, it does deliver the real thing often enough to keep the claim to immediacy viable. Sobchak (1996) observes, however, that television’s capacity for liveness is managed so that what is (increasingly) simultaneous is not the event and the experience of it, but rather the event and its representation (and, ultimately, its immediacy and its mediation). The prescience of Sobchak’s observation is driven home by the fictional series 24, which claims to render its narrative in real time, complete with scenes running simultaneously on a divided screen. The fact that a represented hour is not an hour long is glibly elided along with the “missing” time needed for advertising and promotion. In the context of contemporary television, real time is a construct that, like liveness, grows increasingly surreal. Like radio before it, initially television was broadcast live. Telefilms quickly became common because of their promise of efficiency (repeatability), image quality, and quality control. Hawes (2001, p. 1) traces the preference for live productions and the mystique about them to nineteenth‐century stage productions, a preference carried to television by the radio interests who developed and nurtured the new medium. The proportion of “transcribed” material increased over the years, but even in the video age a fair amount of television is created before a live audience, whether in a studio or at home, and nothing inherent in the medium allows viewers to detect the difference between live and videotaped images. Ontologically, the video image is “always becoming,” as it requires a pattern of encoded electromagnetic signals to be recreated continually. Even at a time when digitization has stabilized a paused frame of video, it still requires an epistemological leap to imagine frames of video at all. Phenomenologically, televisual liveness is related to the strong sense of distant seeing which the medium generates, together with the fascination of seeming close. A medium unable to produce anything but recorded images does not produce the temporal alignment (happening‐ as‐you‐watch) upon which the special magic of distant seeing is premised (Corner 1999, p. 2). Although the relationship between the continuity of the signal and the experience of liveness remains largely conjectural, the special magic of distant seeing is highly contingent. As explained by Fry (1993, p. 42), the televisual possesses, paradoxically, “a presence of perpetual absence,” something that is always arriving and being received, but which “can never come to be.” For Williams, the continuity of the signal is “the first constitution of flow” (Heath and Skirrow 1986, p. 15). Although

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the notion of televisual flow applies at several levels – ranging from the atomic to programs and the continuity connecting them  –  more important to Williams is the  structuring of endlessly flowing program and interstitial matter by television programmers hoping to keep viewers tuned in. Raymond Williams’s (1974) work describes television’s stream of programming, advertising, and previews of new shows as a “seamless, irreversible flow that elided the differences between its ­constitutive elements” (as cited in Dawson 2007, p. 239). Surfing with a remote control alters the flow envisioned for viewers by any given broadcast or cable source, though the capacity to surf emphasizes the experience of multiple flows that auditors can enter and leave at will. Awareness of other flows continuing even when not intended is common in the experience of television in a way that it is not in the experience of a movie in a theater. This is not to say that spectators at a multiplex are never distracted enough to wonder how the show next door is going, but that moving between continual flows of images is a more difficult mental and physical proposition in the theatrical experience of film. John Ellis (1982) observed that television’s program flow is more segmented than continuous. The segmentation occurs at various levels, including the common division of programs into acts separated by commercial breaks (themselves highly segmented) and series divided into episodes. The divisions between segments are marked emphatically, perhaps none more so than the fade to black before and after commercials placed between the acts of dramatic programs. The segments manifest varying degrees of closure, but none as emphatic as the closure of the classical Hollywood narrative, even allowing for that medium’s current proclivity for sequels and prequels. Jane Feuer assimilated both Williams’s and Ellis’s points of view by proposing a “dialectic of segmentation and flow … segmentation without closure” (Feuer 1983). The debate on flow has also been given a long historical timeline through the claim that the medium of television was designed with movement in mind, a claim that links the development of portable television to an increasingly mobile culture beginning in the 1960s (Spigel 2004). Erik Dawson (2007) links the flow argument in context with the notions of “remediation,” which refers to the “representation of one medium in another.” In stark contrast to the classical Hollywood narrative (often characterized as seamless), the televisual text is all about seams, or segment markers, which don’t interrupt the programs so much as help to constitute them (Williams, in Heath and Skirrow 1986, p. 15). Television narratives use classical Hollywood rendering (such as shot/reverse shot patterns) within acts to inject television’s highly elliptical narratives with natural illusion (see Olson 1999). More often than disguising divisions, then, the televisual flow manifests a preoccupation with division at the expense of continuity. Going beyond Olson’s account of ellipticality as a factor in the narrative transparency that makes Hollywood film and television globally exportable, Caldwell claims that since the 1980s television has “deontologized” its own focus on liveness in favor of “style and materiality.” In Caldwell’s view, “hypostatized time and



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massive regularity comfort the viewer by providing a rich but contained televisual spectacle, an endless play of image and sound” (1995, p. 30). In keeping with Caldwell’s characterization, then, we might say that television’s heavy marking of time divisions serves the embodiment of managed, commoditized time. Indeed, the segmentation of most television into regular and repeatable temporal units bespeaks the dominance of commerciality in the United States and, increasingly, elsewhere. Time is television’s commodity form: units of time are bought and sold even in most so‐called noncommercial settings. The prominence of regular temporal units in American television underscores the American interest in the exportability of film and television. In a formulation reminiscent of Carey’s account of the creation of time zones in the United States in service to the need for the trains carrying commodities to run on regular schedules, global export of commercial television requires temporal regularity and repetition as well as narrative redundancy. In other words, the extra‐diegetic features of televisual time also contribute to negentropy, one of the constituents of the narrative transparency that Olson (1999, p. 98) claims makes American media exportable. If, as Caldwell argues, contemporary television has relegated liveness to secondary status, it does not do so at the expense of temporality. To the contrary, television relegates the rendering of space to secondary importance in the interest of time.

Spatiality: The Window Itself Televisual space privileges the two‐dimensional space of the screen’s x and y axes. As observed by Herbert Zettl (1989), televisual space is increasingly a graphical space in which computer‐generated graphics and overlays emphasize the electronic image’s absence of depth. This depthlessness is in stark contrast to cinema, in which creating the illusion of depth beyond the plane of the screen has been a perennial ideal. The contemporary practice of incessantly flattening the appearance of the televisual space with overlaid graphics suggests that collapsed space is as much a matter of televisual style and convention as it is of the focal length of lenses. The practice of emphasizing the flat, overlapping planes parallel to the screen (known in computer parlance as “windowing”) is a televisual phenomenon easily adapted to the computer and the flat screens now regarded as desirable in both. For even freed of the television studio apparatus’s limitations on mobility, television continues to respect the proscenium’s immutable limitation of the performance space and, concomitantly, on the sphere of viewing positions. Television’s predisposition for emphasizing two‐dimensional space accounts for its preference for proscenium‐style shooting through the period when virtually all primetime television narratives (both drama and comedy) have been shot on film and into the age of digital post‐production. Barker (2000) illustrates the “highly utilitarian” approach of telefilm style with Leave It to Beaver, wherein primary movement is used only as a means to move characters in or out of the shot and tertiary

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movement consists of repetitive, predictable sequences of alternating medium shots. Clearly, more than technological and budget limitations are implicated here. The predominance of medium shots of people in television suggests that a qualification of the mythology of television as “a close‐up medium” is in order. The epithet, apparently derived from the habit of showing products close up in commercials, applies to things more than to people. In the world of the televisual aesthetic, it’s as difficult to see a person close‐up in a window as it is to enter the space beyond it without getting hurt. More important than television’s supposed inability to render deep space is its denial of space by repeatedly and intentionally flattening it through the use of blocking and superimposed graphics. As Morse (1998, p. 94) points out, the ancestral metaphor for the framing of television news subjects is the cartoon balloon, not the window. By extension, the space behind the television screen is also flat. It is an immaterial space in which camera, graphics, editing, and sounds “transform ‘the world’ into picture and we watch this picture which appears to be, but never is, the world we are in” (Fry 1993, p. 30). Indeed, as Morse’s discussion of the virtual subject positions constructed for humans by machines such as television and “more completely interactive and immersive technologies” suggests, it may be that the televisual locates viewers more precisely than it locates the people and objects it presents for viewing. The consideration of interactivity has implications for both flow and spectatorship. An alternative model of spectatorship emerges through the user interacting with multiple windows simultaneously, one that is tentatively predicated on pattern and randomness rather than absence or presence (Hailes 1999). Such discussions of multiple windows and/or screens analyzes the fractured perspectives they offer, and may point us toward aesthetic forms in which the “multiple and simultaneous” supersede sequentiality (Friedberg 2006, p. 243) qtd in Tudor (2014).

Aurality The multiple presentational formats of much television suggest that television viewers also are expected to be listeners. Most messages are verbalized by the medium’s infamous talking heads and voice‐overs, but fictional characters seldom miss opportunities to articulate the moral import of narratives. Morse (1998, p. 6) names television as the first machine to mediate stories and also to “simulate the act of personally narrating them in a shared virtual space.” The simulation thus extends to news and other “reality” formats, which depend on the “enunciative fallacy” identified by Greimas as a feature of any speech act. In electronic media, immediacy and aurality conspire to foster the idea that the person speaking is a subject “in the here and now” and not twice removed – once by the mediation itself and again by the fact that speaking is already a first‐order simulation of the enunciating subject and the time and place of enunciation. The speaking voices of television are disembodied in various



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ways, not least of which is the medium’s flattened visual space described in the ­section “Spatiality: The Window Itself.” Michelle Hilmes argues that television “has no ur‐text.” She models the notion of sound and television’s “immediacy” through the concept of streaming seriality: present time transmission combined with episodic, often open‐ ended structure. This results in an extremely wide variety of non‐diegetic sounds, as opposed to cinema, and can best be understood as a “supertext … the television viewing experience as a whole” (2008, pp. 154–158). Music and sound provide punctuation and emphasis, as well as the all‐important signature theme, to representational and presentational television forms. The addition of stereo and even surround sound to broadcasting replaces visual depth with aural depth. This development complements Altman’s (1986) analysis of television’s discursive character, which invites viewers into dialog and conveys the suggestion that the images television delivers have been collected “just for us.” One of his prime examples is the signaling of the replay in a televised football game. Sound cues call viewers to attention so they can see images assembled just for their viewing (Altman 1986, p. 50). The television industry’s preoccupation with improving picture quality is ironic in the light of the importance of sound, which only in recent years has been a priority for technological improvement. Television “speaks” in a variety of modes, its flow constituted by a series of presentational and representational moments nearly filled with talk. Television’s flow is unique, rapidly moving among various levels of textuality: commercial, show credits, diegesis of a narrative. These segments are dependent upon sound for distinction of level and connection into flow (Hilmes 2008, p. 160). Its narrative forms, dominated as they are by melodrama and family comedy genres, contain an abundance of social commentary. Deriving their content from the quotidian and the topical, these narratives are every bit as important and powerful at bearing television’s social meaning as more clearly presentational forms such as news, so‐called “reality” forms, and commercials. The (oft) spoken morality of television befits a medium that takes its social role seriously. Indeed, the wave upon wave of entertaining (or annoying) advocacy for consumption is perhaps the most eloquent testimony that television knows and embraces its role as social arbiter. Thus, it is fitting to note television’s reflexivity in association with its aurality and commerciality. Intertextual promoter, huckster, and zealot, television seems ever aware of itself as such (as well as its auditors’ awareness of these roles). It is no wonder that it seeks to fill the very air with repetitive sounds and endless talk.

Femininity: Talking (Back) Television’s domesticity (its location in the home and preoccupation with family matters), its acknowledged role as sales agent for commodities and consumption, and its openness to women as creators and performers are among the factors that some writers have used to characterize television as more feminine than other

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media. Corner (1999, p. 26) maintains that television’s visual scale, domestic mode of reception, and forms of spoken address provide the medium with the grounds for “a relaxed sociality” that contributes to its sense of co‐presence with the outside world. Corner traces the association with gender and domesticity to the medium’s durable preoccupation with the housewife and the equally durable regulatory concern with television’s impact on children and the family. The characterization of mass culture as woman has been a persistent theme in critical theory since Marx wrote of the “elusive, illicit, femininity of the commodity” that “seems to found the very idea of possession and production itself ” (Zucker 2002, p. 178). As feminist critics have observed, the language for analysis may have changed since Marx and the Frankfurt School authors who adopted it, but the association often continues as a tacit assumption. The larger domain of literature and the arts stands in decided contrast to modernism’s masculinist preoccupation with action, enterprise, and progress. Huyssen (1986, p. 190) points out that for art, repudiating the feminine, whether implicitly or explicitly, “has always been one of the constitutive features of a modernist aesthetic intent on distancing itself and its productions from the trivialities and banalities of everyday life.” The modernist ­valorization of the abstract amounts to relegation of popular, realist forms to inferior, feminine status, despite the fact the production of mass culture has been under the control of men (see Huyssen 1986, p. 205). Television’s appeals to women as consumers are complicated, too. Lynn Spigel (1992, p. 159) has argued convincingly for early television’s self‐conscious and paradoxical appeals to women in the family comedy, which “transforms everyday life into a play in which something ‘happens’.” Spigel sees that play enacted in the “prefabricated social setting” of 1950s suburbs, which she and others such as Mellencamp (1986) and Feuer (2001) find implicated in the strategic containment of women characters such as Gracie, Lucy, Roseanne, and Absolutely Fabulous’s Patsy and Edina. The televisual view of women thus manifests another paradox: the avatars of consumer culture must be taught how to behave and to keep their place. Hatch (2002) demonstrates this paradox in her analysis of the selling of soap to the American housewife interpolated by postwar soap operas. Michele Hilmes (1997) has uncovered the blatant efforts of network executives to “masculinize” a medium that paid too much attention to women because it had so much soap to sell and so much air (time) to fill. Though powerful women on both sides of the cameras have been targets of misogynist degradation, women, their sensibilities, and their buying potential remain influential in television. Perhaps the most telling evidence of a truth that won’t go away is the fact that television still works hard at masculinization. Advertising executives are still talking about addressing television ads to women, and the topic is exceptional enough to elicit comment in the trade press. In that context, a masculine voice addresses a presumably masculine reader over the perennial topic of what “to do about” women. Miranda Banks (2009) argues that critical differences emerge in feminist production studies of above and below the line workers. This distinction is critical to understanding the



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gendered nature of television production. Banks puts special emphasis on the industry’s definition of above the line as “creative” and below the line as “craft.” Such markers can be unpacked to find economic, and cultural values that accrue to work defined as either creative and technical (Banks 2009; Caldwell 2008).

Hybridism: Messing with the Borders Television’s resistance to modernist analytical categories has made critical engagement with it nettlesome, too (see Deming 1989). Indeed, television’s postmodernist characteristics reinforce its characterization as feminine. As emphatic as television is about time divisions, it flaunts its fluidity where genre is concerned. Although most individual episodes of any series are formulaic by design, television is determinedly recombinant at the series level. In part, television’s generic hybridism is attributable to the paradoxes built into its need to be familiar and centrist, while claiming to cut away at the edges – simultaneously exercising its penchants for recycling and topicality, nostalgia and immediacy. Critics noticed television’s generic hybridism in the 1980s, the decade in which terms such as “dramedy” found their way into the critical vocabulary. However, television’s resistance to formal categories is inveterate. Television also flirts with the borders of reality and fantasy. Spigel concludes her discussion of family comedies with the observation that they transport viewers to a “new electronic landscape where the borders between fiction and reality were easily crossed” (1992, p. 180). If fictions may be said to blur the borders of reality, then “reality” genres (from news to talk, games, contests, and makeovers) may be said to blur the boundaries between “primary experiences” (such as conversation or other interpersonal relations) and constructed social realities (see Morse 1986, p. 74). Stars appear as themselves in narratives or in commercials, and characters morph into hawkers with ease. Such fluidities combine with other postmodernist characteristics: intertextuality, pastiche, “multiple and collaged presentational forms,” textual messiness (more textural than transparent), and reflexivity (Caldwell 1995, p.  23). Though not the first to observe television’s unrelenting postmodernism, Caldwell sees in that very observation postmodern critics’ inability to distinguish the modern from the postmodern in television.

Televisuality in the Golden Age: Gertrude Berg and The Goldbergs The critical literature on television locates the elements of the televisual explored here – peculiar patterns of temporality, spatiality, aurality, femininity, and hybridism – in various historical periods. The question posed now is: how successfully can these traits be deployed to illuminate work produced when television was just coming into its own? If the televisual was invented in the celebrated Golden Age in the United States, it ought to be possible to find at least traces of it in those texts that have survived.

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Gertrude Berg (1899–1966) was a pioneer broadcaster and prolific creator of theater, radio, television, and film. After more than 5000 radio programs (including The Goldbergs, 1931–1934, 1936–1950), she moved to television to reinvent the series, transforming it from soap opera to domestic comedy. Berg is one of the inventors of radio drama, of television drama, and of television comedy. Her oeuvre is significant because of her contributions to the development of the television domestic comedy (especially the ethnic comedy), her unusually powerful industry status, the broad popularity of her programs, and her timing. The Goldbergs is regarded as exemplary television from the Golden Age, and its history incorporates momentous developments in television. The series was carried live on CBS (1949–1951) until controversy over the blacklisting of actor Philip Loeb ended the relationship. The series reappeared on NBC under new sponsorship for the 1952–1953 season and then moved to the Dumont network in 1954. A filmed version ran in first‐run syndication in 1955–1956. Some kinescoped broadcasts from the early live years, and the whole of the 1954–1955 and 1955–1956 seasons (more than 80 episodes all together) have survived in various archives. The Goldbergs portrayed the trials and tribulations of the eponymous Jewish ­family living in a Bronxville tenement. Over the years, the series included over two hundred characters, though it was sustained by five central figures. Molly Goldberg (Gertrude Berg) was a powerful and benevolent mother absorbed with finding ­sensible solutions for family and neighborhood problems. Her humor, derived ­primarily from malapropisms and Yiddish dialect, was lovingly authentic, never patronizing or condescending. Molly’s husband Jake Goldberg (Philip Loeb, Harold J. Stone, Robert H. Harris) worked in a dress shop, though audiences knew him as the reliable husband and father, and as the perfect foil to Molly. Jake could be impatient or critical. He also could seem a little silly or irrelevant, by comparison with his wife, especially when the schemes he criticized proved beneficial. The Goldberg children, Rosalie (Arlene McQuade) and Sammy (Larry Robinson, Tom Taylor), typified first‐generation Americans trying to make sense of their heritage. “Rosie” and “Sammily” (as Molly familiarly referred to them) were dedicated to modernizing their parents and correcting their pronunciation. Molly’s Uncle David Romaine (Eli Mintz) rounded out the Goldberg family regulars. Uncle David was integral to the household, often cooking or washing the dishes. He wore a ruffled apron with as much nonchalance as his yarmulke. A ready enlistee in Jake’s sideline commentaries on Molly’s activities, Uncle David would echo Jake’s protests and judgments. The beloved Uncle David’s eccentricities were taken in their stride by the rest of the family. In the surviving episodes of The Goldbergs, features such as the theatricality of the set, the creative use of a proscenium shooting style, and high‐quality acting are all prominent. The episodes also contain visual and narrative treatments that eventually became conventions of the domestic comedy. The focus of the reading that follows is on spatiality. This is so not only because there is not enough room in these pages for a detailed exploration of all the elements of the televisual. Analysis of the



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treatment of space in The Goldbergs reveals the extent to which the features of the televisual interpenetrate one another. In other words, analysis of one implicates the others.

Televisual Space: Sample Synthetic Reading Molly is typical of the 1950s television mother in that she cooks wearing attractive dresses, takes care of everybody, and never seems to get dirty. In 1955, she moves her family to the suburbs and seems always ready to shop or entertain. The obvious difference from other television mothers of the time is that she is neither thin nor glamorous. Moreover, she is in charge. This mother knows best, and her narrative dominance is matched by her visual dominance. Molly dominates both the television frame and the conversation. From the beginning of the series, she tends to be “downstage” of other characters (closer to the camera). When the Goldbergs form the tableau reminiscent of soap opera (and film melodrama), Molly typically is centered in the lower, “heavier” portion of the screen. Even in shot/reverse shot sequences cut from film in the final year of the series, Molly’s close‐up is tighter, and her body is literally larger on the screen. Berg uses her big bones, big hair, and big features to advantage. Her gestures often call attention to her matronly form – which grows bigger every season – as she smoothes her apron or plants her hands on her hips. She fills the famous window frame from which she hails her neighbors with a musical “Yoohoo” or presents the virtues of her sponsors’ products in direct address to the camera. In one scene from “Desperate Men” in 1955, Molly appears in the center of a pyramid formed by the other characters and the dining room table. She stands behind the table, hands on hips, larger and taller than the others. Even more dramatic effect comes from a scene in the same episode in which Molly, Jake, and Uncle David have been tied up by robbers. Molly’s body looks especially large as a result of her central placement and the perspective of the shot. In scenes with the other actors, Berg’s body often is nearly still, leaving the bustling movement associated with television domestic comedy largely to the rest of the cast. These blocking techniques underscore Berg’s character as axial to the narrative. This is in contrast to Carroll O’Connor’s performance of Archie Bunker on the day of Florence and Herbert’s wedding, when Archie is constantly in motion, “orchestrating” the movements of other characters. Barker (2000, p. 176) interprets this activity as the visual manifestation of Archie’s axial role in the narrative. Molly achieves her status as the visual anchor of the action largely by standing still, a blocking technique that is echoed in the performance of Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Frasier Crane in the domestic comedy Frasier, which ran from 1993 to 2004. Typical of domestic comedy, any of the Goldbergs can become the focus of an episode. Nonetheless, Molly is always the focalizer, the moral center of the form’s discursive universe. By contrast, the male roles are largely superfluous. When, in the

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episode with the young robbers, Jake and Uncle David don’t want Molly to be a hero attempting to take down the robbers, she replies, “It’s no time for a faint heart.” A woman of action as well as a minder of manners, Molly references her own centrality. The men’s place is on the sidelines, where they make fun of Molly’s projects, including matchmaking. She ultimately triumphs in spite of them. Molly teaches them a lesson and then preaches the moral of the story at the close of each narrative, a lesson that carries over to the closing commercial pitch of the live episodes. Unlike radio, which had to overcome critical and regulatory resistance to commercialism (over which there was at least a public debate), television was born commercial. From the beginning, television programs were seen as devices to secure the attention of eyes and ears for the commercial pitch, even if programmers worried over how much blatant selling Americans would tolerate. In The Goldbergs, Molly is the only character privileged to interact with the audience by addressing the camera directly. She does so only during her commercial pitches, which she does in character, often using the “problems” of other characters in the narrative as an excuse to talk about the calming properties of Sanka decaffeinated coffee or Rybutol vitamins. Berg relishes her intimate minutes with the camera, earnestly pitching “her” Sanka, Rybutol, or the television set itself (for RCA). The commercials lend authority to Molly’s character, as she is part of the narrative and (at beginning and end of the broadcast) is also central to its framing device. In the commercials, viewers get their special time with Molly, in effect, more important time even than she spends with her fictive family. Viewers get the undivided attention of “the mother audience members had or wished they had” [in] “an era in which Jewish mothers were the models of perfect mothers, sacrificing all for the children’s happiness” (Epstein 2001, pp. 72–73). Leaning out of her window toward the camera, Molly shares her advice on how to live well by consuming. She speaks in an intimate, almost conspiratorial, tone as she talks about other characters with the audience at home. Assertive and authoritative, Molly is the axis upon which commercial and narrative imperatives turn. The window frame functions to contain the narrative visually, but not Molly’s body. She fills the window frame, and her gestures take place in the space between the “window” and the camera as she leans forward. Spigel points out that the ­convention of making the commercial pitch seem “closer” to the audience than the narrative is most pronounced in The Goldbergs (in contrast to Burns & Allen or I Love Lucy, which had actual or animated theatrical curtains to mark this strategy). The transition from presentation in the commercial to representation in the narrative creates “the illusion of moving from a level of pure discourse to the level of story, of moving from a kind of unmediated communication to a narrative space” (Spigel 1992, p. 168). If the pitch enacted television’s enunciative fallacy, the dramatic transition from it to the narrative (when Molly literally rotates 180° and begins to speak with her family, and the director cuts on the action) also calls attention to the seam where the two



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forms of address meet. The convention of marking the transition between narrative and commercial with a fade‐out and fade‐in occurs in live broadcasts of other series when the commercial is done by someone located elsewhere in the studio. As soon as the shows are no longer broadcast live, but recorded on film or videotape, the fade to black becomes the standard delineator of narrative time and space, a convention that continues to the present day. Musical “stingers” also mark segments when they can be added in post‐production. Gone from the final, syndicated season are Molly’s famous sales pitches, indicative of her eroding visual and discursive power. In the early years of The Goldbergs, theatricality is suggested by the look of the set and graphics more often than by blocking. What today’s students would call “cheesy,” primitive‐looking graphics open the show. The titles are hand lettered, almost as though by the hand of a child. The signature geranium on Molly’s window sill is crudely drawn. The flower grows in an empty Sanka can, announcing the sponsor’s product (and the Goldbergs’ postwar frugality) from the opening moment of the show. The window Molly leans from is cut out of a “wall” of painted‐on bricks. Such painted‐on or outlined set elements are common, and they complement the graphic style of the titles. In a clear nod to its radio predecessor, The Goldbergs on television has a character who is neither seen nor heard. Pinky the dog is spoken to and stepped over, but he is the product of sheer imagination. The impracticality of having a live dog in the television studio (not necessary for radio) no doubt explains why Pinky is never seen. Having the actors pretend that he is there barking and wagging his tail is a startlingly reflexive gesture. The “presence” of Pinky in the television episodes also assumes an audience that followed the Goldberg family from radio to television. The ubiquity of theatricality is not surprising in that New York (Manhattan) is American television’s place of birth and the salad days of its Golden Age. Together with the visual elements, the “endless self‐referentiality” Spigel (1992, p. 169) described in The Goldbergs signals the characteristic reflexivity of the domestic comedy genre and of television. In the early episodes of The Goldbergs, the shooting style is designed to create the illusion of depth more than to create a proscenium effect, however. Movement often occurs along the z axis; and characters are composed in patterns of overlapping planes (Molly does a lot of overlapping!). It has not yet become conventional to move characters parallel to the screen plane in the family comedies. Rather, the actors are choreographed in deep space before nearly stationary cameras. Sometimes they are stacked in depth for simultaneous reaction to events happening in the foreground, even though few variations in angle, distance, and lighting are available. The medium focal length of the lens allows as many as three rooms of the Goldberg apartment to be visible (and in focus) in a single shot, and characters are busy talking and moving in as many as four planes at once. Thus, the multiple planes parallel to the screen defined by framing devices incorporated into the set (window frames and archways outlined in paint, for example) define interior space in depth traversed by actors moving on the z axis.

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Often the actors execute a complex dance in which they must hit their marks accurately in space and time. Set movement patterns are evident from episode to episode, and misses are admirably infrequent given the exigencies of live studio production. However, the episodes are not without moments of experimentation. In a 1949 episode, “Composition,” the camera placed outside the window to shoot Molly during the commercials is used to frame characters inside the apartment with the window, half‐drawn shade and all. (This voyeuristic moment occurs five years before the release of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.) In another early episode, we see the visiting Uncle Beirish (Menasha Skulnik) through a tank full of live, swimming fish! In addition to the reflexivity generated by people having their fun with the new technology of television, such shots call attention to the frames themselves and concomitantly emphasize the flatness of the screen plane and the space behind it. Thus, the live years of The Goldbergs, the era before telefilm values assert their dominance over the visual style of television comedy, reveal a more elastic approach to the rendering of space. By the final season, the telefilm style (not something more cinematic) characterizes the episodes. The early Goldbergs shows manifest narrative television’s proclivity for the long and medium shot. Even when shot on film in the final season, shot/reverse shot sequences utilize the medium shot much more than the close‐up. The predominance of medium shots persists, with the exception that later sitcoms use more limited (though more elaborate) sets and more limited kinds of movement by actors. In sum, The Goldbergs’ seven seasons manifest signs of the solidifying televisual conventions as they incorporate techniques from radio, theater and the cinema. Experimentation, the use of different directors for different episodes (still common practice in series television), and rapidly evolving conventions – all confound static definitions of production style even at the series level. Long‐running series such as The Goldbergs are particularly difficult to describe without an even more dynamic approach stemming from close analysis of a substantial number of episodes and an appreciation for variation and change over the life span of the series.

Conclusion The cross‐currents of visual style evident in The Goldbergs demonstrate that easy dichotomies between media have been challenged by television from the beginning. They also suggest that the convergence of cinematic and televisual styles needs to be understood in evolutionary terms and contextualized accordingly. Berg’s work demonstrates that televisuality, like genre, is an unstable construct to be applied with the utmost delicacy, especially when approaching bodies of work traditionally regarded as the most formulaic. Ultimately, the constituent technologies of the televisual need to be seen more broadly and in more integrated ways than most past scholarship has done. The televisual is at once technology, style, and ideology; it is at once art, economics, and



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politics. Such complexity demands no less than to place television (along with its precursors and predecessors) in the history of entertainment technologies writ large. Fry’s declaration, that the ability to identify the televisual signals the end of television as medium and the acknowledgement of television as environment, is chastening. For, in the light of the televisual, the window metaphor becomes painfully apt. It places the medium and all its related, overdetermining formations behind the distancing glass that reveals television as the computer waiting to happen. Does that recognition obviate the need to study television series as texts? Not at all, because defining the televisual is a project only just begun. The secrets still locked in ­television’s past are crucial grounds upon which its future may yet be understood and contested.

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Chapter 4

The Past Is Now Present Onscreen: Television, History, and Collective Memory Gary R. Edgerton

A Different Kind of History Altogether I turn to History channel frequently bc I like history. There is nevr any ­history unless u r an antique dealer. Change name! — @ChuckGrassley – 8:14 p.m. – 1 Feb 2012

Senator Charles Grassley (R‐Iowa) has targeted History (formerly The History Channel from 1995 to 2008) on Twitter since 2012, calling out the network for the strategic programming changes made by its executives. Grassley’s tweet also underscores how “history” often means different things to different people. It has long been a source of contention and controversy, animating a sprawling discourse encompassing both an academic discipline and a genre of popular culture. In the latter case, specifically, expressions of popular history run the gamut from material to mediated. Their range includes cultural artifacts, monuments, living history museums, period songs, historical novels, and television shows, among many other examples. History has served a source for programming since the earliest days of TV. Beginning in 1947, historical content emerged as a common staple of primetime television in the US across such widely different subgenres as NBC’s Americana (a 30‐minute quiz show, 1947–1949); CBS’s Studio One (a 60‐minute live anthology program, which regularly included historical dramas, 1948–1958); ABC’s Crusade in Europe (a 26‐part 30‐minute episodic documentary miniseries that adapted General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s wartime memoirs, 1949); and DuMont’s Famous Jury Trials (a 30‐minute historically recreated court show, 1949–1952).

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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It is little wonder, then, that history on TV today comes in many different forms on all kinds of well‐established and newly emerging channels. The antique dealer that Senator Grassley refers to is Rick Harrison of the hit reality series, Pawn Stars (History, 2009–present), on which he co‐stars with his father, Richard “Old Man” Harrison, his son, Corey “Big Hoss” Harrison, and his childhood friend, Austin “Chumlee” Russell. Together they man the 24‐hour World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas. In a 2010 review, TV Guide aptly described this program as “one part Antiques Roadshow [PBS, 1997–present], a pinch of LA Ink [set in a Los Angeles tattoo parlor on TLC, 2007–2011] and a dash of COPS [Fox, 1989–2013; Spike, 2013–2017; Paramount Network, 2018–present]” (Moynihan 23). Pawn Stars (the pun on porn stars is intentional, given its seedy Las Vegas locale) celebrated its 500th episode on 22 January 2018. It has grown to be a global phenomenon seen in 150 countries and dubbed into 38 different languages (Lawrence 2018). The (pre‐2009) History Channel had been decidedly middlebrow with an emphasis on infotainment embellished with a patina of scholarship. During much of the first decade of the twenty‐first century, it continued in the position it settled into in the late 1990s as a reliably successful top‐25 basic cable channel. The History Channel had achieved a degree of brand stability and recognition where it was frequently featured on the even higher profile pay TV series, The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), as Tony’s favorite network, which he often watched as he unwound from work while exercising or just relaxing in his upper‐middle‐class suburban New Jersey home. “It means we’re in the mainstream,” explained Artie Scheff in 2001, who was then‐chief marketing officer for The History Channel and later its parent A&E Television Networks (AETN) from 1999 to 2006. “We’ve become part of pop culture. We’re Tony Sopranos favorite channel. Letterman and Leno talk about us on a regular basis.” He could have added how much Ozzy Osbourne, the former Black Sabbath singer, loved tuning into The History Channel on The Osbournes (MTV, 2002–2005), as his bemused wife Sharon teased him by referring to her husband’s network of choice as “The War Channel.” What did the fictional Tony on the East Coast, Ozzy in Beverly Hills, and Dave and Jay coast‐to‐coast, all have in common? They fit the target profile of The History Channel’s core audience of upscale men 25–54. This remains a highly coveted demographic because it is traditionally hard to capture. This specific grouping used to only choose news and sports programming on a regular basis. Since the 1990s, however, historical programming is very much a part of this cohort’s viewing agenda. In turn, History has made one key adjustment since the great recession of 2008–2009: the network now targets a broader, less well‐to‐do and less educated swath of men. The recent popularity of more lowbrow fare on History such as Pawn Stars reflects a change in strategy shared by the other basic cable networks owned by AETN that include A&E (formerly the Arts & Entertainment Network, 1984–1995), the Crime and Investigation Network, FYI (formerly Biography, 1999–2014), Lifetime, Blaze, and Viceland. Nancy Dubuc, who joined AETN in 1999, has overseen programming decisions at History, A&E, Lifetime, and Vice Media at different times during the



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intervening years. She spearheaded the shift away from what was perceived to be a dry, dull, and academically styled lineup to much more populist and entertaining fare at History, replacing mostly military‐themed shows with an assortment of reality‐based series (Harrison 2011). Besides Pawn Stars, Dubuc’s programming team expanded the network’s schedule to include such broad‐appeal reality hits as the action‐oriented Ice Road Truckers (2007–present), which was a spinoff of the much more sober and quasi‐informational Modern Marvels (1995–2015), as well as the similarly rowdy and hyper‐masculine Ax Men (2008–2016) and Swamp People (2010–present). “We were an entertainment brand and if we were going to compete in an era of incredible growth in the cable industry,” she recounted in 2012, “I felt we actually needed to be entertaining” (Rose 2012). The results were immediate and unmistakable. Over the last decade, History rose in rank to place annually within the top‐10 most popular basic cable channels in the US (de Moraes 2018). History, moreover, emerged in 2017 as the 15th most watched network on all of American television, including such legacy brands as NBC, CBS, and ABC (Schneider 2017; Katz 2018). History’s course correction is now well‐established. Viewers such as Senator Grassley, however, miss the network’s former lineup and perceive the recent changes as abandoning its original programming mission and dumbing down its brand. Just watched history on An American Experience abt Thomas Edison the inventor Thx Comcast on Arlington Va Channel 19 DO U GET MESSAGE HISTORY CHANNEL??? — @ChuckGrassley – 12:59 p.m. – 30 Dec 2017

In this tweet, Grassley refers to a rerun of the two‐hour historical documentary, Thomas Edison (PBS, 2015), telecast under the auspices of PBS’s flagship historical series, American Experience (1988–present). This program was the first directorial effort of writer‐producer Michelle Ferrari, whose career began as a script researcher and production assistant on the eight‐part documentary miniseries, The West (PBS, 1996), directed by Stephen Ives with Ken Burns serving as executive producer. Programming changes at History have no doubt alienated more traditional, high‐ end viewers such as Grassley, but the fact is there is currently more regularly scheduled and streamable historical content available on the full range of existing TV channels than ever before. Made‐for‐TV history is currently a vast enterprise, spanning feature‐length specials and television series, commercial and public networks, corporate and independent producers. The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic rise of television histories on screens all around the world, particularly in the United States, the rest of North and South America, all of Europe, parts of Africa, and throughout Asia. These historical programs come in the form of biographies and quasi‐biographical documentaries and docudramas, reality programs and historical fictions. These subgenres coincide with a marked increase of interest in history among television audiences across the globe. “I think we’re living in a time when history has

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reemerged as one of the popular forms of entertainment, and that’s great,” observes producer, director, and writer Ric Burns. “It sort of slept for a couple of decades, in the 1960s and 1970s, and now it’s really back, as it was before TV when historical novels and historical movies and historical poetry and history itself were mainstays of popular culture” (Flanagan 1994). Ric’s brother Ken is probably the most recognizable television producer‐director specializing in historical programming, primarily because of the unprecedented success of The Civil War (PBS, 1990) and the consistently robust showings of his other TV specials. Ken Burns became one of public television’s busiest and most celebrated producers during the 1980s, when the historical documentary held little interest for most TV viewers in America and internationally. Since 1990, however, an estimated 80 million Americans have now seen The Civil War; 55 million have watched Baseball (PBS, 1994); 50 million The War (PBS, 2007); 45 million Jazz (PBS, 2001); 40 million The Vietnam War (PBS, 2017); and 35 million The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (PBS, 2014). His other TV productions over the last three decades have averaged approximately 15 million viewers during their initial telecasts. The cumulative popularity of Burns’s television histories is striking by virtually any measure, and he – more than anyone – has emerged as the signature figure of this far larger programming trend (Edgerton 2001). Nevertheless, histories on TV today encompass much more than just documentaries, irrespective of Ken Burns’s extraordinary success and influence as a television showrunner and popular historian. Made‐for‐TV histories employ a wide array of nonfictional and fictional formats and techniques. Any constructive evaluation of historical programming needs to begin with the understanding that it is an entirely new and different kind of history altogether. Unlike written discourse, the language of television is highly stylized, elliptical (rather than linear in structure), and associational or metaphoric in the ways in which it portrays images and ideas. Overall, then, this chapter delineates the broad parameters of made‐for‐TV history, describing its stylistic preferences, and proposing a dozen general assumptions about the nature of this widespread phenomenon. This chapter concludes with some time‐tested observations ­concerning the enduring relationship between the proponents of popular and professional history, including the challenges and opportunities that this linkage affords television producers and scholars alike.

The Many Faces of History on Television The miniseries is not about O.J. and there are too many important issues that this documentary touches on that need to be talked about … This is different. This is not sensationalist in any way. Most importantly, this is history. — Ezra Edelman, producer and director of O.J. Made in America. (Edelman 2017)



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Television histories now demonstrate a continuum of quality from comprehensive, complex, and penetrating to trash TV. With over 650 channels in North America alone, the biggest change for made‐for‐television histories in the twenty‐ first century is that they appear on unexpected channels and in a wider assortment of nonfictional and fictional forms. Networks such as PBS, History, and Military History still deliver historical programming on a regular basis as part of their missions. More and more, though, history on TV can originate with legacy broadcasters such as NBC, basic cable channels such as FX, premium networks such as HBO, and television portals such as Netflix. Given the 24/7 continuousness of television coupled with the ongoing relentless demand of filling air time across hundreds of channels, TV histories pop up in the most unlikely places these days, filling the full spectrum from compelling and authoritative to boilerplate and specious. One recent high‐end example is ESPN’s nearly eight‐hour five‐part documentary miniseries, O.J.: Made in America (2016). Developed under the umbrella of the network’s 30 for 30 series (2009–present), O.J.: Made in America was produced and directed by Ezra Edelman, who had previously made four well‐received feature‐ length (90–120 minute) documentaries that examined important subjects from sports history: Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush (HBO, 2007), Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (HBO, 2010), The Curious Case of Curt Flood (HBO Films, 2011), and Requiem for the Big East (ESPN, 2014). This latter work premiered during the second season of 30 for 30 spurring series creators, Connor Schell and Bill Simmons, to convince Edelman to take on a future episode involving O.J. Simpson. “The O.J. murder trial, I was not interested,” he recalls, “but the wider canvass, I was interested” (Edelman 2017). Conducting a deep dive into the relevant sociopolitical and cultural issues surrounding O.J. Simpson eventually required multiple episodes and much more air time than originally planned. Significantly, Edelman and his creative team utilized a life history approach to the topic, which is a standard scholarly method that utilizes a person’s biography as a vehicle to better understand and analyze larger contexts and issues. In the case of O.J.: Made in America, the life story of Orenthal James Simpson is followed from his birth in 1947 through his 2007 incarceration in a Nevada prison for an impulsively conducted armed robbery in Las Vegas up to the final edit and audio mix in 2015. In this miniseries, moreover, O.J. Simpson functions as a synecdoche to explore the themes of celebrity, masculinity, domestic violence, race, law enforcement and the criminal justice system over the past half‐century in the United States. By the culmination of the Simpson trial for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman at the beginning of Part 5, the not‐guilty verdict follows logically for those watching given how thoroughly the racial politics and the landscape of policing in Los Angeles is delineated in Parts 1 through 4 of the miniseries. O.J.: Made in America is epic in scale and ambition revealing as much – if not more – about American society and culture since the 1960s than it does about O.J. Simpson, the individual.

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Sensing they had something special, executives at ESPN and Edelman debuted the entire documentary with just one intermission at the Sundance Film Festival on 22 January 2016, followed by a limited one‐week theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles on 20–26 May to meet the eligibility requirements for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) annual awards. Part 1 of O.J.: Made in America then premiered on ABC on 11 June with Parts 2 through 5 airing on ESPN on June 14–18. From that point onward, the whole miniseries played in heavy rotation on ESPN and ESPN2 and streamed on ESPN3 for viewers worldwide. O.J.: Made in America received nearly unanimous critical and institutional praise winning more than 45 major awards, including an unprecedented double‐dip of two Emmys for Outstanding Directing and Editing for a Nonfiction Program and an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, spurring a rule change at AMPAS barring multipart documentaries from future Academy Award consideration (McNary 2017). O.J.: Made in America thus emerged as television’s most watched and celebrated historical documentary since PBS’s 1990 debut of Ken Burns’s The Civil War. Estimates of linear (traditional reception determined by a network schedule at a set time) and nonlinear (online streaming) TV viewership of the miniseries already exceed 20 million people (Episode #230: Ezra Edelman, 2017). Critics, too, singled out O.J.: Made in America as standing shoulder‐to‐shoulder with the best print classics in creative nonfiction and history. For instance, A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote that “‘O.J.: Made in America,’ directed by Ezra Edelman, has the grandeur and authority of the best long‐form nonfiction. If it were a book, it could sit on a shelf alongside ‘The Executioner’s Song’ by Norman Mailer and the great biographical works of Robert Caro” (Scott 2016). In retrospect, O.J.: Made in America is just the highest profile of literally hundreds of twenty‐first century histories on television that are grounded in careful research, innovatively styled, emotionally engaging, consistently insightful, and well told as stories. The biggest surprise regarding this particular made‐for‐TV history is that it originated, was funded, and distributed by ESPN, a network not known for historical programming. On the low end of the television histories spectrum are offerings like History’s Ancient Aliens (2009–present). This dubious and fantastical, albeit popular, series is steeped in pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Each episode purports to examine a so‐called mystery from the past, such as the origin of the Moai statues on Easter Island, possible UFO activity in the Bermuda Triangle, and the rumored existence of Da Vinci’s forbidden codes. Ancient Aliens then explores these so‐called historical quandaries by using quasi‐documentary stylistics, concluding with explanations suggesting that astronauts from other planets regularly intervened in human affairs to act as guides with their advanced knowledge or provide various kinds of supernatural help. First and foremost, then, the definition of what constitutes history on television has greatly expanded for good and ill in the twenty‐first century. Television histories today



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can be nonfictional, fictional, or somewhere in between. They can aspire to be as accurate and edifying as possible or mostly entertaining, escapist, and aimed at attracting ever larger audiences. Made‐for‐TV histories can even be speculative, such as Stephen King’s eight‐episode science fiction thriller, 11.22.63 (Hulu, 2016), in which the protagonist travels back in time hoping to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy; provide alternate views, such as The Man in the High Castle (Amazon, 2015–present), which is based on the premise that the Axis powers won World War II resulting in Germany and Japan dividing up and ruling the United States; or serve as the background setting for period dramas, such as with the go‐go advertising world of Madison Avenue during the rapidly changing 1960s in Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015). Second, made‐for‐TV histories are subject to the same kinds of format and generic influences that affect the rest of television at any given moment of time. Reality formats comprised nearly two‐thirds of all television programming at the start of the twenty‐ first century. Variety referred to this trend as the “‘Survivor’ after‐effect,” alluding to CBS’s breakout hit (2000–present), while adding that “popular network reality shows have brought a new audience to ‘really real’ nonfiction programming on cable” (McDonald 2001). The first historical reality series was a joint UK–US production, The 1900 House (Channel 4 and PBS, 1999–2000). This so‐called “living history” program was based on the guilty pleasure of having viewers observe a contemporary family adapt to and interact in a setting that approximates the accommodations and furnishings of a turn‐of‐the‐last‐century home. The voyeuristic appeal of watching The 1900 House shared much in common with the earlier Dutch creation, Big Brother (Endemol, 1999–present, and subsequently franchised in 54 countries), as did the soap opera nature of the action that ensued. The 1900 House was so successful on both sides of the Atlantic that it spawned two more joint productions (The 1940s House in 2002; and The Edwardian Country House [UK title]/Manor House [US title] in 2002–2003); two more sequels in the US (Colonial House in 2004; and Texas Ranch House in 2006); four follow‐ups in the UK (Regency House Party in 2004; Coal House at War in 2007; 1920s Coal House in 2008; and Victorian Slum House in 2016); along with two variations adapted to the local history and culture in Australia; three in New Zealand; eight in Germany; and one in Switzerland. Not surprisingly, objections to these “you are there” made‐ for‐TV histories have appeared in both popular and scholarly publications. As one British scholar concluded in an early review, “‘reality history’ may be entertainment, but it is neither reality nor history” (Stearn 2002). Throughout the 2010s, the ratio between reality and scripted shows flipped with the latter format accounting for nearly 70% of all television programming by the end of the decade. In 2002, for example, there were 182 scripted series; in 2017, that number skyrocketed to 487 with no apparent slowdown in sight (Lynch 2018). In 2015, FX Networks CEO, John Landgraf, famously christened this surge in scripted series and miniseries the “era of Peak TV” (Holloway 2018). Like other genres, historical docudramas flourished and ranged in approach from carefully constructed

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popular histories, such as HBO’s John Adams (2008) and Netflix’s The Crown (on Queen Elizabeth II, 2016–present); to well‐executed historical melodramas, such as History’s Hatfield & McCoys (2012) and FX’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson (2016); to loosely based tabloid histories, such as Showtime’s The Tudors (centering mainly on King Henry VIII’s romantic exploits, 2007–2010) and History’s Vikings (inspired by Norse legends centered around Ragnar Lothbrok, 2013–present). Third, the technical and stylistic features of television as a medium likewise influence the kinds of historical representations that are produced. History on TV tends to stress the twin dictates of narrative and biography, which ideally expresses television’s penchant for personalizing all social, cultural, and for our purposes, historical matters within the highly controlled and viewer‐involving confines of a well‐ designed plot structure. The scholarly literature on television has established intimacy and immediacy  –  among other aesthetics  –  as intrinsic properties of the medium (Adler 1981; Allen 1987; Bianculli 1992; Creeber 2013; Fiske and Hartley 1992; Newcomb 1974; Peacock and Jacobs 2013). For instance, the dimensions of most stationary or portable screens on which TV content is now viewed have long ago resulted in an evident preference for more intimate and personally revealing shot types – such as close‐ups and medium shots – that fashion the majority of fictional and nonfictional historical portrayals in the style of intense and passionate dramas or melodramas played out between a manageable number of protagonists and antagonists. When successful, audiences closely identify with the historical figures and stories being presented, and likewise, respond in intimate ways. Peter Morgan’s critically acclaimed and popular docudramatic series, The Crown (Netflix, 2016–present), is a case in point. This narrative focuses on the British royal family and mixes the factual underpinnings of historical events beginning in 1947 through the Princess Diana years and into the turn of the new century with imagined dialog and highly personalized interactions among the historical “actors.” Morgan employed 10 full‐time researchers on The Crown to ensure rigor and authenticity in representing both public events and private affairs within the series. When I started sketching out episodes and thinking about what the show could possibly offer me as a writer or an audience – what was the central dilemma at the heart of this – psychologically, emotionally for the lead character – it would be who she is as Elizabeth Windsor and who she is as Elizabeth Regina, the queen, are two very different things – and the push and the pull between those two things – a bit like Russian Dolls, one within the other. (Morgan 2018)

As creator, writer, and showrunner, therefore, Morgan is most interested in exploring the human dimension that too often lies hidden beneath the pomp and circumstance of Queen Elizabeth II’s duties as monarch.



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Television’s immediacy usually works in tandem with this tendency toward ­intimacy. Both TV and film are incapable of rendering temporal dimensions with much precision. They have no grammatical analogs for the past and future tenses of written language and, consequently, amplify the present tense of immediacy out of proportion. The illusion created in television viewing is best suggested by the familiar cliché, “being there,” which is exactly the approach taken by 10‐time Emmy‐ Award winning writer, producer, and director, David Grubin, when shaping the documentary biographies of such iconic and historically mythologized personages as Napoleon (PBS, 2000) and The Buddha (PBS, 2010), attempting to make them more down to earth and humanly understandable. “You are not learning about history when you are watching,” clarifies Grubin, “you feel like you’re experiencing it” (Grubin 1999). Made‐for‐television histories, in this regard, are best understood as personifying Marshall McLuhan’s eminently useful  –  though often misunderstood – metaphor, “the medium is the message.” Fourth, made‐for‐TV history is a global phenomenon. The international TV industry today is best thought of as a three‐legged stool comprising broadcasting, cable‐ and‐satellite, and OTT (over‐the‐top) streaming sectors. Encompassing the first two legs, there are over one billion television households worldwide with just a little over 11% of these TV homes situated in the United States. American viewership is just a fraction of the global total, but the US is disproportionally represented in the production and international distribution of TV programming, currently having an economic and creative stake in more than 500 scripted series, in addition to approximately half as many reality‐based programs. Geography thus matters in the creation of all television content, including made‐for‐TV histories. The aforementioned AETN is a prime example in this regard. Joint owned by Hearst Communications (50%) and Disney’s ABC Television Group (50%), AETN has evolved over the past two decades. In 2000, it comprised A&E, The Biography Channel, The History Channel, and the History Channel International. The combined reach of AETN was then 235 million homes telecasting in 20 languages across 70 countries. On both the domestic and international fronts, “The History Channel [was then] the fastest growing cable network ever” (“Making History with History” 2001). AETN has kept its commitment to historical programming while simultaneously expanding its identity and size to 11 channels that include A&E, the Crime and Investigation Network, FYI, History, History en Español, Military History, Lifetime (acquired in 2009), Lifetime Movies, Lifetime Real Women, Blaze (a UK‐based channel utilizing mostly A&E and History series), and Viceland (a multinational channel featuring lifestyle documentaries and reality shows aimed at millennials). AETN also signed a long‐term, multiplatform distribution agreement enhancing its satellite viewing and online accessibility potential with AT&T in 2015. As a result, the network group’s cumulative reach now has grown to 300 homes, plus 500 million additional digital users in 37 languages across 150 countries and territories (A+E Networks n.d.). Historical programming is currently available almost anywhere at any time on earth.

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Fifth, made‐for‐TV history has flourished in the twenty‐first century by capitalizing on the digital convergence and ever‐increasing compatibility between television and the internet. The clichéd narrative that accompanies the arrival of any new mass medium is that the young upstart technology wages an all‐out Darwinian assault on its predecessor for, first, survival, and, then, outright supremacy in the media ­marketplace. Many pundits in the 2000s claimed that the internet was destined to supplant television in households nationwide. For instance, a 2004 survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project of 1286 media experts found that 53% believed that the internet would “replace television’s central place in the home,” resulting in TV’s inevitable decline by 2014 (Fox et al. 2005). More prescient was Robert Papper (then of Ball State University’s Center for Media Design and now of Hofstra University), who recognized in 2006 that “television is still the 800‐pound gorilla because of how much the average person is exposed to it. However, that is quickly evolving and the day is coming when most TV will arrive over the internet. We’re going to stop looking at them as different media” (Wolinsky 2006). During the 2010s, in turn, the ratio between linear and nonlinear viewing habits in the US rose from 90–10% to 60–40% (Spangler 2018b). Although the proportions differ depending on country, region, and continent, the growth and expansion of online TV is an unmistakable global trend. Furthermore, fictional and nonfictional made‐for‐TV histories have migrated en masse to the three major OTT channels and are already among their more popular selections. For instance, Netflix revealed that The Crown was their number one “most savored show in 2017” (Feldman 2017). Ken Burns’s oeuvre and most of the 30‐year catalog of PBS’s American Experience are now a click away through either Netflix or Amazon. Likewise, Hulu is the home of History’s entire programming portfolio. Overall, these few examples merely scratch the surface of the hundreds of television histories that are now readily available and easily accessible to viewers worldwide because of the continuing growth, technical improvements, and convenience of internet TV. Sixth, history on television remains big business in terms of profits and branding. The business of made‐for‐TV histories is as bifurcated as the economic conditions of the hundreds of broadcast, cable‐and‐satellite, and OTT channels worldwide during the era of Peak TV. On the high‐end, prestige cable and streaming dramas currently average $5–7 million per episode in production costs (Ryan and Littleton 2017). Breakout signature hits are more important than ever to networks as the most effective means of both attracting audiences and growing a network’s brand. Just as HBO was willing to invest $12.5 million per episode in the popular Emmy and Golden Globe award‐winning historical miniseries, Band of Brothers in 2001, Netflix gambled $10 million per episode for the first season and $13 million for the second in producing The Crown as a way to establish its bona fides and brand, as well as compete with the most watched and critically acclaimed shows on all of television (Sweney 2018). On the low‐end, documentary and reality programming still averages $250 000– 450 000 per 30‐minute episode with budgets sometimes rising as high as $1 million



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for an hour (WGA Report on Nonfiction Television 2013). With hundreds of ­channels and so much time to fill, nonfiction is relatively cost‐effective when compared to producing fictional shows. There are, in turn, numerous top‐50 networks, including A&E, CNN, Cultural.es (formerly Docu TVE), Discovery, Documentary, History, and Smithsonian, that employ documentary and reality histories as either their content staple or as an economical way to fill out the rest of their respective schedules. For instance, Smithsonian, which won a Peabody for MLK: The Assassination Tapes (2012), recently produced a two‐hour special, Drinks, Crime and Prohibition (2018), a scholarly handling of a topical area that builds off Ken Burns’s even more in‐depth Prohibition (PBS, 2011) (Catlin 2018). Ever since “Burns’s The Civil War proved that history on TV could be engaging – and attract millions of viewers,” historical “documentaries [have been] all over the dial” (Gabler 1997). Moreover, many of these programs and their reality‐based counterparts are just as popular with domestic and international audiences as sitcoms, hour‐long dramas, and movie reruns in syndication. Seventh, the vast majority of television histories nevertheless affirm the local and regional needs, diversity of interests, and self‐perceptions of those who watch them. Even though the reach and popularity of made‐for‐TV histories are global, they are typically produced and programmed to appeal to national, regional, and localized tastes and sensibilities. Netflix, for example, has aggressively expanded into an estimated 190 countries since 2015. By New Year’s Day 2018, this OTT portal network had 52 million subscribers in the United States and 117.6 million worldwide. With a subscription base that is more than half international, many of Netflix’s archive of approximately 700 original television series are either dubbed or subtitled for local consumption, while 80 are actually non‐English language productions from outside the US (Spangler 2018a). Although the company still produces a majority of its current active roster of 90 series in English, it is aggressively branching out by acquiring or creating its own shows in languages as diverse as French, Portuguese, and Turkish (Koblin 2017). Franchising, too, is a fact of life in twenty‐first century TV. Former Speaker of the House, Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill is usually credited with coining the saw, “all politics is local.” The same can be said of history on television. Antiques Roadshow (BBC One, 1979) began as a UK production that mixed drama with cultural history. The human interest angle of the format derives from the interplay between the local person with the antique or artifact and the professional evaluator. Each encounter results in a detailed summary of the item’s historical, artistic, and craftworthy characteristics culminating in a reveal of the article’s value, which serves as a minor dramatic climax. The format is engaging and eminently malleable, resulting in a half‐dozen international franchises  –  including the Netherlands (begun in 1984), Germany (1985), Sweden (1989), Finland (1997), Australia (2005), and Canada (2005) – besides the highly successful PBS version in the United States. So far, the American program has visited 147 cities in 45 states, providing viewers with a great deal of local color

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and history in the process. History’s aforementioned Pawn Stars is an overt clone of Antiques Roadshow. It’s tag line of “history one item at a time” reveals and acknowledges those roots (Lockwood 2011). Eighth, TV producers and audiences are similarly preoccupied with creating a useable past – a long‐standing tenet of popular history – where stories involving figures and events are used to clarify the present and discover the future. There is logic behind the myopia implied by presentism. As is the case with all Ken Burns’s television histories, a good deal of the success of The Civil War must be equated with the way that Burns and his creative team made sense of this nineteenth‐century conflict from their vantage point in the mid‐to‐late 1980s when they produced the miniseries. They stressed above all else the personal dimensions of the war, making it all the more immediate and comprehensible to the nearly 40 million viewers who first tuned into the miniseries between 23 and 28 September 1990. All told, this historical documentary addressed a number of contemporaneous controversies that reflected the shifting fault lines in the country’s underlying sense of itself as a national culture, including the questions of slavery, race relations, and continuing discrimination; the rapidly changing roles of women and men in society; the place of federal versus local government in civic affairs; and the individual struggle for meaning and conviction in modern life. The Civil War as useable past is thus an artistic attempt to better understand these enduring public issues and ideally form a new consensus around them from Burns’s perspective, serving also as a validation for the members of its core audience (which skewed older, white, male, and upscale in the ratings) of the importance of their past in an era of unprecedented multicultural redefinition (Statistical Research Incorporated 1990). Ninth, the rise and immense popularity of history on TV is largely the result of its affinity and ability to embody current concerns and priorities within the stories it telecasts and streams about the past. Television’s unwavering allegiance to the present tense is not only one of the medium’s grammatical imperatives, it is also an implicit challenge to one of the traditional touchstones of academic history. Professional historians have customarily employed the rigors of their craft to avoid presentism as much as possible, which is the assumption that the past is being viewed and evaluated largely by the standards of the present. The revisionist work of postmodernist historians like Hayden White has challenged this principle in academic circles. White has argued that historiography is much more about telling stories inspired by contemporary perspectives, than it is with recapturing and conveying any kind of objective truth about the past (White 2014). This alternative scholarly outlook has gained increased momentum over the last two generations, even calling into question whether or not there is an authentic, knowable history at all beyond the subjectivity of the present (Doran 2013). Most popular historians including those who work in television take this postmodernist viewpoint one step further. They tacitly embrace presentism through the back door by concentrating only on those historical figures, events, and issues that are most relevant to themselves and their target audiences.



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Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War is another example of this c­ reative team’s long‐standing allegiance to presentism. Their 10‐part nearly 17‐hour miniseries contains parallels with the current White House in disarray and obsessed with leaks; two presidents (Johnson and Nixon) who believed newspeople were lying about their respective motives and actions; mass demonstrations across the country; document drops of classified materials into a political conversation (the Pentagon Papers); and a doomed attempt to build a successful military campaign upon a ­corrupt political foundation (in South Vietnam). The most direct parallel that Burns and Novick identified with the Vietnam era was the chronic breakdown in civil discourse that admittedly plagues our country today. In fact, this miniseries suggests explicitly that the seeds of our present‐day red state/blue state divide was planted in the hyper‐partisanship surrounding the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s. In episode nine, “A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970–March 1973),” for instance, former infantry platoon leader and company commander, Philip Gioia, summarizes this thesis by stating that “the Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. It polarized the country as it probably hadn’t been polarized since the Civil War. Unfortunately, we’ve never moved far away from that. And we’ve never recovered.” Tenth, the flip side of presentism is pastism (a term coined by historian Joseph Ellis), which refers to the “scholarly tendency to declare the past offlimits to nonscholars” (Ellis 1997, p. 22). Professor of history and art history at Columbia University and committed historical documentarist, Simon Schama, further explains, “Underlying many of these complaints is a deep‐rooted prejudice against the possibility of serious television history, given that the subject is held to be too important to be left to bungling (as it is implied) ‘amateurs’. ‘Real’ history is, apparently, the monopoly of the academy” (Schama 2004). Media historian, Robert Sklar, perfectly captured this long‐standing bias with his metaphor, “historian‐cop,” which alludes to the tone of policing that usually emerges whenever professional historians apply standards of judgment they reserve for assessing scholarly books and articles to films and television (Sklar 1997). Furthermore, Sklar called for a greater awareness of both the production and reception processes involved in producing mediated histories as a way of better appreciating how these more encompassing frameworks influence what audiences actually see and understand as onscreen depiction of the past. Made‐for‐TV history has proven to be an even more tempting and incendiary target than film and history for the proponents of pastism, especially since its pervasiveness and impact with the general public far outstrips anything that can be achieved in theaters. As a result, television histories are sometimes rejected out of hand for being either too biographical or quasi‐biographical in approach, or too stylized and unrealistic in their plots, characterizations, and imagery. Occasionally these criticism are well‐founded; historical programming certainly demonstrates its share of honest failures or downright irresponsible and trashy depictions of the past.

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Other times, though, history on TV delivers on its potential to be edifying as well as engaging as popular history, having even gained increasing support in the academy and the published literature on the subject over the past half‐century with each new generation of scholars (Benshoff and Griffin 2009; Gray and Bell 2013; Edwards et al. 2018). In the twenty‐first century, in particular, there has been a growing desire among many professional and popular historians to find ways to reconcile and comingle as much as possible each other’s traditions in what has become a mutually beneficial working relationship (Edgerton and Rollins 2001; Ludvigsson 2003; McArthur 1978; O’Connor 1983, 1988, 1990; Rosenstone 2012; Sobchack 1996; Toplin 2002, 2010). British historian and prominent TV commentator, Tristram Hunt, sums up this more contemporary and ecumenical stance. Television history can act as a powerfully beneficial force helping to democratize knowledge, develop new approaches to understanding multiple pasts, and generate instructive debate about the function and relevance of history. Indeed, television history is now a vital component of how millions of people interact with the past. The question is no longer one of validity but of progress: not whether television history is a good thing, but how do we make it better. (Hunt 2004)

Eleventh, collective memory is the site of mediation where professional history must ultimately share space with popular history. Interdisciplinary work in memory studies now boasts adherents in American studies, anthropology, communication, cultural studies, English, history, psychology, and sociology (Erll 2010, 2011; Fussell 1989; Hoskins 2017; Kammen 1993; Le Goff 1996; Lewis 1975; Lipsitz 1990; Niemeyer 2014; Olick et al. 2011; Schudson 1992; Zelizer 1992, 1998). The contemporary preoccupation with memory dates back to Freud, although recent scholarship focuses more on the shared, collective nature of remembering, rather than the individual act of recalling the past, which is the customary realm of psychological inquiry into this topical area. Researchers today mostly emphasize how collective memory “exists in the world, rather than in a person’s head, and so is embodied in different cultural forms” (Zelizer 1995). It “is, above all, archival,” explains Pierre Nora, “it relies on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image.” For their part, professional historians “have traditionally been concerned above all else with the accuracy of a memory, and how correctly it describes what actually occurred at some point in the past” (Thelen 1989). “Less traditional historians have allowed for a more complex relationship, arguing that history and collective memory can be complimentary, identical, oppositional, or antithetical at different times” (Zelizer 1995). According to this way of thinking, more popular uses of memory have less to do with accuracy per se, than using the past as a kind of communal, mythic response to current, issues, controversies, and challenges. Consequently, the proponents of



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memory studies are most concerned with how and why a remembered version is being constructed at a particular time, such as the aforementioned examples of The Civil War, O.J.: Made in America, and The Crown, than whether a specific rendition of the past is historically correct and reliable above all else. Rather than think of professional and popular history as dramatically opposed traditions (with one more reliable and true, and the other unsophisticated and false), it is perhaps more helpful to consider them as two ends of the same continuum. In Culture as History, the late Warren Susman (1984), first championed this more sympathetic appreciation of the popular historical tradition. Susman noted that myth and history are intimately linked to each other. One supplies the drama; the other the understanding. The popular heritage holds the potential to connect people passionately to their pasts; the scholarly camp maps out the processes for comprehending what actually happened with richness and depth. Susman’s fundamental premise was that popular history and professional ­history need not always clash at cross‐purposes. Together they enrich the historical enterprise of a culture, and the strengths of one can serve to check the excesses of the other. Many subsequent scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have concurred with Susman’s basic thesis and continue to deepen his arguments in the intervening years. In his classic and widely influential book, That Noble Dream, Peter Novick (1988) has skillfully examined the controversies that have fundamentally affected history as a field of study over the past two generations. Subsequent debates continue in the literature and at conferences during the twenty‐first century over the relative merits of narrative versus analytic history, synthetic versus fragmentary history, and consensus versus multicultural history (Cheng 2012; Park et  al. 2011; Salevouris and Furay 2015). Within this context, popular and professional history are seen less as discrete traditions, and more as overlapping parts of the same whole, despite the many tensions that still persist. For example, popular histories can now be recognized for their analytical insights, while professional histories can similarly be valued for their expressive possibilities. Susman (1984) succinctly summarizes this more inclusive vision with his often quoted affirmation: “History, I am convinced, is not just something to be left to historians.” He expressed this belief while always taking for granted that scholars were already essential to historical activity and would continue to be in the future. Twelfth and, most importantly, television programming delivered via broadcast, cable‐and‐satellite, and OTT platforms is still the principal means by which most people learn about history. TV must be understood (although seldom is) as the primary way that people of all ages form their understanding of the past. Just as television has profoundly affected and altered every aspect of contemporary life – from the family to education, government, business, and religion – the medium’s nonfictional and fictional portrayals have similarly transformed the way tens of millions of viewers think about historical figures and events.

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The collective memory of 9/11, for example, is indistinguishably linked with the way in which this event and its aftermath was telecast continuously over four straight days to worldwide audiences numbering in the hundreds of millions. Viewer attention was effectively channeled into familiar narrative patterns featuring heroic public servants and villainous foreign terrorists. These slowly unfolding storylines were further enhanced by the shocking repetitive power of seeing the two World Trade Center towers aflame and finally collapsing time and again. In subsequent months and years, real‐life footage from 9/11 has been regularly incorporated into numerous TV documentaries produced in America as well as internationally to commemorate the succeeding anniversaries of the attacks and aftermath, while fictionalized scenes of domestic terrorism have appeared on such widely diverse entertainment programs as NBC’s Law & Order (1990–2010), Third Watch (1999–2005), The West Wing (1999–2006), CBS’s The Agency (2001–2003), UPN’s Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005), Fox’s 24 (2001–2010; 2014), FX’s Rescue Me (2004–2011), and Showtime’s Homeland (2011–2019), among many other series.

A Place for Made‐for‐Television History Alongside Professional History History is stuck with television as the primary mediator of memory. – Andrew Hoskins (2001).

Memory scholars such as Andrew Hoskins work on both sides of the boundary that separates popular from professional history. They frequently experience f­irsthand the mutual skepticism that still sometimes exists between the two camps. Each usually works in different media (although some academics do produce TV ­ ­programs, websites, and films on historical topics); each tends to place a dissimilar stress on the respective roles of storytelling versus analysis in relaying history; and each tailors a version of the past that is designed for disparate – though overlapping  –  kinds of audiences. These distinctions are real enough. Nevertheless, the ­artist and the scholar, the amateur and the expert, can complement each other far more than is evident by the occasional expressions of suspicion, defensiveness, and on rare occasions, contempt, which arise on both sides. The popular history tradition is actually as old as the historical impulse itself. The first historians, dating back to the ancient Hebrews and Greeks, were poets and storytellers; and their original approach to the past was to marshal whatever evidence and first‐person stories they could into an all‐inclusive historical epic. This master narrative was typically populated by heroes and villains who allegorically personified certain virtues and vices in the national character that most members of the general population recognized and responded to immediately. Television as popular history still adopts facets of this strategy at its most rudimentary level, although our small‐screen morality tales about the past are far more seamless and sophisticated in



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their construction, thus rendering these formulaic elements invisible to most ­contemporary viewers. Popular history is essentially artistic and ceremonial in nature. In the case of ­television histories, the act of producing, telecasting, and viewing historical programming becomes a large‐scale cultural ritual in and of itself. The process in turn completes a number of important functions: it organizes together various viewing constituencies into a web of understandable relations, which are defined mostly by their differing identities and positions of power; it loosely affirms majoritarian standards, values, and beliefs; and it facilitates a society’s ongoing negotiation with the past by portraying those parts of the collective memory that are most relevant at any given time to the producers of those programs as well as the millions of viewers who watch them. In contrast, professional history is resolutely scientific and empirical in origin. It developed gradually over the second‐half of the nineteenth century, mainly in reaction to the 2500‐year legacy of popular history. The new scholarly traditional recast the study of history inside the increasingly respectable and rigorous mold of the emerging social sciences with its principal attachments to systematic inquiry, the quest for objectivity, and the pursuit of new knowledge. In effect, professional history rejected the obvious myth‐making of popular history and adopted a more modern and disciplined approach to gathering facts, and then testing and cross‐ checking them for validity and reliability. By the turn of the twentieth century, history had become institutionalized as a legitimate discipline and full‐fledged occupation within colleges and universities. Professional historians pioneered a wide array of specialty areas that they examined as impartially as they could, aspiring for a detached and truthful rendering of their subjects, independent of all personal tastes and biases. The ideal of objectivity has been modified considerably since the 1960s to take into account the inevitability with which scholars and their facts always come with very definite points of view. From the perspective of the twenty‐first century, moreover, the subjective excesses of popular history appear less like a difference in kind than a matter of degree, especially when compared against the ideological exuberance of contemporary scholarship. Most surprisingly, America’s preeminent examples of popular history currently originate on primetime television, encompassing the full gamut of actual and fictionalized presentations. Live “media events,” such as TV coverage of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, the Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Desert Storm, the O.J. Simpson trial, the funeral of Princess Diana, and the 9/11 attacks “are in competition with the writing of history in defining the contents of collective memory” (Dayan and Katz 1992, p. 213). “Early in the [twentieth] century, we thought history was something that happened temporally ‘before’ and was represented temporally ‘after’ us and our personal and immediate experience,” recounts Vivian Sobchack. “Today, history seems to happen right now – is transmitted, reflected upon, shown play‐by‐play, taken up as the stuff of multiple stories and

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significance, given all sorts of ‘coverage’ in the temporal dimension of the present as we live it” (Sobchack 1996). In this way, for instance, TV transformed 9/11 into “instant history” by taking what was essentially localized New York City and Washington, DC catastrophes and turning them into a global media event with the whole world bearing witness (Dayan and Katz 1998). “In this sense, television acted as an agent of history and memory, recording and preserving representations to be referenced in the future” (White and Schwoch 1997). “As historians who focus on popular memory have [long] insisted, we experience the present through the lens of the past – and we shape our understanding of the past through the lens of the present” (Rosenberg 2003). Just as TV sometimes preempts the authority of professional historians on determining what exactly should be considered historic, scholars are likewise crossing over into the public sphere of popular history more than ever before in roles such as production consultants, expert onscreen commentators, and in a few select cases, even writer‐producers and hosts of historically themed programming. One of the more prominent is the aforementioned Simon Schama, whose more than a dozen television documentary specials and miniseries began with Landscape and Memory (BBC Two, 1995), and have since included A History of Britain (BBC Two & The History Channel, 2000–2002), Murder at Harvard (PBS, 2003), The Story of Jews (BBC Two & PBS, 2013), and his most recent updating of Kenneth Clark’s 1969 series, Civilisations (BBC Two & PBS, 2018) in collaboration with classicist, Mary Beard, and fellow historian David Olusoga. Schama’s first major crossover success in both the US and UK was the 15‐part miniseries, A History of Britain, an adaptation of his best‐selling trilogy of books by the same name (Schama 2000, 2001, 2002). This epic documentary was spaced across three seasons on BBC Two and The History Channel as the seven part, “At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC–1603 AD” in 2000; the four part, “The British Wars: 1603–1776” in 2001; and the four part, “The Fate of Empire: 1776–1965” in 2002. This ambitious miniseries demonstrated Schama’s exceptional dramatic talents of being able to design extended historical narratives for TV, while still maintaining his lively on‐camera presence as a learned guide setting the appropriate context and sharing colorful anecdotes and asides with the viewer. A History of Britain was such a success in the international television marketplace that Schama signed a “$4.6 million book and TV deal” in the summer of 2003 for his next three of what has now proven to be a continuing series of personally selected, written, produced, and presented historical documentaries (Johnson 2002). Consequently, Schama’s approach to made‐for‐TV history combines the storytelling accessibility of the popular historian and the detailed rigor of his scholarly training and background as a professional historian. For instance, Murder at Harvard was created for the American Experience. It once again featured his unique ability to bridge both historical traditions without shortchanging either one. Based on the second‐half of his 1991 book, Dead Certainties: Unwanted Speculations, Murder at Harvard retells the notorious tale of one of the most sensational murder trials in American history.



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In 1850 a Harvard chemistry professor, John White Webster, was tried and eventually hanged for allegedly killing Dr. George Parkman, a Boston Brahman from whom he had borrowed money but to whom he was unable to repay the loan. Schama fleshes out these two historical figures, along with several other characters, by reevaluating all the known facts, the trial transcripts, the newspaper reports, and the mixed motives of each of the principals in order to see if he can finally solve the still controversial homicide 150 years later. In raising the matter (and the dead) in Murder at Harvard, Schama and his creative associates, producers Melissa Banta and Eric Strange, recreate a number of key scenes complete with invented dialog and presumed interactions between the major players. “I knew I was crossing a line historians don’t usually cross,” confides Schama, who speaks often and directly to the audience onscreen throughout the docudrama, “the line that separates history from fiction. I felt free to let my imagination work to get closer to the truth.” Besides the murder mystery, moreover, this television program also becomes an exploration into how historical methods are utilized and the past reconstructed. As Schama reveals at a later point in Murder at Harvard: “Maybe I thought what I was after was not a literal documentary truth, but a poetic truth  –  an imaginative truth – and for that I was going to have to become my own Resurrection man. I was going to have to make these characters live again.” No matter how enriched and tempered by scholarly research, knowledge, and expertise, taking such poetic license is clearly more the province of popular rather than professional history. The team of Schama, Banta, and Strange openly enlist the on‐camera opinions of five distinguished historians – Pauline Maier, Ronald Story, Karen Halttunen, John Goodman, and Natalie Zemon Davis – to examine the historiographic implications of their approach in Murder at Harvard. Toward the beginning of the docudrama, for example, Pauline Maier argues that Schama “is not writing a whodunit. He’s trying to deal with a more philosophical issue, and that is how do we know about the past.” As part of the program’s conclusion, Natalie Zemon Davis adds: The historian’s fictionalizing can help him or her ask new questions about his evidence, questions that might never have come up before. When you’re trying to put yourself fully in the mind of your actors and see them moving through the streets of Boston, for instance, or moving through a trial, you suddenly think about things that never occurred to you before. You might even then be able to go back to the evidence and find the answers.

Such self‐reflexivity in a made‐for‐television history suggests the increasing depth and potential of the historical programming genre as well as the growing sophistication of the audiences it attracts. Even as made‐for‐TV history series are becoming more accepted by the historical establishment, residual resistance still remains on the more traditional margins of the discipline. One contemporaneous published critique of Murder at Harvard reflected this ongoing bias: “For the film to

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have succeeded as a meditation on historical truth, it would have needed a third plotline: a discussion by the filmmakers on how to present the double stories of murder and history. They might have, for example, interspersed footage of applying for grants, writing a script, auditioning actors, or deciding what material to cut” (Masur 2003). In response to such impractical criticisms, Simon Schama asserts that too often “the success of television history is judged by the degree to which preoccupations of print historians are faithfully translated and reproduced on television” (Schama 2004, p. 27). He counters in turn that “I’m amazed when anyone talks of dumbing down. If anything, I expect complaints that I am asking too much of people. From the beginning we wanted to tell stories and ask questions” (Jardine 2002). Historian Robert Toplin concurs that a “great deal of ink and airtime are wasted on angry indictments of cinematic history for engaging in practices of the genre or for inventing and manipulating evidence. These criticisms would not seem irrelevant if they were framed with an understanding of the way Hollywood drama works” (Toplin 2002). Despite these lingering tensions, the highly dynamic relationship between television producers and scholars feature three principal patterns so far in the twenty‐first century. First of all, most made‐for‐TV histories are built upon the foundation of academic scholarship. They are essentially synthetic in nature and should not be judged on whether or not they generate new knowledge, as much as on how creatively and responsibly they shed additional light on the existing historical record. A case in point is the aforementioned documentarist, David Grubin, whose character studies for PBS’s American Experience over the years, ranging from LBJ (1991) to Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided (2001), RFK (2004), The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2009), and Tesla (2016), have set the standard for biographical histories on TV. According to Grubin, “historical documentary is a kind of poetry, resting on a foundation of fact” (Grubin 1997). Second, professional historians are more involved than ever in the production processes of many television histories. They characteristically influence, but rarely control, the end products of such programming unless they also branch out into producing like Simon Schama. Third and lastly, made‐for‐TV histories frequently provide professional historians with opportunities to introduce their scholarly ideas and insights to much larger audiences. Too often, television histories are hastily misperceived as the last word on any given topic, simply because of the unprecedented power and influence of TV as a medium. Rather than being definitive, made‐for‐television histories are probably best understood as dramatic alternatives to the many published histories that exist within a general subject area. Overall, TV producers as historians typically reverse the usual academic hierarchy, trusting first the lessons found in art (i.e. storytelling, televisual aesthetics, film clips, photography, paintings, period music) before turning to the scholarly record to fill in the details of their more public visions of history. This is admittedly a speculative approach; but then again, popular and professional historians alike are all



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amateurs when it comes to detecting the human traces of lives once lived among the emotional resonances of the past. In the final analysis, television histories enable unprecedentedly large audiences to become increasingly aware of and intrigued by the stories and figures of the past, spurring some viewers to pursue their newfound historical interests beyond the screen and into other forms of popular and professional history.

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Part IV

Industry

Chapter 5

Broadcasting in the Age of Netflix: When the Market is Master Sylvia Harvey

Introduction This chapter considers changes in the supply of television programs in the early twenty‐first century, in particular the clash between traditional broadcasters and the new online providers, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The long history of legislation, regulation, and public interest campaigning – related to the once‐new medium of broadcasting – is also examined. For it is this past shaping or regulation of the broadcasting terrain that may affect the take‐up of the new services and their broader cultural impact. In the second decade of the new millennium the newcomers achieved rapid ­success. Thus, in the United States (US), by the summer of 2018, the trade magazine Variety noted that nearly 150 million people were watching Netflix “at least once per month.” Meanwhile Deloitte reported that “55 per cent of American households ­subscribe to at least one video streaming service” (Deloitte 2018; Spangler 2018, p. 4). In the United Kingdom (UK), the regulatory body Ofcom declared “over 39% [of] UK households now take at least one subscription on‐demand service” (2018a, p. 8). “Cord‐cutting” became a common phrase in the US as viewers cancelled their large pay TV cable packages in favor of the persuasive simplicity, quality, and economy of the newcomer services. The average monthly cost for a full cable subscription was around $70–$100 for a plethora of channels, many of which remained unwatched. The Economist, citing Nielsen data, reported that “Americans aged 12–24 are ­watching less than half as much pay‐TV as in 2010,” paying instead for the new online, on demand services (Economist 2016, 2018). Netflix basic was available for

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$7.99 or £5.99 in the UK, while in the US, Hulu, along with Amazon and YouTube, had also entered the fray. And the new kids on the block moved at speed without legislative let or hindrance. Much video‐streamed material is now watched via an internet‐connected or smart television with some 60% of US internet homes connected in this way in 2017 and an estimated 52% of UK television households thus connected in the first half of 2018 (NPD 2018; Ofcom 2018a, p. 14). The now standard terms for the new services are Video on Demand (VOD), Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) and Over‐The‐Top (OTT). This last term, OTT, refers to the supply of content via online streaming directly to viewers and homes with broadband internet connections and not via the old pre‐internet established methods of broadcast, cable, or satellite transmission. It is also important to note that the new services are always‐on and available on demand and that many viewers are no longer tethered to their homes, thanks to the development of smart mobile phones that enable video viewing. In addition, as soon as a distinction is made between traditional broadcasters and the OTT newcomers, the emergence of a new kind of hybridity should also be acknowledged as broadcasters sought to offer newer and always‐available online streaming services in addition to their traditional, real‐time television (TV) schedule. Examples are the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) “All Access” service in the US and the BBC’s iPlayer in the UK. However, these internet‐friendly moves by more traditional providers should not be allowed to obscure the fact that broadcasters in both the US and the UK remain subject to a range of long‐established legal requirements – for example, to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity,” to make available a range of genres including news, current affairs, and documentary along with drama and entertainment, or to show a mandated proportion of original, first‐run programs. These rules do not apply to the on‐demand, online providers.

The Social Role of Broadcasting From the late 1950s, and since the reduced price of television sets made these more widely available to lower income homes, the new devices were to wreak havoc with the previously widespread habit of movie‐going, and with the economic protocols and profitability of the film industry. In the UK, for example, cinema‐going dropped from an all‐time high of 1635 million attendances per year in 1946 to its nadir of just 64 million by 1982 (UK Cinema Association 2018).1 By the new millennium, the sale of films to TV outlets (the old enemy) had long become an established element of the business plan either to cover initial film production costs or to enhance profitability. The “box” in the living room was to become the new hearth of the home with the number of sets in the UK rising from 5.7 million in 1956 to 20.3 million by 1981 (BARB 2018b).2 And this box offered nightly entertainment, at more affordable prices than the cinema, as well as including news in the daily schedules.



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The BBC’s declared mission to “inform, educate and entertain” continued into the era of television. And although its monopoly was broken in 1955, some public service values were to migrate across to the new privately owned but regulated broadcaster, Independent Television (ITV). The regionally based companies that made up the new national network were required by law to offer “a proper balance in their subject‐matter and a high general standard of quality,” news was to be presented “with due accuracy and impartiality,” there should be “no matter designed to serve the interests of any political party,” and programs should include “properly balanced discussions.” Advertisements could only be inserted in “natural breaks” and the amount of advertising time should not be “so great as to detract from the value of the programmes as a means of entertainment, instruction and information”; no religious or political advertising was permitted (Television Act 1954, Section 3; Second Schedule, Section 4). In addition, the new regulatory body – the Independent Television Authority (ITA) – exercised considerable supervisory power. The network of stations that made up ITV were also well‐resourced, effectively enjoying a monopoly in the sale of TV advertising until 1982, since no competing‐provider licenses were issued in any region (Sendall 1982). As James Day, advocate of public broadcasting in the US, noted with interest, part of the strength of the BBC/ITV system in the UK was the “exclusive entitlement to distinctly different sources of income”; the BBC from its license fee and ITV from the sale of advertising (Day 1995, pp. 362–363). The first competition for the sale of advertising airtime in the UK only emerged in 1982 with the advent of Channel 4. As various commentators have noted “riches and regulation” were the order of the day for ITV; it became rich and popular, but also fulfilled various legally mandated social obligations. The wording of laws is frequently dry, but some of the principles outlined in the British legislation referred to above were more eloquently expressed two centuries earlier by George Washington, when outgoing President of the United States. In his Farewell Address of 1796, directed at “Friends and Fellow Citizens,” he put forward an ambitious goal: Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. (Washington 1796/2000, p. 21)

In 1961, in his first year in office, President John F. Kennedy had expressed his belief in the social significance and power of broadcasting. In a speech to the leaders of the US television industry, he noted: For the flow of ideas, the capacity to make informed choices, the ability to criticize, all the assumptions on which political democracy rests, depend largely upon communication. And you are the guardians of the most powerful and effective means of communication ever designed. (Kennedy 1961)

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In November of the previous year, a couple of weeks after Kennedy’s close victory in the presidential election, the CBS network had screened the documentary Harvest of Shame (1960), a detailed account of the lives and harsh working conditions of migratory US farm workers and their families. Presented by the journalist Edward R. Murrow, the film ended with a face‐to‐camera, direct address to the viewer‐consumers, considered also in their role as citizens: The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night and good luck. (CBS Reports 1960)

In his history of American broadcasting, Erik Barnouw noted a related truth, namely the potential resistance of viewers to what they have seen. And credibility may be scarce where a medium has routinely presented itself as primarily a place of entertainment. Writing about the reception of this film, Barnouw suggests that it: portrayed the plight of migrant workers  –  so vividly that many people rejected its truth. Such poverty and human erosion could not easily be fitted into the world as seen in prime time. This reaction became a familiar one to documentary producers. (Barnouw 1977, p. 284).

Whilst this kind of campaigning documentary might have been seen as a contribution to the spirit of Kennedy’s “new frontier,” it could survive only with  difficulty in a world of relatively unregulated and sharply competitive popular TV. When the President made his courteous speech to the assembled titans of the broadcasting industry  –  the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)  –  he was perhaps a little more critical than he seemed, for he had already appointed a new Chairman of the regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). On the day after the President’s address, the new appointee, Newton Minow, was to speak to the assembled grandees in a different way, noting their financial acumen (a 9.7% increase in profits between 1959 and 1960), but famously describing a good part of their industry as a “vast wasteland,” criticizing the “old complacent unbalanced fare of action‐adventure and situation comedies” (Minow 1961). In this speech and in subsequent writing, Minow might be said to offer a twentieth‐century elaboration of Washington’s advocacy of “institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge,” calling for “a wide range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives.” And since the three‐year broadcasting licenses were granted by the FCC at no charge and since “the people own the air,” he proposed



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that “for every hour that the people give you – you owe them something.” The principles behind these observations are expressed in a book he published after leaving the FCC: I believe television is the most powerful instrument ever created to reach the minds and hearts of man… I believe that the future of this nation  –  of the democratic ideal – and the world depends on an enlightened electorate, on an informed citizenry. (1964, p. viii)

Some 10 years later, he expressed with greater frustration his concern that advertising seemed to be taking over the public space of TV and that Congress had, in practice, rendered the FCC powerless to prevent this, observing: The House of Representatives made it clear to the FCC that it should stay out of the area. Thus, we remain the only nation in the world which has no limits on how many commercials a broadcaster may run. (Krasnow and Longley 1973, Preface)

In summary, the development of advertiser‐funded, free‐to‐air services was quickly established as the norm in the early days of US television and only seriously challenged in the early 1970s by Home Box Office (HBO), a subscription service offering original, often challenging drama. HBO signaled the enormous changes that were to come in the growth of a pay TV market. Over the subsequent four decades, subscription cable services in the US were to emerge as the dominant and increasingly expensive mode of TV reception. Although, even at its height, the pay TV revolution with its rough estimate of 100 million subscribers, did not reach everyone. The official census figures taken in conjunction with the Nielsen estimates suggest that as many as 20–37 million US dwellings were without this service (see Note 2). In the UK, working TV sets were estimated to be present in 95.6% of homes (Ofcom 2018a, p. 11). Pay TV also grew in the UK from around 1990, delivered mainly via satellite, not cable. After a difficult and costly start, BSkyB – now Sky – emerged as the dominant player with its portfolio of channels that included live coverage of key sports events. By early 2018, pay‐satellite TV was present in just over 30% of homes, a slight dip from the figure of 33.6% in 2012 (Ofcom 2018a, p. 12). As in the US, pay TV in the UK remains a valuable market with revenues of some £6.4 billion in 2017, compared to a revenue for the newer online services (including advertiser‐funded material) of just under £2.3 billion (Ofcom 2018a, p. 5). However, as is often the case in the history of technological and cultural innovation, it was the speed of success of the newcomers and the intensity of support for their modestly priced services that indicated a serious shift in the underlying tectonic plates of the broadcasting system.

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Legislation, Regulation, and the Shaping of Broadcasting A decade before the first major legislation dealing with US broadcasting – the 1934 Communications Act – the American film industry was already establishing itself as a dominant international player. In Europe, Australia and Latin America, US films were sold at prices that made them more than competitive with local productions. The large population of the US and the emergence of a highly successful studio production and exhibition system meant that high‐budget movies could cover their costs in the home market and be sold at a kind of discount abroad. This was good for the audiences who watched and enjoyed the films, but bad for film writers and producers in countries with smaller populations as local production could not compete on cost. Cultural tensions emerged along with what some considered to be trade imbalances. As early as 1923, a New York paper noted: The film is to America what the flag once was to Britain. By its means Uncle Sam may hope someday, if he is not checked in time, to Americanize the world.

A US State Department official was to confirm these sentiments in noting “the people of many countries now consider America as the arbiter of manners, fashion, sports customs and standards of living.” By the 1930s, it was estimated that foreign sales brought the US industry some 35% of its income, ensuring profitability (Maltby and Craven 1995, pp. 68–69). In Britain, the government was lobbied heavily by a film industry in crisis and in 1927  –  a year after the General Strike – was persuaded to pass one of the first film quota laws. Many surviving on low incomes continued to be attracted by the vigor and apparently classless nature of American movies. But the Cinematograph Films Act, requiring cinemas to show a minimum of 5% of British films, kept the door open for a national film industry and the very low quota was expected to rise over time (Hartog 1983, pp. 59–73). The success of the US film industry in the period between the two World Wars meant that it required little in the way of government intervention beyond recognition and support for its international role. And Hollywood was able to “make its own weather” by carefully developing modes of storytelling that would work in a variety of world markets even if, arguably, some of the texture and tension of life in the US and its great range of experiences and challenges was ironed out in the process. During this golden age of the studio system, Ruth Vasey notes some homogenizing tendencies in a “deliberate policy of effacing ethnic and cultural difference on the screen.” Thus, Hollywood achieved “a kind of coherence as a fantastic kingdom, both strange and familiar to its diverse audiences” (1997, pp. 227–228). The fictional worlds created by players like Netflix and Amazon almost a hundred years later face a similar problem in crafting narratives that will work for viewers in many different parts of the world, with some looking for sedation, some for excitement, and some for change.



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Aspects of US Regulation Unlike the case of the movie business, two major pieces of legislation were designed to shape the development of broadcasting, albeit with a light touch: the 1934 Communications Act and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Kahn 1973, pp. 54–111; Aufderheide 1999, pp. 143–182). The 1934 law made clear the public ownership of the airwaves by creating a new body, the FCC, with the power to license “the use…but not the ownership” of the new channels and to ensure that these were used with regard to “the public convenience, interest or necessity.” This was to be a national service and no license could be granted to “an alien or the representative of an alien.” A positive contribution to the political process was also required and operators had an obligation to “operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance” (Kahn 1973, pp. 64, 65, 74, 80; Sections 301–315 of the Act). With wording drawn from public utilities legislation, the Act offered little detail on how the public interest might be served in an industry that dealt with meaning‐ making and not with pipes and wires. Although, with the wisdom of twenty‐first century hindsight, the reference to a requirement that broadcasters offer “reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance” seems of great and continuing significance. In the few years prior to the 1934 Act, and in the shadow of the great crash of 1929, there had been strong lobbying of Congress aimed at ensuring that 25% of all available frequencies would be reserved for educational and non‐commercial purposes, though with no agreed strategy on how this might be financed. Reflecting on what some had considered to be the chaos and commercialization of the airwaves that had preceded the legislation, writer and poet James Rorty believed that “for all practical purposes radio in America is owned by big business, administered by big business, and censored by big business”; while Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that: anything that breaks up the monopoly and gets non‐commercial stuff across is our meat, because only thus do we escape advertiser’ pressure and open up controversial discussion. (McChesney 1993, p. 212)

These lobbies were not successful, although the wish for services that are independent of big business and advertiser pressure was arguably recognized some 30 years later when President Johnson approved the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act with, at that time, significant federal financial support (Day 1995). The immediate postwar period saw the FCC turn its attention to the poor performance of some radio stations, publishing in 1946 the report, Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, subsequently known as the “Blue Book.” One of the early historians of US broadcasting, Erik Barnouw, claimed that the profitability of the industry had increased considerably during the wartime years, rising from 67% in 1939 to 223% by 1944 (before payment of federal taxes), with an implication

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that it was investment in content that had suffered during this period. Looking in detail at the output of a number of radio stations, the FCC report had four main concerns: the relative absence of any programs not directly paid for by advertising income (referred to as “sustaining programs”); an insufficient number of local, live programs; the absence of discussion of public issues; and an overabundance of time devoted to advertising. As the report noted, standards developed by the NAB “at present permit as much as one and three‐quarter minutes of advertising in a five minute period” (Barnouw 1968, pp. 227–230; Kahn 1973, p. 213). A measured response from Variety – “Obviously the industry has brought upon itself the FCC proposals by its abuses” – was soon overtaken by an extensive and angry attack from the broadcasting sector. The NAB President accused the FCC of violating the free speech guarantees of the Constitution (a reference to the free speech rights of broadcasters), while the trade paper Broadcasting saw the Blue Book as an assault on “the pattern of American life.” This was the beginning of the anti‐ communist blacklisting period that led to the imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten in 1947–1948 and many were to come to fear the accusation of anti‐Americanism, arguably the FCC among them. The Blue Book also came under attack from politicians. Members of Congress who had benefited from making local radio broadcasts to their constituents were mobilized to put more pressure on the Commission and in effect to politicize what were arguably the legitimate issues of quality and standards raised by the regulator. All of this resulted in a retreat by the FCC and by the renewal, without question, of the licenses of the offending stations (Barnouw 1968, pp. 230–236). Media historian Victor Pickard notes both the boldness of the Blue Book and also its relative failure: “It stages nothing less than a full frontal attack on what has since come to be seen as inevitable, natural, and benign: a largely self‐regulated commercial media system” (2015, p. 96). By the 1960s, as blacklisting was beginning to fade away, the climate of opinion became more favorable to public interest intervention and the courts gave more credence to the positive side of regulation. Since 1949, the FCC had supported what came to be known as the “Fairness Doctrine,” advocating the importance of “the maintenance of radio as a medium of freedom of speech for the general public” (Kahn 1973, p. 385). The effectiveness of the doctrine arguably reached its peak in the Supreme Court’s “Red Lion” ruling of 1969. Here the Court spoke up on behalf of the interests of listeners and viewers, finding that “the right to free speech of a broadcaster… does not embrace a right to snuff out the free speech of others.” It is, the Court argued, “the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount” (Kahn 1973, pp. 380–411, 424, 426). For some, these views were unacceptable and limited the powers of private corporations to run profitable businesses. The Presidency of Ronald Reagan provided an opportunity to abolish the rules on fairness and the finely calibrated political appointments at the top of the FCC ensured that its own Fairness Doctrine was suspended and declared “unconstitutional” by the Commission in the summer of 1987 (Harvey 1998; Stein 2006).



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The Presidency of Bill Clinton saw the enactment of the second major piece of communications legislation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Confronting an array of technological changes and driven by the belief that markets not politicians or the public interest were the most effective agents of change, the Act removed many of the rules previously applied to media ownership. One obvious effect was the spate of mergers and buyouts that consolidated the broadcasting and cable industries, allowing greater concentration of ownership. Thus, for example, the Clear Channel network consisting of 40 radio stations in 1996 owned 850 stations by 2014 (Jolly 2016, p. 191). One extraordinary phrase from an abridged version of the Act, seeking to protect incumbent license‐holders against newcomers at license renewal time, is resonant with the clucking of feathering your own nest: “Competitor Consideration Prohibited” (Aufderheide 1999, p. 169). When the FCC moved to further liberalize ownership rules in 2003, eliminating the ban on cross‐media ownership, this evoked a wave of public protest that created unexpected alliances. The Republican and libertarian journalist, William Safire, asked in the New York Times “Why do we have more channels but fewer real choices today? Because the ownership of our means of communication is shrinking” (Klinenberg 2007, p. 232). Greater concentration also increased prices and as one report noted: “consumer cable prices have been rising at three times the cost of inflation” (Public Interest Research Group [PIRG] 2003, p. 1). These issues of cost and choice are clearly relevant to and even the driving forces behind the cord‐cutting phenomenon in the US in recent years, a development that is also driven by the arrival of unexpected competition from the SVODs (Littleton and Holloway 2017).

Aspects of Regulation in the UK, Canada, and the European Union Britain’s oldest broadcaster, the BBC, began as a private company in 1922, becoming a public corporation in 1927 and operating since then under the provisions of a series of fixed‐term Royal Charters. It is funded by an annual license fee, costing £12.54 per month in 2018, supplemented by income from the sale of BBC programs. In 2017–2018, the fee amounted to £3.83 billion and other income was £1.23 billion (BBC 2018, p. 185). The level of the fee, and the specific provisions of each charter, are decided by the government of the day. However, once the Charter is awarded it is expected that the BBC will operate independently from government and public confidence is largely dependent on this expectation being met (Mair et al. 2015). Finance has diminished over the last decade. Since the economic crisis of 2008, the Conservative governments of 2010 and 2015 have diverted significant amounts of license fee income away from BBC program‐making and toward helping to reduce the public sector deficit. This amounted to a reduction of around 20% in the value of the license fee on each occasion (author’s estimate) (Hunt 2010; Snoddy 2011; Martinson and Plunkett, 2015).

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By 2018 the BBC’s Director General Tony Hall was arguing that the value of the license fee had reduced by some £800 million since 2008, leaving insufficient resources for original drama. This, he suggested, made the Corporation dangerously dependent on co‐production partners – including Netflix – and could put material of local interest at risk. Three Girls (2017) might be one example. This was a BBC dramatization of the real‐life stories of the young victims of grooming and sexual abuse in Rochdale, developed by writer and director Nicole Taylor and Phillipa Lowthorpe, with actress Maxine Peake playing the social worker who had tried to make the case public. The risks taken paid off and the three‐part series achieved some of the highest ratings possible for peak‐time drama – attracting over eight million viewers on free to air television (BBC 2017b; Hall 2017; Brown 2018). The BBC has long prized its independence from government, believing that the gold standard of its news, in particular, required this genre to be free of political interference. During moments of particular political crisis, including the decision to go to war in Iraq (2003) and the referendum on leaving the European Union (2016), the BBC found itself under fire in respect of the impartiality of its coverage. Nonetheless, nearly a century after its founding the Corporation’s trust rating as reported by Ofcom, appeared to remain high: “Audiences recognise it as a trusted brand providing reliable, high quality information” (2017b, p. 6). More detailed studies found that BBC 1 was the “most‐used news source” for 62% of those surveyed, followed by ITV on 41% and Facebook on 33%; meanwhile 74% considered TV news in general “helps me understand what’s going on in the world today,” compared with 50% who thought the same about social media sources (Ofcom 2018d, p. 2, 89). It is also worth noting that at least one of the BBC’s News programs achieves a regular place among the list of “Top 100 Network Programmes” published weekly by Broadcast. In the week of 8 October 2018, for example, the number one slot was occupied by the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing (10.6 million viewers), with ITV’s serial drama Coronation Street at number four (6.7 million), BBC News at Six at number 25 (4.7 million viewers) and the ITV Evening News at number 41 (3.5 million viewers) (Broadcast 2018, p. 24). The 1954 Television Act ended the BBC’s monopoly, but also placed extensive requirements on what the new commercial providers might do, as indicated earlier. Among other things, the new ITV network was expected to devote significant resources and time to news. It was successful in attracting good audience ratings for this genre, along with some distinguished documentary series, for example Granada’s World in Action and Yorkshire Television’s First Tuesday, notable achievements of ITV’s golden age prior to the damaging 1991 license competitions (Davidson 1992). It may be as a consequence of the early regulatory requirements for factual programs that Ofcom was able to find that documentary was still attracting significant numbers of viewers in 2013. In that year, an analysis of all viewing to the five main public service channels (PSBs) (BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV1, Channel 4, and Channel 5) indicated three top areas of attraction: entertainment took a 19.2% share; UK drama and soap took 15.7%; and documentaries took 12.5%, with sport and news as the other substantial genres (Ofcom 2014, p. 37).



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Also in 2013, the year after the switchover to digital‐only broadcasting, there were a total of 527 free to air and pay TV channels broadcasting in Britain (Ofcom 2014, p. 127). This plenitude was the result of both more efficient digital uses of spectrum and of the Conservative government’s Broadcasting Act of 1990. The law had encouraged the granting of new licenses, including for Rupert Murdoch’s pay TV enterprise, Sky, but had also – arguably mistakenly – subjected ITV to heavy new costs. Channel 4, the first publicly owned and advertising‐funded broadcaster, was created by the 1981 Broadcasting Act. The new broadcaster was expected to experiment and innovate in the form and content of programs and required to operate as a publisher‐broadcaster – commissioning programs to be made out of house. It was subsequently credited with having created an extensive and successful independent production sector. However, by 2015, as small independent companies became large ones, a significant number were bought up by major US media interests (Harvey 1994; Goodwin 1998; Elwes 2015). Channel 5, last of the analog, free to air broadcasters, was launched in 1997, enabled by the 1990 Act. It was privately owned and advertiser‐funded, though later designated as a public service broadcaster. With no absolute legal prohibition on foreign ownership in the 1990 Act, Channel 5 was subsequently to be bought by a major US media conglomerate, Viacom, in 2014. The last relevant piece of the regulatory jigsaw in the UK is the Communications Act (2003), introduced by a Labour government; it combined free market friendly policies with selected acts of public intervention. The four broadcasters designated as public service – the “PSBs” – BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 – were given the following obligations, outlined in Section 264 of the Act. They must be free and universally available to viewers in all parts of the UK. They must include current affairs and impartial peak time news, a significant proportion of original programs, and a series of “opt out” programs of special interest to those living in the UK’s regions and nations (not applied to Channel 4 and Channel 5). They must broadcast a significant number of original programs made outside London. The programs should be of “a high general standard” with respect to “the contents of the programmes, the quality of the programme making; and… the professional skill and editorial integrity applied in the making of the programme”; they should facilitate “civic understanding and fair and well‐informed debate” and “reflect the lives and concerns of different communities and cultural interests and traditions within the United Kingdom” (Communications Act 2003, Section 264). Three final factors indicate ways in which broadcasting provision has or might be strengthened in relationship to the rapid adoption of SVOD services in the UK: firstly, the invention and rapid take‐up of the Freeview platform created to provide easy access to free digital TV content; secondly, the steps being taken by the Canadian government to consider the best ways of defending and increasing national audio‐visual content; and, thirdly, the recently agreed revisions to the European Union’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) designed to ensure that a significant proportion of the catalog offer of SVOD services includes work of European origin.

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The Freeview platform was launched by the BBC and its consortium partners in 2002, and was designed to offer an easy way for viewers to watch programs from a range of digital providers. BSkyB’s pay TV service had switched from analog to digital in 1998 and for a while it seemed that this subscription platform offered the only route to the digital future. The new Freeview platform was designed for the “pay television rejecters” (Dyke 2005, pp. 183–187). With the one‐off purchase of a set‐top box and using existing aerial connections, viewers could then obtain access to digital TV even from an old analog TV set. By 2014, Freeview was present in nearly half of all UK homes and advertised itself as offering access to “95% of the nation’s favourite shows at 0% of the cost” (Freeview 2018). Ofcom’s report on the state of play in 2018 found that the largest proportion of UK homes, just under 40%, appeared to be satisfied with free to air digital terrestrial television (DTT) services only; 34% subscribed to a pay TV satellite service, and 15% had signed up to a pay TV cable service. The regulator noted a rise in the general popularity of digital terrestrial services and suggested that this increase “may have been driven in part by consumers moving away from traditional pay‐TV platforms in favour of combining a free‐to‐air DTT service with online SVOD services” (Ofcom 2018a, p. 12). If true, this could be good for Netflix and its SVOD rivals. In Canada, the government has stepped in on a number of occasions to ensure that some space is retained in the national media for the expression of Canadian voices and not only American ones. In September 2018, an ambitious inquiry was established to review Canadian legislation, arising from a concern that “digital disruption has had a significant effect on creators, culture and content.” Concern has arisen because the new online SVOD services “are exempted from Canadian content requirements” and, as a consequence, it has become more difficult to maintain production of “quality Canadian content – particularly drama and children’s programming” (Government of Canada 2018). Canada has a population of some 37 million, compared with a US population of 326 million, and this has arguably made the successful production of national content difficult, since it is almost always cheaper to import from the US. The SVOD providers appeared initially to have resisted the notion that they might be accountable to Canadian legislators, though this could change as new national plans emerge. The European Union has come up with a way of supporting local culture and audio‐visual production by requiring a “30% share of European works in on‐demand catalogues” (European Union 2018). Following approval by the European Parliament, it is envisaged that this new Directive came into force at the end of 2018. However, without vigorous national commitments to invest in national film and TV production, it could be difficult for the “30 per cent” rule to deliver larger audiences for local production.

What Do Audiences Want? News and Drama in the Age of Netflix Television is changing as an object, an industry, and a cultural form. The internet challenges broadcasting and cable; the flat, smart TV replaces the cathode ray tube; the cost of drama production rises because of increased demand; serial drama is



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binge‐watched at weekends or viewed on buses and trains on the way to work; the SVODs position themselves in different ways in relationship to national broadcasting or cinema (Jenner 2016; Ryan and Littleton 2017; Wayne 2018; Lobato 2019). Some comparative figures contrasting the US and the UK markets may be useful. As already indicated, the US population is nearly five times larger than that of the UK, but its TV market, according to Ofcom, is more than nine times as large, with revenues of some £132 billion in 2016, compared with a UK figure of £14 billion (excluding revenues from online/on demand services in both cases [see Note 2]) (Ofcom 2017c, p. 86). In respect of pay TV (mainly cable in the US and satellite in the UK), as might be expected from the figures above, Ofcom found significant differences between the two countries: in the US, 81% of homes subscribed to these services, with a significantly lower figure of 58% for the UK. Likewise, in the case of take‐up of online SVOD services (for the same year, 2016), these were believed to be present in 84% of US homes, compared with a presence of 41% in UK homes. The value generated by the online TV sector was estimated to be just under £14 billion in the US, compared with just under £2 billion for the UK (Ofcom 2017c, p. 86). It could be just a matter of time before the UK increases its rate of online subscriptions. But more recent figures from 2018 – relating to only one kind of SVOD subscription (Netflix)  –  suggest that the UK with a 33.8% user penetration rate ranks only tenth in a list of the top 10 countries subscribing to this service (Lynch 2018).

Some Examples from the UK To date the top five TV channels in the UK have remained, perhaps surprisingly, those of the four broadcasters designated in law as the public service providers. Two of the four are publicly owned (BBC and Channel 4) and two privately owned (ITV and Channel 5). In 2017 the top five PSBs, along with their subsidiary or “portfolio” channels attracted a 71% share of the “live” national TV audience (Ofcom 2018c, p. 5; see Table 5.1). These figures are difficult to compare with the US Nielsen ratings, which tend to emphasize viewers aged 18 to 49 years as judged to be especially attractive to advertisers; in the 2017–2018 season, NBC was judged to be the winner with a 2.2% share (Maglio 2018). In addition to the above five individual channels, in 2017, BSkyB was the most successful of the pay TV services. Delivered mainly by satellite, it is present in around half of British homes. Its most popular single channel in the autumn of 2018 was Sky Sports Main Event, with a share of 1% of the UK audience. Across all of its channels in 2017, it had an 8.3% share of all UK broadcaster viewing (BARB 2018c, 2018d).3 Sky News attracts small audiences compared with BBC or ITV News, and viewing figures are difficult to obtain as “reach” rather than share figures tends to be made available.

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Table 5.1  UK television channels’ shares of national television audience, 2017. Terrestrial TV by individual channel

% share of all UK broadcaster viewing in 2017

BBC 1 ITV1 BBC 2 Channel 4 Channel 5 Plus all other PSB portfolio channels

22 15 6 5 4 19

Source: Ofcom (2018c), p. 5; BARB (2018a, Table 5).

Despite its relatively modest share of the UK audience, Sky received annual subscription revenues of £7.1 billion in the UK and Ireland in 2017. This revenue is nearly twice the amount of the BBC license fee of £3.8 billion in the same year (BBC 2017a, p. 125; Sky 2018, p. 96). The popularity of the main BBC channels and ITV1 might in part be attributed to the regulatory framework stemming from the 2003 legislation. Ofcom limits the scope for production cost‐cutting on the BBC’s main channels by requiring a high proportion of original material to be shown (effectively quota obligations). Thus, for channels BBC One, Two, and Four, an overall figure of 75% original content is required; but this rises to 90% in peak time for BBC One and Two. BBC One is also obliged to show 1520 hours of network news per year (Ofcom 2017a, pp. 15, 11). Similar but slightly lower obligations apply to the most popular privately owned channel, ITV1, which is required to show at least 65% of original programs rising to 85% in peak time (Ofcom 2018b, p. 54). Non‐broadcaster viewing in the UK, including that devoted to the new OTT subscription providers  –  mainly Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Sky’s NOW TV  –  has grown considerably in recent years, even if at a slower pace than in the US. In 2018, SVOD subscriptions at 15.4 million have, for the first time, overtaken pay TV subscriptions at 15.1 million, mainly paid to Sky (Ofcom 2018a, p. 13). This could be Britain’s cord‐cutting moment when subscribers begin to shift from one type of pay provider to another; though sport remains an effective driver for Sky and, like other powerful players in the US, it is hedging its bets with the provision of the successful online NOW TV service. In the five years after 2012, the average amount of daily broadcast TV watched went down by 38 minutes, including a drop of nine minutes in the year 2016–2017. The new daily average in the UK for 2017 was 3 hours and 23 minutes. But these reductions have been matched by increases in internet‐enabled viewing to services like Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube (Ofcom 2018a, pp. 4, 14).



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Other research indicates that the viewing of time‐shifted or on‐demand ­programs from the main broadcasters had risen to some 12% of all TV viewing time by 2014 (informitv 2015). And Ofcom recognized the popularity of these services, referring to the BBC iPlayer as “the most popular on‐demand service with 63% of adults ­saying they use it” (2017d, p. 4). Age has been understood for some time to be a key factor in determining the amount of TV watched. A 2018 study indicated that adults over 55 years watch on average 321 minutes of TV per day; those aged 16–34 watch 123 minutes and children watch only 86 minutes a day. And there is also a link between age and the take up of SVOD in the UK; a 2017 study noted that 76% of young people aged 16–24 used an SVOD service, compared with only 19% of people over the age of 65 (Ofcom 2017d, p. 3; 2018c, pp. 6–8). A 2017 study by Enders Analysis contrasted the TV viewing habits of the whole UK population with the viewing habits of younger people between the ages of 16 and 34 years. This broadly reflected the Ofcom findings, but Enders also found a larger gap in watching “Broadcaster: live” TV (42% of viewing by younger people contrasted with 66% by the population at large), and a much smaller gap for watching the online catch‐up services like the BBC’s iPlayer categorized as “Broadcaster: non‐live” (17% for younger viewers and 16% for the whole population). Catch‐up services using, for example, BBC iPlayer or ITV Hub, increased steadily across the population as a whole, rising from an average 23 minutes a day in 2010 to 39 minutes a day by 2017 (Enders Analysis 2018, Figures 4 and 5, pp. 4–5, 1). We can infer from this that the online catch up services offered by the PSBs are popular across different age groups. However, without the cooperation of the online subscription providers, there are still no credible ratings figures available for the newcomers in the UK, and the term “unmatched viewing” has emerged to designate this gap in our knowledge.

The Netflix Offer Developments in 2018 demonstrated both the strength and the weakness of Netflix and its competitors. Dominant players in the US cable TV industry have felt the cold blast of change. Comcast, for example, lost just over a third of a million cord‐cutting subscribers between 2017 and 2018 (down from 21.34 million to 20.98 million); however, it did correspondingly well as a provider of residential high‐speed internet access, taking over a third of a million new customers in the US (informitv 2018). It also succeeded in purchasing British pay TV provider Sky. But a combination of US subscriber irritation at the rising prices of unnecessarily large cable TV packages, accompanied by significant cultural change, kept the door firmly open for Netflix to continue to “make the weather.” As an Economist journalist put it: Cheap, personalized, advertising‐free, binge‐released video is widely seen as having hastened a decline in audiences for broadcast television… (2018, p. 5)

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Netflix in the early twenty‐first century was arguably doing what Hollywood had done almost a hundred years before: investing large amounts in original production with the aim of creating a new home market and using that as the launchpad for success in global markets. Here was an anti‐television, television provider recovering the good name and success of a cinema industry (the “flicks”) that had been so badly humiliated some half a century earlier by the domestic talking box with pictures. However, many powerful players in the US film production industry and in the European film distribution industry (for example, the Cannes Film Festival) did not see it quite like that. For some, the threatening newcomer was an unwanted guest at their party. Having all but boycotted Cannes in 2018 because of the latter’s rule on eligibility for the main prize (limited to films intended for theatrical release in France), Netflix appeared to soften its position a little. Speaking at a festival in France, celebrating the best of television drama series, Chief Executive Reed Hastings noted: “Sometimes we make mistakes. We got into a bigger situation with Cannes than we meant to.” Variety reported that he also showed some awareness of the forthcoming European Union regulation requiring SVOD operators to include 30% of works of European origin within their catalogs. Recognizing the need to seem regulation‐compliant in a country – France – that had historically fostered its film industry with more determination than the UK, he noted that the new catalog quota would be a “little tough,” but expressed a willingness to: work within the systems…Regulation is critical to order. There is great regulation that is very useful. It’s up to us in every country to participate and follow those regulations. (Grantham 2000; Hopewell and Lang 2018)

It remains to be seen if Netflix is willing to operate within the spirit of these new European rules. Meanwhile, the US movie business, in some quarters, is recognizing the opportunity for peaceful and profitable co‐existence with the newcomers. The Chief Executive of Paramount (owned by Viacom) announced a production partnership with Netflix in November 2018, noting a significant business opportunity in that Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Hulu were now collectively investing more than $20 billion in content (Nicolaou 2018). The overall financial picture is still risky for Netflix as its subscription rates remain attractively low, while its continuing investment in expensive new content and its level of debt financing remains enormously high (Ovide 2018). The company’s plans spent $12 billion on content in 2018. As a consequence, attracting new subscribers, worldwide, remained a key priority. One Financial Times journalist referred to it waspishly as “the junk bond financed content factory” and the eyes of investors are trained sharply onto the quarterly reports of growth in subscriptions. In July 2018, the target figure for increases was not met and the company’s share price took a noticeable dip. But targets were then exceeded by the end of the third quarter with an extra 1.1 million subscribers in the US and an extra 5.9 million worldwide making a new global total of 137 million (Bond 2018; Powell 2018). A



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further key feature of the October reporting is not only that sales rose by 34%, but that international increases in revenue were outpacing US domestic sales. Thus, the third quarter of 2018 saw international sales of $1.97 billion slightly outperforming the US sales of $1.94 billion (Ramachandran and Maidenberg 2018).

Conclusion This brief comparison of the British and American television markets, together with a consideration of the associated cultural, political, and regulatory issues that shaped them, indicates that the jury is still out on the extent of the impact of the SVOD newcomers. However, as audiences reach for new pleasures, the impact on production sectors that are some 70 years old is already considerable. And, as an exceptionally dry summer may reveal long hidden patterns of land use, so the impact of the newcomers tells us something about the histories and foundations of two national broadcasting systems. It is perhaps the reliance on market competition principles, along with some rather uncompetitive and incumbent‐supporting legislation in 1996, that made the US cable TV industry more vulnerable to attack from the SVOD disrupters – while in the UK, it may be too soon to tell to what extent the PSB system will be damaged or even destroyed by the newcomers and to what extent it will simply co‐exist with them. Looking ahead, from US history we may take the advice of George Washington to promote institutions “for the general diffusion of knowledge” and the words of the 1934 Communications Act that broadcasters should offer “reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” The internet and social media have brought great opportunities for learning and sharing but equally they have created echo chambers or bleak wind tunnels where human speech is vociferous but also corralled and sometimes less (not more) able to impact on the cultural and political institutions that we encounter – and criticize – in daily life. Broadcasting was born in the, early days of universal suffrage; sometimes it suppressed, sometimes it enabled an extension of those freedoms that “having a voice and a vote” proposed. In his book 6, The Good Citizen, Michael Schudson reflects on the pessimism of Walter Lippmann writing in 1920 about the inadequacies of journalism and the difficult prospects for democracy when “the manufacture of consent is an unregulated commercial enterprise” (1998, p. 212). Some of the campaigning around both broadcasting and social media has been about seeing these two different entities as potentially the way‐markers for egalitarian social change, for a world where “each has enough” and respect replaces fear. Renewing these way‐markers is now an important objective for those traveling towards the “city on the hill.” Netflix can never offer the light, sometimes called “the news,” that will illuminate the pressing concerns of a thousand different cultures and societies. But the greatest storytelling is never far away from truth‐telling. What kinds of stories is Netflix going to tell us?

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Notes 1 Cinema‐going in the UK rose from its lowest point in 1982 to a modest 171 million attendances per year in 2017. The small screen or, rather, the increasingly large, flat, and smart TV screen in the home was to remain the focus of attention. 2 In 2017, the US population was estimated at 326 million with 137 million “housing units” (US Census Bureau 2018). The “National TV Household Universe” was estimated at 120 million (Nielsen 2018). In the same year, the UK population was estimated at 66 million, with the number of homes estimated at 27.2 million and the number of TV homes at 26.7 million (BARB 2018b; Office for National Statistics 2018a, 2018b). 3 Some Sky services are also relayed by subscription cable providers in the UK. In the week ending 28 October 2018, Sky’s top‐rated channel was Sky Sports Main Event with a 1.05% share of all viewers and with Sky 1, Pick, and Sky News varying between a 0.8 and a 1.0% share in that year (BARB 2018d).

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McChesney, R.W. (1993). Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy. The Battle for the Control of U. S. Broadcasting, 1928–1935. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Minow, N. (1961). Television and the public interest. Speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, 9 May. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm (accessed 24 September 2018). Minow, N. (1964). Equal Time. The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest (ed. L. Laurent). New York: Atheneum. Nicolaou, A. (2018). Paramount agrees deal to make films for Netflix. Financial Times, 16 November. https://www.ft.com/content/ac466e72‐e999‐11e8‐885c‐ e64da4c0f981 (accessed 20 November 2018). Nielsen (2018). Nielsen estimates 119.9 million TV Homes in the US for the 2018–2019 TV season. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/nielsen‐estimates‐119‐9‐ million‐tv‐homes‐in‐the‐us‐for‐the‐2018‐19‐season.html (accessed 24 September 2018). NPD (2018). 60 per cent of US internet Homes have at least one TV connected to the internet. https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press‐releases/2017/60‐ percent‐of‐us‐internet‐homes‐have‐at‐least‐one‐tv‐connected‐to‐the‐internet/ (accessed 10 October 2018). Ofcom (2014). Public Service Broadcasting Annual Report 2014. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__ data/assets/pdf_file/0032/78845/psb_annual_report_2014.pdf (accessed 20 October 2018). Ofcom (2017a). Operating licence for the BBC’s UK public services. https://www.ofcom. org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/107072/bbc‐operating‐licence.pdf (accessed 24 September 2018). Ofcom (2017b). Connected nations report. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0022/108517/connected‐nations‐evolution‐television‐2017.pdf (accessed 22 September 2018). Ofcom (2017c). International Communications Market Report 2017. https://www.ofcom.org. uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/108896/icmr‐2017.pdf (accessed 10 October, 2018). Ofcom (2017d). Box set Britain: UK’s TV and online habits revealed. https://www.ofcom.org. uk/about‐ofcom/latest/media/media‐releases/2017/box‐set‐britain‐tv‐online‐habits (accessed 10 October 2018). Ofcom (2018a). Media nations: UK 2018. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0014/116006/media‐nations‐2018‐uk.pdf (accessed 10 September 2018). Ofcom (2018b). Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Regional Channel 3 Licence, 2017. https://www. ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/63689/ITV‐Yorkshire‐Attachment‐to‐ Variation‐No.14.pdf (accessed 5 October 2018). Ofcom (2018c) Public service broadcasting in the digital age. Supporting PSB for the next decade and beyond. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/111896/ Public‐service‐broadcasting‐in‐the‐digital‐age.pdf (accessed 20 August. 2018). Ofcom (2018d). News consumption in the UK: 2018. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0024/116529/news‐consumption‐2018.pdf (accessed 20 September 2018). Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2018a). Population estimates. https://www.ons.gov.uk/ peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates (accessed 24 September 2018). Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2018b). Families and households. https://www.ons.gov. uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/ familiesandhouseholds/2017 (accessed 24 September 2018).

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Chapter 6

The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis1 Giuseppe Richeri

Introduction The future growth of the audiovisual industry obviously depends on a combination of many factors. The three main factors are available resources, consumer behavior, and state intervention/regulation. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the current situation and trends specifically in relation to economic resources for television, because much of audiovisual production, as well as the behavior of viewers, depends on the stability of the economic model and its possible mutations. Beyond a discussion of the current situation and subsequent trends, I believe it is helpful to first look more closely at Italian television, both recent factors, which are potentially surmountable, as well as structural changes, which are probably irreversible. Based on this, it is possible to assess the impact of new business models that are advancing in the television market and, in particular, nonlinear services such as Video on Demand (VoD) (European Audiovisual Observatory 2016). Nonlinear services offer audiovisual content without the immobility of the program schedule, allowing the viewer to use various payment forms and choose from a catalog of thousands of titles, ordering and watching via the internet at the preferred moment on a range of devices (TVs, PCs, iPads, smartphones, etc.). Along with cell phone games, these sources represent the most dynamic part of the audiovisual market, one that can potentially generate resources for the production of new television content. These nonlinear services will be discussed after an analysis of the current resources generated by linear television.

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Impact of the 2007–2008 Financial Crisis in the Television Market in Italy The period between 2010 and 2017 represented a profound crisis in Italian television (as well as in many other European countries) and was the first affirmation of a new mode of supply and access to television content online, which raised new questions about the future of the Italian and European audiovisual industry. A new phase of very intense competition began, especially among the audiovisual production companies and US products. The economic crisis that began in 2007 had an immediate impact on the television market, especially focused on advertising, but also blocking the growth of other resources. From 2010 to 2017, based on data provided by Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazione (Agcom; 2018),2 total television advertising decreased from 4.283 billion euros in 2010 to 3.332 billion in 2017 (22.2% less), and the service charge (canone)3 contracted almost 2.3%. Resources from paid TV subscriptions also became stagnant (from 3.007 billion euros in 2010 to 3.051 in 2017). In general, as shown in Table 6.1, resources earmarked for television activity substantially declined. Together with the economic crisis, however, there was another crisis that altered the traditional television market order, underlined by changes in the behavior of viewers: a reduction in the consumption of the main generalist channels managed by Rai (public) and Mediaset (private) and an increase in the market for minor channels. In summary, between 2010 and 2017, all financing sources for television activities were reduced and there was a net reduction in the audience for the main generalist channels (see Table 6.2). In the face of this situation, two main questions need to be answered: 1. Will the three business models that prevail today in the television field – state funding (from the service charge), business sources (advertising) and domestic sources (subscriptions)  –  be able to recover and start a new expansion cycle, which is essential to sustain the regime of rising costs that characterizes the television business in a competitive environment? Table 6.1  Total resources for broadcast TV and pay TV: advertising, service charges and subscriptions, 2010–2017 (in billions of euros). Year

2010

2017

2017/2010

Broadcast TV

5619

4762

−15.2%

Pay TV

3406

3382

−1.0%

Total

9025

8144

−9.8%

(a)

 Includes only subscription revenues. Source: based on data from Agcom (2018).

(a)



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 131

2. Will the generalist television network, designed to attract large audiences, be able to recover lost viewers after the fragmentation of supply and the new opportunities available to a growing number of people?

What Resources? Toward a Structural Crisis Despite the drastic reduction suffered in the period, advertising continues to be the main financing source for television, followed by subscription and service charges which have increased when compared with advertising (see Table 6.3).

The License Fee for Broadcasting First, we will analyze the service charge, which was the first example of a service fee in Europe, but now represents the third largest source of Italian television financing. Despite the prediction that there will be an increase in these funds, and in particular, for the production of content, this seems unlikely. In fact, it is difficult to imagine any conditions under which that would happen (for more details, see Richeri 2014). The service charge is a form of financing typical of the public television monopoly that existed when Italians consumed only Rai programs. This is no longer the case because more than half of television consumption is through other channels and financed in other ways. The second consideration is that the service charge is basically a tax that governments prefer to reduce rather than increase. Also, historically, the service fee has been justified because it served the funding of a service of general interest that was intended to satisfy the general need for information, culture, and Table 6.2  2010–2017 daily average television audience share. Year

2010

2017

2017/2010

Rai

41.3%

37.2%

−9.9%

Mediaset

37.4%

30.3%

−19%

Others

21.4%

32.5%

+51.8%

Source: based on data from Agcom (2018).

Table 6.3  Main resources for financing Italian television, 2010–2015. Year

2010

2017

Advertising

47.5%

41%

Subscriptions

33.3%

37.4%

Service charge

19.2%

20.6%

Source: based on data from Agcom (2018).

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entertainment when a large part of the population had little or no opportunity to satisfy these needs. However, this situation no longer applies because nowadays the majority of the population has other opportunities to meet their cultural, entertainment, and informational needs and aspirations through a variety of free and paid sources, without the public TV services. In these conditions, it seems unlikely that there will be the “political will” to increase service charges to expand resources for audiovisual production – especially considering the reduction of bad debt, which affects the legal obligation to pay the service charge.

Advertising Advertising is the second highest source of television’s financial resources in Italy and growth prospects are not encouraging. After a sharp decline as a result of the economic crisis that began in 2007–2008 and which had a negative impact on Gross Domestic Product [GDP], industrial production, and household consumption, the seriousness of the situation seems attenuated, not resolved. Historically, advertising has never been used by companies with an anti‐cyclical function: the recent crisis has shown that companies still consider advertising not as an investment, but as a cost to be cut as soon as they experience negative financial signs, as if things will be resolved when the economic cycle reaches a new expansion phase (Richeri 2012). There have also been some structural changes that have been consolidated, which has weakened television as a means of advertising. Three main aspects support this assertion. The first factor is the progressive multiplication of TV channels and the resulting dispersion of viewers for an increasingly fragmented offer of audiovisual content. Currently, in Italy, more than 30% of viewers prefer niche channels that individually attract less than 1–1.5% of the audience. In other European countries where the fragmentation process is more advanced, viewers are dispersed across a larger number of channels with small audiences reaching on average 50% of the total audience. The most advanced case is the United Kingdom, where measurements by the Broadcasting Audience Research Board (Barb) have evaluated the shares of 300 TV channels among a total of 526 (Ofcom 2018). For example, for the week of 29 August to 4 September 2016, only two channels had shares exceeding 10% (BBC1, ITV), the other four channels had shares between 6 and 4%. Those six channels together reached 50.79% of the audience share; the other 300+ channels measured had a daily accumulated share of 49.21%, each having a share lower than 1% (Barb 2016) (see Table 6.4). The fragmentation process of television audiences has a negative impact on advertising investment. The example of the United Kingdom illustrates well what probably happens in other contexts. A considerable part of the TV audience abandoned the big generalist channels and migrated to the multichannel offerings, consisting of hundreds of niche pay TV channels with, of course, very low ratings. The advertising slice of these hundreds of specialized channels is greatly reduced and,



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 133

Table 6.4  Share of the six major TV channels in the United Kingdom (8/29/2016–9/4/2016). Channels

Share

BBC 1

20.82%

ITV

10.26%

BBC 2

5.94%

Channel 4

4.88%

Channel 5

4.2%

ITV HD

4.69%

Niche channels

49.21%

Total

100%

Source: Barb (September 2016).

consequently, this also impacts their income. Thus, the values of the main variables – audience, advertising fees and income, and investments in TV programming  –  are relatively inferior to traditional, large generalist channels. In this situation, the advertising investment in channels with large audiences, although in decline, tends to stagnate or decrease, whereas investment in the set of channels with smaller audiences tends to grow due to low advertising rates that attract new advertisers (Ofcom 2016). Audience fragmentation mainly impacts advertising investments in three negative ways. First, to reach a large number of viewers, advertisers plan their advertising campaigns in tens or hundreds of different channels, instead of a limited number of channels, and therefore they have greater organizational and negotiation costs. Furthermore, as is well‐known, the smaller the audience of a television channel, the harder it becomes to measure it (i.e. to keep the statistical deviation within an acceptable margin). When the audience is smaller, the greater the sample must be, but its dimensions cannot grow much for financial reasons. If the trend of fragmentation continues in the coming years, it is likely that it will have a negative impact on the amount of resources earmarked for television advertising. The second aspect relates to the fact that, in recent years, advertisers have focused part of their investments in other media, reducing the amount traditionally intended for television. The area of greatest success has been the internet, which offers some advantages over television. To name a few: advertising has a lower cost on the internet, messages can be directed to a target audience, and the measurement of the number of people affected by the advertising message is more accurate than measurements of TV audiences. The third negative aspect is represented by the new forms of commercial promotion, such as product placement and branded content, which are funded with budgets destined for advertising, but that normally do not generate resources for television companies (Dagnino 2016).

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Pay TV Subscriptions Currently, pay TV subscriptions constitute the second largest source of Italian television financing after advertising. Even in this area, signs of slowdown and perhaps of stagnation can be observed. In fact, in addition to the decrease in the number of subscribers caused by the economic crisis, pay TV shows signs of saturation, both in Italy and in other European countries. On the one hand, the number of new subscribers is shrinking; on the other, the number of withdrawals have been increasing. This situation probably will not be resolved in the near future, mainly because the new VoD service is growing in Italy and is in competition with pay TV. In fact, the new VoD services, particularly those accessible by subscription, called Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD), offer attractive alternatives to former pay TV subscribers, as well as new subscribers. The competitive strength of SVoD services in relation to pay TV can be highlighted by the example of Netflix and its international success. Netflix offers thousands of audiovisual products (including movies and recent TV series), available upon request at the desired moment, with a very cost‐effective subscription in relation to pay TV. Two audience groups are still more linked to the pay TV model: viewers who do not want to invest time and attention choosing among thousands of movie titles available in a catalog; and, viewers who are interested mostly in live sports broadcasts, exclusively offered by pay TV. Those who decide to subscribe to a pay TV service mainly to have access to a range of cartoons (for children), or recent and classic movies, may find that SVoD services better meet their needs: more titles, more variety, and more flexibility, with a lower price and access to a large number of hit series. Netflix also has a personalized offer both to obviate the need for subscribers from investing too much time and to facilitate their choices among the thousands of titles in the catalog, Netflix provides each subscriber with a list of titles that correspond to their user profile and their ­consumption habits.

Audiovisual Production and Development of New Television Services Thus far, the discussion has highlighted how the three traditional economic sources of television financing do not have encouraging future expectations. In fact, considering the recent data and ongoing developments in the television market, income from service charges has little chance of growth, as well as, for other reasons, the ones from advertising and subscriptions of pay TV. In this context, we cannot expect that the production of audiovisual content for television, especially non‐innovative content, will find the resources needed to expand. However, there are new television sectors that are growing in terms of both the public and resources. The most promising developments are the television services



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 135

that use the World Wide Web as a distribution and access infrastructure, in other words, the so‐called Over the Top (OTT) services. According to a recent survey by the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), the main factor of OTT services’ success is SVoD, offered by companies such as Netflix and Amazon. This is not a novelty: “SVoD services existed in the most important markets before the entry of these two SVoD service providers, but their marketing strategies … coupled with attractive content, multi‐screen availability and ease of use has appealed to European customers” (EAO 2015, p. 139). The strategy of penetration for two US companies was well calculated to strengthen their presence in privileged European countries, and then they spread throughout the rest of the European Union (EU): Netflix and Amazon also decided to expand first to the countries that presented the most favorable market conditions for digital services, such as broadband penetration in households, high level of equipment in connected devices such as smartphones, smart TVs and fairly mature digital economy (e‐commerce, offer of digital media) and a tech‐savvy population. (EAO 2015, p. 139)

The main issue to consider here is how the success of Netflix and similar businesses can benefit, in a non‐marginal way, from growth in the European television industry and particularly in the Italian industry. To answer this question, we used data provided by a study published in 2015 (Ene and Grece 2015) on the origin of audiovisual products offered in catalogs of 75 VoD services and 17 SVoD services in some countries of the EU. Titles of the products offered were divided into two broad categories, and then according to region of origin: 167 676 accumulated titles, which represent all titles in catalogs of the 75 VoD services considered (each movie can be counted several times) and the single titles, 28 000, which represent the set of individual titles (the same movie present in most catalogs is counted only once). This means that, on average, each title was present in catalogs of 5.8 VoD services. Table  6.5 shows that movies produced in the EU represent 43% of the titles offered, but only occupy 27% of total supply, whereas the USA has 41%, but is responsible for 59% of the global supply. Table 6.5  Region of origin of movies offered in catalogs of 75 VoD services in the EU (2015). Accumulated titles

Single titles

European Union (EU)

27%

43%

Other European countries

2%

3%

United States of America

59%

41%

Other non‐European countries

12%

13%

Source: EAO (2015); Ene and Grece (2015).

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136

Table 6.6  Netflix catalog content in three European countries (October 2015). National

EU

USA

Germany

6%

25%

64%

France

15%

26%

53%

UK

10%

17%

69%

Source: Netflix.

In other words, catalogs of VoD services in each country researched offer a percentage of national movies, but that are not exported, since they are not present in VoD catalogs of other European countries. On the other hand, most US movies are simultaneously present in the catalogs of many European countries. Therefore, whereas a European title is distributed only in the country of origin, a US title is available in various European countries. As a result, from the economic point of view, we see that a US title is potentially more profitable than a European title. The same survey also examined 16 catalogs of SVoD services, where they identified 17 800 accumulated titles (present in most catalogs) and 8300 single titles. In this case, the US titles have a stronger position than in the previous case, since they represent 60% of accumulated stock and 51% of individual titles against, respectively, 30% and 38% of the titles produced in the EU (Ene and Grece 2015). Considering the specific case of Netflix, which currently represents the most successful SVoD service both in the US and in Europe, the situation for audiovisual products from the EU is even more critical than in previous cases. In October 2015, in the Netflix catalogs of eight European countries, the average number of movies was 1151 (Italy was not considered because Netflix had not yet begun to operate at the time of research). In all eight countries considered in the research, from the titles in the catalog, 6% were national audiovisual products, 21% produced in other EU countries and 69% originated in the US. Details of the three main EU countries considered in this research can be found in Table 6.6. Thus, in the three countries analyzed, most of the titles offered by Netflix are from the US; the titles of European origin occur more in France, where they represent 41% of the total, followed by Germany with 31% and the United Kingdom with 27%.

Big Data and the Television Business Model The most dynamic TV sector today consists of a number of companies that have adopted a business model which is anything but traditional. These firms offer on‐ demand TV content, while the traditional model offers prescheduled TV content, which is standard for all users.



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 137

The potential for each client to choose a program from a vast range of programs of various genres, paying for services in different ways, is the novel feature of the world TV market over the last few years. Underlying it is internet use, which for many years has been exploiting suitable telecommunications networks  –  broadband  –  to access TV content (including high‐definition) from any point of the ­network from fixed or mobile terminals (TVs, PCs, tablets, smartphones). This makes TV much more flexible than linear programming because individual users are free to choose what they want to see, when and where they want to see it, and on whatever device best suits them (Richeri 2015). However, internet‐based TV does not benefit users alone, but also TV firms. In addition to offering new and appealing services, a wide range of data can potentially be obtained on their clients and, in particular, their tastes and the quality, quantity, and style of their TV consumption. In this case, it is no longer simply a matter of knowledge about TV audiences based on sample estimates, but accurate knowledge of the behavior of each user making use of these services. It is well known that everything we do via the internet generates data that is collected and recorded in large digital memories, which can then be processed to track audience profiles (consumption, choices, preferences, behaviors, relationships, etc.). One of the most tangible results of this, for example, is that buying or showing an interest in a history book, booking a hotel in Seville, taking part in an African sculpture auction or the like means that we will receive information via the internet on similar objects or services. It is important to note that the center‐stage players in new on‐demand services and exploitation of the big data collected are not the sector’s traditional firms. It is thus not a matter of a new type of television emerging from traditional spheres. The most innovative and dynamic firms which have made such a success of the new services were originally in the non‐TV sector  –  Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others – with some traditional TV leaders entering the field only later in what are still second rank roles. To analyze the strategic role played by big data in television, let us look at Netflix, the market leader for on‐demand subscription services. Collection and processing of the big data relating to its subscribers is considered one of Netflix’s most significant competitive advantages. It is a US firm which was founded in 1997 as a video and DVD distributor, and added VoD via the internet in 2007, which soon became its main activity (see Tables 6.7 and 6.8 for more details). Table 6.7  Netflix subscribers (millions).

USA Rest of the world TOTAL

December 2016

December 2017

Change

49.4 44.3 93.7

54.7 62.8 117.5

+10% +48% +25%

Source: based on Netflix Annual Report (Netflix 2017).

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Table 6.8  Netflix revenue (billions $).

USA Rest of the world TOTAL

December 2016

December 2017

Change

5.1 3.2 8.3

6.1 4.1 11.1

+21% +28% +34%

Source: based on Netflix Annual Report (Netflix 2017).

By the end of 2017, Netflix had 117 million subscribers for its VoD services; 47% were in the US and the others were distributed across 189 countries. Total revenues were $11.1 billion, with over 55% earned in the US. It should be noted that although US subscriber growth figures are high (10%), Netflix’s non‐US market exploded in 2017 with growth rates close to 50%. Revenues have grown in both cases at higher rates, 21 and 28% respectively. Meanwhile, Netflix invested over $6 billion in 2017 buying and making programs, with 600 hours of original content. The number of programs offered by Netflix varies from country to country, although official data do not exist. Estimates for the US vary greatly from year to year, but the number is currently declining. The strategy would seem to be to focus on smaller numbers of programs, but to offer higher quality. Estimates in 2013 reported US services offering over 30 000 programs (including individual TV series episodes), while a 2016 estimate showed just over 6000 programs (though it is not clear whether only films are included or if individual TV series episodes are also included). The competitive factors which have enabled Netflix to dominate its closest rivals, like Amazon and Hulu, are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

very low monthly subscription costs; a large catalog of films, documentaries and TV series; high broadcast/technical quality; three types of big data exploitation: (i) selection and choice of content to make or buy; (ii) advice offered to individual subscribers relating to programs presumably corresponding to their tastes; and, (iii) client behavior and choice analysis.

Netflix’s big data relationship can be seen as the most important innovation in its business model and competition strategy. The main purpose of collecting and processing the data generated by VoD subscribers on the web is to track a detailed profile for each of them on their choices, tastes, and consumer behavior in order to forecast their future habits. This means being able to select and offer the most suitable content to subscribers via purchases and direct production in order to encourage both subscriber renewal and word‐of‐mouth gains of new TV viewers.



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 139

The complexity of the information gathered and the extent of the knowledge on subscribers which can derive from processing this data can be imagined if we consider even a partial list of everything which is recorded automatically on each subscriber’s activities: • Which programs they watch (and their main characteristics: directors, type of screenplay, period in which the story is set, etc.). • When they watch (day and time). • When they stop, rewind, or fast forward. • Where they watch programs. • What devices they use (TV, PC, tablet, mobile phone). • When they turn off programs and if/when they return to them. • Their judgments on programs watched (every day the total points given by ­subscribers amounts to several million). • Type of program searched for by subscribers. • Sequence of programs watched. • Time devoted every day to Netflix programs. Source: Blygo (2013).

Processing this data enables Netflix to forecast subscribers’ consumer orientations to a considerable extent and offer them advice on available programs on this  basis. First and foremost, this serves to lessen the frustrations which many subscribers feel when they choose programs from the thousands available, given the impracticality of finding out about all of them. This advice service also increases the perceived value of the money spent on subscriptions and strengthens the subscriber–Netflix bond and the former’s loyalty to the brand. In other words, it encourages subscribers to renew their subscriptions. The surprising fact is that the advice offered to subscribers on the basis of processing and analysis of the big data generated by them is generally appreciated to the extent that 75% of their choices are based on it (Nightingale 2016). Big data analysis is also used in action related to subscribers which Netflix is at risk of losing. Those who watch at least 15 hours of programs supplied by Netflix, on the other hand, are very likely to renew their subscriptions. Meanwhile, almost all those watching fewer than five hours of Netflix programs per month let their subscriptions lapse. The problem is thus how to get low‐consuming subscribers to watch more Netflix programs. To resolve this a range of techniques is used, such as having a new episode of a series begin automatically when the one a subscriber is watching ends.

Big Data for Content Analysis Another important big data application relates to Netflix’s decision to buy the rights to new productions. In 2011, when it already had 25 million subscribers in the US, Netflix decided to invest some of its resources in producing original content, in

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addition to content bought from the main Hollywood studios and TV networks. Thus, Netflix bought from the BBC the rights to a new version of House of Cards, based on a book by English writer Michael Dobbs and set within the British political and governmental establishment. This involved investing $100 million in a 13‐part series, or an average investment of $7 million per episode. To the surprise of observers, this investment was made without first creating a pilot episode to assess the series’ potential and reduce the risk. The reasons behind Netflix’s decision not to take the usual precautions involved in an investment of this size were explained clearly by Jonathan Friedman, the firm’s communications director (Nightingale 2016): Because we have a direct relationship with consumers, we know what people like to watch and that helps us understand how big the interest is going to be for a given show. It gave us some confidence that we could find an audience for a show like House of Cards.

And Steve Swasey, another Netflix manager, added: We have a high degree of confidence in [House of Cards] based on the director, the producer and the stars…. We don’t have to spend millions to get people to tune into this. Through our algorithms, we can determine who might be interested in Kevin Spacey [House of Cards’ main star], or political drama and say to them “You might want to watch this.”

The data collected by Netflix was also used to create the presentation material serving to introduce the series to subscribers, highlighting the elements most in line with their profiles. There were 10 presentations, each of which promoted the series on the basis of different components. For example, those who had already watched a great many films starring the series’ main actor Kevin Spacey saw a presentation featuring him. Those who generally watched programs in which female roles were central saw a presentation with actresses in the forefront, and so on. Actually, the preparation which enabled individual users’ profiles to be linked with content offered was much more complex. To understand how Netflix works with big data, attempts have been made externally to reconstruct its analysis methodologies, program descriptions, combinations and film and TV series analysis process results via a testing inductive trajectory. The level of understanding achieved after this challenging and arduous undertaking was, however, merely an approximation of the system most often used by Netflix, which uses powerful and secret automatic processing methods on specially created data and algorithms to achieve effective results (Madrigal 2014). The framework used to analyze what subscribers are looking for in a program is based on the identification of thousands of microgenres. Netflix examines each film and TV series in the finest detail and now possesses an unprecedented volume of data on its catalog products.



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 141

To obtain this result one hundred or so specialized and professionally trained individuals break down films and TV series into the smallest detail and consider every sort of variable. It is a highly sophisticated analytical task based on a 36‐page document which each analyst has to follow to classify a film or TV series in accordance with a long list of components and traits. This description considers a vast range of aspects ranging from the physical characteristics of its stars to the various components of the script and plot, acting style, costumes, directors, year of production, and hundreds of other variables. From the potential combinations of all the variables used to identify a film or TV series, many thousands of labels are created, each identifying a variable number of films: for example, there are certainly more war films from 1939 to 1945 set in Europe with American stars than war films for the same period set in Japan offered to US Netflix viewers. One of Netflix’s main competitive advantages is precisely the potential for combining labels and the films they identify with the profiles of millions of subscribers and their TV habits. This database serves not simply to select advice to give subscribers on the programs which best fit their tastes, but also to identify film and TV series content to be bought or made. Thus, when Netflix decides to produce a series such as House of Cards, it does not need to guess what the public wants, but can count on a mass of data, information, and guidelines, which reduces uncertainty and risk significantly. It is normally ­estimated that only 35% of TV programs are successful enough to continue after their first year, while 65% are withdrawn after the first or second series. In Netflix’s case, 70% of its products are sufficiently popular with subscribers that they can be considered a success. Labels identifying products are many and varied. Here are a few examples: • • • • • • • • • • •

films directed by Otto Preminger films based on real life 1980s cult horror films films based on literary classics action films starring Sylvester Stallone critically acclaimed 1940s crime films 1930s spy and action films films based on literary classics films set in the Edwardian era romantic films on marriage documentaries on animals in the Amazon

Each label can correspond to a multiplicity of films and each film can be cataloged under a multiplicity of labels, according to the long list of variables contained in the 36‐page document used to train the analysts, mentioned above. The main directors, actors, locations, genres and subgenres, soundtracks, historical eras, and so on alone suffice to generate a long list of categories; their potential combinations

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spawn thousands of labels used by Netflix and are connected automatically with subscribers who might be interested in this content. On the basis of a user’s profile, for example, Netflix can suggest: a romantic film on marriage drawn from classical literature starring Sylvester Stallone, etc.

Some Critical Observations Netflix’s use of big data to guide its operational and strategic choices is perhaps the most advanced example to be found today in the TV industry sector. As we have seen, the Netflix model is certainly highly complex and requires considerable investment, although only a limited amount is known about its functioning, above all because hundreds of people are involved in the constant updating and honing of both programs analysis and the processing of the algorithms (Madrigal 2014). The specialist press has noted that the results obtained by Netflix using content and subscriber big data are markedly positive and represent one of the main factors in its primacy in the VoD subscription market. There are, however, some critical issues that need underlining, relating, on the one hand, to subscriber behavior, and on the other, to the selection and choice of the films and TV programs appearing in the catalog. According to many commentators, the fact that over 75% of subscribers follow Netflix’s advice, as we have seen, is a demonstration of the firm’s ability to use big data processing and analysis to identify and forecast consumer tastes to a considerable extent and thus to offer the “right” programs from its catalog. However, it is well‐known that TV audience choices for traditional linear TV are guided more by inertia than by tastes and interests. It is thus possible that a considerable percentage of subscribers to Netflix choose on the same basis as traditional TV audiences, accepting what is offered them to avoid the effort involved in choosing. Furthermore, Netflix’s advice to subscribers risks limiting their TV consumption to a limited number of programs, as compared to the many opportunities offered by the catalog. Positive viewing experiences might involve just happening upon a film or documentary, perhaps one we would not have expected to be interested in, or choosing programs that we know nothing about out of curiosity. A further observation relates to the weight that big data has in the selection and choice of catalog programs. Over the last three years, the range of programs Netflix offered to its US audiences has been reduced. The official explanation is that this is due to the firm’s decision to reduce the volume to increase quality. But a considerable segment of its programs are no longer in its catalog as a result of the excessive prices demanded to renew rights. Furthermore, we do not know what proportion of programs whose rights are not renewed when use rights expire do so because they were “mistakes,” i.e. they were not sufficiently popular with clients. In other words, how many big data guided purchases have not worked out? It would also be interesting to enquire into a third aspect relating to how big data analysis accuracy changes in accordance with variations in subscriber numbers and



The Audiovisual Industry and the Structural Factors of the Television Crisis 143

programs. The number of network interactions depends on these two variables and thus the dimensions of the big data gathered and processed. With a small number of interactions, do big data processing results get less accurate? As we have seen, in the US, there are 50 million Netflix subscribers and the catalog available to them is extremely large with a huge prevalence of American programs. Netflix is now officially present in 190 countries, however. In many of these, subscriber numbers are very limited because populations are lower, broadband internet access is more limited, or for other reasons. Moreover, in all countries outside the US, the number of catalog programs offered is much more limited than America’s. We might thus speculate that Netflix’s success in many of the 190 countries it officially operates in is still entirely uncertain. It is not yet clear whether Netflix’s use of big data, a first rank factor in the US market, can generate a competitive advantage in all the other national markets in which it has opened in recent years.

Conclusion with Questions After analyzing growth potential of traditional television resources and detecting a critical situation in the three main financing sources (advertising, subscriptions, and service charges), we analyzed the new nonlinear television services, VoD and SVoD. In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, these represent the most dynamic part of the television industry, one capable of generating new resources that may be partly intended for the production of audiovisual content. An analysis of the VoD and SVoD services catalogs offered in various European countries shows limited offerings of European movies in comparison with those from the United States, which are likely to attract most of the generated resources. As has happened with commercial television and was repeated with pay TV, the development of new TV services and new business models can be a lost opportunity for the Italian audiovisual industry, which has had only secondary benefits. Therefore, some issues should be discussed in relation to creating initiatives (laws, regulations, restrictions) that take advantage of the new nonlinear television services and that could bring advantages for the Italian and European audiovisual industry. To conclude, we suggest two questions are germane to such initiatives: • Are there conditions to define a quota of European products in catalogs of VoD and SVoD services? • Are there conditions to force the investment of a significant portion of profits generated by VoD and SVoD services in national and European audiovisual production? Business models and strategic tools like big data that are employed by Netflix and other internet television companies may be the future of the audiovisual landscape, and

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thus it is important to consider the possibility of a new hegemony in the audiovisual market, with traditional linear television being pushed into a marginal position.

Notes 1 This chapter is a version of an article published in MATRIZes, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil, Vol 11, N° 1, 2017, pp. 13–24. 2 Authority to Guarantee Communication, intended for communication regulation authority in Italy, specifically concerning pluralism of information. 3 In Italian, canone is the broadcast TV service charge, paid annually by Italians.

References Autoritá per le Garanzie Nelle Communicazione [Agcom] (2018). Relazione annuale sull’attività svolta e sui programmi di lavoro. Rome. https://goo.gl/jucFbW. Blygo, Z. (2013). How Netflix uses analytics to select movies, creates content and makes multimillion dollar decisions. Kissmetric blog. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how‐netflix‐ uses‐analytics. Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board [Barb] (2016). Channel viewing share. https://goo. gl/pblGT8. Dagnino, G. (2016). Il product placement come pratica e cultura nella produzione. Ph.D. thesis. Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano. Ene, L. and Grece, C. (2015). Origin of Films in VoD Catalogues in EU. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. European Audiovisual Observatory (2015). The Development of European Market for On Demand Audiovisual Services. Strasbourg: The European Council. ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=6352. European Audiovisual Observatory (2016). On‐demand Audiovisual Markets in the European Union: Developments 2014 and 2015. The European Council. https://goo.gl/pTW8oZ. Madrigal, A. C. (2014). How Netflix reverse engineered Hollywood. The Atlantic, 1 February. Netflix, Inc. (2017). Annual Report/Form 10‐K. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/ doc_financials/annual_reports/0001065280‐18‐000069.pdf. Nightingale, R. (2016). How Netflix knows exactly what you want to watch. Makeuseof. http://www.makeuseof.com/about Office of Communications (2016) The Communication Market Report 2016. London: Ofcom. https://goo.gl/A3cXi1. Richeri, G. (2012). Economia dei media. Bari: Caterza. Richeri, G. (2014). Modelli economici in transizione. Problemi dell’Informazione, Bologna. 1, pp. 97–110. Richeri, G. (2015). Televisione: crisi del mercato e nuovi modelli commerciali. Problemi dell’Informazione, Bologna, anno XL, n. 2, pp. 263–281.

Chapter 7

Netflix, Inc. and Online Television Jane Shattuc

Netflix.com might go down in TV history as the single most important company that disrupted and rewrote television in the twenty‐first century. An exaggeration? Consider this: the decade‐old service is the world’s largest streaming TV network and the largest internet media and entertainment business with over 120 million paid subscribers. Often described as the “800‐lb. gorilla in the room” in the boardrooms of the media industry in 2010s, the company represents a central shift in what constitutes television. As part of what Amanda Lotz (2018) calls the “post TV” period, “the new Netflix order” (Brueggemann 2017) moves TV from a mass medium to a more narrowly consumed form with a much greater array of programs and tastes fueled by the logic of the internet. By 2016 The Hollywood Reporter was predicting that Netflix and Amazon Prime meant the end of the Hollywood studio system (Galloway 2016). In March 2018 speaking about streaming, film director Steven Spielberg warned: “Television is really thriving with quality and art, but it poses a clear and present danger to filmgoers” (Dalton 2018). The streaming networks offer more money, greater creative license and a willingness to produce more individuated programs and films than the American film industry. Given that, why would anyone not want to work in the diverse and creative world of streaming?

The Technological Shift The possibility of streaming media really only started in the 1990s with the proliferation of personal computers. A further step arrived with the technology that offered enough CPUs (central processing units) and bandwidth (a speed minimally A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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of 2 Mbit/s or bit rates) to keep the video or audio from buffering. In the early 2000s, broadband penetration increased allowing a majority of Americans access to the internet. Then Adobe Flash standardized the streaming formats as well as the method of delivering commercial media to personal computers connected to the internet. And HTML5  –  the central markup language used for constructing and displaying web content  –  was adopted. Smartphones and their connection to the internet had become ubiquitous by 2010. In 2012 Netflix built its own custom content delivery system (CDN) that cleaned up the process that gets the data from their company to the users for a smoother viewer experience known as the “last mile.” Like water running from a tap, streaming TV flows program data from a website directly to the user’s computer – no intermediary and no need to store it on a digital video recorder or your computer. The programs are there to be watched and rewatched whenever, on the viewer’s terms. This “over‐the‐top” (OTT) service, whereby the content provider distributes over the internet, represents a major technological change in the content and form of what television is from the eras of broadcasting and cable. Streaming was finally commercially viable and television was no longer a living room occurrence, but rather a where‐the‐computer‐is phenomenon.

The Business of Streaming TV Much like the “big three” broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC in the 1950s, in the 2010s the TV streaming industry started to consolidate into the “big three” of TV companies: Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu (see Table 7.1 for information on US‐based streaming services). YouTube, Apple, and Facebook Watch stand as the “three minors.” But as much as there was a clear pecking order of streaming companies by 2018, Netflix’s success ignited a battle for the next big streaming service with every major TV and internet companies vying to get into the business. Small niche streaming services such as Crunchyroll, Mubi, Fandor and Shudder keep growing. Traditional big media corporations have responded by consolidating, e.g. Disney’s successful takeover battle against Comcast for 21st Century Fox and AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner in attempt to marry corporate might with content providers. The creation of Disney’s streaming service in 2019 changed the streaming industry. It took back its all‐important films from Netflix. As the world’s largest media corporation, Disney is the emergent fourth major and possibly the biggest streaming network with its vast possibilities of in‐house productions and its established hits in film (e.g. Pixar animation) and television (e.g. ABC and cable Disney channels). But it will be hard to catch up with Netflix, given the latter’s head start, global role, and unbridled spending in producing TV and film. Netflix is the “first network” of streaming in terms of size, audience, and array of original programs. It is more focused on TV series than its rivals Hulu and Amazon. Its library and global viewership in 2018 dwarfed that of any competitor – nearly

Table 7.1  Streaming services for seven US‐based companies in 2018.

$10.99 standard $7.99 basic $13.99 premium Subscribers 130.1 million (56 million in US)

$11.99 $8.99 prime video $7.99 only $11.99 no $12.99 Amazon Prime commercials $39.99 with live TV service 100 million globally 20 million 1.5 million (Amazon Prime) 26 million viewers (Prime Video)

TBD

Free

Free (advertising‐based video‐on‐demand service)

TBD

Content Spend Major Talent Deals

$5 billion in 2018

$2.5 billion

$1 billion

2 billion users worldwide Approximately 185 million daily active Facebook users in North America Up to $1 billion

Sony Crackle apps have been downloaded more than 100 million times 5 million monthly unique visits Not revealed

Nicole Kidman Jordan Peele Amy Sherman‐Palladino

Bruce Miller Jason Reitman

Monthly Fee

$12‐13 billion in 2018 Ryan Murphy Shonda Rhimes Jenji Kohan Barack and Michelle Obama

“Hundreds of millions” No overall deals, but talent includes: Kevin Hart (“What the Fit?”) Will Smith (The Jump”)

Oprah Winfrey No overall deals, Kerry Ehrin but talent includes: Jado Pinkett Smith Tom Brady

No overall deals, but producers include: Bryan Cranston (“SuperMansion”) 50 Cent (“The Oath”) (Continued )

Table 7.1  (Continued)

Biggest Success

Biggest Flop

Territories Original Series Pitch

“The Oath” “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” (moved to Netflix)

TBD

“Ball in the Family” Mike Rowe’s “Returning the Favor” Its partnerships with controversial information sources Global

50

20–25

14

27

A mix of You Tubers and Hollywood talent, geared toward a young, active audience that’s already on YouTube.

The sky’s the limit, so be there on the ground floor; despite rumors to the contrary, all kinds of programming welcome, including darker fare.

Facebook Watch isn’t interested in doing large prestige dramas; it’s focused on shows that are heavily social and good to watch on mobile.

Ad‐supported network allows viewers to watch for free, and originals are supplemented by a library of movies and series.

“Stranger Things” “Orange is the New Black” “The Get Down” “Gypsy”

“The Grand Tour” “Sneaky Pete”

“The Handmaid’s Tale” “South Park” (off‐net)

“Cobra Kai”

TBD

“Crisis in Six Scenes” “The Last Tycoon”

“Hard Sun”

“Youth & Condquesnces”

TBD

More than 190 700 globally

More than 200

U.S. only

17

20–25 The depth of its library and acquired content makes Hulu a must‐have for TV fans, and there is attention to every show, given the low volume.

Approximately 125 domestically They need a The new executive lot of content. team is much more You name it, invested and looking they’ll hear it. for bigger, more commercial projects.

“Sequestered”

20

Awards

43 Emmys out of 225 nominations 2 Oscars out of 14 nominations

10 Emmys out of 66 nominations. 3 Oscars out of 8 nominations

TBD 10 Emmys out of 47 YouTube Premium nominations hasn’t yet been Emmy nominated, although YouTube as a platform has been nominated at least nine times.

Table compiled by Michael Schneider from company reports and Variety research. Source: Littleton (2018).

5 Primetime Emmy No Primetime nominations Emmy nominations yet, although Facebook Watch was nominated for three Daytime Emmys in 2018

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15 000 titles and 117 million subscribers in 190 countries. Located in Los Gatos, California, it began in 1997 as a California DVD mail rental company as a part of the Silicon Valley technology boom. A decade later it had rented a billion films by mail. With the increase of data delivery speed and lower cost of bandwidth in the 2000s, it became more technologically feasible for the firm to deliver entire films and programs via the internet – video on demand (VOD). The company started to stream movies in 2008 across the internet and 10 years later it was consuming one‐fifth of all the internet’s entire bandwidth with its streaming (Can Netflix please Investors… 2018). Netflix does not give the number of viewers for its programs and films. Rather it uses an algorithm to predict audience interests based on the viewing habits of its users and makes recommendations to the individual viewer built on the equation that is not publicly divulged. The company initially divided the audience by geographic communities, gender, and age, much like the Nielsen ratings during the broadcast TV era. But by 2016, the viewers were split into “taste communities” based on Netflix’s belief that audience tastes were more complex than a series of demographic differences. “We have seen that where you live, gender, age and other demographics are not significantly indicative of the content you will enjoy,” a spokesperson for Netflix stated (Rodriguez 2017). These communities drive what Netflix chooses to produce. For example, this author continually gets the recommendation from Netflix for “strong female lead” based on my previous viewings. If a large enough group of viewers continually choose that category, Netflix will produce more productions for the taste community that prefers strong women leads. With over 2000 taste communities of viewers who have similar tastes  –  often across international boundaries  –  Netflix has tailored its programs, production, dubbing, marketing, and advertising to them by isolating the specific elements of the series and forefronting them. It has a director of “content localization and quality control” whose team is devoted to localizing its product strategy, which means working with translators to adjust key names and phrases to the locale. Netflix tags all of its content with hundreds of generic terms, which allows it to hone its recommendations and marketing to individual users. For example, Stranger Things (2016) would normally be classified as a “science fiction” series, but according to Todd Yellin, head of product, Netflix tags it with “Supernatural. Psychic powers. Missing person. Family in crisis. Conspiracy. It’s also a buddy story” (Laporte 2017). These new categories have the potential to change how viewers might frame the way they understand a series or film – much as classic genres (western, horror, and musical) affected how audiences interpreted Hollywood films. Amazon Video is the “second” streaming network with its 100 million subscribers worldwide. It is the child of Amazon.com – the largest internet retail company in the world. The company represents the twenty‐first century move to the consolidation of a number of businesses under one corporation, similar to the trusts of the early twentieth century, such as Standard Oil and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Now we have Facebook, Google, and Amazon. In fact, among



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investors, the big media companies are known as the FAANG group of technology stocks, comprising Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (Google’s parent) – huge media companies that dwarf the competition and cause less innovation as a whole. Amazon is not only a retail firm, but a service company with Amazon Web Services and Amazon Cloud, grocery delivery, Amazon Games, Alexa, and Kindle. Unlike Netflix, streaming and producing media is not the central focus of Amazon Video’s parent, Amazon. It is part of larger package of Amazon goods and services that attract viewers and ultimately customers. In fact, Amazon often tells investors that Prime Video service is just another enticement to get people to sign up for its Prime membership. The video portion was launched as a VOD service in 2006 under title “Amazon Unbox,” signifying how it and the industry in general were moving away from DVDs. Amazon Prime Instant Video is accessed one of two ways as either an extension of “Prime” – initially a $79 a year subscription for 1–2‐day quick delivery of Amazon goods in 2005. But to compete with Netflix, in December 2016 Amazon added Prime for $12.99 per month or $99 per year. By 2018 Amazon had increased the yearly fee to $119. Prime Video has the edge on Netflix because users are not likely to unsubscribe from Prime because it is tied to its “free” delivery service. By connecting its streaming service to its established “free” delivery service, Amazon has a built‐in audience. The ancillary Amazon services that are b ­ undled into Amazon Prime further differentiate it from Netflix. Beyond the delivery service, Amazon continues to add its other offerings, such as streaming Prime Music, Prime Now with Whole Foods deliveries and discounts, and more as part of its Prime package. According to Amazon, about one‐fourth of the Prime sign‐ ups are primarily for the video streaming – five million people in a three‐year period. As of early 2016, Amazon Prime Video had nine times more movies than TV series in the US, while Netflix and Hulu carried only twice as many movies as TV shows. In the years since, Netflix has developed its television side over films. In 2018, it had 1569 TV series and the number of movies offered had decreased to 4010. With a producing budget close to $4.5 billion in comparison with Netflix’s $8 ­billion, Amazon has not had the “must watch” hits that Netflix has had with its Stranger Things (2016–) and that Hulu has had with The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–). Its greatest success has been The Man in the High Castle (2017) with eight million viewers. As of 2018, Amazon did not have a way of individualizing or personalizing the viewing habits of its viewers in the way Netflix has made famous. Amazon contemplates the total spent on the marketing and the making of a series and connects it to the number of new Prime subscribers who chose to watch it to determine the entire cost of each in‐house production. This method assumes that these subscribers bought into Prime mainly to watch that show. Netflix knows how much it will pay for the rights to distribute a film based on its algorithm even before negotiations have begun.

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Amazon prefers more commercial and generally popular productions. Bosch, Transparent, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, One Mississippi, and Grand Tour have been its critical successes. For example, it signed director Jordan Peele (Get Out 2017) to a deal to get a “first look” at his TV ideas, which has resulted in his Nazi hunter drama, The Hunt (2018). Julia Roberts acts in and is executive producer for the thriller Homecoming (2018–), directed by Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot). Nicole Kidman’s production company is producing The Expatriates (2019) for Amazon. The network has gained the rights to remake The Lord of the Rings for television for $250 million. All these deals reveal how all the streaming networks are under great pressure to have a continuous set of hits so viewers do not sign up for a series that they are interested in and drop their subscription after it is over. Even with Amazon’s tendency to appeal to a larger audience than Netflix, the readiness of the streaming networks to produce a range of series and films has resulted in a greater cultural acceptance of TV as an innovative medium. It is losing its second‐class status as the film industry has finally started to flock to television, with the likes of David Fincher, Jordan Peele, the Wachowski sisters and Spike Lee producing online and prompting TV to take on the costs and standards of film industry, but with a much more creative sensibility. Hulu.com stands as “the third streaming network” in terms of size and influence, with its 20 million US subscribers in 2018. It started streaming in 2006 as the brainchild of media corporate insiders, but did not stream publicly until 2008. What distinguishes Hulu from Netflix and Amazon is its multiple corporate parents – initially, 21st Century Fox (30%), Comcast (30%), the Walt Disney Company (30%), and AT&T (10%). It originally signed distribution partnership rights to exhibit media with Comcast, MSN, Myspace, Yahoo and Facebook in 2006. Then it signed a deal with Fox, Disney, and NBC as content providers in 2008. But in 2019, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox and gained controlling interest of 60 % in Hulu, potentially giving it a more clearly defined brand. Hulu has always lacked a clear focus as a streaming company due to its corporate parents having competing views for its future. It was initially a free legacy service. Its distinguishing characteristic is that it streams TV series the day after they air on other platforms. On top of advertising, it added a low monthly subscription fee in 2010 of $7.99. It shows ads before, during, and after the programs, unless you pay $4.00 more a month for its commercial‐free option. It streams only domestically. And its programs roll out as an episode a week. As a result, Hulu feels more like classical broadcast TV, but with a much greater offering of programs and movies afforded by a streaming service. This third network has a large back catalog of TV series and movies, which gives it the aura of a TV nostalgia or legacy network. With a small number of original programs, it is a very different streaming service when compared to Netflix and Amazon with their unprecedented amount of original productions. Its most critically acclaimed original series – Casual (2015–2018), Difficult People (2015–2017), and Runaways (2017–) – have not created much buzz or general awareness. It was not until 2017 that it produced a culturally significant award‐winning program, The



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Handmaid’s Tale, based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 feminist novel. With the 20th Century Fox/Disney merger, the streaming industry will most likely ­position Hulu as the adult network, with Disney as a different streaming network to maintain the family entertainment brand. The fourth network, YouTube, is instructive not only because it has the largest number of original videos, but also in how it differs from the three top streaming networks. It should be seen chronologically as the first streaming network. Netflix’s move to streaming was inspired by YouTube’s success as a video streaming service. Launched out of a garage by around 320 PayPal employees in 2005, YouTube.com began by allowing users to upload personal videos for general viewing. The ability of users to create videos and upload them onto this video‐sharing service differentiated YouTube from the other major curated streaming services such as Netflix, which is a platform for professional and known producers. YouTube’s willingness to host anyone’s video was hailed as the democratization of media – no longer were producers controlled by corporations, popularity, and profit to exhibit their work. YouTube represented the new participatory culture of Web 2.0 (Burgess and Green 2009, p. 7). Anyone who had an internet connection and specifically a smartphone with a camera could become a media maker by uploading the video to YouTube and have potentially millions of views. The streaming service still caters primarily to 12–17‐year‐old teenagers  –  a potentially lucrative market. In 2006, it became the fastest growing company on the internet with over 65 000 uploads and reportedly 100 views per day in July of that year. Its economic potential was substantiated when Google bought $1.65 billion of YouTube’s stock the same year. Time Magazine featured YouTube as “Person of the Year” on its cover in 2006 to signal how it was genuinely changing media culture. The press wrote that the gates to media control were seemingly blown open or, as the New York Times declared in 2012, “On YouTube, Amateur Is the New Pro” (Walker 2012). The tension between amateur and corporate has defined YouTube’s history. Its videos include commercial fictional programs à la Netflix and Amazon to music videos to channels to “funny stupid videos” by adolescents (best represented by the proliferation of cat videos) to commercially savvy ads. The video‐sharing service formed advertising partnerships with NBC, BBC, MGM, Lionsgate, and CBS early on; the companies uploaded their films and programs in exchange for a portion of the profit from ads. In 2007, the website launched its “Partner Program,” which made stars out of unknown producers. Successful amateurs with a large viewership developed into professionals in that they were allowed to earn 55% of the ad revenue on their channels, defined by a group of videos by the same maker. For example, Ryan Higa and Sean Fujiyoshi with their How to Be Emo, and Zoe Sugg with her Zoella, a fashion and beauty vlog, began as amateurs in 2008. By 2018, they had 10–12 million subscribers and billions of views and they earned over $100,000 a year. These viewings do not rival a program such as NBC’s ER in the 1990s, when episodes had audiences of 25 million viewers weekly (EW Staff 1998). Although these people are the exceptions, they represent how YouTube has monetized amateurism.

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It underlines the myth of the “little guy” making it, which powers so much of corporate capitalism. Even an animated “annoying talking orange” has succeeded as a web series with over a million subscribers. This commercialization of amateurs moved YouTube closer to being a commercial streaming service for traditional media corporations where amateur video functions as a free product. Slowly, YouTube has moved to becoming “television.” In 2008, YouTube’s receptivity to amateur video narrowed when it shifted to exhibiting commercially made films and television in agreement with CBS, Lionsgate, and MGM, along with its amateur and “professional amateur” videos. The streamer functions much like the other commercial companies: no matter what the video is, there is an audience regardless of size and thus a potential profit from ads. It is the aggregate of many money‐making videos, not one big blockbuster with large profits.

Original Production by Streaming Networks By 2015, the TV producers began to think that they had produced too much TV (or what John Landgraf of FX called “Peak TV”), with broadcast networks and the proliferating cable networks seen as potentially overwhelming viewers with choice. But Netflix proved them wrong. One of its definitive characteristics is the amount of content it has created through “Netflix’s Originals” and distribution agreements. By 2018, it had made close to 700 original series. As a whole, Netflix does not make its series and films. It signs deals with production companies. For example, Stranger Things was produced by 21 Laps Entertainment under the guidance of Shawn Levy, and written and directed by the Duffer brothers. Creators find Netflix an attractive partner because of its lack of interference in the production process, in contrast to the legacy networks which have historically overwhelmed producers with endless directives or “notes.” When dealing with the streaming network, both companies share the production costs and cooperate on the cost of distribution. Netflix holds distribution rights in the US and often internationally for a set period of time. But ultimately the production company owns the rights which allows it to find other licensing partners beyond Netflix. The TV company has to wait a certain period of time before it can license the show elsewhere. But given Netflix’s foothold in the US and 180 countries, it becomes difficult to restream with another streaming service; the program loses its “original” status and instead functions as a rerun. Netflix wants the international rights and is often prepared to pay for the entire production budget to get them. As a result, a production company rarely gains additional profit beyond Netflix. Even when the relicensing rights are available, the streamer often does not renew the series because it weighs the cost of licensing against its viewer numbers. Or in the words of Netflix, the company considers the following questions: “Are the rights to renew the licensing to stream still available?



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What is the popularity and cost of a particular title? Are there other seasonal or localized factors?” (Netflix Help Center 2018). In 2017, Netflix leased the historic Sunset Bronson Studios – formerly the Warner Bros. studio and corporate home in 1940s, with 43 000 ft. of sound stages, offices, and support space – to produce US‐based films and TV. It spent $12.4 billion for content in 2018 and was predicted to spend $15 billion in 2019. Even before the company started streaming, its Red Envelope division began to finance, license, and distribute documentaries (e.g. Born into the Brothel, 2004 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary). By contrast, Amazon can be defined more as a film streamer with four times as many movies as Netflix. It uses Amazon Studios in Los Angeles as the source for original productions and film distribution. It initially allowed anyone to submit a script via the internet – shades of the democratic logic of YouTube. It paid $10 000 for any script it developed and $200 000 for a script that became a movie. This policy resulted in 26 series and 23 film in development in 2013. By 2018, no more screenplays were to be submitted online. However, Amazon films produced the successful Manchester by the Sea (the first streaming film to win Academy Awards) and The Big Sick, one of the top streaming films released in theaters. Further, it distributed Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, an art house film, in theaters and made it available on Prime – exposing an Iranian film to a far wider audience than other Middle Eastern films through streaming. Thus, Amazon Prime is a film streamer as opposed to Netflix being a TV series maker. Critics often cite Netflix as being responsible for revitalization of independent film and TV production in America in the 2010s. Or, as an IndieWire writer argues: “Netflix has become a – if not the – leading force in shaping the future of narrative visual storytelling” (Brueggemann 2017). Its strategy is to let original content drive growth. Because of its enormous global viewership, Netflix is interested in a substantial diversity of niche programs and films. It allows for narrower content and a range of audience tastes and, as a result, independent film and series have flourished. The network spends more generously for its series than broadcast and cable TV. It paid $50–60 million a season for House of Cards and The New Black is Orange, which made the streamer a “must see” TV network. The Crown’s cost of $130 million per season seems huge, but the series helped launch Netflix’s penetration into British streaming markets. Some of its most critically acclaimed lower budget, but still well‐ funded, series are: Mindhunter (2017–), Dear White People (2017–), American Vandal (2017), Master of None (2015–2017), and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015) to name a few. Netflix’s qualitative difference has produced a large group of loyal users – a stable revenue base. Many independent filmmakers are wary of Netflix’s lack of theatrical release, fearing that their work gets lost in the streamer’s huge catalog. Without the publicity and marketing surrounding a theatrical release, filmmakers do not gain the “name” necessary to attract more funding for other projects. Contrastingly, Amazon promotes its films with a publicity campaign for its theatrical releases. In 2018, it started shedding its quirkier independent series and films. It dropped two critically

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well‐received unorthodox sitcoms made by women – One Mississippi (2015–2017) and I Love Dick (2016–2017)  –  for broader more conventional fare with a larger audience  –  evidence of the limits of independent TV series in this new world of streaming. By 2018, Netflix had moved into producing more media by underrepresented groups based on race and gender – classic demographic categories. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Netflix will release more films directed by women in the next four months than the combined six major Hollywood studios have released in the entire year to date. (For the record, that number for the studios is four. If you exclude one title from specialty division Sony Classics, it’s just three.)” (Olsen 2018). Further, Netflix has signed major multiseries deals with black executive producers and directors – Shonda Rhimes, Dave Chappelle, Ava DuVernay and Kenya Barris – stealing them from broadcast TV. Netflix started a “Strong Black Lead” initiative on social media and through live events in order to connect with black audiences regarding its effort to produce black series and film. It released an ad with 47 black creators, who have produced media for the streaming network. And Netflix even signed Michelle and Barack Obama to a multiyear producing deal which involves fiction series and documentaries  –  an extraordinary branding move. As opposed to its anti‐ demographic taste communities, “strong women lead” and “strong black lead” maintain race and gender as central categories for production, revealing the central role of identity politics in its streaming choices. What fuels this desire for idiosyncratic and sectional programs is the nature of the internet. The often‐used economic term “the long tail” (Anderson 2006) describes the line on the demand curve of media consumption that reveals the short head – traditional big media corporations and their blockbusters in television, film music, and books – is slowly dying out due to the boundless abundance of niche products in the digital age that will attract someone, somewhere, at some time. It began with the growth of cable TV and its proliferation of networks which catered to narrow interests – Lifetime for women, the Golf Channel for just one sport, Syfy for science fiction and Black Entertainment Television Network (BET) for just one race. But with the internet, a streaming company based on a subscription has the ability to continually expand its offerings to narrow audiences with specific tastes which have not been serviced by the traditional media producers who depend on large audiences to gain profits. And in the case of Netflix, it has created its own networks by subdividing its offerings into various categories or genres that have taken over the need for niche cable networks. A Netflix Original is content that is exclusively produced (sometimes co‐produced), distributed by, and shown on Netflix. By 2018, Netflix’s offerings divided into approximately two‐thirds films and one‐third TV series. An “original” series differs from a broadcast network program in that the producers receive the money for usually two years of programs up front. The number of programs commissioned, the amount of money, and the guarantee of two years of episodes have been a catalyst for the growth of independent production. Although it still produces films, Netflix has



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made three times more TV series (1569 titles) than films, which have declined by 1000 titles. This interest in television programs speaks to the fact that Netflix prefers to engage audiences in the long‐term commitment of multiple episodes that bind them to the streaming network. Nevertheless, Hulu lost $920 million in 2017, in part because it wanted to increase its original content by $2.5 billion to compete with Netflix and Amazon. It added seven new series for the 2017/2018 season, yet original scripted series are not its central focus, given that it added live TV to its offerings. Production companies can develop more complex characters and narrative arcs with a promise of two years of episodes. Episodes and seasons can vary in length depending on the creator’s needs. One can argue that streaming series provide more of what Richard Dyer calls a “novelistic approach” to narrative and character development as opposed to the half‐hour or sixty‐minute formats of broadcast TV, which more often lead to formulaic stories and stereotypical characters aimed at a broad audience (Dyer 2002, p. 13). The series and films are different in that their form and content often break with what have been common TV and media traditions – white male protagonists who have clear goals that are achieved by the end of episode or film. Yet streaming series are still narrative‐driven with a strongly defined lead. They move from popular culture to being more middlebrow  –  accessible art. Independent filmmakers are more interested in working with Netflix because of its money and support for small films and series at a time when the major studios are moving toward fewer and fewer films, preferring the big budget global spectacles such as the superhero films. The “independent” relationship began with House of Cards in February 2013. What makes the series such a benchmark for streamed TV is that it is directed by David Fincher (a known film “auteur”) and starred actors normally associated with major films. It mixed a complex plot with two less‐than‐likeable lead characters, an ironic direct address by one of leads, and moody cinematography to underscore the cold reality of American politics. The New Yorker critic argued that the quality of the series meant the end of cable as the provider of quality TV: “House of Cards may not be the best show on television, but it is in the same league as the best shows, and that makes all the difference” (Wu 2013). The choice of the series announced Netflix’s dedication to quality and independent non‐formulaic TV programming. When its next critically acclaimed series, Orange is the New Black, a quirky women’s prison drama that highlighted an economically, sexually, and racially diverse group of characters, came along later in 2013, the critical establishment again praised Netflix as the new studio of quality non‐mainstream television. It focused on a multicast of women characters, openly dealing with diverse sexualities, sexual violence, and the lower classes. Salon.com’s TV critic wrote of the social significance of the series: “There’s nothing like the power of storytelling to change the way we think and feel, though. Which means that for all its flaws, ‘Orange Is the New Black’ has the potential to join the pantheon of TV programs that have worked to move our country forward” (Pozner 2013). The streamer has since continued to win a number of

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Primetime Emmys (112 nominations, which tops 108 nominations of HBO – the once touted mainstay of quality TV) and two Academy Awards for its documentaries (White Helmets 2017 and Icarus 2018)  –  the industry’s recognition for exceptionalism. But there are limits to Netflix’s support of independent production. It has canceled the surreal Lady Dynamite (2016–2017); Sense8 (2015–2018)  –  a mystical sci‐fi adventure from Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski; Colleen Ballinger’s comedy, Haters Back Off! (2016–2017); Naomi Watts’s psychological thriller, Gypsy (2017); Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down (2016–2017); Kay Cannon’s Girlboss (2017); and Chuck Lorre’s Disjointed (2017–2018), starring Kathy Bates – all series that highlighted either women producers or characters. What caused these series to be canceled will never be clear, given Netflix’s lack of transparency about viewer numbers.

The Ontological Crisis for the Media Industry Netflix’s offerings have caused an ontological crisis in the industry about the difference between film and television. It has upset the traditional industrial boundaries. Netflix’s eight Academy Award nominations in 2018 caused a number of industry people to question what exactly a movie is in the age of streaming. To qualify for the Oscars, Netflix releases most of its films theatrically in the US (usually for one week) which is the standard minimum to qualify as a “film.” But this dilemma was further underscored by the anger at 2017 Cannes Film Festival with the entry of two Netflix’s films – Okja (2017) and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) into the competition. The outcry about the limited theatrical release of these film caused the festival to define all future entries as films that have had a theatrical release in France. More importantly, the festival ruled that a film entry could not be streamed until three years after Cannes. As a result, Netflix pulled out of the festival in 2018. Netflix has caused this problem in part because of its aggressive insistence on “day‐and‐date” releases, whereby a film premiers in theaters and online on the same date and time. Amazon Studios differs, releasing its five to ten films in theaters for longer runs in distribution partnerships with Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate and moving recently to self‐distribution in the US. Its films are internationally distributed as widely as possible in conjunction with local distributors, while, with a free market business logic, Netflix does not want any constraint. Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix, responded to the Cannes festival situation with a self‐congratulatory statement: “It’s just that the festival has chosen to celebrate distribution rather than the art of cinema. We are 100% about the art of cinema” (Setoodeh 2018). Cannes’ refusal turned into a seismic shift in the festival world in Europe when the Venice Film Festival accepted six Netflix films that same year – some of which were made by well‐known directors such as Alfonso Cuaron, the Coen Brothers and Paul Greengrass – and it became the festival to watch. In an



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age of convergence, Netflix has effectively narrowed the distinctions between old and new media, where the differences have stopped mattering for many makers and viewers. Central to Netflix’s success is its willingness to take on huge debt – $8.5 billion to be exact – to make its rapidly increasing numbers of productions. Amazon Video has Amazon.com’s $150 billion backing. Hulu now has Disney behind it (and formerly its major media owners offered financial support). Netflix debt is fueled by its desire to increase its global presence through increasing subscribers lured by a robust output of local productions. Its market value hit a high of $162 billion in May 2018, temporarily topping Disney’s net worth of $150.6 billion. It pledged to spend $13 billion to produce more content. In 2018 Netflix released 69 films, whereas Warner Brothers had 15 and Disney 23. The streaming network has yet to turn a profit. Its debt is not considered a problem by the company as long it continues to expand its subscribers (with 3.2 billion internet users worldwide) and is able to secure cheap loans. The spending topped every other studio’s outlay for non‐sports related content. Debt is not unusual for a Hollywood media company; for example, Disney’s debt was $13.7 billion after its takeover of 20th Century Fox. As Reed Hastings, the head of Netflix, maintains: the company will continue to take on debt “for many years” (Huddleston 2017).

Globalization Another important characteristic is Netflix’s global presence and the backlash against its usurpation of national and local production and distribution in other countries. Netflix’s avowed aim is to produce locally and distribute content globally. It first moved into Canada in 2010, whereas Amazon launched Amazon Video internationally in late 2016 with availability in 200 countries. Its global offerings are limited because Amazon does not have the rights to show a percentage of Amazon Video’s sizeable film collection outside the US. By contrast Netflix has invested more than $1.75 billion in 90 original European productions, including licensed programming, original content, and co‐productions by 2017. It has been progressively letting the global reach of its business drive growth. There are more viewers outside America (even without China, where American streaming companies are not allowed to operate.) It has made series in 21 countries with such examples as Dark (Germany 2017–), The Crown (UK 2016–) and 3% (Brazil 2016–). One of its chief plans is to respect the cultural nuances of the local markets. The company dubs and subtitles to bring out the nuance of the original meaning in 13 or more languages. In 2018, it opened its first foreign production hub in Madrid to target Spanish language production of drama series. The 13 000 cast, crew, and extras working on 20 Netflix original productions in Madrid exemplifies Netflix’s mantra: “produce locally and globally distribute content.”

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Additionally, it has co‐produced with the leading public television networks, BBC and BBC2 (Britain), CBC (Canada), Canal+(France) and NRK1 (Norway) – former state bastions of protectionism against the incursion of American media. The co‐production agreements mean that Netflix gets the right to release the series to “the rest of world” in exchange for partial funding. Foreign producers are questioning whether this is a good deal, given they usually contribute three‐fourths of the costs. Netflix’s global co‐productions have caused TV companies in other countries to think increasingly about the worldwide reach of streaming and their own need to co‐produce with other European TV companies to rival the standards set by Netflix’s expensive productions due to its deep pockets, something independent film producers have done for decades. But the European experience of Netflix can be read at least two ways. Some European industry people see Netflix’s spending as rescuing dying TV industries. For example, it co‐financed a $28 million Medici: Masters of Florence in 2016 and the series gave the sagging state TV network RAI 25% of the audience – a substantial boost. According to Variety, the head at Lux Vide studio in Rome “hopes ’Medici’ will be the trailblazer for a new TV genre hailing from Italy that he calls ’Mediterranean drama,’” and, “Mining this rich material with bigger budgets, the right skill sets and a global outlook can become ’the starting point for something completely new in high‐end TV’” (Vivarelli 2018). Nevertheless, other European broadcasters fear the loss of their audience due to the ease, technological prowess, and relative high budgets on the Netflix’s platform. For example, Netflix’s The Crown cost $130 million for a 10‐episode season, whereas Britain’s ITV Network spent $150 000 per episode for Downton Abbey (2010–2015). European TV networks have joined forces to create national streaming platforms. In France, the three most popular TV networks  –  France TV, M6, and TF1  –  have joined together to create Salto, a streaming service for its combined programs. In Germany, commercial TV ProSiebenSat.1 created Maxdome as its online streaming service by merging with Discovery Communication’s Eurosport for a VOD service. The two have invited other major German commercial and public TV networks to join the service. And in Britain the three leading broadcast networks – BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 – have signed a five‐year agreement to invest over $150 million in the existing VOD, the digital terrestrial platform Freeview, to provide live and on‐ demand TV. At one time, such mergers were prohibited by law as a form of collusion and illegal due to antitrust legislation. But these broadcast networks argue that such agreements are necessary in the face of Netflix’s and Amazon’s dominance of the European streaming market. Earlier European attempts at streaming services were severely undercut when Netflix extended into Europe. For example, the French Canal Plus’s number of streaming subscribers fell from a high of 800 000 in 2014 to 200 000 in 2018 with the arrival of Netflix (Roxborough 2018). Some Asian streaming services surpass Netflix and Amazon Prime’s presence in their respective countries. In India, Hot Star TV, a streaming and video on‐demand



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service launched by Star India, is more popular than the two leading US streamers. However, Star India is a subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, which was acquired by Disney – an example of global consolidation and continued American dominance. By 2017, Thailand (V Line), Korea (pooq and Rakuten Viki), Taiwan (iQiyi – the vast mainland China network), and Japan (Showroom) all outranked Netflix and Amazon as popular streaming services. Netflix only started to penetrate the Asia market in 2016. The high subscription rates for the American streaming services (reduced to $7–8 per month for Asia) is a barrier for countries where people earn half that much for a day’s work. (The equivalent rate would be $100–200 a month for Americans.) Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu subscription rates only work where there is a solid middle class with disposable income. Netflix has signed agreements to produce localized content in South Korea  –  one of Asia’s wealthiest countries. By contrast, poorer Asian countries lack reliable broadband. The English language basis of Netflix’s offerings causes lack of interest. Many people in Asia still prefer programs and films about their culture in their own language. In 2018, Netflix made its streaming service available to 54 countries in Africa. It hired a director of content acquisition in Amsterdam for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa with the object of sourcing local content and acquiring the rights to local films and series. The grouping of so many different countries is a problematic logic for localizing content. It must also negotiate the potentially explosive political content of local films and programs of which Netflix, as a Western company, might not be aware. (Consider the angry reaction to the depiction of Colombia in Narcos [2015–2017] by its citizens [AFP].) Netflix has already picked up films like the Nigerian box‐office hit The Wedding Party (2016) and Catching Feelings (2018), a South African romantic comedy. But it has yet to develop a significant producing presence in Africa. The main African competition is iROKO TV, often called the “Netflix of Africa.” Its success is built on its large catalog of Nigerian films, which are more popular in Africa than Hollywood films. It got the distribution rights early on in Africa to iTunes and Amazon retail. The company’s future ability to mature is based on the growing young consumer class in Africa. The problems still are the poor internet connection, the lack of internet penetration, and expensive internet access, with broadband prices amounting to 10 times what they are in Asia in terms of percentage of daily income. As a result, 55 % of iROKO’s and Netflix’s African subscribers come from the substantial diasporic community outside of Africa (Mohammed 2016). Nevertheless, the number of smartphones is growing in Africa and with this comes the growth of mobile TV. Netflix’s global power has led critics to question whether it is the newest embodiment of Western media imperialism. The combination of the Cannes Film Festival’s controversy about Netflix and the definition of film, and the difficulty of creating viable counternational streaming networks, has led to calls of imperialism or, as one French official, Christophe Tardieu, director of the National Cinema Center, has

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described Netflix: “the perfect representation of American cultural imperialism” (Munzenrieder 2017). Others fear that the streaming service and its global hold ­represent the rise of a new monoculture where local culture and stories will not be able to compete. Even with Netflix’s co‐production agreements with non‐American producers, a Netflix film or Netflix series will evolve in terms of style and content due to the practices of the corporation, such as its 2000 global taste communities that help define what gets produced. Consider how Apple, Ikea, Amazon, and now Netflix have come to define the global cultural experience – a serious narrowing of cultural products and experiences.

Conclusion: Where Linear TV, Cable, and Streaming Crash into Each Other The last manifestation of streaming is the return to live television. It is recreating cable as “virtual cable,” where a company streams content in real time allowing a number of broadcast channels to be mixed with subscription streaming services. In the industry, they are known as MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors). By 2018, Hulu, Sling, Fubo DirecTV Now, Roku, Apple TV and YouTube all offered live multichannel TV. They are often referred to “skinny bundles” in that they do not offer as many channels as traditional cable companies and as a result they are less expensive. They are part of a general transformation of the industry as viewers become ever more frustrated with the limits of cable and “cut the cord” as they move from cable to the internet. Live streaming was first added to Twitter in 2014. A demonstration had broken out in Taksim Square, Istanbul and one of the individuals who went on to develop the software was frustrated because he wanted to see, and not just read about, the political event. And thus, Periscope was invented – Twitter users started adding live feeds from their mobile devices to their written comments with the ability to play back the stream. Soon Meerkat, another live streaming service, allowed users to connect their Facebook and Twitter (which quickly cut off its connection to Periscope) accounts with live feeds for their followers. Here you have the democratization or “YouTube‐ing” of live TV: anyone with a phone and a Twitter account could broadcast a live moment or event such as a demonstration, an interaction with authorities, or a natural disaster as it played out instead of allowing TV news corporations to control its depiction. The professional streaming of live TV does not involve long and expensive contracts that bundle often a hundred unwanted channels together with the most sought‐after. YouTube Live TV is a multichannel live streaming service that costs three time more than Netflix per month. It features the programs of the five networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CW) with 40 streaming channels. Twitch is the live streaming of video‐game playing and an important subdivision of Amazon with its 100 million viewers and $970 million in revenues. Google via YouTube came to live TV relatively late, entering an



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established field of Direct TV Now, Hulu with Live TV, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV. Hulu with Live TV has firmly stated that its focus is still on “on‐demand commercial free viewing rather than live, ad‐supported programming.” Yet for all these live streamers, the difficulty of navigating the proliferating number of separate streaming companies with proprietary content remains a barrier to replicating cable. More importantly, Comcast declared that it had completed an arrangement to add Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube to the online content available through its set top Xfinity X1 service. Once corporate foes, the three major streaming networks may be reviving cable, and the cable company may help increase the penetration of the streaming networks into the American market. This agreement suggests that even guarded companies such as Netflix, with a robust proprietary interest in their original content, are willing to become part of cable. Perhaps the television industry is not changing so dramatically. Instead of cord‐ cutting, we have cord shifting where linear pay TV delivered via a box is exchanged for linear pay TV delivered via the internet – a shift in technology, not companies. In the end, Netflix stands as a prolific, transnational media producer and distributor. Due to its ability to cater to smaller and more diverse audiences on the internet, it has changed television and film by making TV more complex and global.

References Anderson, C. (2006). The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less Is More. New York: Hyperion. Brueggemann, T. (2017). Defending Netflix: Why the streaming giant may be the savior of indie film — editorial. IndieWire, 1 May. https://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/defending‐ netflix‐streaming‐giant‐savior‐indie‐film‐1201808694 (accessed 19 May 2018). Burgess, J. and Green, J. (2009). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Can Netflix please investors and still avoid the techlash? (2018). The Economist, 28 June. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/06/28/can‐netflix‐please‐investors‐and‐still‐ avoid‐the‐techlash (accessed 18 August 2018). Dalton, B. (2018). Steven Spielberg: "TV poses clear and present danger to filmgoers." Screen Daily, 26 March. http://www.screendaily.com/news/steven‐spielberg‐tv‐poses‐clear‐ and‐present‐danger‐to‐filmgoers/5127777.article (accessed 21 July 2018). Dyer, R. (2002). A Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. New York: Routledge. EW Staff (1998). What ranked and what tanked. Entertainment Weekly, 29 May. https://ew. com/article/1998/05/29/what‐ranked‐and‐what‐tanked (accessed 12 August 2018). Galloway, S. (2016) “Galloway on film: Challenges from Amazon and Netflix signal the end of the studio system,” Hollywood Reporter, 8 August. https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/news/amazon‐netflix‐challenge‐hollywood‐studio‐system‐916045 (accessed 17 June 2018). Huddleston Jr., T. (2017) Netflix execs defend big spending and recent show cancellations. Fortune, 1 July. https://www.fortune.com/2017/07/18/netflix‐reed‐hastings‐spending‐ cancellations (accessed 21 July 2018).

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Laporte, N. (2017). Netflix offers a rare look inside its strategy for global domination. Fast Company, 23 October. Littleton, C. (2018). How Hollywood is racing to catch up with Netflix. Variety, 21 August. https://variety.com/2018/digital/features/media‐streaming‐services‐netflix‐disney‐ comcast‐att‐1202910463 (accessed 6 August 2019). Lotz, A. (2018). We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Mohammed, O. (2016). The “Netflix of Africa” is taking on Netflix in Africa. Quartz Africa 25 January. https://www.qz.com/africa/601961/the‐netflix‐of‐africa‐is‐taking‐on‐netflix‐ in‐africa (accessed 12 June 2018). Munzenrieder, K. (2017). Netflix’s “American Cultural Imperialism” is causing quite the scandal at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. W Magazine, 17 May. https://www.wmagazine. com/story/netflix‐2017‐cannes‐film‐festival (accessed 12 May 2018). Netflix Help Center (2018). Why do TV shows and movies leave Netflix? Netflix.com. https:// help.netflix.com/en/node/60541 (accessed 25 September 2018). Olsen, M. (2018). Five female directors, many stories: a conversation on filmmaking, Netflix and more. Los Angeles Times, 30 August. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ movies/la‐ca‐mn‐sneaks‐female‐filmmakers‐netflix‐20180830‐story.html, (accessed 30 August 2018). Pozner, J. (2013). TV can make America better. Salon.com, 29 August. https://www.salon. com/2013/08/29/tv_can_make_america_better (accessed 2 July 2018). Rodriguez, A. (2017). Netflix divides its 93 million users around the world into 1,300 “taste communities.” Quartz, 22 March. https://qz.com/939195/netflix‐nflx‐divides‐its‐93‐ million‐users‐around‐the‐world‐not‐by‐geography‐but‐into‐1300‐taste‐communities (accessed 24 August 2018). Roxborough, S. (2018). Global streaming revenue set to outpace box office in 2019, study finds. Variety, 17 December. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/global‐streaming‐ revenueset‐outpace‐box‐office‐2019‐study‐finds‐1169945 (accessed 6 August 2019). Setoodeh, R. (2018). Netflix pulls out of Cannes following rule change (exclusive). Variety, 11 April. https://variety.com/2018/film/news/netflix‐cannes‐rule‐change‐ted‐sarandos‐ interview‐exclusive‐1202750473 (accessed 15 July 2018). Vivarelli, N. (2018). Will Netflix’s English‐language “Medici: Masters of Florence” rescue Italy’s TV Biz? Variety, 5 January. https://variety.com/2018/artisans/production/netflix‐ medici‐tv‐series‐1202651265 (accessed 19 June 2018). Walker, R. (2012). On YouTube, amateur is the new pro. New York Times Magazine, 28 June p. MM32. Wu, T. (2013). “House of Cards” and the decline of cable. The New Yorker, 4 February. https:// www.newyorker.com/culture/culture‐desk/house‐of‐cards‐and‐the‐decline‐of‐cable (accessed 2 July 2018).

Chapter 8

Television Advertising: Texts, Political Economy, and Ideology Matthew P. McAllister and Lars Stoltzfus‐Brown

In our era of digital and social media, of Facebook and Google, of smartphones and Netflix, there is much concern about the future of the good old‐fashioned television commercial. A 2015 article from The Guardian argued about the 30‐second television spot that “It’s doomed to be relegated to the dustbin of 20th‐century artefacts, right up there with cassette players and dial telephones” (Wolk 2015). Another ­article was equally fatalistic by listing “10 statistics illustrating the inevitable decline of TV advertising” (“10 statistics,” 2016). From a political economic perspective, long‐term trends in advertising spending do not seem good for the future of the TV commercial, at least on traditional ­television outlets like broadcasting and cable. For much of the 1990s and 2000s, the amount of money spent on TV advertising had been dominant. In 1996, for the first time in US history, television became the number one medium for advertising ­revenue, displacing newspapers which had been the top receiver of advertising ­revenue for decades before that (US Census Bureau 1998, p. 578). In 2017, however, advertisers made internet advertising the top spending category; $69.2 billion was estimated to be spent on internet advertising in the US, compared to $68.5 billion for ads on TV; worse news was that spending on TV ads decreased from the year before, from 2016 to 2017, despite a thriving US economy (Ad Age Marketing Fact Pack 2017, p. 14). If the TV commercial is declining as a singularly dominant cultural and e­ conomic force, though, it is going to go out kicking and screaming, and its historical legacy as a key influence of modern life is not in doubt. US ad spending totaling nearly $70 billion is nothing to sneeze at and made up over one‐third of all advertising spending; and globally television was still the number one advertising medium through at A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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least 2018 (Ad Age Marketing Fact Pack 2017, p. 15). Although trade journals such as Advertising Age certainly wring their hands in concern at the fast‐paced change in marketing, nevertheless plenty of articles note the centrality of the television commercial for digital‐era company branding and integrated campaigns. “Iconic brand advertising on TV isn’t going anywhere,” declared a marketing insider in June 2018 (Troiano 2018), while another that same year bluntly stated that “The most powerful [marketing] platform … is TV” (Rothwell 2018). The cost of a 30‐second Super Bowl commercial exceeded the $5 million mark for the first time in history in 2018, and the NBC broadcast of that event may have set a record for the most advertising revenue collected by a TV network in one day (Michaels 2018). Both culturally and economically, television commercials continue to be a powerful force. Even in an era of commercial‐free streaming television, the TV commercial is one of the most consistent and pervasive genres of modern culture. It is easy to see this influence for those who watch traditional television regularly – hour‐long primetime programs airing on US broadcast networks average more than 11 minutes of commercials per hour, and cable networks devote even more time to ads (Battaglio 2018). But even those who do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV are often exposed through other means. “Cord‐cutters” may see commercials through the “free” digital broadcast channels that they can access through their antenna‐enabled television sets, for example. More commonly, they will see television‐style commercials via internet advertising, YouTube videos, or shared content on social media. And, once viewed, television ads can be striking and memorable. Although designed to sell products, television commercials have a vast degree of symbolic complexity and have unintended effects beyond the selling goal; they tell stories and teach lessons about what (and who) to value and denigrate in life. However, the ads themselves may not be the most significant aspect of advertising. Economically, American television from the very beginning was driven by dollars from advertising. As a major source for television’s funding, advertising influences the nature of television programming in profound ways and has influenced how other media can alter its programming, messages, formatting, and targeted audiences to attract advertising. This chapter will review many of the key ideas of advertising as texts and as a central element in the political economy of television, focusing especially on points raised by the extensive critical literature on television commercials. How ads as texts and financing influence the ideological messages on television – what particular social groups, institutions and practices are portrayed as winners and losers; what cultural ideas are promoted or suppressed  –  will be highlighted. Although examples from many countries will be discussed, the focus in this chapter will be on research about US television advertising, in many ways the archetype broadcast advertising model that set the bar – a gaudily decorated and corrosive bar, admittedly  –  for the rest of the world’s commercial television systems.



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Beginnings of Television Advertising American television was, as Samuel notes, the “first exclusively commercial medium in history” (2001, p. xiv). By this, he means that other media – radio, newspapers, magazines – had some roots in non‐advertising revenue streams, most commonly where audience members would foot at least part of the bill. TV in the US, though, was designed from the very beginning to be advertising‐supported. In the US, before television, radio had developed the sponsorship system that television later employed (Meyers 2014). With sponsorship‐funded radio and television, advertisers and their agencies had much more immediate, operational control over US television programming than in later years. Advertisers were influential in how broadcast audiences were measured (McGuigan 2015; Meehan 2005). Advertising agencies such as J. Walter Thompson often served as program producers as one sponsor funded the production of a program and comprised the majority of commercial time. Similarly, companies used sponsorship of programs like soap operas to tout multiple brands they sold; Proctor and Gamble, in particular, was said by the 1950s to be “producing more footage of filmed entertainment than any major movie studio” (quoted in McGuigan 2015, p. 896). One implication of this was that in addition to the then‐typical 60‐second spot advertisements between program segments, early television was dominated by product selling during the programming. Such techniques as “integrated commercials” (promotional messages integrated into variety skits) and “host selling” would blur the distinctions between programming and advertisement (Alexander et  al. 1998; Samuel 2001), not unlike digital techniques that came much later like native advertising and content marketing (Einstein 2016). When factoring in host selling, product placement, on‐set sponsor signage, and the spot advertisements themselves, some early programs may have been as much as 70% promotional (Samuel 2001). Eventually, from the 1960s to the 2000s, sponsorship mainly left television for the more magazine‐style spot advertisement system, with many advertisers buying commercial time during a program, rather than being one exclusive sponsor. There are several reasons for the decline of exclusive sponsorship in television, including the high cost of producing an entire program, the increased revenue potential to the networks of the magazine system, and the increased control over programming decisions and scheduling desired by the networks. In addition, as Barnouw notes, television was sufficiently commercialized by the 1960s, with commercial logic completely dominating the medium, that the direct control offered by sponsorship was no longer needed. Barnouw argues that “A vast industry has grown up around the needs and wishes of sponsors. Its program formulas, business practices, ratings, demographic surveys have all evolved in ways to satisfy sponsor requirements” (1978, p. 4). From the 1950s, then, the genre that is the television commercial was significantly developed and refined. The advertisement as enacted on television added to the semiotic arsenal of the marketer. TV commercials used the same visual and

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audio techniques as theatrical film and television programs, but arguably with more variety, including a more demonstrative use of on‐screen graphics, sound (a mix of dialog, instrumental music, singing, and sound effects can be used in one commercial), the use of both animation and live‐action (again, sometimes in the same commercial), and variety of character modalities (off‐screen and on‐screen narrators, direct address, scripted character interactions) than most film and television programs. Television commercials are designed, first and foremost, to sell a product. Yet with the cultural and economic resources that back them, commercials have effects beyond the purchase of a product. In the 2010s, commercials on average cost about $350 000 to produce, although some high‐profile commercials may have production budgets over $1 million (“Figuring out a production budget,” 2015). With often little material difference between products to promote, commercials must grab our attention and enhance the image of the product. They use a variety of sounds, dialog, visuals, motion, and editing techniques to communicate. They must appeal to particular demographic groups and not others. As a form of storytelling, they represent people, institutions, and practices in particularly self‐serving ways (that is, to promote some elements and values over others). And they have a short time frame in which to communicate (typically 15 or 30 seconds). For these reasons, television commercials may cultivate effects beyond their immediate purpose that can have profound implications. In the next sections, two themes raised by television advertising critics will be explored: the degree to which television commercials fetishize the commodity and commercial form, and the ideological implications of representation in television ads.

Television Commercials as Commodity and Commercial Fetishism One characteristic of industrial and consumer capitalism is the fetishization of commodities. This Marxist term refers to the process in which commodities (industrially produced goods) are separated from their production contexts. Commodities in ­capitalism are fetishized when we think of them as not produced by a particular means of production (in a network of labor and owner relations), but rather as autonomous, as produced seemingly by mysterious or even magical means, and the commodity therefore takes on a symbolic life of its own. Marx did not write in our modern era of consumer culture, but nevertheless the concept of brands – and advertising’s role in symbolically constituting the meaning of brands – has extended and intensified fetishization (Jhally 1987; McAllister 2015). We think of brands not as something produced in specific industrial relations, but as items that can empower us. Raymond Williams, although not using this Marxian terminology, described this fetishizing logic of advertising by noting that the reason modern ads are effective is not because humans are hypermaterialistic. If we were purely materialistic, then ads



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themselves would not even be necessary or, at most, would just need to show the product, perhaps in especially flattering camera angles. We would simply want the product for the product’s sake. The reason ads look the way they do, though, is that “our society quite evidently is not materialistic enough” (Williams 1980, p. 185). Because humans have other needs besides the material, in order to be persuaded to purchase products, advertisers have to symbolically link other personal, social, and cultural values to the product. In the ads, the material product must be elevated beyond the material. Advertising in all media does this, but television advertising seems especially suited to the emotional linkage of products to social values. Print advertising has more space for words, so factual information and logical argument about the product are easier to incorporate in a one‐page ad than in a 30‐second commercial. Besides using sound in creative ways, television has an image advantage over audio‐ only ads in that it can use visual symbolism to link products to desirable images and emotions. Samuel (2001) argues that television commercials were so effective at linking products to happiness that this form may have revitalized the “American Dream” and the imperative of consumer culture in the United States in the 1950s, an era that followed times of economic scarcity (the Depression) and material scarcity (World War II). In television advertising, an Apple computer is not just a computer, but is a way to express your individuality and rebel against the system (Stein 2002); Nike is not just an athletic shoe, but allows you to empower yourself and “just do it” (Stabile 2000); branded pharmaceutical drugs do not just treat a condition, but promise a happier and more fulfilling life (Applequist 2016); eating a Snickers transforms you back to your true self again; drinking Dos Equis helps make you an interesting person (if not maybe the most interesting person in the world); Ford trucks assert masculinity; McDonald’s enhances parenting skills and family cohesion. The fetishization of brands on television and other media may also distract us from the realities of producing goods. With an emphasis on consumption, television commercials (and most advertising) rarely highlight the production context. So, for example, while Nike emphasized the neoliberal value of “just doing it,” it has a history of using exploitative global labor to manufacture the shoes, something that their ads avoid discussing (Stabile 2000). Sometimes a campaign may even invent a completely different production context. Keebler cookies are made by elves in trees as depicted in commercials that aired on television for 30+ years. Flo, the service representative in Progressive Insurance commercials, is shown to be a dedicated worker in a sparkling‐white Progressive Superstore, even though Progressive is an insurance company whose policies are sold either online or through independent insurance agents (McAllister et al. 2015). So, either through the celebration of the magical power of brands, or through a distorted view of production, television commercials perpetuate commodity fetishism. All advertising, print and electronic, may do these functions (even if television is especially good at it). One potential sociocultural effect of television advertising in

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particular, though, is to fetishize commercials themselves. Throughout most of modern media history, advertisements are largely seen as an annoyance, as part of the social contract of having access to free or reduced‐cost content (more on this below). Certainly, before television there were advertisements that were seen as entertaining for their own sake: clever jokes or attractive models in magazine ads, cute advertising spokescharacters, or catchy jingles in radio commercials. However, it would be the rare person who would frame a magazine ad or listen to a collection of radio jingles. Television commercials and the commercial‐friendly nature of television, though, have elevated the advertisement as a beloved form of culture. This transformation may be mostly the result of the changing prominence of commercials that air during the US National Football League Super Bowl broadcast. During the first Super Bowl broadcasts (from 1967 to 1983), the commercials were similar to those that aired during any high‐profile sports event, such as baseball’s World Series. They were guaranteed a large audience, but the ads were not particularly noteworthy. However, with the 60‐second commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer in 1984, a spectacularly lavish ad directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott and that attracted significant media attention, advertisers began to see the Super Bowl as an event to showcase especially entertaining and high‐profile commercials. Ad budgets grew, media began previewing, reviewing, and reporting on the commercials, marketing efforts such as press releases and dedicated websites grew around the ads, and surveys indicated that the number of viewers who tuned in primarily, or exclusively, for the commercials continued (and continues) to grow. Since 2004, CBS airs a television special, Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials, that is an hour‐long program that replays beloved commercials, as perhaps a key milestone for how we see Super Bowl commercials as something to look forward to, and to seek out (for a discussion of history of the Super Bowl commercial as entertainment, see McAllister and Galindo‐Ramirez 2017). Similar to how advertising can fetishize brands by removing them from a production context and creating social meanings around brands, the reframing of commercials as entertainment removes advertising from its self‐serving and persuasive context. This change has also arguably led the way for other forms of the blurring of advertising into media content, such as trends in native advertising and content marketing on the internet, where it is often difficult to determine what is an ad and what is non‐persuasive web content.

Representation in Television Commercials Another central issue of television commercials as textual systems is representation: to what extent are certain social groups systematically portrayed in ways that may enhance or undermine their social authority and agency? In this way, as with commodity fetishism, representation (in culture generally and television commercials



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specifically) is ideological: cultural images are embedded in larger social structures and hierarchies that maintain or challenge the sociocultural status quo. Sometimes the issue with representation is about under‐ or non‐representation. For example, commercials during children’s programming on the US cable network Nickelodeon tend to underrepresent girls of all races, as well as Asian and Latinx kids, as lead presenters or in voice‐overs; indigenous representation is absent completely (Peruta and Powers 2017). With other groups or contexts, there may be visibility, but the kind of representations offer troublesome images of the groups. In regards to gender identity, for example, most of the work on television commercials focus on cisgender straight women. Women in television commercials are often placed in supportive or sexualized roles, a trend that is both enduring and has been found in different national contexts (see, for example, Verhellen et al. 2016). Masculinity, too, tends to be disciplined in commercials in specific ways that reinforce a limiting, normative, and stereotypical “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 2005). Branchik and O’Leary (2016) argue that representations of gender identities and sexuality in TV advertisements can serve to reinforce negative cultural stereotypes in the name of “humor appeals.” The authors interrogate a 2006 television ad campaign by Milwaukee Beer where “a man undertaking some feminine (read ‘gay’) behavior is literally crushed to death by a gigantic beer can as punishment for the proscribed behavior” (p. 532). This was only one of several instances the authors categorize in the rise in advertisements portraying violence against gay and/or feminine men as humorous or funny. Similarly, Kluch’s (2015) research on masculinity in Old Spice advertisements reinforces that “real men” are cisgender, heterosexual, incredibly ­masculine, and able‐bodied. Clements (2017) discusses how advertisers treat transgender and non‐binary populations, using a 2016 Bud Light commercial to illustrate the performative use of marginalized bodies to sell products, even if the overarching corporation does not structurally support these bodies: Bud Light’s [ad] features cisgender actors Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen … Transgender actor Ian Harvie appears in the ad for a split second … The final lines of Bud Light’s spot more or less lay the multi‐billion dollar corporation’s intentions bare. Rogan rallies the crowd shouting, ’Beer should have labels, not people. We don’t care, we’ll sell you beer!’ Expectedly, Bud’s ’political’ motive behind supporting trans people is really just the capitalist motive: to sell more beer (Clements, para. 7–8).

Advertisements are designed to sell products and the accompanying ideology that being desirable can be equated with being a consumer, and that differences from the white imaginary are only tolerable if those embodying difference – being disabled, a person of color, LGBTQIA+, elderly, or lower‐class – are also striving for middle‐class, heteronormative, product‐driven lives. If individuals deviate from that norm, they will be symbolically punished within the ad itself.

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Similarly, with race, Crockett’s (2008) analysis of how advertisers strategically employ Black bodies found “advertisers use blackness representations to help them make claims about the product’s role as a cultural resource … [or] to make claims about the presumed viewer that emphasize themes of similarity or difference” (p. 261). Middle‐ and upper‐class Black bodies, particularly professional athletes, become associated with commodities and the constructed values around them: sneakers as status symbols, sports events as markers of masculinity, and products as sexy or exotic. Crockett argues that many advertisements are not necessarily marketed toward Black audiences, but rather use the suggestion of Blackness as a way to convey being cool, athletic, or sensual – what scholar bell hooks (1992) calls “eating the other” (p. 21). Representations of difference, then, are used to either demonize or exoticize that difference in order to reinforce the importance of a middle‐class lifestyle completely with a focus on forming one’s identity through consumption. Just as disobeying the norm can be mitigated through purchasing the “right” kind of products, so too can one become even more desirable through consumption; consumerism can even allow one to “sample” different cultures. In terms of class, the assumed “norm” is that of the middle class – this is so common in commercials that it is often invisible. Sometimes, though, television commercials will highlight class as a way to distinguish brands. McAllister and Aupperle (2017) argue that several TV commercials in the post‐recession era of 2015–2017 highlighted the superiority of upper‐class to working‐class people in the service of branding. DirecTV, for example, offered two versions of actor Rob Lowe (one a DirecTV user and the other a cable TV user) in ways that presented the non‐ DirecTV user as a lower‐class loser who worked in fast‐food or wore leather jackets. Television commercials are also a way that people may see images of others from different countries. In the United States, for example, American views of Australians may be influenced by commercials for Foster’s Beer or Outback Steakhouse that present Australians as fun loving and unconventional, even uncouth (Greiner 2001). Commercials for charities such as Christian Children’s Fund offer images of emaciated children  –  usually people of color  –  in extreme poverty, presenting the “International Other” as desperate, without agency or infrastructure, while white Americans are presented as saviors (Swiger 2002). Similarly, views of Americans in other countries may be influenced by Marlboro cigarette commercials that equate American masculinity with the ruggedly individualistic cowboy, or as especially rich and glamorous as symbolized by the appearance of Hollywood stars in commercials. Westernized values of consumption and definition of beauty may also be conveyed through commercials for globalized brands or commercials for local products that mimic global values and persuasive strategies in such countries as India, Nigeria, and South Africa (Das and Sharma 2016; Ovedele and Minor 2012). Throughout much of the world, television commercials for tourism contribute to “nation branding” efforts to present cohesive, narrow, and flattering images of the promoted nation and culture (Aronczyk 2013; Kaneva 2012).



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The Political Economy of Television Commercials: Advertising as TV Funding System In 1981, Oscar Mayer, the food brand associated with hot dogs and bologna, released a “Television Program Policy,” through their advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, to the broadcast television networks prohibiting messages in programming during which their commercials aired. The company, then, did not want their commercials associated with particular programming. Some of these prohibitions, especially the food‐centric ones, were a little eye‐rolling. No Oscar Mayer commercial should appear during • Programs in which a dog, horse, or cow is eating food; • Programs in which there is an abuse of food such as food fights; • Programs in which a character says they are a vegetarian. One could argue that the anti‐vegetarian prohibition is fairly serious in terms of limiting different worldviews and ways of being – if still an unsurprising prohibition for a hot‐dog company. However, other prohibitions were more sweeping and asserted pointedly ideological constraints: • Programs involving controversial subjects on a personal basis such as abortion, rape, alcoholism [sic], drug addiction, homosexuality, etc.; • Programs involving controversial group activities such as extremists in politics or religion; • Programs which could be viewed as anti a particular industry or activity such as nuclear‐energy or hunting (gun control), etc. (Oscar Mayer Television 1981). Other advertisers such as Proctor and Gamble had similar programming restrictions (Baker 1994). What is unknown is the extent to which these demands merely influenced where commercials appeared, or if at some level they affected the programming itself, especially if the networks suspected (or knew) that advertisers felt that way. If enough advertisers want to avoid programs that criticize nuclear power, does that mean program producers will not create programs that criticize nuclear power? If the answer is sometimes the latter, the reason for the ability of advertisers to influence programming is rooted in the political economy of television advertising. The economic logic of a simple financial transaction like buying a glass of lemonade from a child’s stand is easy to see: you are the buyer, the child is the seller, and the lemonade is the product. Television is a bit more complicated to map in this way, and this complication is due in large part to advertising’s role. As Smythe (1977) noted, because commercial television generates much of its revenues from advertising, in this system the advertisers are the “buyers,” the television networks (for national advertising) and stations/cable systems (for local) are

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the sellers, and we, the viewers, are the product: we are “the audience‐commodity.” The cost of placing a 30‐second ad during a program, after all, depends upon a mixture of the ratings for that program  –  the measure of the size and demographics of the viewership – and the type and time of program in which an ad is placed. Advertisers will purchase time on a program when this audience measure promises a sufficient audience, and by “sufficient” it is meant one that is especially consumerist. Ideally, advertisers would also like this product  – the viewership – to be in an appropriate mental/emotional state to be receptive to the messages in ads. If advertisers purchase audiences from television organizations, then what economic function do the programs serve? They are a “bribe” or “free lunch” or bait to grab the audience (Smythe 1977, p. 5). In the United States, given this subordinate economic role that programming plays, the dominance of advertising as the main revenue generator for commercial television, and the 60‐plus year entrenchment of this system, it should not be surprising that its television programming is affected by all of this. As other countries adopt a more privatized and “Americanized” television system, it is logical to assume that the economic logic of advertising will continue to shape programming worldwide as well. In fact, the advertising industry in many countries is more dependent upon television than in the United States. In the version of this chapter that appeared in the first edition of this book, seven different effects of advertising upon television content were listed and discussed. They were: • The “Don’t Bite the Hand” Effect: Avoid criticizing specific advertisers or advertising as a cultural practice. • The “Don’t Rock the Boat” Effect: Avoid controversial messages when possible, such as in the Oscar Mayer directives. • The “Conspicuous Consumption” Effect: Have programming friendly to consumption, which could include characters who live in comfortable surroundings or programs about consumption, such as cooking programs on Food Network and the general ad‐friendliness of reality television (Deery 2012). • The “That’s Entertainment” Effect: Have programming that is fast paced and filled with attention‐grabbing visuals. • The “Pardon the Interruption” Effect: Have programming designed to have commercial messages inserted in the middle of their stories. • The “Youth (and Other Advertising‐Friendly Groups) Will Be Served” Effect: Since audiences are product, advertisers want to reach consumer‐oriented audiences, including young people and white males 18–35. • The “Plugola” Effect: The insertion of specific brands into programming or even the creation of programming based on specific brands. This would include programming we would now see as very related to native advertising on digital media.



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In an era of legacy media outlets like broadcast and network television desperate for advertising money, and in the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election and the start of the Trump era, we see many of the above effects writ large. Arising from this context are two additional effects: • The “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS” Effect. The prevalence of hypercommercialization in television has an impact on every genre of programming, and this can have tangible effects in the realm of news media. In early 2016, when talking about the media circus that then‐candidate Donald Trump attracted  –  and especially the increase in ratings and political‐advertising spending (or spending by consumer goods during political programming) – CBS CEO Leslie Moonves famously quipped about Trump and the GOP (Grand Old Party) primary that year, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damned good for CBS” (Bond 2016). It was also good for candidate Trump. Using data pulled from analytics firm mediaQuant, The New York Times reported Trump earned around $2 billion of free media coverage during the 2016 presidential election cycle (Confessore and Yourish 2016). Media studies scholar Matt Jordan argues this astronomical coverage was due to the for‐profit nature of advertising‐driven media, where sensationalism sells: “while Trump scapegoats the media, he has served them well – at least, financially. Cable news organizations are expected to break records with US$2.5 billion in profits this election … CNN has earned roughly $100 million more than they’d anticipated during this election cycle – largely due to Trump” (Jordan 2016, para. 3). Trump’s familiarity with reality television and the “That’s Entertainment” effect transition seamlessly into the political realm, where constant tweets and bursts of anger create a news environment so fast‐paced it encourages citizens to stay glued to their favorite news channel at all times. Unfortunately for the political knowledge of the citizenry, in a media system where controversy and scandal result in more views, clicks, and likes – and thus, more advertising dollars – a boring truth will be subjugated to an outrageous lie. When advertisers benefit from salaciousness, even in the realm of news media, news organizations may be reticent to abandon the source of that profit (in this case, Trump), even if it means not presenting neutral, nuanced, or in‐depth rapportage. The 2016 presidential election highlighted the democratic flaws inherent in advertising‐driven political coverage, much of it led by television: media can be exploited by a charismatic politician who generates scandal, as scandal then generates articles, coverage, retweets, and advertising revenue. • The “To Boycott or Not To Boycott?” Effect Television’s reliance on advertising as a form of revenue not only affects the nature of political coverage, but can also be used for political goals by advocacy groups outside of television; groups and citizens realize the efficacy of targeting corporations to mitigate political change. For instance, Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg called for a boycott of advertisers affiliated with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham show after she mocked Hogg via Twitter. After a dozen advertisers pulled their

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commercials in response to the boycott, the “ad breaks during her 10 p.m. show, ‘The Ingraham Angle,’ were noticeably shorter than usual” (Stelter 2018, para. 6). Using boycotts to place financial pressure on media companies, politicians, and political groups demonstrates just how important advertising revenue is to many aspects of American politics, corporations, and media. Networks, of course, realize the dangers to their bottom line when consumers threaten to boycott advertisers. In September 2017, ESPN sports journalist and commentator Jemele Hill labeled then‐President Trump – not without justification – a “white supremacist” on social media platform Twitter. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the tweets “outrageous” and a “fireable offense.” ESPN reprimanded Hill for the Tweet, but did not suspend or fire her (Nakamura 2017). A month later, Hill tweeted again, this time about suggesting a potential boycott of advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys because of the team’s owner, Jerry Jones, and his hardline stand against players kneeling during the National Anthem. ESPN suspended Hill for two weeks following that tweet. Why the harsher reaction by ESPN the second time? Perhaps it was the company’s belief that the Jones‐themed tweet represented a repeat offense. Perhaps it was the context of Twitter and the overlap of the personal and the professional. But another explanation is that, in the second tweet, Hill voiced the unspeakable for media: the possibility of upsetting advertisers. As the trade publication Advertising Age suggested, “ESPN simply does too much business with these brands to allow one of its on‐air representatives to suggest that fans should act against the interests of said brands” (Crupi 2017). While boycotts can be effective at least in the short term with calling attention to issues, they rely on citizens acting like consumers and buying in to a consumption mindset even when protesting. Importantly, the boycotts are often not about disallowing corporations from donating to politicians or advertising on media, but about gearing those corporations to funnel their money elsewhere. The issue becomes less about why advertisers have so much power over programming and politics in the first place and more about viewing advertisers and corporations as potentially benevolent saviors. In fact, boycotts ask advertisers to increase their influence over media content: to use the threat of pulling money from certain programs or ideas in order to change them. Thus, boycotts may have power, but they do not get to – and may even enhance – the root of hypercommercialism within television advertising that has resulted in a profits‐driven political sphere.

The Role of Digital Media in the Future of Commercials The beginning of this chapter focused on the issue of the supposed demise of the television commercial. This predicted doom of the commercial has accompanied changes in the nature of television itself with the introduction of digital cord‐­ cutting services like Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix. Services like these are based on a subscription model wherein consumers pay a monthly or yearly fee



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to instantaneously gain access to a library of media content. This content – shows and films that originated elsewhere and original content available exclusively on that ­platform – is ostensibly free of traditional advertising breaks. Despite billing themselves as ad‐free, these corporations still have strong relationships with the world of products in a variety of ways. First, many of the backlog of programs on these services were created in the ­context of broadcast and cable network advertising‐supported television. When a viewer watches Jane the Virgin on Netflix, Modern Family on Hulu, and Mr. Robot on Amazon Prime, they see programming originally created for The CW, ABC, and USA networks respectively, which means the narrative of the programs had to account for commercial breaks at predictable times; this affects rhythms, plotting, and length in ways that do not affect programs created for non‐commercial networks. In the case of cord‐cutting subscription service Hulu, it has multiple cost plans depending on how many ads consumers are willing to view – the cheapest plan has the most advertisements. Even some programs on Hulu’s $11.99 ad‐free version “aren’t included in the Hulu No Commercials plan … These shows will still stream uninterrupted, but with a short commercial aired before and after the episode,” so even with this plan, ad‐free does not actually mean without advertisements (“Will all shows,” 2018, n.p.). Hulu’s obvious advertising presence in its ad‐free content is a slightly different approach from subscription service giant Netflix, where product placement and integration take precedence and erodes the definition of “commercial‐free.” Branded Entertainment Network (BEN), an advertising agency started by Bill Gates, frequently works with Netflix: “The company helped facilitate the ‘Stranger Things’ [Kentucky Fried Chicken] deal, as well as others including Tin Cup Whisky in ‘Jessica Jones’ and GMC [vehicles] in ‘Queer Eye’ … BEN’s research shows 92 percent of the top 25 streaming shows had at least one product placement [in 2017]” (Castillo 2018, para. 13). The aforementioned shows are all Netflix‐produced content, so the strong connection with advertisers may both offset production costs and demonstrate how the Conspicuous Consumption and Plugola effects weave their way into digital media. In a more explicit version of the Plugola effect of hypercommercial television, Amazon Prime Video and Japanese entertainment company Yoshimoto Kogyo teamed up in 2016 to create a completely consumption‐focused show (“Amazon Prime Video,” 2016). Upon watching content – created by Yoshimoto Kogyo – about Japanese luxury food, Amazon Prime subscribers were then shown exclusive deals on food items present in that episode. Thus, the true goal of the show is the glorification of products under the guise of entertainment. Synergy between Amazon as retailer and Amazon as mediated content creator has unique implications for hypercommercialism: if viewers‐as‐consumers are encouraged by Amazon Prime Video to buy products featured on Amazon Prime, where are the lines between entertainment media and glorified advertisements? In fact, the future of the television commercial, and the traditional television program, will likely involve the continued integration of digital technologies to further

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combine programs, with advertising, with shopping, and with purchasing. “Addressable” commercials that target particular households over others bring niche advertising to television that has long been available on websites and social media (Handley 2017). As McGuigan (2018) documents, discourse of “t‐commerce” (for “television commerce”) and shoppability in both TV ads and programs has accompanied marketing imaginations about the medium for decades, may be facilitated further in the advanced digital era, and may even have influence the development of such functions on the internet.

Conclusion While the nature of television itself is morphing in response to the explosion of ­digital media platforms and formats, its cornerstone is still advertising and commercialism. This chapter has provided a history of how commercialism and television became inextricable, discussed the basic ideological messages about the nature of commodities and representation found in TV commercials, and moved us into the present with digital and cord‐cutting services. However, even these new forms of television still strongly rely on advertising, product placement, and promoting a consumption‐focused mindset. This not only impacts how we view entertainment; it also has serious ramifications for the political atmosphere in the US, as demonstrated by the 2016 presidential election and boycotts of advertisers who support political figures. In a system where views, clicks, and likes are more important than subversive content or depressing truths not conducive to commercialism, television’s commodifying of audiences does the citizenry a disservice. Advertising promotes a rather narrow view of what is acceptable: a lifestyle defined by and through one’s proximity to products and upward mobility. Even in advertisements that promote diversity and inclusion, they only do so if every population is invested in being an active consumer. The ongoing pressure and influence that advertising exerts on mediated life in the United States paints a somewhat bleak portrait. However, there are realms where advertisers have less power, and where citizens are pushing back against increasing hypercommercialism. Free Press is one such organization, a nonprofit focusing on raising awareness of how advertising interests shape legislation against the public interest. The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood is another nonprofit that targets problematic messages about identity and consumption in ads, as well as advertising influence in children’s programming specifically, arguing “when children adopt the values that dominate commercial culture  –  materialism, self‐indulgence, conformity, impulse buying, and unthinking brand loyalty – the health of democracy and sustainability of our planet are threatened” (“About CCFC,” 2018, para. 2). Non‐hierarchical culture jamming collective, Adbusters, provides a slightly different approach by refusing to allow advertisers and corporate sponsors to participate in its magazine production; Adbusters also seeks to “fight the mental takeover of an ever‐present ad



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industry” through its spoofs of advertising campaigns and hashtag #BuyNothingDay encouraging non‐consumption (Adbusters 2018). The Center for Media Literacy has educational units for primary and secondary schools focusing on the effects that advertisements can have. These are just a few organizations actively working against the increase of commercial culture in everyday life. If one does not want to be involved with an organization, there are still other ways to combat ads. Attaching adblockers to one’s internet browser can cause Hulu commercials to glitch and not play appropriately, disrupting advertiser intent. Being mindful of the presence of product placement or the various effects in this chapter is also a relatively simple option. Finally, voting and contacting politicians on state and federal regulations regarding advertisements and political donations is yet another tactic. There are many ways to push back against the tide of advertising culture, some of which are easily done and have low stakes. To conclude, despite the ubiquity and seeming permanence of hypercommercialism in the American mediascape, citizens do have more options than voting with one’s dollar  –  even being informed of how our media systems work is an important step forward. Advertisements ultimately aim to bring profits to the corporation producing them and promote a consumerist lifestyle. Serving the public interest and supporting a robust, critically minded citizenry may run counter to those aims, so it is up to citizens to reassert the importance of media that place a populace first.

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Kluch, Y. (2015). “The man your man should be like”: Consumerism, patriarchy and the construction of twenty‐first‐century masculinities in 2010 and 2012 Old Spice campaigns. Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture 6 (3): 361–377. McAllister, M.P. (2015). Commodity fetishism. In: The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies (eds. D.T. Cook and J.M. Ryan), 97–98. Oxford, UK: Wiley‐Blackwell. McAllister, M.P. and Aupperle, A. (2017). Class shaming in post‐recession US advertising. Journal of Communication Inquiry 41 (2): 140–156. McAllister, M.P., Cooke, T.R., and Buckley, C. (2015). Fetishizing Flo: constructing retail space and flexible gendered labor in digital‐era insurance advertising. Critical Studies in Media Communication 32 (5): 347–362. McAllister, M.P. and Galindo‐Ramirez, E. (2017). Fifty years of Super Bowl commercials, thirty‐two years of spectacular consumption. International Journal of the History of Sport 34 (1–2): 46–64. McGuigan, L. (2015). Proctor & Gamble, mass media and the making of American life. Media, Culture and Society 37 (6): 887–903. McGuigan, L. (2018). Selling Jennifer Aniston’s sweater: the persistence of shoppability in framing television’s future. Media Industries 5 (1): 1–26. Meehan, E.R. (2005). Why TV Is Not our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who’s Really in Charge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Meyers, C.B. (2014). A Word for our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio. New York: Fordham University Press. Michaels, M. (2018). The price of a 30‐second Super Bowl ad has exploded – but it may be worth it for companies. Business Insider, 25 January. http://www.businessinsider.com/ super‐bowl‐commercials‐cost‐more‐than‐eagles‐quarterback‐earns‐2018‐1. Nakamura, D. (2017). White House: ESPN’s Jemele Hill should be fired for calling Trump a “white supremacist.” The Washington Post, 13 September. https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/post‐politics/wp/2017/09/13/white‐house‐espns‐jemele‐hill‐should‐be‐ fired‐for‐calling‐trump‐a‐white‐supremacist/?utm_term=.491955e884dd. Oscar Mayer Television Programming Policy (1981). J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America (electronic database). Marlborough, UK: Adam Matthew Digital. www. amdigital.co.uk/primary‐sources/j‐walter‐thompson‐advertising‐america. Ovedele, A. and Minor, M.S. (2012). Consumer culture plots in television advertising from Nigeria and South Africa. Journal of Advertising 41 (1): 91–107. Peruta, A. and Powers, J. (2017). Look who’s talking to our kids: representations of race and gender in TV commercials on nickelodeon. International Journal of Communication 11: 1133–1148. Rothwell, J. (2018). The most powerful platform is … TV. Advertising Age, 9 April. http:// adage.com/article/the‐freewheel‐council/powerful‐platform‐tv/312961. Samuel, L.R. (2001). Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Smythe, D.W. (1977). Communications: Blindspot of Western marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1 (3): 1–27. Stabile, C.A. (2000). Nike, social responsibility, and the hidden mode of production. Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2): 186–204. Stein, S.R. (2002). The ‘1984’ Macintosh ad: cinematic icons and constitutive rhetoric in the launch of a new machine. The Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2): 169–192.

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Chapter 9

Contested Connections: Public Broadcasting and Culture in Common Graham Murdock

The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery. Williams (1989, p. 4)

The idea of a shared culture can be understood in two very different, opposed, ways. It can, and often does, refer to the values, identities, and ways of life that those in a position to impose their views promote as the defining attributes of a society or group. This directive, top‐down, impetus, constructs a “common culture” marked by essentialist categories and perimeter fences. The alternative is to think of collective meaning‐making taking place within a “culture in common,” an array of arenas of representation and expression open to everyone but continually modified and contested, as Williams puts it, “under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery.” From the outset, demands from below, from groups pressing for their voices to be heard and their lives represented within the broadcasting system, have clashed with the drive by power holders to promote their favored conceptions of the worthwhile and valuable. Corporations have pressed to integrate public institutions into the marketplace. Governments have sought to dampen social divisions by appealing to the imagined unity of the nation. This chapter reviews the ways these tensions have unfolded over the history of public broadcasting and examines its possible futures. Is it possible to mobilize digital technologies to build a new culture in common with public broadcasting at its center, or will the leading digital corporations install a dominant common culture A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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organized around the intensification of consumption? In exploring this question, I will pay particular attention to the changing situation of the BBC in Britain, the first comprehensive public broadcasting service, since it illustrates particularly clearly both the challenges and the possibilities.

Universalizing Service The idea of broadcasting is underpinned by an image taken from agricultural labor, of a sower walking a plowed field dipping her hand into a basket of seeds held in the crook of the arm and throwing them out in a broad arc to spread them as widely and evenly as possible. The radio spectrum promised to translate this model of distribution into the cultural realm by creating a public good that was non‐exclusive and non‐rival. Where cinema seats, paperback books, and many other popular cultural goods were sold as commodities for personal use, broadcast programs could be accessed and enjoyed by anyone with an aerial and receiving set without interfering with anyone else. They assembled a new and potentially inclusive virtual community. As John (later Lord) Reith, the BBC’s first Director General, noted in his 1924 book, Broadcast Over Britain, “It does not matter how many thousands there may be listening; there is always enough for others, when they wish to join in” (Reith 1924, p. 217). This potential for universality, coupled with broadcasting’s removal from the price system, promised to create a uniquely democratic form of popular communication since, as Reith noted, “There is nothing in it which is exclusive to those who pay more” (Reith 1924, pp. 217–218). In the absence of direct customer payments, however, there were only two ways to finance broadcasting services. They could be funded by public subsidies in the form of a direct grant from general funds or an earmarked tax; or they could raise revenues from advertisers wanting to reach mass audiences in their homes. The choice between these forms of funding, or the balance struck between them, had fundamental implications for the imagined communities that audiences were beckoned to join and the way they were encouraged to picture themselves as members of a social collective.

Commons and Communards Commons are clusters of resources considered essential to living sustained by practices of sharing underwritten by a culture of cooperation. Historically, most commons have been built around regulated access to the grazing and fishing rights and supplies of raw materials, particularly wood, that have enabled peasant communities to survive with a degree of self‐sufficiency. With industrialization, this possibility has been progressively closed off by commercial enclosure, prompting mass migrations into the expanding cities in search of waged work. As Marx pointed out, this



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“primitive accumulation” of previously communal resources was the essential motor that kick started capitalist expansion (Marx 1990, pp. 873–930). The commons did not disappear with urbanization. Residents developed new forms of collective organization to express and defend their shared interests and aspirations. As a consequence, in complex modern societies, everyone is a commoner and communard, as well as a citizen and consumer. People belong to multiple imagined communities offering identities anchored in dedicated rituals, narratives, and networks of mutual support. These may be communities of religious belief, locality, political conviction, shared enthusiasms, or solidarities based on shared discrimination or common interests. From the outset, broadcasters sought to use the medium’s potential for universality to incorporate these particularistic loyalties into the master identities of either consumer or citizen.

Cementing Citizenship The BBC’s early years as a public institution coincided with the final extension of the adult franchise and the struggle for a new social contract of citizenship promising universal access to the essential cultural resources required for active political and social participation; comprehensive and accurate information about contemporary events and the actions of power holders; access to frameworks of synthesis, interpretation, and explanation that convert raw information into usable knowledge; creative spaces where the full range of experiences and aspirations are represented without denigration or stereotyping; and deliberative arenas where contending accounts can be scrutinized. Faced with populations they saw as essentially ignorant and untutored, early practitioners of public broadcasting took it upon themselves to demonstrate the skills of deliberation in action. As Charles Lewis, the BBC’s first Organizer of Programmes noted, they offered the public “an opportunity they have never had before of hearing both sides of a question expounded by experts” (quoted in Smith 1974, p. 43). This stance operated as a powerful mechanism of exclusion largely confining the broadcast talk of ordinary people at home to immediate experience rather than affairs of state or intellectual controversies. Listeners were relegated to appearing as subjects for documentary investigation, contestants in entertainment shows, and “characters” in comedy programs. At the same time they were urged to embrace a conception of shared national political and social membership rooted in a studiedly selective definition of common culture.

Imagining the Nation In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the ties binding the imagined community of the nation to the administrative ensembles commanded by states were under pressure in a number of European countries, from both the tenacity of regional

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identities and the resilience of class solidarities. It was against this background that public broadcasting came to be seen as the key to cementing the primacy of the nation as a source of social solidarity that took priority over localized or sectional loyalties. Under Reith, the BBC introduced a series of invented traditions designed to knit the nation together. They included relaying the chimes of Big Ben – the clock on the Houses of Parliament – before the main daily news bulletins and broadcasting George V’s opening speech at the British Empire Exhibition, which Reith saw as having the effect of “making the nation as one man” (quoted in Scannell 2000, p. 48). Later the king was persuaded to give an annual broadcast address to the nation on Christmas Day, a tradition that has continued down to the present. These reaffirmations of imagined national social unity were supported in Britain by a definition of culture promoted by an array of publicly funded cultural institutions – museums, libraries, galleries, schools, and universities. Choices of what to display and promote were made by an expanding class of cultural intermediaries and designed to demonstrate how the defining qualities of the nation, and by extension of the Western Christian tradition, found their highest expression in works that had entered the official canon. This argument had been forcefully put by the Victorian cultural critic, Matthew Arnold, in his influential 1869 polemic, Culture and Anarchy, written in the wake of the popular agitation leading up to passing of the 1867 franchise reform bill when a largely working class crowd, denied entry to Hyde Park to hold a rally, had torn down the railings and trampled on the flower beds. In common with almost every other member of the British establishment, Arnold saw this defiance of authority as heralding mob rule. The best and perhaps the only way to avoid this, he argued, was to ensure that the working class were given every opportunity to get to know “the best that has been thought and said” (Arnold 1966, p. 6). There was a clear disciplinary impulse behind this ambition, but it was also intended as an educational project in the original Latin sense of “leading out,” opening up new horizons and experiences for those who would otherwise be denied them. “Plenty of people,” Arnold complained, “will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted … for the actual condition of the masses” (Arnold 1966, p. 69). The point was not to cater to prevailing tastes or reproduce common sense understandings, but to encourage people to reach beyond them by “diffusing, … making prevail, … carrying from end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; … to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned ….” (Arnold 1966, p. 70). Reaffirming this position, Reith was adamant that one of the BBC’s central missions was to ensure that “the wisdom of the wise and the amenities of culture are available without discrimination” (Reith 1924, p. 218). Like Arnold, he took it for granted that what constituted “wisdom” and “culture” would be defined by intellectual and creative elites. Trading on notions of the “free floating” intellectual and the



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autonomy of authorship and art helped bolster public broadcasting’s claims to ­relative autonomy from state direction, but it also opened it to accusations of paternalism. Many of those who entered public broadcasting followed Arnold in viewing their core task as constructing a ladder which people would steadily climb, moving from the lowest rungs of packaged commercial entertainment to the highest rungs of consecrated cultural artifacts. Mixed programming schedules, where light entertainment or comedy would be followed by a classic music concert or a great play, would convert them by stealth, using their existing tastes as a point of entry to something more “elevated.” This vertical map necessarily devalued vernacular cultures and lay knowledge, opening its proponents to accusations of paternalism and condescension. Audiences were invited to participate in a common culture they had no part in shaping. What its proponents presented as democratization, many of its recipients experienced as dismissal. The result was an enduring tension between the impetus to generalize expertise and the centralization of the right to communicate in the hands of accredited cultural and intellectual professionals. This generated a gathering crisis of representation in both the senses this term carries in English: as a system for allocating the right to speak in central public arenas and as an array of cultural forms through which ideas and experiences are mediated. The selective celebration of national culture and character was given added impetus by the growing cultural domination of the United States. The global ascendancy of Hollywood and the increasing popularity of jazz in the years following World War I led many observers in Europe and elsewhere to view American commercialized culture as an agent of imaginative annexation. The BBC was concerned enough in 1928 to commission an internal report on its growing control over the British entertainment industry. Entitled “The Octopus,” it floated the idea “that the national outlook and, with it, character, is gradually becoming Americanised” (quoted in Frith 1983, p. 103).

Selling Consumerism The problem critics perceived with American popular culture was not simply that it was steadily occupying more physical and imaginative space, but that it promoted an ethos of consumerism that was at odds with the cultivation of citizenship. By addressing audiences primarily as individuals pursuing self‐realization through personal choices in the marketplace, it displaced citizens’ responsibility to contribute to the quality of collective life. The culture of consumerism was advanced first in the United States. In 1913, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line process and started to mass produce his Model T motor car. With the arrival of the washing machine in 1916 and the refrigerator in 1918, new domestic vistas of comfort, convenience and opportunity opened

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up, promising that everyone could be born again, leaving behind the old struggle to maintain basic living standards and entering the domain of life styles. For most households in Europe, however, and many in the United States hit by the Great Depression, this new consumer landscape remained an unvisited country until the 1950s. Innovations in popular communication were central to installing the ideology of consumerism at the center of everyday life. The rise of cinema combined with the expansion of department stores had reorganized product appeals around display with lavish film sets and spectacular window displays presenting choices between competing commodities as immediately recognizable markers of preferred life styles and identities (see Murdock 2014). Sign values increasingly joined calculations of cost and utility as principles of evaluation and selection. Visits to cinemas and stores required preplanning and journeys into town, however. They were time‐out from everyday routines. In contrast, commercial broadcasting seamlessly integrated consumerism into everyday domestic routine. Television broadcasting had begun in the late 1930s. Regular transmissions were launched in Britain in 1936 and in the US in April 1939, but both services were interrupted by the Second World War resuming only when hostilities ceased in the late 1940s. This initial start‐up period offered opportunities to rethink the organizational arrangements set in place in the radio age, but they were not pursued and earlier structures were simply transferred. The BBC retained its national monopoly. The major American commercial networks maintained their dominance. After an initial period of recovery and reconstruction in the immediate postwar years, rising real wages and the expansion of hire purchase agreements laid the basis for a mass consumer system in Britain. For the first time, big ticket consumer goods were within the reach of working class families. Television set ownership expanded rapidly creating a major new potential arena for advertising. The principle of flow developed within American commercial programming provided the ideal technique for installing commodity display as a ubiquitous accompaniment of domestic routines. As the camera moved between advertisements and shots of the stylish kitchens and domestic interiors featured in situation comedies and soap operas, the effect was a “visceral dazzle, an absorbing sense of pleasure in the act of perusal. Costumes. Things. Things to look at. New things. The latest things” (Marling 1994, p. 5). Reliance on advertising has demonstrable cultural impacts on broadcasting. It is not simply that the need to assemble mass audiences works against minority representation and pushes programming toward the already familiar, accepted, and successful (see Einstein 2004). Or that advertisers may seek to influence programming in the interests of securing a positive selling environment. Dependency on advertising undermines the core project of providing full resources for citizenship in more fundamental ways. Firstly, by setting aside a guaranteed amount of time in every broadcast hour for product promotion, it privileges the rights of commercial speech and constricts the space available to other voices. Secondly, by inviting viewers to identify themselves primarily as consumers, with a sovereign right to realize their



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aspirations through personal acts of purchase, it offers the chance to opt out of the social contract of citizenship. Why support improved public transport if you can afford a car? Prices appear as the gateways to freedom and taxes as the denial of choice. Private interests take precedence over the public good. In the immediate postwar years in Britain, however, the emerging mass consumerism was cross‐cut by a new welfare settlement that expanded the public resources supporting citizens’ full and equal participation in social life. Witnessing the steady expansion of mass consumerism, however, business interests exerted mounting pressure on government to introduce commercial television services. They succeeded and on 30 July 1954, the Independent Television Act formally ended the BBC’s monopoly over broadcasting services. Within this new dual system, the BBC retained its sole entitlement to the license fee, while the new ITV companies were given monopoly rights to collect advertising revenues within their franchise areas in return for producing a range of public service, educational, minority, and other programs that would not have met purely commercially calculations. Advertising was strictly controlled and confined to clearly signaled slots or breaks in programming, but these restrictions were rapidly circumvented with the introduction of “advertising magazines” promoting branded goods within formats classified under information and entertainment (see Murdock 1992). This practice was later banned, but the effort to integrate commodities into the flow of programming continued with struggles over product placement and native advertising.

Contested Representations By the mid‐1970s, however, public service broadcasting was not only facing intensified competition from commercial operators, it but was confronted with a deepening crisis of representation as the monopolies of professionalism came under increasing challenge from communities of interest and mobilization demanding greater access and control over voice and visibility. Long‐standing working class and trade union complaints of exclusion and denigration were joined by social mobilizations around age, gender, and sexuality, and by struggles to negotiate post‐colonial migrations and diasporas and develop multi‐ethnic cultures based on equality of recognition and respect. Public service broadcasters responded to these proliferating constituencies of communards in two main ways. There were experiments with program forms that enlisted participants as producers and collaborators. The BBC’s Open Door and Video Diary series encouraged people to film their lives and preoccupations in ways they determined, with professional practitioners on hand to offer advice. More ambitiously, the mid‐1970s also saw gathering momentum behind proposals for the vacant fourth national channel to be allocated to a new, independent force operating as a publisher‐broadcaster commissioning its programs from a wide range of freelance producers, many of whom would have close ties with the new communards. After a heated debate, this

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vision prevailed and in 1979 Margaret Thatcher’s incoming Conservative government gave it its backing. The channel was greeted enthusiastically by radical program makers and ­movement activists, but its basic organization fitted perfectly with the conservative government’s commitment to greater marketization. The reliance on independent production broke the BBC–ITV monopoly on program‐making and opened up the sector to competition. After an initial period of radical diversification, program commissioning came to center around a limited group of major independent producers who were increasingly integrated into commercial consortia. This trend was accelerated by a shift in the collection of the advertising revenues that provide the channel’s core funding. Initially, the right to sell advertising space was granted to the ITV companies in return for an agreed annual levy paid to the channel. By placing programming at one remove from direct advertising pressure, this arrangement gave commissioning editors considerable freedom to pursue the channel’s statutory goals of providing for “tastes and interests not generally catered for by ITV” and encouraging “innovation and experiment in the forms and content of programs. This cross‐subsidy system was discontinued in 1998 and the Channel allowed to sell its own advertising, incorporating it into the mainstream of commercially competitive …. ‘Diversity,’ the lynch‐pin of its original project, disappeared from its corporate lexicon to be replaced by the vocabulary of business – ‘let the viewers decide,’ ‘risk‐taking,’ ‘product quality,’ and ‘commerce’” (see Born 2003, p. 782). Increased exposure to advertisers’ requirements fed through into commissioning decisions. In 2000, the channel introduced the pioneering and hugely successful “reality television” show, Big Brother, produced by the Dutch‐based independent Endemol. Participants were confined to a house and their interactions monitored, with the audience voting each week for the least popular housemate to be expelled. The last contestant remaining commanded a cash prize. It was the direct antithesis of the enhanced participation envisaged by channel’s original supporters. It was stage‐managed, voyeuristic, and cultivated an entrepreneurial sense of self by ­offering contestants the chance to become celebrities.

The Forward March of Marketization The channel’s commercialization was part of a wider movement to reorganize television around the institutions and animating ideology of the market. In Britain, original program production for cable relay systems, which had begun as a series of participatory community‐based experiments, was ceded to major commercial operators. Control over national satellite services, originally planned as an extension of the BBC’s remit, was transferred to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, whose Sky brand became the sole supplier. This pattern of increased commercialization was repeated across Europe. In 1980, in the 17 major Western European countries, only Italy, in a commercial



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coup organized by Silvio Berlusconi, had followed Britain and introduced a dual broadcasting system with public service channels competing with terrestrial commercial services. The remaining 15 were still public service monopolies, although only four (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium) were supported entirely out of public funds. The rest relied on a mixture of public money and advertising. By 1990, public service monopolies had disappeared completely in Western Europe and nine more countries had introduced dual systems (Brants and Siune 1992, p. 104). This concerted expansion of commercial provision was part of a more general reorientation of economic organization in response to the structural crisis of advanced capitalism in the mid‐1970s. The full employment, rising real wages, and upwards growth of the previous three decades came to a halt, opening the way for advocates of neoliberal economic models to blame the extended state intervention of the previous three decades. Their solution was to abandon the postwar social settlement. Their vocal advocacy of marketization was enthusiastically embraced by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States with rafts of policy interventions. Publicly owned assets were sold to private investors, public interest curbs on corporate activity were removed or reduced, the bargaining power of organized labor was eroded, and taxes on companies and high wealth individuals were cut, placing public spending under increasing pressure.

Capitalizing on Crisis The extractive and manufacturing industries that had formed the backbone of the first wave of industrialization were in terminal decline and increasingly commentators were talking about a new stage of capitalism centered on services, high‐tech industries and information, and cultural goods. Communications systems occupied a privileged position within this new economic vision for three reasons. Firstly, they were the main arenas for the product promotion needed to restore growth by boosting consumption. Secondly, they were increasingly significant industries and centers of innovation. Thirdly, the infrastructures and networks they operated provided the foundational resource for managing marketization on a global scale. For neoliberal theorists, all three of these key roles were most effectively pursued by private communications corporations in pursuit of profits. As a consequence, public provision was systematically dismantled and appropriated in a new enclosure movement. In Britain and Europe, telephone services had been provided by state monopolies and in the US by a publicly regulated private monopoly, AT&T. In 1984, the Conservative government in Britain privatized the state telecoms operator, British Telecom, selling a majority 50.2% stake to private investors, and AT&T’s monopoly was ended as regional services were transferred to independent operators. Over the next decade, governmental enthusiasm for open markets steadily gathered momentum. In 1994, the European Union resolved to liberalize telecoms and introduce competition across all member states. Two years later, the 1996 Telecommunications

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Act in the US was introduced with the stated aim of letting “any communications business compete in any market against any other.” In associated legislation passed the same year, the Communication Decency Act gave the emerging internet ­operators a free regulatory pass. By ruling that “no provider of an internet computer service shall be treated as the publisher of any information provided by another information content provider,” Section 230 (c) of the Act defined internet services as neutral platforms, involved solely in carriage in the same way as telephone services, with no responsibility for the content they carried. This laid the basis for a radical restructuring of the terms of competition within media markets and opened space for an unprecedented and virtually unregulated online expansion of advertising and product promotion. The structural crisis of the mid‐ and late‐1970s was in part a crisis of underconsumption. New purchases were not keeping pace with production. People needed to be persuaded to buy more, more often and to replace items more quickly (see Streeck 2016). This required two conditions to be met: a rapid extension of easily available credit allowing borrowing against future income, and a promotional system that mapped and differentiated markets more precisely, tied product appeals more securely to strategies of self‐presentation, and captured attention and engagement more comprehensively. The business models developed by the major commercial digital platforms, led by Google and Facebook, met all three of these conditions, paving the way for an unprecedented domination of popular online activity. In the early years of the internet, however, almost no one foresaw this.

Digital Enclosures Tim Berners‐Lee’s foundational vision of the World Wide Web imagined an open internet that anyone could access and navigate in any configuration they chose. Enthusiasts saw the vertical, top‐down domination of communication by ­established power centers being radically challenged and replaced by horizontal peer‐to‐peer networks of equal exchange informed by an ethos of cooperation and sharing. They envisaged everyone becoming a digital communard, contributing to a borderless flow of conversations, encounters, and vernacular production, missing completely the internet’s potential to reinforce vertical flows of corporate power. In the battle to control online participation, however, the established media corporations found themselves outflanked by new players. In July 2005, the leading social networking site, MySpace, was acquired by one of the leading global media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. A year later it had become the most visited internet site in the US. Murdoch saw it as an additional channel for directing users to the material produced by his other divisions, particularly the Fox cinema and television interests. By 2008, however, MySpace had been overtaken by Facebook, launched in 2004, and was finally sold in 2011. The difference lay in the business models. News Corp. concentrated on



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promoting prepackaged material, while Facebook capitalized on the participatory ethos of the internet to fill the site with material produced or selected by users ­generating an ever more extensive and detailed repository of personal data that can be filtered and sorted by dedicated computer programs and algorithms to develop individualized menus of content. This microtargeting, allied to the continual ­reinforcement of already formed preferences, promises advertisers who are marketing products and political groups who are promoting ideological positions, unparalleled levels of attention and engagement. This business model comprehensively undermines the three conditions for a ­culture in common identified by Raymond Williams in the quotation that heads this chapter. Experience and contact are corralled into defined and managed spaces and there is no dynamic of discovering the unexpected and challenging. As Tim Berners‐ Lee has noted, reflecting on the commercial reordering of the open internet: “‘walled gardens’ no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity, richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing Web market outside their gates” (Berners‐Lee 2010, p. 83). This drive to digital enclosure dismantles the social contract of citizenship. Recognition and respect for the entitlements of others is displaced by an insistence on the priority of personal claims. Participation is monetized to drive a cultural system defined by the pervasiveness of promotion, producing a new and ever more enveloping common culture directed by a handful of dominant corporations and organized around the imperatives of commodification.

On‐Screen and Online: Culture in Common This is not the whole story, however. As Hans Magnus Enzensberger noted in his foundational essay on emerging media, communication technologies are “leaky” and open to alternative uses (Enzensberger 1976). The impetus to commodification has been continually opposed by initiatives organized around the principles of the commons, with participants freely donating their time, energy, and expertise to create and maintain shared resources that are openly available to anyone who wishes to use them. Wikipedia is the best‐known example. At the same time, public cultural institutions have moved to use digital technologies to address long‐standing problems of reach, diversity, and engagement. Digitalizing the collections and resources held by public libraries, museums, archives, and universities eradicates the constraints on access imposed by physical location and limited display space and opens new opportunities to accommodate vernacular contributions and engage users as collaborators. Alongside the voices of cultural and political elites, the oral archive held by Britain’s national library now includes recordings of ordinary people providing a more layered and nuanced portrait of contemporary experience. This initiative, The Listening Project, a joint venture with the BBC, with the recordings being broadcast on radio before being deposited in the archive, points to the central role that public service broadcasting could play in constructing a new culture in common for the digital age

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that combines the economies of public goods and gifts to provide a comprehensive alternative to commercial provision. So far, however, this potential has not been realized. It was evident from an early point in the commercialization of the internet that public service broadcasting’s universal reach, familiarity, and continuing high levels of public trust offered a strong basis on which to build this alternative (see Murdock 2005). Programs would become gateways to arrays of related online material, deliberative fora, and collaborative projects. The core features of this new integration between what appeared on screen and what was available online were outlined in a series of papers by the BBC’s Controller of Archive Development, Tony Ageh. This new “Digital Space” as he dubbed it, would be defined by its networked configuration and its participatory and dialogical mode of operation. He envisioned the BBC acting as a first point of access to an “ever growing library of permanently available media and data held on behalf of the public by our enduring institutions. Our museums and libraries; our public service broadcasters (all of them); our public archives; government services,” (Ageh 2015) and make this “vast archival wealth of nations – our Collective Abundance – here in Europe and well beyond, accessible” (Ageh 2012, p. 9). These resources would be “freely available for anyone to use for research or for amusement, for discovery or for debate, for creative endeavour or simply for the pleasure of watching, listening or reading” (Ageh 2015). This new space would not simply offer access to professionally produced resources; it would actively “encourage and even require contributions from the whole of our society,” developing “a place where conversation thrives, where all contributions are welcomed and where every story, no matter who tells it, has value” (Ageh 2012, p. 9). The commercial internet also welcomes “all contributions” and “every story,” but its business model pushes participation toward polarization and abuse, and opens it to deliberate manipulation and falsification by interventions promoting particular political positions or reinforcing social divisions. A viable culture in common requires deliberation on contentious issues to be conducted on the basis of comprehensive and reliable information and a willingness to take account of alternative arguments. Experiments with deliberative fora – where participants are presented with the full range of available evidence and discussion is moderated to ensure civility – have operationalized this ideal, with considerable success (see Fishkin 2009). In an increasingly segmented media landscape, public broadcasting provides the only viable collective space left for the extended deliberative encounters at the heart of democratic life. A version of Ageh’s vision found its way into the policy document, “British, Bold and Creative,” that the BBC published in 2015 with a promise to “create and manage an on line platform” that, working with the country’s “most respected arts, culture and intellectual institutions,” would “provide the gold standard in accuracy, breadth, depth, debate and revelation,” offering “audiences the thrill of discovery and the reassurance of reliability” (BBC 2015, p. 70). The content stored in this digital repository would then be available for audiences to share and use for non‐commercial



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purposes. Outlining its plans for “productive cooperation” with other cultural ­institutions, however, the corporation gave pride of place to creating landmark “festivals of Britain,” an ambition with strong echoes of paternalistic constructions of national culture. With public institutions under continual pressure to justify their receipt of state subsidies, there is a clear political incentive to maximize reach and use by linking them together. But a digital culture in common also requires a comprehensive renegotiation of the relations among professional and amateur creativity, and expert and vernacular knowledge. Moving from paternalism to collaboration and sustaining a genuine alternative to the commercialized internet faces formidable barriers, however. Marketization has not only massively expanded the reach of commercial dynamics, it has pressured public cultural institutions to behave as though they were ­private corporations seeking to maximize monetary returns on their holdings. This drive to corporatization has required public broadcasters to become more entrepreneurial in pursuit of additional revenues, while immediately attracting criticism for “crowding out” commercial competitors if they are too successful. Even free services are seen by critics as anti‐competitive. The BBC’s web site is one of the most frequently ­visited in the UK, but lobbying from commercial interests has led to successive reductions in its scope. In 2011, it was cut by 25%. Corporatization has transformed the business models of every public cultural institution. Publicly subsidized theaters and opera houses have increasingly looked for opportunities to distribute their productions through paid‐for cinema exhibition, erecting barriers to full participation in a networked public commons and excluding those unable to afford the ticket prices. Over a thousand major museums and archives have joined Google’s Arts and Culture domain, taking advantage of the possibility of offering virtual tours of collections. In doing so, they have extended the company’s enclosure of the digital domain and weakened the foundations for a public culture in common. These foundations are further eroded when public institutions adopt the digital majors’ operating strategies. In response to young people’s declining attachment to BBC services, the corporation has launched a new app for mobile devices that selects “content users are likely to be interested in based on the categories they chose on sign up and what they have previously watched or listened to” (quoted in Jackson 2016). In place of unexpected encounters that extend and challenge established tastes and preconceptions, this strategy reproduces the marketing logic development by the digital majors, using audience data to erect a walled garden organized around their stated preferences. In a communications landscape being comprehensively reorganized around the interests of the leading commercial internet platforms, however, the choices facing public broadcasters go beyond immediate accommodations to decisions over ­fundamental building blocks. A digital culture in common cannot piggy‐back on protocols and technologies developed and controlled for other purposes. It needs to actively seek alternatives.

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Four preconditions for a public interest web presence are immediately evident. Firstly, there must be no product or brand promotion in any form. Secondly, navigation requires a search engine that sorts and ranks sites by their veracity and social value, not their popularity (see Andrejevic 2013). Thirdly, all material, whether professionally produced or contributed by citizens, should be freely available for non‐ commercial reuse. Fourthly, personal information generated by users’ online engagement must not be commodified and sold. Whether it remains the property of the person, to dispose of as they wish, or contributes to a data commons of information available for public purposes is a choice requiring further debate (see Bria 2018). Addressing these basic operational protocols, however, still leaves open major questions around public cultural institutions’ continuing dependence on the dominant architecture or the internet and their collusion with the negative environmental impacts of the digital devices they rely on. Confronting these issues takes debate on broadcasting futures into unfamiliar territory and raises difficult issues and hard choices, from the viability of alternative internet architectures to the ecological and social costs of the material extraction and energy generation employed in manufacturing, operating, and disposing of the machines and installations that generate and store digital culture and facilitate access (see Murdock 2018). Acknowledging the urgency of these issues returns us to the original organization of the commons, where social relations, imaginative engagement with the world, and a commitment to environmental care were bound together by collective collaborative activity. The business models of the major commercial internet platforms pull in the opposite direction. Promising unrivaled opportunities for personal choice and expression, they incorporate all activity into a cultural system comprehensively ruled by the logic of commodification directed by a handful of mega corporations. They offer a new monetized common culture that reaches into and regulates every aspect of private and public life. Public broadcasting could play a central role in countering this enclosure and constructing a new digital culture in common. Whether it will remains open to question and, more importantly, open to struggle.

References Ageh, T. (2012). The digital public space: what it is, why it matters and how we can all help develop it. Speech to the Economies of the Commons conference, Amsterdam, 11 October. Ageh, T. (2015). The BBC, the licence fee and the digital public space. Open Democracy, 3 March. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/bbc‐licence‐fee‐and‐digital‐ public‐space. Andrejevic, M. (2013). Public service media utilities: rethinking search engines and social networking as public goods. Media Information Australia 46: 123–132. Arnold, M. (1966 [1869]). Culture and Anarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BBC (2015) British, Bold, Creative: The BBC Programmes and Services in the Next Charter, BBC, London, September.



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Berners‐Lee, T. (2010). Long live the Web. Scientific American, December, pp. 80–85. Born, G. (2003). Strategy, positioning and projection in digital television: channel four and the commercialization of public service television in the UK. Media, Culture and Society 25 (6): 773–799. Brants, K. and Siune, K. (1992). Public broadcasting in a state of flux. In: Dynamics of Media Politics: Broadcast and Electronic Media in Western Europe (eds. K. Siune and W. Truetzschler), 101–115. London: Sage Publications. Bria, F. (2018). A new deal for data. In: Economics for the Many (ed. J. McDonnell), 164–173. London: Verso. Einstein, M. (2004). Broadcast network television; 1955–2003: the pursuit of advertising and the decline of diversity. Journal of Media Economics 17 (2): 145–155. Enzensberger, H.M. (1976). Constituents of a theory of the media. In: Raids and Reconstructions: Essays on Politics, Crime and Culture (ed. H.M. Enzenberger), 20–53. Londom: Pluto Press. Fishkin, J.S. (2009). When People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frith, S. (1983). The pleasures of the hearth: the making of BBC light entertainment. In: Formations of Pleasure (eds. F. Jameson, T. Eagleton, C. Kaplan and L. Mulvey), 101– 123. London: Routledge. Jackson, J. (2016). BBC “personalisation” app ties together iPlayer and other digital services. The Guardian, 19 July. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/19/bbc‐ personalisation‐app‐ties‐together‐iplayer‐and‐other‐digital‐services. Marling, K.A. (1994). As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marx, K. (1990 [1867]). Part eight: So‐called primitive accumulation. In: Capital, Volume 1 (ed. K. Marx), 873–930. London: Penguin Classics. Murdock, G. (1992). Embedded persuasions: the fall and rise of integrated advertising. In: Come on Down? Popular Media Culture (eds. D. Strinati and S. Wagg), 202–231. London: Routledge. Murdock, G. (2005). Building the digital commons: public broadcasting in the age of the internet. In: Cultural Dimensions in Public Service Broadcasting (eds. G.F. Lowe and P. Jauert), 213–230. Nordicom: Goteborg University. Murdock, G. (2014). Producing consumerism: commodities, ideologies, practices. In: Critique, Social Media and the Information Society (eds. C. Fuchs and M. Sandoval), 125–143. London: Routledge. Murdock, G. (2018). Media materialities: for a moral economy of machines. The Journal of Communication 68 (2): 359–368. Reith, J.C.W. (1924). Broadcast Over Britain. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Scannell, P. (2000). Public service broadcasting: the history of a concept. In: British Television: A Reader (ed. E. Buscombe), 45–62. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, A. (1974). British Broadcasting. Newton Abbot: David and Charles. Streeck, W. (2016). Citizens as customers: considerations on the new politics of consumption. In: How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System (ed. W. Streeck), 95–112. London: Verso. Williams, R. (1989). Culture ordinary. In: Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (ed. R. Williams), 3–18. London: Verso.

Part V

Genres

Chapter 10

Reality TV: Performances and Audiences Annette Hill

Reality TV is a container for a range of diverse programs, series, formats, and events in which elements of documentary, talent shows, game shows, talk shows, soap operas, melodramas, and sport, mix together to produce subgenres. There are a variety of styles and techniques associated with reality TV, such as non‐professional actors and celebrities, unscripted and scripted dialogue, surveillance footage and hand‐held cameras, seeing events unfold as they are happening in front of the camera, as well as more artificially constructed settings designed as social experiments and constructed to heighten emotional conflict between contestants. As we can see, reality TV is not a self‐contained genre, but rather occupies an intergeneric space between many different genres and platforms, something we will explore in this chapter.1 The rise of reality TV came at a time when networks were looking for a quick‐fix solution to economic problems within the cultural industries. Increased costs in the production of drama, sitcom, and comedy ensured unscripted, popular factual programming became a viable economic option during the 1990s. The deregulation and marketization of media industries, especially in advanced industrial states such as the United States, Western Europe, and Australasia, also contributed to the rise of reality TV, as it performed well in a competitive, format‐driven, multichannel environment. Although examples of reality TV can be found throughout the history of television, reality programs arrived en masse in prime‐time television schedules during the 1990s. Docusoaps, also called “fly‐on‐the‐wall” documentaries, “soap‐docs,” or “reality soaps,” became the “motor of primetime” during the mid‐ to late‐1990s in Britain (Phillips 1999, p. 23). There were as many as 65 docusoaps broadcast on the A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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main channels between 1995 and 1999, attracting audiences of up to 12 million. Docusoaps were so popular that the term even made it into the Oxford Dictionary (Phillips 1999, p. 22). The docusoap is a combination of observational documentary and character‐driven drama. One TV producer explained: “We’d seen that flashing bluelight documentaries could work, but many of the latest ones are factual soaps, very character‐led … nothing seems to be too mundane. It’s the technique of a soap opera brought into documentaries” (Biddiscomb 1998, p. 16). Although there had been predecessors to the docusoap, namely Paul Watson’s The Family, it was its “prioritisation of entertainment over social commentary” that made the docusoap so different from observational documentary, and perforce popular with general viewers (Bruzzi 2001, p. 132). Since its arrival in 2000 the reality game show and talent show have become international bestsellers. The birth of competitive reality formats can be traced to British producer Charlie Parsons, who developed the idea for Survivor in the early 1990s, and sold an option on the rights to Endemol, before a Swedish company bought the format and renamed it Expedition Robinson. In the meantime, Endemol had been working on a similar idea, Big Brother, the brainchild of Dutch TV producer John de Mol, who described the format as the voluntary locking up of nine people during a hundred days in a house, watched continuously by 24 television cameras, to which the viewers, at the intercession of the inmates, once in two weeks vote against one of the inmates who has to leave the house, until the last person to stay in can be called a winner. (Costera et al. 2000, p. 10)2

Big Brother was a hit. More than three million people watched the final in Holland (the program first appeared on RTL in 1999) and voted by telephone for the winner. The fact that the format worked well with converging media, such as websites and telecommunications, only added to its strong economic performance in the television marketplace. After the “smash hit” of competitive reality formats, the networks scrambled to glut the market with a winning formula of game show, observational documentary, and high drama.

Defining Reality TV We can broadly define reality TV into two distinct spaces that draw on subvariants of other genres across fact, drama, and entertainment (Hill 2015). There is the “world” space of television programs set in hospitals, airports, or hotels. Examples of the world space of reality TV can be found in early forms of factual entertainment in the 1990s, such as docusoaps, or crime and emergency programming. More recently, series such as A Very British Airline or Duck Dynasty tend to be set in real‐world spaces, and are often described as fly on the wall, docusoap, or reality soap to signal



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the mix observational style documentary with soap opera elements. The intergeneric space of these series and formats set in real‐world locations usually contains participants who are performing as themselves in recognizable social roles, such as parent or airline worker. This kind of content is often deeply banal, although that does not mean to say it is any less dramatic or less engaging to viewers. Reality TV as world space was dominant in the 1990s, and in the last few years has seen a resurgence as a prime‐time ratings hit with younger audiences. The other kind of reality content includes the “television” space of programs set in specially designed studios, houses, or locations. Examples of the television space of reality TV can be found in competitive reality such as Big Brother and Survivor, talent shows such as Pop Idol or Strictly Come Dancing, and cookery shows like MasterChef. These programs are all formats, and have proved to be very successful business models in the development of cross‐media content. This type of reality TV is usually described as shiny floor shows, talent contests, lifestyle, and factual entertainment to signal the mix of entertainment, talk shows, or sports competition within these formats. The intergeneric space of these series and formats set in created‐for‐television locations usually contains participants as contestants who are both performing as themselves and competing in a reality contest. Often these formats contain celebrities and professional dancers, singers, or music producers, or there are celebrity versions of the formats that work alongside amateur versions. This kind of reality TV is often a spectacle of excess, although this does not mean to say it is never banal. These kinds of formats have dominated global television for the past 15 years, and it is only in the last few years that the series are suffering from format fatigue.

Debating Reality TV Early academic studies into the then‐emerging phenomenon of reality TV focused primarily on the definition of the genre, and its relationship with other types of television genres. Work by Bill Nichols (1994), John Corner (1995, 1996), and Richard Kilborn (1994, 1998) on the status of reality programming within factual television is particularly useful in highlighting early debates about the factual and fictional elements of the reality genre. The issues Corner and Kilborn raised about the characteristics of reality programming and the impact of popular factual television on the future of documentary television are significant issues. Both scholars have written extensively about the changing nature of audiovisual documentation, and the role reality TV has to play in opening up debate about the truth claims of factual television (Corner 2002, 2011; Kilborn 2003). More recent work by scholars in media and cultural studies suggests that the reality genre is a rich site for analysis and debate. Holmes and Jermyn (2003) examined the economic, aesthetic, and cultural contexts to the genre. Andrejevic (2004) examined the politics of surveillance. Hill (2002, 2005, 2007, 2015) has conducted

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audience research that suggests viewers are critically engaged with the performance of selves and truth claims within reality formats. Further research can be found on issues such as gender, class, race and identity, celebrities, consumer culture, global formats and regional reception contexts, politics and populism, within the genre (see Deery 2015; Kraidy and Sender 2011; Ouellette 2014, among others). Since the early days of reality TV, cultural critics have consistently attacked the genre for being voyeuristic, cheap, sensational television. There have been accusations that reality TV contributes to the “dumbing down,” or tabloidization, of politics, society and culture. Such criticism is based on general concerns about quality standards within public service and commercial television, the attention and emotional economy in digital media, the influence of television and social media on viewers and users, the business‐ and consumer‐driven logic of the genre, and the ethics of popular television and the internet. For example, back in the early 2000s at the height of the Big Brother phenomenon articles such as “Danger: Reality TV Can Rot Your Brain,” “Ragbag of Cheap Thrills,” or “TV’s Theatre of Cruelty” were typical of the type of commentary that dominated discussion of reality programming.3 In a UK report for the Campaign for Quality Television in 2003, reality TV was singled out by Michael Tracey of the University of Colorado as the “stuff of the vulgate,” encouraging “moral and intellectual impoverishment in contemporary life.”4 Robert Thompson of Syracuse University suggests that reality TV is popular “because it’s stupid and moronic.”5 In his book, The Shadow of a Nation, the broadcaster Nick Clarke states that the popularity of reality TV has led to a dangerous blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction, and as a result reality TV has had a negative effect on modern society. As one critic commented: “In essence, this may as well be network crack: reality TV is fast, cheap and totally addictive … the shows [are] weapons of mass distraction … causing us to become dumber, fatter, and more disengaged from ourselves and society” (Conlin 2003). The mixed metaphors of drug addiction and war indicate how the reality genre was, and still is, often framed in relation to media effects and cultural, social, and moral values. These concerns have become even more vocal with the mixing of political culture and reality television, for example, the rise of Donald Trump as both a reality television personality and a political figure on the national and world stage. Scholars writing about populism in the political arena make comparisons with popular factual television, in particular reality TV and its spectacle of excess. Some critics even suggest that reality TV is in part responsible for the rise of populism and figures such as Trump. The early criticisms of the negative values of reality TV on society and politics are reused in popular debates about the masses and populism, with headlines in the news suggesting that Trump is producing his own reality show in the White House, that he is a reality TV president. Although political figures like Trump certainly acquired knowledge and skills about performance in reality TV like The Apprentice, as well as sports entertainment, assertive statements that the media is the cause of the rise of Trump need to be questioned, not least because empirical research



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suggests that reality TV and the celebrity industry are part of a wider picture of the communicative modes of political culture today (see Boyle and Kelly 2011; Hill 2015; Kraidy and Sender 2011). Reality TV may be popular, but this is not the same as saying the genre is a reason for populism. Audiences are critically engaged with reality TV, able to make distinctions between what they perceive to be good and bad reality programming. As John Ellis points out, audiences of reality programming are involved in exactly the type of debates about cultural and social values that critics note are missing from the programs themselves: “on the radio, in the press, in everyday conversation, people argue the toss over ‘are these people typical?’ and ‘are these really our values?’” (Ellis 2003). If we visualize the value of reality TV, we would see shows overshadowed by talk about them. In a representative sample of 4516 people (aged 16–65+) in Britain in 2003, only 15% thought it important that reality programs were shown on TV (Hill 2007). Still, nearly 60% admitted to watching the genre. As this person explained: there is “crap I would never watch, crap I might watch, and then crap I would definitely watch” (33‐year‐old male student). Clearly, reality TV has entertainment value for audiences, otherwise it wouldn’t dominate the prime‐time schedules in the way it does. But people don’t watch or talk about shows in the same way as drama, for example. Favorite drama series inspire devotion from dedicated fans. When a reality soap beat dramas such as Downton Abbey (ITV1, UK) and Sherlock (BBC1, UK) to a BAFTA YouTube Audience Award (2011), critics worried about the future of entertainment television. The look of shock on actor Martin Freeman’s face (Sherlock) as the award was announced became a YouTube hit in itself, with many people watching that moment rather than the award ceremony or the reality soap. One person commented after the announcement of the award: “I’m not going to say the people on The Only Way is Essex are representative of everything that’s wrong with modern culture, but I’m sure going to think it loudly” (The Guardian, 2011). A similar turning point occurred in America with Duck Dynasty (A&E, USA, 2014), when it beat American Idol and Survivor in the ratings for the key demographic of 18–59 year olds (O’Connell 2014). Göran Bolin notes the value of media can be found not so much in content but in how value is produced from that content (2011). The value of reality television often lies beyond the content on offer. For example, the value of mega format Idols is about its economic value as an international entertainment format, its aesthetic value as live entertainment for cross‐media content, and its cultural, or social, value. The connections across these different types of value are constantly shifting positions. When Simon Fuller had the idea for Pop Idol in the early 2000s, his idea became a format that was rolled out globally as a reality talent show. According to the official FremantleMedia (2014) website, Idols has been “watched by over 460 million viewers worldwide since it first launched in 2001” and “the Idols format has aired 207 series across 47 territories to date.” According to the New York Times (Stelter 2012), the 2012 season of American Idol saw the format “grappling with its own competition.” This season had an average of 19.2 million viewers, with 7.9 million viewers

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aged 18–49; the ratings were down on previous years with on average of over 20 million viewers, and ten million in the coveted 18–49 age group. Rival talent shows challenged the juggernaut, although American Idol still remained number one after 11 seasons on Fox. TV critics and social media chatter suggested the series had lost its cultural value, suffering from format fatigue. A commentator for the website Television Without Pity noted how contestants “probably can’t remember a world without ’American Idol,’” training for the competition from a young age – “it’s like watching somebody who was grown in a vat for this purpose” (Stelter 2012). For 2013, the season dropped its pole position, indicating an average audience age of around fifty: “it’s become your grandparents’ American Idol” (Halperin 2013). The ratings decline marked “the fall of the house of ’Idol’” (Carter 2014). In short, we can say reality TV has value as a cultural phenomenon in the sense that it is part of a social and media matrix. “It is not possible to understand reality TV unless it can be connected to something else” (Bignell 2005, p. 177). We can understand reality television as a broad generic phenomenon that makes a mark as popular entertainment. The fact that reality TV operates across intergeneric spaces means that it can be analyzed as individual series that have phenomenal moments that grab audience/user attention, and as a cultural phenomenon that connects with real‐world issues. In the next section, “Performance of Selves,” we analyze the issue of performance across the intergeneric spaces of reality TV.

Performance of Selves The idea of performance is multifaceted. In its most literal form as audience– performer interaction for live theater, it can mean the live performance of a theater production, for example, if you are in Leicester Square, London, there are advertisements for tickets to a theater show. Performance in this sense means the production of a show whereby a collective group is responsible for an overall performance, typically a production company with a director, producer, script writer, set designer, camera, lighting and sound operators, actors or participants, among others. Then, there is the performance of an individual playing a role, for example, critics singled out the performance of an actor in “I Can’t Sing!,” a musical based on the television series The X Factor. Performance in this sense means one person’s ability to play a role or showcase a talent, drawing on various skills and experience to produce a vocal, physical, musical, and/or emotional performance. It is worth making a distinction between acting by a performer and the production of a performance, as these practices are somewhat different. An individual usually works with other actors, dancers, or musicians, and industry professionals to collectively construct a performance. Still, an individual performer can be singled out for their part, winning an award for best actor in a new musical, for example. The production of a performance is often judged on the work of people front and back stage who deliver a successful show. There are certain professionals who claim



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more of the spotlight than others. The comedian Harry Hill was co‐writer of “I Can’t Sing!” and part of the publicity for the production; when “I Can’t Sing!” closed after less than two months at the London Palladium, it was Harry Hill’s name that was cited in the press. Still, this satirical musical did not fail because of one person, but relied on the collective production of the show and the willingness of the theater public to pay to see a live performance. The performance modes of reality TV are multifaceted in the sense that traditionally distinct groups of creative producers, participants/performers, and audiences become interconnected within the intergeneric spaces of the genre. Whilst there is some overlap between individual performers and the collective production of “I Can’t Sing!,” there are still distinctions between the actor playing the part of Simon Cowell, or the writer of the lines the actor is speaking or singing in that role. The actors and writers co‐create the performance together, following working practices within the profession. However, there are not such clear working practices for the ordinary people who audition for The X Factor: they are not all actors who are members of a professional union such as Equity and yet they do sign consent forms to appear in a televised production; they are not all given a script to read and yet they do play an established role in a talent show audition, a role familiar to them from watching previous shows. The idea of performance that is the basis of this research on audiences extends the notion of performer–audience interaction in theater to everyday life. Richard Schechner (1977/2004, p. 22) wrote that “performance is a ‘quality’ that can occur in any situation rather than a fenced off genre.” Victor Turner (1986) developed an anthropology of performance, an approach that addressed the relations between the performer and audience as a process of transformation for a group and an individual. Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998, p. 38) argue: Critical to what it means to be a member of an audience is the idea of performance. Audiences are groups of people before whom a performance of one kind or another takes place. Performance, in turn, is an activity in which the person accentuates his or her behaviour under the scrutiny of others.

They argue for an understanding of cultural performance that builds on the work of Schencher and Turner, looking at different performance modes (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998, p. 43) in public and private spaces, local and global contexts, and in particular in mediascapes, something they call mediatized performance (1998, p. 43). To add to this broad understanding of cultural or mediatized performance, is the work of Erving Goffman and his idea of the performance of the self (1959). People have a front‐stage self they knowingly perform for audiences, and they have a backstage self that offers a more authentic, or true, version of the self. Goffman contends that people use props, or resources, from everyday life, to help in the performance of the self. And as people gather these props, they construct performances of the self

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that showcase public and private personas. For Goffman, social interaction is about a face‐to‐face encounter, and a performance “may be defined as all the activity of given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants” (1959, p. 26). Performance, then, is a multifaceted activity that shifts depending on the situation. Other people become an audience, or “co‐participants” (p. 27), made up of family, friends, work colleagues, or strangers, who respond to performances and in turn can perform themselves. Thus, performance and impression management become part and parcel of how people negotiate their ­identities and social relations in daily life. Goffman is speaking of face‐to‐face encounters, so the idea of cultural or mediatized performance takes his original ­concept of the presentation of the self in everyday life into cultural and mediated situations. John Corner (2002) cautions that Goffman’s idea of routine performance is not to be lifted wholesale to reality TV. There are differences between you performing in the kitchen and performing in front of a camera crew with an expected audience of millions. But, it is a testament to Goffman’s original idea that the performance of the self becomes increasingly relevant to the development of reality TV within the media matrix (Meyrowitz 1985). Our sense of self, performance mode, and the ­reactions of others may be different, but there is a connection. Indeed, it is an argument in this chapter that perhaps more than any other academic study, performance of selves is a metatext for reality TV. From the early days of research in this genre, scholars have highlighted the ways reality TV captures on camera the banality of everyday life and the ways audiences engage with the individual and collective performances of people caught on camera (see Corner 2002; Kilborn 2003, among others). It has become a cliché now that performers in talent shows refer to themselves as former audiences – “I was a big fan, and now I can’t believe I’m here in the studio.” The double identity of audience and performer connects with the internet where YouTube videos of auditions can garner more attention than televised screenings. For example, the Susan Boyle audition of “I dreamed a dream” on Britain’s Got Talent (ITV1, UK) has over 300 million hits on YouTube. Highly performative and emotional moments in reality TV are a feature of many formats, filmed in bite‐sized form for commercial television and social media. Gary Carter (2013), an executive producer of reality TV, noted: “we underestimate what a revolution it is to be performing yourself.” He explained: “the revolutionary nature of this performance is because reality television allowed the individual participant to move from being the subject of the argument of another (typically, the film maker) to being the generator of the argument” (Carter 2014). Reality formats like Big Brother (Endemol) in the early 2000s or Pop Idol (19 and FremantleMedia) today make performing versions of yourself center stage. ‘For example, Big Brother requires a performance as “national everyperson,” while Idol requires a performance of “me as pop idol” (Carter 2014). Producers and participants create high drama and big emotions that can be circulated as “did you see



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that!” mediated moments. These big moments – a tearful audition in American Idol (Fox, USA), a broken shoulder on the ice rink in Dancing on Ice (ITV1, UK) – become mega moments, repackaged within highlights of the latest series, or circulated in social media. In turn, audiences talk about performance, multiple identities, and notions of truth and artifice, in everyday conversations and social media gossip. One young viewer succinctly described the performance of the self in reality TV as: “I just think that’s life cos at the end of the day everyone lies” (15‐year‐old schoolgirl). The fact that reality TV invites commentary on the notion “everyone lies” in a strange way opens a door to reflection on the multiple realities of the world we live in. What follows is an examination of the blurred boundaries between individual performers and collective performances by producers, participants, and audiences in reality television. Gary Carter (2013) comments on the porosity of performance in reality shows where ordinary people “come on in a performance mode. It’s a symbiotic relationship between performer and producer, and then the position of performer as former audience.” This symbiotic relationship between producer, performer, and audience is encapsulated in the casting of superfans as contestants in reality formats. The position of performer as former audience is the lifeblood of this entertainment genre.

Performance in Talent Shows In previous research on competitive reality shows various scholars have argued that performance and authenticity are essential to these formats. In John Corner’s article titled “Performing the Real” (2002, pp. 263–264), he discusses the term selving as “the central process whereby ‘true selves’ are seen to emerge (and develop) from underneath and, indeed, through, the ‘performed selves’ projected for us.” This alternation between the true self and performed self invites “thick judgemental and speculative discourse around participants’ motives, actions and likely future behaviour” (2002, p. 264). Corner’s idea of selving connects with John McGrath’s discussion of surveillance space as “selves producing selves” (2004, p. 17). Lothar Mikos et al., in their research of Big Brother in Germany, also suggested performance was key to understanding participants‐contestants (Mikos et al. 2000). Roscoe described the process of selving as “a glimmer of authenticity” within the performative frame of the format (2001). She explains how reality formats in the early 2000s invited audiences to reflect on “selves producing selves”: You heard people talk about the difference between how you are with some people and how you were at work. There was certainly moments where people would say they are just acting, and actually aren’t we all like that all of the time. This was a moment when people could talk about multiple identities in meaningful ways whilst enjoying

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themselves. This wasn’t a lecture, it wasn’t a documentary on identity, but through just enjoying the banality of everyday life people started to talk about really interesting things. Audiences were drawing from performance, postmodern theories of identity, in ways we would not have identified in advance. (Roscoe 2013)

A glimmer of authenticity might be an example of what Goffman (1959) describes as the difference between the front‐stage and backstage self. For Goffman, the backstage self can be the true self, but it can also be a consciously intimate glimpse into another identity we want to show friends, or family. Meyrowitz (1985) calls this a middle region between front stage and backstage, extending the notion of an authentic self as played out in mediated spaces. For Roscoe, reality television invited participants and audiences to play with multiple identities, reflecting on claims that all of us perform ourselves in the front stage, middle region and backstage of our mediated lives. She saw early audiences of Big Brother as exemplifying the ways people can detect a true or authentic inner self through Corner’s (2002) “thick judgemental and speculative discourse” on people’s behavior. There is a play‐off between authenticity and performance. A moment of authenticity in a performance is a crucial element of the “reality” relations between producers, participants, and audiences. An authentic moment can be a self‐conscious performance of a true self. But it can also be an exaggerated, or produced “moment” of authenticity by a knowing participant cast by reality television producers. Before competitive reality, the genre had utilized common practices in documentary, or drama, to grab audience attention through unusual actions of real people, or memorable performances by actors. This young viewer described a “did you see that!” moment in a docusoap about professional cleaners shown in 2000: “I like Life of Grime cos it’s the sort of thing you can go in next day and talk to your friends ‘Uurgh, did you see the scanky house with all that dog poo?!’” (15‐year‐old schoolboy). Another young viewer went on to describe how Big Brother producers approached the challenge of capturing audience attention: “If it’s like boring, you’re not going to watch so they’ve got to keep you interested with things you haven’t seen before, that shock or amaze you, not just, like, some man buying some sweets in a shop!” (12‐ year‐old schoolboy). As we can see from these young viewers, competitive reality added an extra dimension to the “did you see that!” moment in traditional television. It took the idea of selving and exaggerated it in order to encourage the public to watch, interact, and vote. We can call this “the moment” – the moment when someone performing themselves shows us a glimpse of an alternative reality hidden behind the façade. For the first season of Big Brother in Britain, the moment was associated with Nasty Nick’s eviction from the house. For some time viewers had been aware that Nick had been lying about his past and manipulating contestants. He was finally confronted, broke down in tears, and evicted for cheating. These female viewers (aged 18–34) commented:



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amy:  I mean it’s laughable now, but at the time it was “Oh, my god!” general:  Yeah. amy:  I phoned my friend up and I was very upset! [laughs] I went I’ve seen someone nearly have a nervous breakdown! janice:  And everybody was talking about it as well.

This episode in the first season of Big Brother exemplified the elements of ‘the moment’ that would become commonplace in competitive reality formats. There was the casting of a character audiences loved to hate. Tabloid papers called him Nasty Nick because of his blatant deception. There were the multiple identities contained within the performances of participants and the editing by producers to draw out these selves. Nick was performing a friendly version of himself in front of housemates, but producers revealed a devious backstage self to audiences. There were interactive viewers and users. The public tuned in in the millions to watch this episode and the live eviction show, voting for or against people they loved or hated; they took a closer look at the house via webcams, all the time speculating about his character, weighing up his multiple identities, and gossiping about him as a person and a contestant. And then there was the media attention given to this moment, reported in the news, featured in magazines and hotly debated on talk shows, repackaged and remediated for maximum impact. The moments in early seasons of Big Brother were genuinely something new to audiences. “There was a sense these progammes gained access to something completely different. That is the thing we talk about and remember” (Roscoe 2013). One female viewer (aged 18–34) commented on the Nasty Nick moment as: “the thing is, it’s real life … you’re not watching some soap character, sort of have some crisis over absolutely nothing. You’re watching someone’s life, aren’t you?” The authenticity of the moment was significant; this was someone’s real life set within the parameters of a reality show. And the intimacy of the moment was significant, a glimpse into a private space not often revealed to the public. These young female viewers (aged 12–15) explained: sam:  Yeah. I like felt sorry for him because of his crying but it was sort of like it made something better, it was a good thing cos … yeah, it made everyone watch it. jenny:  Yeah, but people may have feelings, it’s not like it’s a soap opera, it’s real life.

This moment of authenticity was understood as an emotional performance, a glimpse of intimate relations played out in a mediated public space. The relationship between creative producers, participants and audiences consolidated around these reality TV moments. When Gary Carter (2013) describes this relationship as symbiotic, he is referring to the co‐production of these performances. Producers consciously cast characters and created situations where a “did you see that!” moment might occur; participants consciously played up their personalities to generate memorable moments, an example of McGrath’s “selves producing selves”

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(2004, p. 17); and audiences engaged in a social performance where “everyone was talking about it.” The moment quickly became overproduced. For example, these 12–15‐year‐old schoolgirls speculated on whether Nasty Nick was a plant: jo:  I think that Big Brother planted him there … cos without that, without him, can you imagine … Big Brother would have been really boring. amy:  Yeah, they’ve got to get someone there to make it interesting. chris:  Unless they paid him, unless he was a genuine person and they paid him to, like, start making trouble. Because they weren’t even angry at him or anything, Big Brother were like “so, how do you feel?” You wouldn’t say that to someone, you’d say “What are you doing?! You’re a nutter! What are you mucking up your chances for?!”

What was genuine about these moments in competitive reality quickly degenerated into something forced that invited suspicion rather than speculation from viewers.

The Moment’s Moment A “moment’s moment” is big theater. It is the point at which the small moments we talk about in a reality show become manufactured as big memorable moments. In American Idol (Season 11, 2012) judge Randy Jackson described the emotional breakdown of contestant Joshua Ledet as a “moment’s moment.” In the semi‐ finals Jackson commented on Phillip Phillip’s performance: “Finally, in the end, in this moment, when you need moments … you had a giant moment” (Herman 2012). For Jackson, a contestant’s emotional investment in a live performance (the moment) is combined with the framing of this performance as a memorable moment within the television show and cross‐media. The moment’s moment is a strategic move by producers to deliver a big emotional performance. This moment’s moment then becomes an aggregation of moments that feature in a live show, “best of ” segments from the series, YouTube videos, and social media chatter. Gary Carter (2013) explains this feature of talent formats as “the moments full of moments  –  take all the best moments and we stitch them together into another great moment.” The moment’s moment is “faux and stagey and utterly illegitimate” (Carter 2013). There are several elements that come together in the strategic production of a moment’s moment, and an aggregation of these moments full of moments in competitive reality. First, there is the use of participants as contestants – ordinary people we have not seen before suddenly having their chance in the spotlight. Douglas Wood (2013), Head of Audience Research and Insight at Endemol Shine, commented on “the Gareth Gates moment” in the first season of Pop Idol in the UK (ITV1 2001). Gates auditioned for Idol, gathered a fanbase, and went on to become runner‐up in the live series finale:



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You started to see people trying to replicate those moments. The emotional back story, the nervous contestant, the mother waiting in the wings, the powerful audition following a false start. When you do it too many times the impact of this moment becomes lost. (Wood 2013)

This is a backstage to front‐stage performance of the self, where the audience is positioned as talent scout. Another element is the reactions of judges to auditions and live performances in talent formats. Julie Donovan (2013), Formats Consultant, noted how “you see the artificial arguments in the judging panels in the shows. When you feel like you are being over-manipulated you fall out of love with the shows.” The judges react to the supposedly authentic performance of a participant, that inner self we see a glimpse of, and manipulate the moment to the point of saturation. A third element is the big emotions that accompany these performances by participants and judges. Jane Roscoe, former Head of International Sales, SBS, Australia, (2013) explained: It is like the reveal in the makeover show. You have to have this moment, and usually in a competition it is when someone breaks down and cries, and not just a few tears, you have got to have traumatic moments. That is part of how it has evolved. These moments of extreme emotions are absolutely necessary in competition shows.

Moments of extreme emotions are experienced by participants and then fed back, like emotional reverb, through the reactions of judges, a live crowd and the viewing public. In this way, the moment’s moment is a combination of performance, reaction, and extreme emotion. It is also a trope for talent formats. Carter (2013) commented: You might call this the Susan Boyle effect, a trope that enters the system … What made Susan Boyle different was YouTube. Everyone wants a moment’s moment for YouTube. And YouTube has genre specifications because it has conventions. If what you are looking for, consciously or unconsciously as a performer, is media exposure you are going to be complicit with that trope because you know how to package yourself.

The Gareth Gates moment, “someone is coming in who you think is rubbish but you know they will be amazing,” evolves into the Susan Boyle effect where her audition in Britain’s Got Talent becomes a mega moment, remediated as a trope for YouTube. Roscoe (2013) described the trope in talent formats as the big shiny floor moment: You have a factory of formats and each one has to be bigger and better. These formats are massive productions and every little detail is controlled, the way they communicate, there is nothing left to chance. On the one hand, it might give viewers a satisfying experience, it is a really well‐made shiny floor show. On the other hand, why it feels less interesting to other viewers is that it is too manufactured, too perfect. There is very

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little space for surprise. If we talk in TV about the job to surprise and delight viewers, for formats you do that with big name judges, fireworks, a big band, but you don’t do it through those little moments that you don’t expect, like wow she is different than I expect. You get the big shiny floor moment that is manufactured, and it has to be that way because everywhere around the world they want the same experience.

The big shiny floor moment becomes branded within a format and fed into a spiral of cross‐media content. Audiences are aware of a transition from something that seems like an emotionally authentic moment to an overproduced mega moment. There is “loud and shrieky” television of the kind where “there is no structure except what the performers themselves are delivering” (Carter 2013). The Only Way is Essex or Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E! USA, 2007–) are good examples of this kind of scripted reality programming. This term usually “means that the storyline is created and the performers are ‘improvising’ in that frame, playing’ themselves”(Carter 2014). In the following discussion, viewers reflected on the manufactured moment: jack:  I think they’re looking for drama, to get the viewers to be like “oh my god, I can’t believe I just saw that.” (24‐year‐old sound technician) debora:  Like if it’s real, you can tell with certain programmes how they edit it, like, it’s very TV but it’s more like a soap. You get that kind of entertainment … (19‐year‐ old sales assistant) jessie:  Just think about it, there are those types of people who act their way through most of their lives … (21‐year‐old male artist) jon:  I mean they might, kind of, act out for the camera, but then you know they end up off camera so at some point they are just going to be themselves. (24‐year‐old unemployed person) debora:  … it’s not so much that they are just acting, it’s like the situations are set up so they will react in a certain way… fiona:  They want to portray a certain character a certain way, to push them and push them. (19‐year‐old student) debora:  Yeah, so then they’re trapped.

Here then, ordinary people performing themselves become trapped in the artificial environment of the show. When Deery (2015) talks about branding in reality TV, this is what audiences have in mind in the manufacturing of artificial personalities. Performers are acting out, producing meta versions of themselves they assume producers and audiences want to see. Around the time of the first seasons of Big Brother and Pop Idol in Britain, a common phrase used in discussion of participants‐contestants was “good luck to them.” Time and again audiences would reflect on what it must be like to participate in competitive reality, and although there was concern about a 15 minutes of fame syndrome, people would end discussions with a note of cautious optimism – good luck to them. It says something about the goodwill of audiences toward participants in



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early seasons of talent formats. By the mid‐2000s it was hard to find positive ­comments by audiences on reality TV participants. In a relatively short space of time, viewers turned on these people (see Hill 2007). Douglas Wood explained “it is that sense of desperation. Many of the contestants were no longer ordinary people. They had lost their innocence and became fame hungry, carbon‐copy talent show characters, just brazen about why they were there” (2013). This viewer summed it up: “well, it’s all sensationalizing somebody’s life even though they’re a bit of a twat” (25‐year‐old female writer). In a short space of time, audience engagement with the performance of the self in reality TV transformed from the little moments into big theatrical moments. This is the “flip side of flickers of authenticity” (Roscoe 2013). These moments are full on: “you are engaged in a completely different way, they are really big, they take up the full screen, take up the space” (Roscoe 2013). There is little room for audiences to find their own way of engaging with people, or using thick description to think through social relations. “No one is interested in ‘well, I tried my best and that is that’. You want the big tears. Small tears are not enough in telly, you want the big tears” (Roscoe 2013). The presenter of Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two (2013) described the big moments in this format as “tears, tantrums and tens.” The manufacturing of the moment’s moment is part of the reason why ratings for talent formats are in decline, and audiences and critics bemoan their predictability. For example, the second season finale of The Voice (BBC1 2013) attracted around seven million viewers on a Saturday night in Britain. On average the series had around five million viewers, down from eight million for the previous year. The official BBC blog described the final as “the greatest final in the history of finals” (BBC 2013). Guardian television critic Stuart Heritage (2013) disagreed. He led his live blog with “prop yourself up everyone. This is going to be tedious.” In many ways the moment full of moments in reality formats has become so overblown there is no space left for audiences to make these shows their own.

Conclusion There is a play‐off between performance and authenticity in reality TV. We all perform ourselves to some degree, putting on a mask to hide the “real me” from the world at large. Reality TV represents the extreme form of this everyday role playing, a mediated space for a “meta me” within the intergeneric spaces of reality TV and social media. Beverly Skeggs and Helen Wood (2012) have shown how significant reactions are to understanding reality TV: the reactions of people as they perform in the media, the reactions of critics and the public to these performances. In their study of women watching lifestyle makeover series such as Wife Swap in the mid‐2000s, the reactions of viewers highlighted how affect is central to the genre. Indeed, they argue an unintentional consequence of reality TV’s focus on emotional performance is that the

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genre makes an intervention into the production of subjectivity. For example, ­programs such as Wife Swap contain performances of personhood. Reality TV does not set out to intervene in our reactions to personhood, but through inviting audiences to assess performances they are “put in the position of the judge” and at the same time judged on their reactions to participants (2012, p. 222). They note “rarely, in other areas of our lives, do we watch the performative broken down and staged over time and space” (2012, p. 222). Reality TV’s “invitation to the viewer to unpack person performance” offers up “moments for critical attention” and thus “enables audiences to see how utterly incoherent, contradictory and unstable the production of subjectivity and normativity is” (2012, p. 222). Reality television’s focus on the performative broken down and staged over time is richly suggestive. There are people performing themselves and social roles, such as parent, pop star, or entrepreneur. Such a moment when we can watch the performance of selves and social roles relies on producers and participants allowing space for what we can call “the moment,” those personal details that we pick up on and say “did you see that!” One female viewer (21‐year‐old student) in the mid‐2000s explained: “You get these insights to their reaction, I think, and that’s what you have to feed off, that’s what you get given really, because you know that’s all you’re given.” Skeggs and Wood’s emphasis on reaction as an affective economy in the genre is precisely what this viewer notices in their moment of critical attention to performance. John Corner’s (2002) discussion of selving in Big Brother becomes especially relevant as this viewer knows their primary mode of engagement with the genre is through thick judgmental description of performance and personhood. Skeggs and Wood reject the viewer as a voyeur interpretation of the genre. They criticize ideologies of surveillance, or governance, as the primary means of analyzing reality television because their empirical evidence suggests something else. Audiences are constantly breaking down notions of watching, reacting, and performing; positioning themselves, often in contradictory ways, as both a judge of participants in reality TV and the object of judgment by others watching these shows. With the development of competitive reality as mega formats, producers and participants took the significance of reaction and turned into a trope. Think of “the Susan Boyle effect” where reactions from the judges and the live crowd to Boyle’s audition in Britain’s Got Talent were manufactured into a moment full of moments that were YouTube friendly. If you search YouTube for this first audition it comes with the tag “big surprise.” In this way, reacting to performance in reality TV has become a trope within the system. If the genre, at one point in its development, unintentionally triggered an intervention into ideologies of subjectivity, identity, and performance in everyday life, then in its current form there is an intentional manufacturing of performance and our reactions to personhood. John McGrath in 2004 argued that the practice of “selves producing selves” in theater or art, using CCTV footage or video diaries, could be a new form of consciousness for living in a surveillance space. The moment’s moment is what happens when a factory of formats manufactures this practice of selving. If all we get given in talent formats are



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big tears, big tantrums, big surprise, then what do audiences have left to feed off? Without the little moments you don’t expect in people’s performance of themselves, reality formats minimize the multiple ways we engage with this kind of media.

Notes 1 This chapter is adapted from a book‐length study, Reality TV: Key Ideas (London: Routledge, 2015). 2 This quotation was cited in translation in de Leeuw (2001). 3 See The Times, 20 December 2002, pp. 4–5; Financial Times, 11 November 1999, p. 22; The Observer, 20 August 2000, p. 15. 4 See Broadcast, 20 June 2003, p. 2. 5 Cited in “Reality TV Takes Off.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/16/ entertainment/main536804.shtml (accessed 27 June 2003).

References Abercrombie, N. and Longhurst, B. (1998). Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination. London: Sage. Andrejevic, M. (2004). Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Biddiscomb, R. (1998). Real life: real ratings. Broadcasting and Cable Television International (January), pp. 14, 16. Bignell, J. (2005). Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty‐First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bolin, G. (2011). Value and the Media: Cultural Production and Consumption in Digital Markets. London: Ashgate. Boyle, R. and Kelly, L. (2011). The Television Entrepreneurs. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Bruzzi, S. (2001). Observational (“Fly‐on‐the‐wall”) documentary. In: The Television Genre Book (ed. G. Creeber), 129–132. London: British Film Institute. Carter, G. (2013). Interview with Author, 20 November. Carter, G. (2014). Comments to Author, 19 May. Clarke, N. (2004). The Shadow of a Nation: How Celebrity Destroyed Britain. Bicester: Phoenix Publishing. Conlin, M. (2003). America’s reality TV addiction. Business Week, January 2003. Corner, J. (1995). Television Form and Public Address. London: Edward Arnold. Corner, J. (1996). The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Corner, J. (2002). Performing the real. Television and New Media 3 (3): 255–270. Corner, J. (2011). Theorising Media: Power, Form and Subjectivity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Costera Meijer, I. and Reesink, M. (eds.) (2000). Reality Soap! Big Brother en de Opkomst van het Multimediaconcept. Amsterdam: Boom.

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de Leeuw, S. (2001). Big Brother: how a Dutch format reinvented living and other stories. Unpublished paper. Deery, J. (2015). Reality TV. Cambridge: Polity. Donovan, J. (2013). Interview with Author, 16 August. Ellis, J. (2003). Big debate is happening everywhere but on TV. Broadcast, 27 June, p. 11. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Pelican Books. Halperin, S. (2013). “American Idol” finale’s ratings free fall: what went wrong. The Hollywood Reporter, 17 May. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/american‐idol‐finales‐ ratings‐free‐fall‐went‐wrong‐050000481.html. Heritage, S. (2013). The Voice Final 2013: Live blog. The Guardian 22 June. http://www. theguardian.com/tv‐and‐radio/tvandradioblog/2013/jun/22/the‐voice‐final‐ 2013‐live‐blog. Herman J (2012). American Idol castoff Joshua Ledet talks favourite moments. Hollywood Reporter, 18 May. Hill, A. (2002). Big Brother: the real audience. Television and New Media 3 (3): 323–340. Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London: Routledge. Hill, A. (2007). Restyling Factual TV: Audiences and News, Documentary and Reality Genres. London: Routledge. Hill, A. (2015). Reality TV: Key Ideas. London: Routledge. Holmes, S. and Jermyn, D. (eds.) (2003). Understanding Reality TV. London: Routledge. Kilborn, R. (1994). How real can you get?: recent developments in reality television. European Journal of Communication 9: 421–439. Kilborn, R. (1998). Shaping the real: democratization and commodification in UK‐factual broadcasting. European Journal of Communication 13 (2): 201–218. Kilborn, R. (2003). Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kraidy, M. and Sender, K. (eds.) (2011). The Politics of Reality Television: Global Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge. McGrath, J.E. (2004). Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space. London: Routledge. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mikos, L., Feise, P., Herzog, K. et al. (2000). Im Auge der Kamera: Das Fernsehereignis Big Brother. Berlin: Vistas. Nichols, B. (1994). Blurring Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. O’Connell, Michael. (2014), TV ratings: “Duck Dynasty” finale ticks up, beats all but “Modern Family.” The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live‐ feed/tv‐ratings‐duck‐dynasty‐finale‐691686. Ouellette, L. (ed.) (2014). A Companion to Reality Television. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Phillips, W. (1999). All washed out. Broadcast, 2 July, 22–23. Roscoe, J. (2001). Big Brother Australia: performing the “real” twenty‐four‐seven. International Journal of Cultural Studies 4 (1): 473–488. Roscoe, J. (2013), Interview with Author, 29 November. Schechner, R. (1977/2004). Performance Theory. London and New York: Routledge. Skeggs, B. and Wood, H. (2012). Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value. London: Routledge.



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Stelter, B. (2012). Idol grapples with its own competition. New York Times, 22 May. http:// www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/arts/television/american‐idol‐ponders‐a‐ratings‐dip‐ on‐fox.html?_r=0. Turner, V. (1986). The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ. Wood, D. (2013) Interview with Author, 16 August.

Chapter 11

Revisiting the Trade in Television News Andrew Calabrese and Christopher C. Barnes

The money’s rolling in and this is fun … I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going. Former CBS president, Les Moonves speaking about presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco in 2016 (quoted in Collins 2016)

This chapter outlines some of the structural changes and resulting new approaches to survival and competition that are afforded by technological and structural changes in how TV news is produced, distributed, and consumed, paying particular ­attention to the pervasive impact of industry restructuring and new marketing ­practices. The fact that the US television industry was a commercial one from the start, notwithstanding the very small role played by public television since the late 1960s, gives the clearest indication that commercial values have always been, and continue increasingly to be, central to determining what is “news” in the United States and how news will be presented. To the extent that the idea of “public service” has been of concern in television history at all in the United States, it has been predominantly with the understanding that the needs, interests, and desires of the public can and should be met within a commercial system. That commercially driven ethos shapes what is considered newsworthy, and it also influences how news is framed. It is with this ethos in mind that we can best understand how media policy, media industry restructuring, and technological innovation are bent to the will of a profit‐driven TV news environment. Although this chapter reflects primarily on the A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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commercial television news environment of the United States, we recognize that similar developments and challenges exist in many other countries. And although every country’s news environment has its own unique structures and internal dynamics, it is worth reflecting on how neoliberal capitalism is shaping the global media landscape. The case of the United States illustrates certain extremes, but also points to certain tendencies that are not unfamiliar in many other countries.

Industry Restructuring and “Digital Disruption” Intense interest in deregulation in the United States began in the late 1960s among largely politically marginalized think‐tanks interpreting the work of Chicago School economists. Within 10 years, market liberalization began taking effect, first during the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter, and more fully blown under Ronald Reagan, as well as during the Clinton years, and up through the present. On behalf of the media industry giants of the Reagan era, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Mark Fowler set about dismantling the Commission’s interference in the market’s ability to devise and serve the “public interest.” Fowler and his aide Daniel Brenner provided a neoliberal manifesto for the public interest with respect to the means of communication: Communications policy should be directed toward maximizing the services the public desires. Instead of defining public demand and specifying categories of programming to serve this demand, the [Federal Communications] Commission should rely on the broadcasters’ ability to determine the wants of their audience through the normal mechanisms of the marketplace. The public’s interest, then, defines the public interest. (Fowler and Brenner 1982)

In the television industry, reasons for media mergers and acquisitions have often included, but are not limited to, the desire for the vertical integration of programming and distribution. Mergers and acquisitions are also a way to enter emerging media, such as cable, internet, and direct broadcast satellites, by the process of ­simply buying companies with significant market share in these media. Based on later efforts by the FCC to further deregulate the television industry in the name of synergy, ownership concentration continued to intensify. The most significant change in television news in recent years has been the shrinking viewership for the three main commercial broadcast networks. Since the mid‐1980s, ABC, CBS, and NBC have been besieged by declining market share and increased competition from cable, satellite, and internet streaming services. As legacy television news transitions to digital formats, a number of cultural, economic, and political changes accompany shifts in public participation, practices within news organizations, and the economics of the news industry. Television news meets audience eyes in an increasing variety of everyday locations, across numerous technological devices, all



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while daily news production routines incorporate the creation of news for multiple digital platforms (Bivens 2014). It would be a mistake not to recognize the participation and collaboration that has occurred with news creation in the last ten years as citizens contribute to the news process and as journalists cooperate and share resources with one another across organizations and outlets (Downie and Shudson 2009). The networked communication between the varied groups that contribute to the news emphasizes the interactive affordances of digital technology, demonstrated by the fact that 37% of all internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented on stories, or shared news via social media posts (Bivens 2014; Purcell 2010). The economic realities of digital communication, however, including the commercial imperatives of news, the hierarchies inherent to networks, and the demanding 24/7 news cycle, all call into question the alleged democratic potential of interactivity (Barnes 2018). Though social media and digital technology continue to transform the ways in which news is communicated, consumed, produced, and disseminated, watching news on television remains the most common practice among current audiences. Most people in the United States consume their news on television, with 57% of adults receiving their news from local television (46%), cable (31%), network (30%), or some combination of the three (Mitchell et al. 2016). Americans prefer to watch the news on television instead of on the web, with radio and print trailing behind. Within these statistics, however, there is a generational split with majorities in the 50–64 (72%) and 65+ (85%) age ranges turning to television news, while younger adults (50% of 18–29‐year‐olds, and 49% 30–49‐year‐olds) often turn to online ­platforms (Mitchell et al. 2016). Survey data also demonstrate that online news video is much more often consumed on desktops and laptops (46%), as opposed to smartphones (18%) and tablets (9%), with audiences largely preferring to consume news written in text (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Though the proliferation of video on social media sites includes an increasing variety of news media, the most popular news videos often involve lifestyle and softer news content. As Antonis Kalogeropoulos and his colleagues (2016) underline, “Even for brands associated with hard news like the Telegraph, the Guardian, or the Independent, their top or second videos of Facebook engagement numbers turned out to be animal videos” (p.  12). Indeed, the most visible online news videos seem to follow the cultural, social, and technological tendencies common to the internet and social networks. The health of newspapers throughout the world is an important factor in assessing the contemporary picture of television news because these operations often ­consistently rely on print media, especially for quality investigative journalism. Even in their best years, most commercial television stations had far fewer reporters, and often focused primarily on accidents, crimes, and scheduled or staged events (Downie and Shudson 2009). Research shows that weekday circulation for newspapers experienced a circulation decline not seen since the immediate aftermath of the  Great Recession, with average weekday circulation falling 7%, while publicly traded newspaper companies experienced their greatest revenue loss also since

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the 2008–2009 recession (Barthel 2016). With the pressure of declining advertising revenues for both television news and print journalism operations, compounded by the expectation to adhere to a demanding news cycle, it is difficult to dismiss the notion that the commercial structure of contemporary news will erode journalism’s public service commitments. Journalism at the national level is oriented toward a non‐stop 24/7 breaking‐news cycle and also characterized by intensified competition between multiple news organizations covering similar stories with similar ­audiences (Nielsen 2015). The drive toward immediacy pushes against the type of historical and contextual coverage that may appear in a newspaper of record, and, at times, the demand to be first for television news operations is as strong or even stronger than the responsibility to be correct. In Rena Bivens’ (2014) ethnographic work in Canada and the United Kingdom, she describes how immediacy is the most crucial news value for television news production, and this is certainly the case when considering digital technological transformations that thrive on immediacy and brevity. It is much less common for users to venture to the websites of individual news organizations to watch videos. They instead tend to engage with videos on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where news organizations very rarely repurpose television content, and more often than not create news videos specifically for online consumption (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Taking Facebook as an example, the average length for native news videos on the site is about 75 seconds – only 8% of news videos on the network exceed 120 seconds, while over half (56%) are shorter than one minute (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). The most successful of these off‐site videos tend to be under one minute, designed to work with no sound (including overlaid text), focus on soft news, and have a strong emotional element (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). These changes to the most visible newscasts seem to have troubling implications for audiences who may not have political knowledge to understand social transformations contextually and historically. It is also clear that the affordances of mobile technology – being able to watch a video silently, while multitasking, commuting, or in a public setting – influence the content and popularity of these news videos. Software tools like Wibbitz, which automatically creates video from text, and Snappy TV, which enables existing television to be recut and easily published to multiple platforms will likely increase the proliferation of these short‐form videos (Newman 2017). One striking feature of these short‐form videos with text is how closely they resemble the format of a television commercial in terms of their flashy presentation, exceedingly brief character, and unyielding placation of the cursory online news consumer. Furthermore, these videos emerge at a time when the public relations industry continues to exert pressure on news organizations for favorable coverage of products, events, and people. Journalists in Canada and the United Kingdom view PR companies as having an “overly powerful role by pushing their stories” onto news workers (quoted in Bivens 2014, p. 100). This is not to say that journalists are not able to select only what is newsworthy from preproduced reports like video news



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releases (Bivens 2014), but the pressure from PR companies is still concerning, ­especially in the highly commercial and temporarily demanding context of contemporary journalism. Additionally, Biven’s (2014) work highlights the tendency of many current journalists changing careers to work in the PR industry, allowing for a growth of sophisticated spin tactics which increase the challenges of filtering out newsworthy material from commercial bias and obfuscation. This pattern creates a type of “revolving door” scenario among industries that, from an ethical standpoint, may corrupt the democratic aims of modern journalism. When considering the complex transformations of information technology and journalism as they relate to the expanding goals of advertisers and PR companies, we must understand the tensions and contradictions embedded in our conceptualization of freedom and practical action of everyday online activity. Digital technologies afford users interactivity when encountering television news online, and we are encouraged to do something with news, whether it is like, react, share, or comment (Bivens 2014). Individuals online remix, repurpose, create, and distribute content, all of which could fall under idealistic notions of resistance or rebellion, but these acts often occur within the framework of commercial systems where information companies collect user data and sell it to third‐party advertisers as a commodity. Because audience activity generates a commodity that is bought and sold, user‐generated content and other practical activity on the web can be viewed as a productive form of digital labor (Fuchs 2009; Smythe 2006). This type of exploitation aims for the accumulation of capital, not the free access of information and means to communication. The exploitation of internet users includes an additional wrinkle when considering user‐generated content in regards to television news. News organizations now rely on user‐generated content in the form of video, images, and audio created by citizens for news reports in the event of breaking news, tragedy, and spectacle. Key examples include the London subway bombings in July 2005, the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013, and the November 2015 attacks in Paris (Bivens 2014; Newman 2016; Pew Research Center 2016). In each of these instances, agencies and networks incorporated user‐generated material into television reports, shifting ­traditional news practices. Although these examples represent a type of public participation, we must qualify notions of citizen involvement in the creations of news with at least two caveats. First, user‐generated content usually only makes its way into newscasts during remarkable breaking news, such as a terrorist attack or a ­natural disaster, and, second, journalists still retain a heightened apprehension and skepticism of public participation, while also preserving traditional news values concerning editorial practices and professionalism (Bivens 2014). Thus, television news operations are willing to utilize stunning footage from citizens, but unwilling to allow the public to play a meaningful role in the creation or selection of what materializes as news. These practices will no doubt grow in years to come, contributing to ever‐­ increasing precarity through the production of user‐generated news content.

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One  possible indication of this development is a company called Newsflare, an online news community and marketplace for user‐generated video content (Newman 2016). It supplies video to over 200 news organizations and rewards contributors with recognition, privileges, and financial rewards (Newman 2016). Newsflare’s website explains that user videos typically earn £25–100, but if the video is “really popular” it is possible to “earn over £1000” (“How to get paid,” 2017). This, along with other freelance news opportunities, demonstrates possible avenues of further precaritization of journalism. Another future possibility may see more automated content captured by sensors, cameras, and drones, leading Nic Newman (2016) to predict, “It may not be long before we see the emergence of automated content farms that rewrite popular trending copy from multiple sources and we’ll also see more cyborg journalists in newsrooms” (p. 36). Technological tools that assist journalists in the pursuit of investigative journalism, fact‐checking, and attribution should of course play a pronounced role in contemporary journalism. But, the possibility of ­relying on these technologies in substitution for qualified reporters, researchers, photographers, and videographers should be concerning to academics and ­journalists alike. It is difficult to avoid questioning the quality of journalism in the last two years, which has seen the election of Donald Trump as US President and the rise of far‐ right extremism on a global scale. One of the most fascinating discourses after Trump’s election in the United States centered on the proliferation of fake news online. And, though fake news is not new, it is very concerning, and it is a product of modern life that should be viewed in relation to the structural, temporal, and economic features of commercial news, algorithmic web processes, and journalistic notions professionalism. Even though journalists hold strong to their values, ­professional norms, and training, we still have prominent amounts of ideologically driven and factually inaccurate news. The reason, perhaps, is not the fact that journalists hold steadfast to their authority, but that commercial imperatives, ­ ­hierarchized content online driven by profits, a demanding 24/7 breaking‐news cycle, and the related intensifying drive to spectacle, disaster, and sensationalism exert significant pressures and limitations over news practices and content. The New York Times reports that Trump received nearly $2 billion in free media coverage from the beginning of his campaign (Confessore and Yourish 2016). Not only does Trump’s ascendancy demonstrate the disturbing ramifications of commercial imperatives within the news industry, it also shows a consequence of the blurred lines between news and entertainment, long critiqued by media studies, communication, and media ecology scholars. One of Donald Trump’s political ­advisors, Roger Stone, suggests that Trump’s time on the reality television show The Apprentice was “the single greatest asset to his presidential campaign” (quoted in Berslow 2016; see also Baym 2016). This is because on the show, “He’s perfectly made up. He’s perfectly coifed. He’s perfectly lit. He’s in the high‐back chair making tough decisions. What does he look like? He looks like a president.” He continues,



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“Now I understand the elites say, ‘Oh, that’s reality TV’. Voters don’t see it that way. Television news and television entertainment: it’s all television.” In the aftermath of Trump’s election, it is likely that concerns over fake news and poor journalism will result in a renewed faith in trusted news sources (see Newman 2017). These dire consequences also present continued opportunities for media scholars, activists, and citizens to offer critiques of our commercial media system to demonstrate the value of public support for robust and antagonistic journalism that speaks truth to power. The following sections of this chapter document a contemporary illustration of television journalism in greater detail, separated into sections focusing on legacy media and digitally native news video. First, we deal with some key examples of recent political and economic transformations in media industries, focusing on media consolidation.

Regulating Toward Increased Ownership Concentration Since the 1970s, the regulatory environment for mass media and telecommunications in the United States began to tilt strongly toward ownership concentration (Horwitz 1989), a trend that appeared to reach a high‐water mark with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Clinton administration’s promise of a new wave of democratized American prosperity (Calabrese 1997). But the Bush administration’s FCC renewed and intensified a radical neoliberal assault on remaining democratic media policy principles when it sought to end regulatory separations of newspaper and broadcast ownership (Calabrese 2004). And the pattern continues to this day (Newman 2018). Consolidations have swept through local television stations in the United States with almost 300 full‐power stations changing hands at a cost of $8 billion (Potter and Masta 2014). Sinclair Broadcasting Group purchased 53 stations, followed by Tribune Media who bought 19 stations, and Gannett who purchased 17 stations (Potter and Masta 2014). After these acquisitions, Sinclair owned or provided services to 167 television stations in 77 markets, reaching almost 40% of the United States population (Potter and Masta 2014). Mergers in this sector have since slowed, with 169 station changing hands in 2014, and 101 in 2015 (Pew Research Center 2016). But, Sinclair recently came close to vastly increasing its market share with the announcement in 2017 of its intentions to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. If the deal had gone through, Sinclair would have reached roughly 70% of American household with a number of key stations in major markets such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (Ember and Merced 2017). Since 1997, Sinclair has spent more than $7 billion on takeovers, excluding the Tribune deal (Ember and Merced 2017). Although Tribune terminated its deal with Sinclair in August 2018, the possibility of further consolidation highlights the threat that media concentration poses to democracy, in particular in regard to the company’s policies surrounding news and information.

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Sinclair is notably conservative. An often cited example is their distribution of already‐produced news stories and features favorable to conservative politics, called “must runs.” Sinclair requires stations under its ownership to air these segments in their evening or morning newscasts (Farhi 2017), which often support policies, ­frustrations, and sentiments from the right and far right about contemporary ­political issues. The company requires its stations to run a daily segment from its “Terrorism Alert Desk,” videos often designed to stoke fear and hatred toward Muslims, immigrants, and refugees (Vogel 2018). Other examples include a package sent during the 2016 election campaign urging voters not to support Hillary Clinton because the Democratic Party was historically pro‐slavery and another short segment in March 2017 from the company’s vice president, Scott Livingston, who accused the national news media of publishing “fake news stories” (Ember 2017). These practices present a striking example of how ownership concentration ­mobilizes politics nationally by provoking strong emotions through sensationalism. Sinclair threatens fundamental public interest principles such as diversity and localism by encouraging a “unified ideological orientation across all of its ­ ­newscasts” (Napoli and Dwyer 2018, p. 589). Another recent merger in the current television news industry involves the Walt Disney Company acquiring 21st Century Fox for $71.3 billion, giving Disney the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire (Lee and Barnes 2018). Prior to this massive consolidation, Fox had tried to acquire Sky, a European satellite giant, for $15 billion and then again for $32 billion attempting to fulfill Murdoch’s long pursuit of the company (Mullen 2018; Scott and Steel 2017). After Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, Murdoch, bidding on behalf of Disney, lost against Comcast for control of Sky in a one‐day auction for the company in September 2018 (Lee and Barnes 2018). Following Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Murdoch retains ownership of Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business and its broadcast TV network of 28 local ­television stations in the United States (Sweney 2017). Similar to Sinclair, evidence demonstrates that Murdoch’s news holdings support conservative political policies and sentiments, including a neoliberal agenda and worldview that “celebrates market dynamics, minimal regulation of corporate activity, and attacks the supposed privileges of public institutions” (Murdock 2017, p. 107). Since the 2016 election, it is also quite clear that Fox News’s political coverage parallels, at times overtly overlapping, far right conspiracy theories and white supremacist ideology that is designed to provoke outrage among its conservative audiences through sensational content and strong emotional appeals. These practices grow out of a history of conservative media strategies to mobilize affect in an effort to cut through the information glut that permeates modern life with the ultimate goal of supporting preexisting power relations (Andrejevic 2013). One of the most significant mergers for television news is AT&T’s recent acquisition of Time Warner. AT&T is one of the largest providers of wireless, broadband, and pay TV services, while Time Warner is the third largest media conglomerate in the world, owning a major movie studio and major television studio, and is one of



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the largest owners of cable networks in the United States (Napoli and Dwyer 2018). AT&T acquired Time Warner for $85.4 billion in June of 2018 (Kang and Merced 2017; Lee and Kang 2018) despite a number of roadblocks from the Department of Justice (DOJ), which sued AT&T to block the merger in November 2017 (Fung 2018). The court ruled in favor of AT&T, arguing that the Government failed to meet its burden to establish that the merger would substantially lessen competition (United States of America v. AT&T et al. 2018). In response to the decision, DOJ filed a notice of appeal in July 2018, but a three‐judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the government’s claim that the lower court had applied anti‐trust laws incorrectly in allowing the merger to proceed (Lee and Kang, 2019). The government’s approach to the AT&T and Time Warner Merger contrasts with the quick confirmation of Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox and runs counter to how Republican administrations ­typically handle media consolidation (Kang and Lee 2018; Napoli and Dwyer 2018). One possible explanation is President Trump’s antipathy toward CNN, a company owned by Time Warner. On the campaign trail, Trump claimed his opposition of the AT&T and Time Warner merger, and even though this has softened after the election, his remarkable feud with CNN suggests a possible motivation for DOJ appealing the decision to approve the merger (Grynbaum 2017; Kang and Merced 2017). The president has repeatedly used Twitter to denounce CNN, calling it “garbage journalism,” “fraud news,” and “fake news,” a sentiment that led to him posting a video depicting him wrestling a figure with the logo of CNN for a head, occurring amidst a spike in threats against CNN employees’ safety (Grynbaum 2017; Neidig 2017). The New York Times reported that White House advisers have discussed the possibility of using the administration’s oversight of the AT&T merger to attempt to rein in CNN, but it is unclear how the president’s disdain for the network could affect the deal going forward (Grynbaum 2017). Philip Napoli and Deborah Dwyer (2018) alert us to the concerning fact that the FCC did not conduct a public interest analysis of the AT&T and Time Warner merger, arguing that because Time Warner lacked a broadcast license at the time of the deal, the agency lacked the legal authority to review the merger, a development that demonstrates how out of sync regulation is with the structural realities of our media system. Equally alarming, due to the Trump administration’s roll‐back of Net Neutrality rules, AT&T can now block or degrade access to online video services it does not own, it can prioritize the company’s own media library by either speeding up access to this content or providing financial incentive for customers to access it, and it can leverage its market position to charge new entrants to the media marketplace for access to its customers (Laroia 2018). Part of the merger and acquisitions picture for television news involves legacy media companies acquiring digital start‐ups that focus on video and social networking. In 2015, for example, NBCUniversal formed partnerships with Vox Media and Buzzfeed in an attempt to reach younger audiences (Pew Research Center 2016). News Corporation is also aggressively invested in digital start‐ups, such as the social

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video advertising platform Unruly Media (Newman 2016). Disney invested $400 million into Vice, and Turner Broadcasting invested $15 million into Mashable (Newman 2016; Stanley 2016). Overall, merger and acquisition activity produce companies that attempt to control the entire television value chain, a perspective that holds that a combination of infrastructure and content ownership is critical for competition in media markets (Evens and Donders 2016). Apart from investing in digital start‐ups, a number of other structural transitions occur as television news organizations accommodate their operations to meet the demands of the digital world. Every current cable news operation is a multiplatform organization, and each has a substantial digital presence (Pew Research Center 2016). Broadcasters seem well suited to the digital transition but researchers have found them struggling to adapt to the particular grammar of digital online video (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Local journalism, as mentioned, struggles to find its place on the internet where the markets are dominated by the largest firms and ­audiences with preferences for high‐budget content (Hindman 2011; Napoli 2016). Digital transitions place an emphasis on flexibility for contemporary news workers. Television journalists, for example, are no longer restricted to one medium and in fact are encouraged to publish across a variety of formats including blogs and social media websites (Bivens 2014). These expectations occur when individual journalists work to build up their personal “brand” on social networks and blogs (Bivens 2014). Paralleling the broader changes in news labor, journalists consistently report having to do more with fewer colleagues and resources, while careers in journalism can often include frequent job‐hopping and the casualization of labor through contracts and freelancing (Deuze and Witschge 2018).

Ratings, Audiences, and Speed There is no clearer indicator of the dictatorship of the market over political communication than the application of television ratings to the evaluation of news and public affairs programming. In an environment of constant ratings pressure, failure to deliver an audience on one “important” news story can cause heads to roll. It is a practice with a long history in entertainment television, but since the 1990s, low ratings increasingly have been used to justify the firing of news producers. Following CBS News’s poor ratings on the night that Princess Diana died, CBS reorganized its news management team with promotions and demotions, leaving the man in charge of “hard news,” Lane Venardos, to be held as the fall guy (“More Viewers Spurn the Nets” 1997). The preoccupation with quarterly ratings sweeps and short‐term ­profitability has long been a major determinant in news production and program decision‐making. Expensive news specials, which are produced with the intent to hype the ratings during sweeps periods, are the rule rather than the exception, as Chicago Tribune media critic Steve Daley noted: “Traditionally, sweeps stories run the gamut from the cynical to the downright moronic. Sex and horrific illness are



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the hallmarks of any true sweeps period, as are blatant and unvarnished plugs for a station’s own network entertainment programming” (quoted in Moritz 1989, p. 123). News remains an important feature of modern life in the United States, with more than seven in ten following national and local news somewhat or very closely, while approximately 65% follow international news with the same regularity (Mitchell et al. 2016). As mentioned, television remains the dominant medium for news, even though younger audiences consume less news through TV and more through online news websites (Mitchell et al. 2016). In general, the websites of news organizations remain text‐based – 97.5% of user time is spent consuming text – while most of the growth in news video occurs through off‐site consumption on social media websites (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Circulation through social networks can be extremely strong with certain viral videos reaching 75–100 million views, but given the fierce competition among news organization for smaller and smaller amounts of attention, contemporary news institutions struggle to maintain direct relationships with viewers online (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Because of the way that social networks and large technology companies fit into this picture, it often means that news publishers must sacrifice more control to Apple and Facebook financially and depend on them to measure the reach of news content (Pew Research Center 2016). Partly as a result of the 2016 election, cable news channels increased viewership. The Pew Research Center’s (2017) most recent data demonstrate that the three major news channels (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC) rose in primetime viewership by 55% to 4.8 million. CNN increased its viewership by 38% to an average of 712 000 viewers, while Fox News remained the leader with 1.8 million; MSNBC trailed behind both with 579 000 (Pew Research Center 2016). Combined average viewership for network newscasts remained stable with a 1% decrease (staying at about 24 million viewers) for ABC, CBS, and NBC (Pew Research Center 2017). Local news, however, declined in both primetime, daytime, total average viewership, and non‐ traditional time slots (Pew Research Center 2016). Since 2007, average audiences for late night newscasts have dropped 31%, while morning audiences have dropped by 12% and early evening by 19% (Pew Research Center 2017). These numbers occur with an increase in digital consumption of news in general, but not necessarily of  video news content. Indeed, the news organizations that suffer most from the ­current structure are local news outlets. They receive less than half of one percent of all page views in a typical market and less than one in five news page views goes to a local news source (Hindman 2011). Digital news consumption has certainly grown since the early twenty‐first century. In 2005, for example, Douglas Ahlers and John Hessen (2005) calculated that roughly 12.2% of the population in the United States substituted online news media for offline news, while for another 21.5%, online news acted as a complement rather than a substitute. Almost 38% of people claim they often get their news from digital sources, including news websites or apps (28%) and social media sites, which follows behind the 57% that prefer television for news, but exceeds audiences who primarily

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rely on radio or print (Pew Research Center 2016). More people consume news‐ related content on mobile devices than on desktops and laptops, but, as mentioned, when viewing news videos, more people prefer to watch on desktops and laptops as opposed to mobile devices (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016; Pew Research Center 2016). This seems logical because desktop and laptop computers resemble television in that they are more stationary than smartphones and tablets, and modern media consumers, especially young people, often replace a laptop or a desktop computer for a ­television in living spaces. At the same time, the proliferation and sophistication of mobile technology seem to influence changes to news video, such as those ­previously mentioned: shorter runtime and designed to be watched silently with text. Changes will continue in years to come as mobile users continue to grow. One  projection predicts that smartphones will reach around 80% of the world’s ­population by 2020 (Newman 2016), which will undoubtably continue to influence how news is created, disseminated, and consumed. Measuring online audiences presents a number of challenges, and we should view online audience data with informed skepticism. A number of scholars note how online audience measurements are generally considered unreliable given the difficulties in tracking audiences across numerous devices and the proliferation of nonhuman web traffic (Hindman 2011; Napoli 2016). Metrics such as monthly audience reach are often falsely inflated, and deceptive even when measured accurately (Hindman 2011). This, of course, has implications for the monetization of content. Typically, advertisers pay only for those members of the audience who either click on an advertisement or go the additional step and make a purchase (Napoli 2016). This complicates the already troubling situation for investigative news and original content, which relies on advertising revenue in our commercial media system. Most recent data for revenue for Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC show total revenue across the three channels increased 4% in 2018 to a total of $5.3 billion, which includes advertising and license (affiliate fees) (Pew Research Center 2019). Fox News has historically led this growth with projections significantly higher than CNN and MSNBC (Pew Research Center 2016). Advertising expenditures for evening network news programs declined by 6%, but increased by 3% for morning news programs (Pew Research Center 2019). ABC, NBC, and CBS also experienced 3% growth in ad revenues for morning news programs since 2015 (Pew Research Center 2017). Local news advertising revenue follows a cyclical pattern of increasing in election years and decreasing in non‐election years, fluctuations which have increased since the Citizens United decision, which struck down major restrictions on corporate contributions to political campaigns (Pew Research Center 2019; Matsa 2017). In 2016, local television stations saw an 11% increase to $20.6 billion since 2015. In terms of online video content, onsite monetization typically focuses on pre‐ roll ads, even though this type of strategy is offputting for users and limits audience growth (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Offsite monetization of content is challenging for new organizations given the problems with audience measurement and the



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c­ ontrol of social media and technology companies. Jesse Holcomb and Amy Mitchell (2014) explain that digital advertising in the US is a $43 billon market, but most of those dollars go to a handful of large technology firms like Facebook and Google. They estimate that new properties lay claim to, at minimum, roughly 12% of the total digital advertising market (Holcomb and Mitchell 2014). In 2018, digital advertising grew to $109 billion, an increase from $88 billion in 2017 (Pew Research Center 2019). Mobile advertising revenue grew to $71 billion from $57 billion in 2017 and video advertising increased to $30 billion, growing 36% from the previous year (Pew Research Center, 2019). Despite this growth, two barriers should be kept in mind when considering the future of news video: first, audiences tend to think that reading text‐based articles is quicker and more convenient than watching news video; and, second, some audience segments believe that video does not add anything to text‐based stories (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). Again, local news seems most imperiled by the current situation. Many local television stations continue to make cuts to already small news staffs due to dwindling ad revenues, and in the last decade there has been a steady decrease in the number of television news operations producing local news of their own (Downie and Schudson 2009). Fewer and fewer stations produce original content today. Out of the 952 United States television stations that air local newscasts, 235 air news ­produced by others, while 717 continue to produce original content, a number that has dropped 8% since 2005 (Potter and Masta 2014). This trend will likely continue with a number of potentially significant media industry mergers on the horizon. Market forces have led to a speeded‐up style of reporting. Stories are told with a faster visual pace, ever‐shorter sound‐bites, and increased use of computer graphics. Because so little information can be transmitted in shorter clips and bites, reporters must be more interpretive and more emotive than they once were. Gone are the two‐minute excerpts of politicians’ speeches in favor of eight‐second sound‐bites that are meant to exemplify the reporter’s thesis about the meaning and significance of the situation at hand. By reducing the average sound‐bite from over 43 seconds in 1968 to under nine seconds in 1988, and all but replacing campaign messages with reporter commentary, modern news has driven political candidates to seek formats that allow more direct access to audiences (Hallin 1994, p. 134). During the 1996 Presidential election campaign, candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole appeared on hitherto mostly unpresidential forums, such as talk shows, MTV and CNN’s Larry King Live. Clinton and running mate Al Gore had begun to explore such venues in the 1992 election, and similar appearances were commonplace by the 2000 election. Such appearances were not uncommon for more recent Presidential candidates. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump all appeared on Saturday Night Live during their campaigns, in addition to appearances on other entertainment programs. Another technological trend in news reporting is the growing use of amateur video, and most local news stations routinely use such ­footage. Particularly bizarre, shocking, or legitimately newsworthy footage may be shown on local stations across the country. The most famous use of such footage was

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the video recording of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police. Today, the widespread use of high‐definition smartphone video recording ­capabilities makes nearly every adult and teenager a potential freelance correspondent, ready to share footage of an extreme event they’ve witnessed, leading to the prospect of viral distribution, and even fame. Using amateur footage is often touted as community involvement, but the content of such footage is often not newsworthy, and sometimes it is staged and fraudulent. Nevertheless, video captured using smartphones and other mobile technologies, including drones and police body cams, has become a significant factor in shaping the contemporary TV news environment.

“Born‐Digital” Video News Outlets “Born‐digital” or “digitally native” news refers to organizations that began on the web. These organizations usually have an advantage over legacy media companies, but they often come under increased pressure to create more and more content with smaller staffs (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). The Pew Research Center (2016) ­qualifies the most prominent born‐digital news companies by receiving a minimum of 10 million unique viewers on average, which amounts to 40 sites, including HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Salon, and TMZ (see Table 11.1). The report shows that, in terms of all web traffic, 29 out of the 40 grew their average monthly unique visitors from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the fourth quarter of 2015, with 19 of them increasing 10% or more (Pew Research Center 2016). The majority of these sites also attracted more visitors from mobile devices than from desktops (Pew Research Center 2016). Not all of these sites offer news video as a constant feature for their content, but many, such as BuzzFeed, Mashable, Mic, and Uproxx, do, especially through social media websites. Buzzfeed perhaps leads this list with the most impact and the biggest investments (Kalogeropoulos et  al. 2016). Antonis Kalogeropoulos and his colleagues (2016) report that, “Hundreds of video producers work at BuzzFeed Motion Picture Studios Table 11.1  Born‐digital news sites with minimum of 10 million unique visitors. 247sports Aplus BleacherReport Breitbart BusinessInsider Bustle BuzzFeed CheatSheet

Cinemablend CNET DailyDot Deadspin DigitalTrends EliteDaily Engadget Gizmodo

Source: Pew Research Center (2016).

HelloGiggles HollywoodLife HuffPost IBTimes IJReview Mashable Mic OpposingViews

Qz Rare.Us RawStory Refinery29 Salon SBNation Slate TheBlaze

TheDailyBeast TheRoot TheVerge Thrillist TMZ Uproxx Upworthy Vox



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in Los Angeles where they have been perfecting long‐ and short‐form video formats that demand to be shared” (p. 29). The culture of the company is oriented toward “endless experimentation,” and hopes to move into long‐form video content and television (p. 29). As Kalogeropoulos and his fellow researchers note in their report, many of these websites orient themselves much more to lifestyle news, soft news, and entertainment. Despite the immense popularity of the most common forms of news from these outlets, as well as the growth of the digital advertising market, there is little evidence that these sites are profitable (Pew Research Center 2016). Many must consistently rely on a combination of ad sales, philanthropy, and individual giving (Pew Research Center 2016). Sticking with BuzzFeed, the company generated at least $100 million in 2014 and raised $200 million in equity from NBC Universal in 2015, but, based on recent news reports, missed its 2015 financial targets (Pew Research Center 2016). Other companies not listed attempt to offer more factual‐oriented news video, such as AJ+ and NowThis. A digital spin‐off of Al Jazeera, AJ+, focuses on content that is short, shareable, and mobile‐first, creating between 10 and 12 videos a day for Facebook (Kalogeropoulos et  al. 2016). The company delivered 2.2 billion video views in 2015, with almost half occurring as 30‐second views (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). NowThis is another popular online news video outlet. It employs experts to match content to the specific features and audience specifics for each platform: for example, hard news and breaking news do not do well on Instagram, while world news is more popular via Snapchat, which has the youngest demographic (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2016). The most common strategy for news video production from these sites involves the previously mentioned characteristics of short, silent videos with continual text overlaid, designed to elevate emotions. Beyond this, a number of other innovations will likely transform the future of news video content on the web. Perhaps the most obvious innovation is tailoring content to mobile devices. Over half of Pew’s 40 publishers offer a mobile app of some kind (Pew Research Center 2016). News companies in general, not just those digitally native, are experimenting with automated content, such as automated earnings reports or automated sports reports (Newman 2016). Rich media advertisements, which are ads that interact instantly when the user’s mouse passes over them, seems to be a popular innovation for news companies in recent years. Companies spent 50% more in 2015 on these ads, which made up 21% of all display ad spending (Pew Research Center 2016). Facebook now allows users to float videos to allow users to scroll or multitask while continuously watching videos (Newman 2016). Online platforms encourage news organizations to produce more native content with features like Snapchat’s Discover or Facebook’s Instant Articles, allowing publishers to create faster news stories and promising up to 100% in advertising revenue (Newman 2016). Technology companies continue to experiment with virtual reality, which, in regards to news, could allow users to have immersive experiences with breaking news stories (Newman 2016; Newman 2017).

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The market for digital advertising is robust, but the majority of this revenue, as mentioned, goes to giant technology firms, such as Google and Facebook. Digital advertising now accounts for more than one‐third (33%) of all ad spending ($183 billion) on any platform (Pew Research Center 2016). Digital advertising is organized in two categories, desktop and mobile, the latter of which now accounts for more than half of all digital advertising spending (Pew Research Center 2016). The five major technology and social media companies, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Twitter, dominate this market, accounting for 65% of all revenue from digital advertising, which amounts to $38.5 billion out of $59.6 billion (Pew Research Center 2016). Facebook alone takes in 30% ($8 billion) of total display ad revenue (Pew Research Center 2016). Needless to say, this makes it especially difficult for digital start‐ups to sustain themselves. Though breaking news online has begun to rival television news in terms of audience numbers, with key examples for video being news concerning Syria or the terrorist attacks in Paris, born‐digital companies continually reside in financial uncertainty (Newman 2016). A few recent examples include news that Mashable laid off 30 people in 2016, while Salon announced a new round of budget cuts and layoffs, and the Elite Daily’s losses more than doubled (Newman 2017). Social media has transformed the consumption, distribution, and creation of news in a number of significant ways. Perhaps the most significant alteration is the way that social media distributes information during a breaking news event. Journalists have greater flexibility to rely on social media, instead of merely wire services, for information about breaking news around the world (Bivens 2014). The growth of user‐generated content through social media allows journalists to ­incorporate new perspectives into news, but this does not fundamentally alter the hierarchies associated with professional journalism, nor does it mean that marginalized voices make it into the news in greater numbers. Breathless claims about digital democracy, which have long been cause for justified suspicion (Calabrese and Borchert 1996) must be tempered especially today by an understanding of the ways in which content is algorithmically hierarchized and of the particular ephemeral formats central to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. More than one in 10 (12%) of people in general say that they use social media as their main source of news and around a quarter of adults under the age of 25 claim the same (Newman 2017). There has also been a vast increase in user‐generated video on social media websites, with Snapchat alone generating eight billion videos a day (Newman 2017). Social networks are fast‐becoming places where short video is common to both use and consumption. According to Newman’s survey of 143 leading editors, CEOs, and digital leaders, when asked about their focus for video, 89% responded that they would focus on short social videos in the coming year (Newman 2017). This was on top of live video, news clips, and other video on their own websites, long‐form video, and virtual reality. With this focus, the central questions will be if this type of news video consumption leads to an informed citizenry



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and the sustainability of this type of news video for legacy and digital news companies as the social networks obtain the lion’s share of advertising revenues. We should also consider these questions as we scrutinize how our commercial media limit the possibilities for a sustainable environment for investigative journalism newspapers. All the major newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post) offer videos regularly on their Facebook pages and on the homepages of their website. These are welcome developments given that this allows these sites an additional medium to communicate, engage viewers, and innovate new ­storytelling methods such as New York Times’ “The Daily 360,” which offers one immersive video each day for a year (Newman 2017). A cursory overview of these videos shows titles such as “The Blackout of 1977 : A Trip Through the Archives,” “Where Slaves Arrived in Brazil,” and “Whimsical Urban Debris as Art in Detroit.” Again, the fact that users tend to interact with these news brands via social media as  opposed to traveling to individual sites (Kalogeropoulos et  al. 2016) poses ­challenges to these papers in search of sustainable revenue.

Search for Civic Reform Before the present era of hypercommodification in television news, in 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow delivered his famous “vast wasteland” speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, the industry trade organization. In his speech, Minow tried to argue that the market cannot and should not be the sole arbiter of the meaning of “quality” television. He concluded that “It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims  –  you must also serve the nation’s needs” (Minow 1991, pp. 26–27). Minow’s speech epitomized the more general contradictions of the “Great Society” era of policy‐making in the United States. The ideal broadcasting system he envisioned should seek and achieve a balance between the roles of the consumer, who presumably is driven by emotion, whim, and desire, and the citizen, who ­presumably is driven by rational thought and needs. It is a theme which American intellectuals who have attempted to strike what is viewed as a proper balance between media profitability and responsibility have visited many times before and after Minow’s speech. American television journalism has never been governed exclusively by professional ideals, or rather such ideals have always been deeply influenced by a commercial logic that includes the commodification of politics. Such was the complaint of Edward R. Murrow in his 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) (Murrow 1958). Television industry leaders sometimes reflect publicly on their power and responsibility, one high‐profile example being retired news anchor Dan Rather’s 1993 speech to the RTNDA, titled “Call It Courage,” in which he paid homage to Murrow and criticized the increasing tabloid orientation and audience pandering in television news (Rather 1993).1 A harsh response to

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Rather by TV critic Walter Goodman was published three weeks later in the New York Times. Goodman wrote: The ratings may not be all that scientific, but the bottom‐liners have learned that they are more reliable guides to the nation’s taste than high‐minded journalists. Corporate executives are not by and large suicidal. If they were persuaded by the figures that news from other countries, economic news and serious substantive news of any kind would bring in more money than game shows or crime shows, America would have an hour’s worth of such nourishment every night … So good luck to Mr. Rather in his campaign to stand up to the bad guys and rouse others in his trade to do likewise. But he had better recognize that the fat cats he is fighting have nothing more devious in mind than catering to the enormous audience he wants to serve, and that bold talk notwithstanding, he is more a beneficiary of the show‐biz system than a victim. (Goodman 1993)

What had changed over the nearly four decades between the speeches of Murrow and Rather was the extent to which public affairs broadcasting became more and more entangled with and driven by the mechanisms of market priorities, gradually displacing what existed of a tradition of professional culture, a pattern that has continued. In addition, public expectations have adapted. While Goodman’s apparent low estimation of the television audience seems fairly undemocratic, if not misanthropic, it does not gainsay the importance of his point. As marketing researchers and consultants in any field of production clearly understand, for better and for worse, it is not simply the quality of a product that determines its economic success, and indeed its survival in the market. More important to market survival and success is the ability of the producers to position their commodity effectively. Distasteful as that reality seems from a public service standpoint, it is one that is faced by all news organizations. As attempts to stem the overshadowing of responsible journalism by market ­vulgarity, voluntary codes of media responsibility, such as that which was advocated by Minow, do not work. A poignant illustration is the miserable failure of the US  Hutchins Commission of 1947. The “blue ribbon” Hutchins Commission was established under a $200 000 grant by magazine baron Henry Luce because he wished to find ideological support for his own profitable enterprises, but instead the Commission disappointed Luce with a scathing report, published under the title “A Free and Responsible Press” (Leigh 1947). The report accused the press of failing to live up to its responsibility to provide truthful and intelligent coverage of current events, or to provide a lively and representative medium of democratic discourse. In essence, the report found that the press had failed to make profitability secondary to responsibility. Based on an assessment of the Hutchins Commission’s efforts and ultimate failure to bring about any change in the practices of commercial news reporting, Stephen Bates argues that voluntary codes of professional responsibility do not work. While the Hutchins Commission was addressing the print media, Bates’s observations are



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no less applicable in the television news environment (Bates 1995). In the United States, the standard response by news organizations to any pressure to change their practices is to cloak themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment and claim that the right of free speech is at stake. More accurately, what they perceive to be at stake is their unbridled freedom to pursue profit in a destabilized and intensifying competitive system. In the 1990s, the so‐called “civic journalism” (also known as “public journalism”) movement in the United States was an attempt to recalibrate the balance between media responsibility and the quest for profitability. Civic journalism represented an attempt to improve the poor image and reality of newspapers, and to move them away from their entertainment and tabloid style and more toward being a central node for facilitating public debate about issues of arguably broad concern. According to civic journalism’s two chief intellectual proponents, Davis Merritt and Jay Rosen, the proper role for journalism in a democratic society is to stimulate and enhance the quality of political participation and public debate as a matter of the “public trust”: Today, the only way for journalists to protect that trust is to strengthen, through ­journalism, America’s civic culture, by which we mean the forces that bind people to their communities, draw them into politics and public affairs, and cause them to see “the system” as theirs  –  public property rather than the playground of insiders or ­political professionals … We are far from believing that journalists or journalism can cure what ails politics and public life in America. That would ascribe too much power to the press … Our claim is a more modest one: if changes are necessary for America to meets its problems and strengthen its democracy, then journalism is one of the agencies that must change. That is the conviction on which public journalism stands. (Merritt and Rosen 1994, pp. 4–5)

In affirming an ideal role for the press that is not unlike that of the Hutchins Commission, the proponents of civic journalism similarly aligned themselves against the evils of tabloidization, trivialization, sensationalism, and the like. Echoing those such as Newton Minow who have argued for striking a balance in favor of press responsibility above profitability, civic journalism’s advocates also evoked the distinction between consumer and citizen: “If the first form of understanding  – ­seeing people as consumers – is typical of ‘the media’ as a business, the second – regarding people as citizens – characterizes ‘the press’ as an American institution” (Rosen 1994, p. 16). While not typically explicit in their condemnation of the trends in television news discussed above, the implicit message of civic journalism’s advocates regarding television was clear: the reliance on image and fast pace, and the short‐circuiting of an ideal of rational discourse among a literate public, left television out of the ­picture. Civic journalism resembled the spirit of the Hutchins Commission in that it was opposed to the prevailing, if lamentable, understanding of what is “news.” But what was striking was the fact that television was so obviously and deliberately

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overlooked in a movement that professed to speak to democratic ideals. While literacy and reading are fundamental to democratic processes in the broadest sense, how can a meaningful and relevant definition of civic journalism be articulated without also recognizing the many ways in which political power is exercised through the uses of the medium of television? Perhaps television journalism is a hopelessly anti‐democratic medium of communication, as many of its critics contend, but the case that print journalism is more democratic has not yet been clearly made. As Harvey Graff (1987) notes in his excellent study, literacy has functioned throughout its history as a means of creating and maintaining social and cultural hegemony (11–12). To assume that the promotion of print literacy was unambiguously aimed at the promotion of a democratic culture of critical discourse is probably as erroneous as the assumption that the promotion of the consumption of commodified television news is unambiguously antithetical to such an aim. The public service ideals of journalism in the United States strain against the realities of the commercial media environment, as is the pattern increasingly in other affluent countries. Today, the cult of personality is likely to continue dominating television news, along with trends toward blurring historically recognized ­distinctions between “news” and “entertainment.” For example, the use of tie‐in strategies to link news to entertainment programming is a common method of managing audience flow. Advertising shapes television (and print) news story selection and framing more than most self‐respecting broadcast journalists are prepared to acknowledge publicly. If it were not the case that the two are so intertwined, then it would be unimportant for networks and stations to be increasingly obsessed with ratings sweeps for their news shows, which determine the prices they can charge advertisers for 30 seconds of airtime. Despite this reality, it is neither surprising nor unreasonable (nor unwelcome) to find widespread concern about the quality of a cultural environment in which the focus and legitimacy of political discourse is heavily shaped by the sale of cars, pet food, pharmaceutical products, and deodorant. Given this reality, it is not surprising that some have attempted to find ways to reform the production of news while accommodating the structure of the commercial system, one highly visible model being the civic journalism movement. For others, a source of optimism about how a competitive market environment might improve the quality of television news in the future lies in the hope that the degree of destabilization of traditional commercial outlets, combined with the declining cost of high‐quality video production and means for distribution (particularly the internet), will continue to open up new niches for independent news sources to emerge. Of course, there is no reason to assume that sensible and heavily capitalized opportunists in the existing market will fail to continue emerging there as dominant players, or that commercial imperatives will not otherwise pervade the entrepreneurial news publishing environment. In essence, the insidious challenge that liberal reformers typically ignore remains, namely, market censorship. Unfortunately, liberal intellectuals and media policy‐makers generally fail to acknowledge and address



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in any depth how commercial enterprise shapes political communication. Moreover, the widely held belief that we now live in a new era in which everyone with a smartphone is a potential citizen‐activist, ready to bring democratic participation down to the hands of the people, has been shown to be naïve, if not delusional (Dean 2009; Fenton 2016). As Siva Vaidhyanathan (2018) recently demonstrated, commercially driven social media systematically undermines rather than enhances the democratic promise that many see in digital communication. The entry of social media into the TV news environment has expanded the means through which news is produced and distributed, but that entry has been governed far more by commercial values than democratic aspirations, and it has undermined the autonomy and quality of television news, leading us increasingly toward shortened attention, greater sensationalism, manipulation, and mass deception. Isolating and measuring every click, like, and view by the media consumer has not been a path to democratic emancipation, but it has enabled untold profits.

Conclusion It is reasonable to doubt that if the quality of civic discourse is truly in decline, it can be attributed simply to the problem of the progressive technology‐driven commodification of news. Furthermore, it is also reasonable to question whether such a ­problem can be resolved by small surgical adjustments to media industry practices. While there are good reasons to expect more from television news organizations than they currently offer, it seems myopic and technologically deterministic to think that commercial television has fundamentally transformed citizenship rather than reproducing and, in essence, modernizing the pattern of its historical conditions. Beyond recent polemics about the commodification of news, this category of concern – generally about the vulgarization of civic discourse – has deep roots in a range of competing theoretical perspectives about mass culture’s relationship to social decay (Brantlinger 1983). In Peter Riesenberg’s (1992) account of the history of Western citizenship, he highlights two general concepts of the citizen – “active” and “passive” – the former prevailing from the time of the Greek city‐state up through the French Revolution, and the latter having lasted since that time. “Passive citizenship safeguarded everyone’s person, property, and liberty. Active citizenship was reserved for the adult male who would contribute to the welfare of the state with his body and property.” Riesenberg argues that while there has been a progressive expansion of equality in the enjoyment of basic human rights and dignity, “politics remained largely in the hands of traditional elites.” In that respect, he concludes that neither the French nor the American revolutions broke with the past, and that the model of active citizenship advanced by Rousseau, based on his image of the Geneva of his childhood, “proved an attractive, but illusory goal throughout modern history” (pp. 271–272; see also p. xviii).

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Commercial television news is often seen as lowering the standards of journalism in general and, by extension, the standards of civil discourse and civic competence. But more fundamentally, we lack sufficient understanding of the nature of this complex relationship between the means of communication and our ideals of what it means to be a competent citizen. Perhaps the first step in such an effort would be to develop a more accurate and deeper understanding of what the concept of the citizen has meant historically, which would be a first step toward developing realistic expectations of citizens in our present historical moment. To conclude that our media undermine the role of the citizen begs questions about what we do and can realistically expect of a modern citizen, and of media that can contribute the most (and least) to the fulfillment of such expectations.

Note 1 Ironically, in a BBC interview, Rather included himself in implicating American ­journalists for being cowed by politicians who might accuse them of being unpatriotic for persisting with questions about justifications for war and the conduct of war: “None of us in journalism have asked the questions strongly enough or long enough about this ­business of limiting access and information for reasons other than national security” (Rather 2002; see also Holt 2002).

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Rosen, J. (1994). Public journalism: first principles. In: Public Journalism: Theory and Practice, Occasional Paper of the Kettering Foundation (eds. J. Rosen and D. Merritt), 6–18. New York: Kettering Foundation. Scott, M. and Steel, M. (2017). Major setback for Murdoch in $15 billion Sky takeover. The Boston Globe 29 June. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/06/29/major‐ setback‐for‐murdoch‐billion‐sky‐takeover/mblYy2moJMQGf3Wq8AjGiN/story.html Smythe, D.W. (2006). On the audience commodity and its work. In: Media and Cultural Studies Key Works (eds. M.G. Durham and D.M. Kellner), 230–256. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Stanley, T. L. (2016). Why big digital video and TV networks are increasingly becoming ­production partners. Adweek, 15 May. http://www.adweek.com/tv‐video/why‐big‐digital‐ video‐and‐tv‐networks‐are‐increasingly‐becoming‐production‐partners‐171440 Sweney, M. (2017). Disney‐Fox deal: what it means for the Murdochs and their media empire. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/14/disney‐fox‐deal‐ what‐it‐means‐for‐the‐murdochs‐and‐their‐media‐empire United States of America v. AT&T, & et  al. (2018). Memorandum opinion. DC Circuit. https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi‐bin/show_public_doc?2017cv2511‐146 Vaidhyanathan, S. (2018). Antisocial media: How Facebook Disconnects us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Vogel, P. (2018). Sinclair’s “Terrorism Alert Desk” segments are designed to gin up xenophobia via local news. Media Matters for America. 1 March.https://www.mediamatters.org/ research/2018/03/01/sinclair‐s‐terrorism‐alert‐desk‐segments‐are‐designed‐gin‐ xenophobia‐local‐news/219517

Chapter 12

Twitter Watchers: The Care and Feeding of Cable News Flow in the Age of Trump Deborah L. Jaramillo

An early observation about television’s daily architecture  –  an analysis rapidly approaching its golden anniversary – warrants a reevaluation as new technologies and shifting viewing patterns call into question its relevance. Flow, as introduced by Raymond Williams (2005) in 1974, described two related phenomena: a pattern of television viewing that was not bound to or organized by self‐contained program units (“watching television” versus watching a particular program); and an industrial strategy that manufactured continuity across programs and what are known as interstitial materials (ads, promos) such that these materials were not “interruptions” but, rather, part of a “block” of viewing time (pp. 194–195). For all the justified criticism, adaptation, and elaboration of Williams’s earliest description of flow, a return to the general concept helps us decode what is happening on cable news channel MSNBC in the Trump era. A jarring occurrence on 5 March 2018, illustrates why contemporary cable news requires a closer look through the lens of flow. That afternoon, Sam Nunberg, former adviser to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, phoned in to MSNBC Live with Katy Tur to break some news. Referencing the investigation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the campaign’s ties to Russia, he declared with agitated bravado that he would not agree to the terms of the FBI’s subpoena to appear before a grand jury. Furthermore, he would not turn over all emails between himself and 10 administration figures, including now‐President Trump. Tur spoke with Nunberg for over 20 minutes, and she had to push him off the call because the next hour of MSNBC Live was about to begin. After his MSNBC appearance,

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Nunberg bounced to CNN, sharing his announcement with Jake Tapper via phone at 3:30 p.m. Nunberg returned to MSNBC in person for The Beat with Ali Melber at 6 p.m. and stayed on set with Melber for the majority of the program, during which the guests tried to get him to see reason. Afterwards Nunberg wound up on CNN again, also in person. Nunberg’s unhinged cable news appearances were the day’s highlight. Unprepared for Nunberg’s foolhardy admissions or hyperactive demeanor, MSNBC quickly adapted and capitalized on the moment throughout the remainder of its lineup. Video and audio clips populated every show. Four clips of Nunberg’s appearances on MSNBC and CNN ran concurrently on The Rachel Maddow Show, underscoring his cross‐channel journey. Yet, for all the glee at MSNBC having been part of the breaking news, the coverage appeared to be incomplete. A major player in the flow of cable news had not yet contributed to the hours‐long conversation. A well‐timed, inflammatory tweet from Trump was the missing piece in what has come to be the routine of post‐2016 cable news. This routine revels in the sort of disruption instigated by political turmoil, scandal, a renewed investment in investigative reporting, and the decision of cable news producers to include and fixate on Trump’s Twitter feed. Information flow, Twitter flow, and programming flow live together now, sometimes uncomfortably. The key to flow on MSNBC, though, is the way that this new living arrangement moves not toward denouement and relaxation at the end of the programming day as broadcast flow does. The blow of each revelation snowballs so that flow is not just a sequence of possibly connected stories from dawn through midnight. Information on television is bound to time, which is indistinguishable from flow for Doane (1990, p. 223). In contemporary cable news, flow has had to accommodate into the category of breaking news the collapsing together and elongation of Doane’s categories of “crisis” and “catastrophe,” wherein a crisis is a “startling and momentous” but quickly resolved development, and catastrophe is a more serious, “instantaneous” crisis. I argue that the crux of flow on MSNBC is actually the opposite of Doane’s description of television news as an “endless stream of information, each bit (as it were) self‐destructing in order to make room for the next” (Doane 1990, p. 224). It is, instead, about memory and magnitude – not the resolution of, but the accumulation of, politically charged information, crises, and catastrophes across the day and, as we are seeing, across all days. Using the MSNBC coverage of four events from 2017 and 2018  –  the indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the attempted firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI raid on Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and the release of former FBI Director James Comey’s memoir – this chapter will focus on how flow can be understood as a process of accumulation that is not without political utility. The combination of a politically charged atmosphere and a national leader who deploys Twitter as a megaphone for insults, praise, and policy has renewed the energy of cable news, which in turn has created new opportunities for scholars to reimagine the relevance of television flow in the twenty‐first century.



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The Continuing Relevance of Flow Twentieth‐century scholarship responding to Williams’s original formulation of television flow argued with and expanded upon his inchoate theorization of, essentially, the commercial television schedule come to life (Modleski 1983; Fiske 1987; Waller 1988; Watkins 1990; Corner 1999). Modleski (1983) offered a feminist analysis that emphasized the “interruption” and “distraction” – not continuity – of daytime television (p. 71). Fiske (1987) wanted to empty the word “flow” of its “connotations of a languid river” and expose the reality of disunification and the “fracturing forces” that resist flow’s “attempts at closure” (p. 105). Later, Corner (1999) criticized dissenters for misunderstanding Williams’s claims of flow’s “unitariness” (p. 66). Williams did not presume to monopolize the meaning of flow, Corner asserted; he was simply acknowledging “patterns of continuities” that operated in “general” ways (p. 66). Mihelj and Huxtable (2015) regard these early discussions as “thought‐provoking and important” but ill‐equipped to inform contemporary transformations in the television industry (p. 335). However, another voice in the early conversation believed shifting viewing habits and competing technologies required a reevaluation of flow. Two items advanced by Waller (1988) tie the twentieth‐century interrogation of flow to the discussion of flow we are seeing in the twenty‐first century: the multiplication of programming as the result of new distribution platforms, and time‐shifting as an assertive act of viewership (p. 8). In the 2000s, a proliferation of “technologies of agency,” or “anti‐flow technologies,” such as the digital video recorder, have troubled but not destroyed flow (Newman and Levine 2012, pp. 129, 131). Newman and Levine argue that as “anti‐flow technologies” purport to give the viewer newfound control, the “ideology of consumer capitalism” underpinning flow endures (pp. 133, 134). Other scholars have studied the adaptation of scheduling, flow, and continuity to the maturation of competitive media markets in Europe (Ihlebaek et al. 2013; Van den Bulck and Enli 2012). And still others have investigated how flow is activated through music in dramatic programs or embodied in commodities in children’s programming (McAllister and Giglio 2005; Fairchild 2011). A recurring theme in contemporary work, then, is the survival of flow, the intention of which is to attract and retain audiences that have many other viewing choices. Missing from old and new discussions of flow is the 24‐hour cable news channel. Fruitful and solid entry points for an analysis of cable news flow appear in the early, probing scholarship of Feuer (1983) and Doane (1990). As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, Doane analyzes how time functions on television in relation to real‐world events, arguing that TV instantly forgets what has just transpired (p. 226). The “banalization” of everyday life on TV does give way to moments of “catastrophe,” which Doane, accessing catastrophe theory, characterizes as “unexpected discontinuity in an otherwise continuous system” (p. 228). Doane wonders, though, how to reconcile this definition with television’s bounty of “discontinuities” that would seem to cancel out “televisual catastrophe” (p. 228). This chapter seeks to

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explore how flow on a cable news channel creates a different type of space where continuity, repetition, anticipation, and disruption commingle; the resulting atmosphere is ripe for continuous, live political catastrophe. Liveness, however, is complicated and has invited much discussion of its role as the medium’s essence. An important early critique of this stance comes from Feuer (1983), who sees both flow and liveness as artifice, as network constructs that paper over the actual transmission of fragments and fabricate “unity” and intimacy with the audience (pp. 16, 19). Feuer disputes Williams’s analysis and repositions flow as “an historically specific result of network practice,” a fact that at least partially explains how cable news exercises multiple flows as it undergoes a generic transformation. The dominant practice of cable news was instituted by CNN, which launched in 1980. The CNN model stresses an attentiveness to the possibility of disruption. The gimmick that advertises the channel’s vigilance is the spectacle of breaking news: the graphic that flashes on screen, the striking chyron announcing an update, the sound effect that amplifies the novelty of the moment. The alternative to this is an attentiveness to the probability of disruption such that disruption is not promoted as novel. This project was undertaken in 1981 by ABC and Westinghouse, which formed the Satellite News Channel (SNC). One year younger than CNN, SNC rejected CNN’s formula of repetition and offered instead a format of “constant updating and ever‐changing stories,” which Morse (1986) argues “provoke anxiety” and catered to the “news junkie” (p. 73). SNC tanked and folded in 1983, but for a brief time it introduced a sensibility of continuous disruption and renewal that, once rejected, has returned. Cable news relies on the relentless flow of time to frame its usefulness for viewers. The constructed liveness of cable news, directly linked to temporal flow, means that breaking news is a built‐in feature, an expected surprise. News is always breaking, though, so what is often a surprise is which breaking news item the channel gatekeepers decide to (or have the resources to) share and explore. Within this structure cable news polices meaning via story selection, titles/graphics, and music for crises and catastrophes (school shootings, terror attacks, significant military interventions), hosts that perform their own brands, and panels of experts frequently plucked from corporate media outlets. Prepackaged reports, archives of still photos and B‐ roll, and other devices supplement the liveness. In short, cable news is a genre equipped to contain and exploit certain breaking news, but the aftermath of the 2016 election forced something of a change. The combination of political catastrophe, the political potential of Twitter, and branding has pushed cable news away from the model of repetition and back to the experimental always‐breaking format. Studies of Twitter’s influence on and interaction with politics and traditional political reporting establish context for contemporary cable news. Twitter allows politicians to control their message and reach a wider audience via retweets (Parmelee and Bichard 2011, p. 183). The harnessing of social media for the purposes of message control responds directly to the tightly managed information regime of commercial news media and the “distrust” of that media (Gainous and



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Wagner 2013, pp. 20, 22). Although Twitter is useful for politicians and journalists alike, there is some doubt about its ability to supplant traditional media’s “in‐depth” reporting (Murthy 2013, p. 51). In her study of Twitter and campaign reporting, Lawrence (2015) writes that “Twitter, rather than fundamentally changing campaign reporting, is for the most part simply shifting established reporting routines into overdrive” (p. 94). The characterization of Twitter flow as an “overwhelm[ing]” force, as a “firehose,” and as an “information tide” also points to a situation growing less manageable from the perspective of the journalism establishment (Lawrence 2015, p. 101). Paired with a presidential tweeter, the effect of that flow on cable news has forged new approaches to coverage. Donald Trump’s prolific use of Twitter found a sizeable audience in 2015 and since then has provoked ire and fascination (Carr 2018). From his general aggression and harassment, to his targeting of high‐profile African Americans, and finally to his propensity to reverse White House policy based on what he just saw on cable news, Donald Trump’s tweets mark a sea change because of the disconnect between his position and his unfiltered behavior (Newkirk 2017; Graham 2018; LaFrance 2017). Cable news has adapted not only to a presidential administration that has broken with protocol on many fronts, but to a president who has taken control of his personal, political, and policy messaging.

MSNBC Flow: Key Moments The fortunes of cable news are often connected to large‐scale crises or scandals (Jaramillo 2009, p. 17). The contentious 2016 election reversed the downward trend of cable news but also upended the routine the genre had established for itself.1 With loud accusations of “fake news” hurled at print and television news operations by Trump, journalists and news personalities have taken up a defensive posture. The institutions that use each other’s reporting to create content  –  in the case of this chapter, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, in particular – have mobilized and given column inches and screen time to what they see as their democratic mission. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, MSNBC has built a critical brand aligned to a degree with progressive politics. Consequently, news that reflects poorly on the right‐wing Trump administration is always breaking news, and breaking news alters the predetermined flow of the day’s content. The remainder of this chapter will examine this new phase of the cable news genre that is, in many ways, a throwback to the failed experiment of SNC. The category of “breaking news” has transitioned from something relatively rare and special to something relatively constant. Breaking news in the Trump era has, in 2017 and 2018, consisted of the standard stories affecting the US – severe weather, mass shootings, immigration/humanitarian crises  –  and the Trump‐specific stories affecting everyone. Even the standard stories have a way of becoming Trump‐specific stories. Binding these two subcategories of breaking news are the President’s tweets and/or

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the anticipation of the President’s tweets. From 6 a.m. when the President is watching television and usually begins tweeting to primetime when the President is again watching television and tweeting, the weight of the stories – sometimes exacerbated by Trump’s social media output – accumulate and disturb the planned flow of the channel. The planned flow includes not just the scripts for each program, but also the prescheduled commercial breaks. Omitted commercial breaks generally indicate a special event or a crisis. In the Trump era, omitted commercial breaks could just mean it is Monday.

Manafort Monday, 30 October 2017 On the morning of 30 October 2017, an MSNBC chyron read, “FIRST CHARGES IN SPECIAL COUNSEL INVESTIGATION.” Joe Scarborough, co‐host of Morning Joe, commented, “The tweets continue this morning.” A tweet appeared on screen that read “@realDonaldTrump: Report out that Obama Campaign paid $972 000 to Fusion GPS. The firm also got $12 400 000 (really?) from DNC [Democratic National Committee]. Nobody knows who OK’d!” The tweet was roundly dismissed by the Morning Joe crew as a tactic intended to distract from the morning’s news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had filed charges against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Rick Gates, a former campaign aide. Guest Ari Melber advised, “Mr. President, call your lawyer before you talk or type.” Hallie Jackson, also making a guest appearance, speculated that Trump was “likely watching this unfold on TV right now.” At the end of Morning Joe viewers were advised to “stick around” because there would be “a lot of news today.” The series of statements described here encapsulate the manner in which MSNBC personalities negotiate a tense political climate and a president who wants to control his own message. The chyron announces a development in all caps. The tweet, read aloud and appearing on screen in Twitter format, carries the weight of the Office of the President, whether or not it intends to distract from or respond to the breaking news. Hosts and guests then comment, offering advice to Trump or describing his state of mind, his behavior, and his strategies. The invitation to keep watching is one of the more overt ways in which the personalities support the breaking news‐driven cable sensibility. What may throw the on‐screen talent off balance must also be an enticement to maintain viewership – a crucial early observation about the economic imperative of flow. Key takeaways from the coverage of Manafort Monday and the day after are the different levels of anticipation built by each program and by the increased weight each program must bear as the programming day draws to a close. In the cable news of the Trump era, flow is a process of accumulation. As opposed to broadcast flow, there is no climax in primetime and relaxation in late night. There is only the accumulation of information and analysis and always the anticipation of more breaking news and more tweets. If we adhere to the metaphor that flow suggests, we



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can consider the breaking items and the tweets to be tributaries heading toward something larger. This is not a natural state for television news, since no genre has a nature. MSNBC constructs the Trump administration as a narrative that will either have a disastrous end or a glorious one (for Trump or the country), so it must surround each revelation from the Mueller team with the appropriate amount of suspense. The process of accumulation is messy, as the intrusions of breaking news and tweets make clear. In the 10 a.m. block MSNBC Live, host Hallie Jackson interrupted a legal correspondent to explain her distraction: “Here on set we’re all looking at our emails.” The breaking news appeared on a chyron: “EX‐TRUMP ADVISER GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS PLEADS GUILTY TO MAKING FALSE STATEMENT TO FBI.” Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted that Manafort’s alleged financial crimes predated the campaign, and he followed that with “NO COLLUSION!” (10:28 a.m. 30 Oct 2017). A graphic of these two tweets appeared 14 more times through 5 a.m. on the 31st. By the 1 p.m. block, discussions about the charges and the possibility of Trump firing Mueller, as well as anticipation for Manafort’s lawyers to appear at the courthouse – made apparent by a recurring live shot outside the courthouse – propelled the hour. The pace of the news and the anticipation for more meant that the entire block ran with no ads. New information about Papadopoulos came in at 3 p.m., as did the news that Manafort would be placed under house arrest. MSNBC took this opportunity to reach into the Twitter archive and prove Papadopoulos’s importance to the campaign by running a photo of a national security meeting that he attended alongside the President. Beside the photo was a 31 March 2016, tweet from Trump that read, “Meeting with my national security team in #WashingtonDC. #Trump2016.” Even though Twitter excels at breaking news, its archival function has served cable news well. Twitter flashbacks help to fact check and contextualize recent developments. Both Hardball with Chris Matthews at 7 p.m. and All In with Chris Hayes at 8 p.m. ran Trump’s tweets from Sunday – tweets that called the Mueller investigation a “Witch Hunt” and tried to shift focus to “so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton” (10:09 and 10:17 a.m.). All In titled this set of tweets “RAGE TWEETING,” implying that the President knew what was going to break on Monday. When recalled by a news program on 30 October, these preemptive tweets from the 29th could be added to the accumulating news. Tweets as evidence of the President’s state of mind feed into the larger timeline of unfolding events as hosts and reporters attempt to reconstruct who knew and when they knew it. In the 11 p.m. block, Ashley Parker, a Washington Post reporter, appeared on The Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams and explained that Trump’s 30 October tweets were a victory lap of sorts since the Manafort charges did not name him. But she stressed that he stopped tweeting for a reason: “The President and the White House today were following along with us just as we were […] trying to make sense of it in real time. The White House didn’t have any heads up. […] What was striking was to see him tweet that out and then moments later the President

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learns […] uh‐oh, there’s more, and it looks a lot worse for him.” By the end of live programming on Manafort Monday, viewers had learned about the Manafort and Gates indictments, the Papadopoulos guilty plea, Russian interference in Facebook, and Mueller’s interviews with White House staff. They also learned that Trump also got some of this information from cable news. Much of Tuesday dwelled on the fallout from Monday. Some Trump tweets made news, but the content did not elaborate on the Mueller investigation, Manafort, Gates, or Papadopoulos. At nearly ten minutes to the 4 p.m. block, news broke that something had happened near Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan. Ten minutes later, viewers learned a pickup truck had struck cyclists on a popular bike path. As quickly as MSNBC veered away from Trump to cover the tragedy, it went back to his Twitter feed. In the 5 p.m. block, Meet the Press Daily host Chuck Todd supplemented the New York Police Department press conference with the President’s first tweet reacting to the news: “In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE USA.!” (5:10 p.m. 31 Oct 2017). Criticism of Trump’s follow‐up tweet in the 6 p.m. block centered on his zeal to attribute the attack to ISIS to justify his own policies. In response to one tweet – “We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!” (6:31 p.m. 31 Oct 2017) – Hallie Jackson commented, “Typically we would see a statement that is not quite as perhaps emphatic as this one is […]. This is similar to what the President has tweeted in the past […]. […] In some of those instances, the President has tried to link this to his [Muslim] travel ban.” Chris Hayes repeated these tweets in the 8 p.m. block as he reported on “another overwhelming day of news,” but he moved away from the attack and back to the day’s earlier stories. In the following hour, Rachel Maddow was not able to wrap up and assess as yet another story broke. Only one tweet from Trump dismissing Papadopoulos as a “low‐level volunteer,” made it into her show. Manafort Monday began with indictments, and the momentum of multiplying news flashes flowed into Tuesday until a surprise attack forced a gear shift. There was no wind‐down as the 10 p.m.  hour neared on the 31st; there was only more breaking news and the lingering shock of the attack. By the end of the 31st, no peaceful or low‐key conclusion materialized. Even if viewers had tuned in for one primetime show or two or three, the recapping routine of each program offered in more concentrated form the same accumulation that a viewer of many more hours of programming would have encountered.

Mueller Almost Gets Fired (the First Time), 25 January 2018 One bit of speculation that emerged during Manafort Monday was if or when Trump would fire the special prosecutor. In the 8:00 p.m. block of 25 January 2018, a New York Times headline appeared as a spectacular chyron: “TRUMP ORDERED



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MUELLER FIRED, BUT BACKED OFF WHEN WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL THREATENED TO QUIT.” The order came in June 2017, but Mueller’s investigation had uncovered it more recently than that. Flow on 25 and 26 January hinged on this breaking news and survived a considerable amount of waiting. When the news broke, the President was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. When would he get the news, and how would he respond? The predominant image during All In with Chris Hayes was a live exterior shot of the White House. This shot is a visual motif on All In; by the time the program airs the sun has set, so viewers can see lights in windows and presumably can ascertain whether Trump is watching the news. Clearly, with Trump in Davos, the shot lost much of its value, but the conversation that continued while the shot was on screen (either in a split or full screen) revolved around the “mood” in the White House and Trump’s will‐he‐or‐won’t‐he interview with Mueller. The toss to Maddow led to a brief but exasperated monolog, which has become commonplace at the top of many of the programs throughout the lineup. Maddow complained to Hayes, “Yeah, you know, I had a really nice show planned.” To her audience, Maddow continued, “You know I did have a perfectly good little show planned for tonight. I’ll act it out with puppets for Susan and the dog and they can tell me whether or not it’s good, and it’ll never make air because KABOOM again. Again.” In what followed, Maddow and later O’Donnell reconstructed news that broke in June to determine what prompted Trump to give the order. O’Donnell admitted to being caught out by the news, remarking, “We’re just living through it minute by minute trying to understand how serious this stuff is.” The flummoxed attitude continued into 11 p.m. when host Brian Williams said, “Here we are again, unbelievably. A domestic story has overshadowed a foreign trip. It’s like when Air Force One is wheels up, something else very bad comes down.” Political analyst Eli Stokols replied, “When Air Force One is not wheels up, something else comes down. I mean this is the story of this presidency. It’s overload in terms of the news cycle.” Overwhelmed by the heft of this late‐breaking story, news personalities self‐reflexively managed the collision between planned and unplanned flow. The following morning, Kristen Welker attributed the absence of Trump tweets to the discipline demanded by his new legal team. News personalities were hungry for an uncensored, unfiltered tweet. Nothing came. In the 6 p.m. block, Ari Melber announced the descent of Air Force One, and a while later a shot of the plane landing in the dark filled the screen, but still nothing emerged from Trump’s phone. On Hardball at 7 p.m., Chris Matthews reconstructed the President’s mood the previous June before the firing order by resurrecting six tweets that revealed “that the Russia probe was very much on his mind when he tried to fire Mueller.” The six tweets filled the screen and overlapped with each other. One came to the front: “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice” (3:55 a.m. 15 Jun 2017). Jonathan Swan of Axios reoriented this

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flashback toward possible ramifications, implying that the Twitter feed would be evidence in any future FBI interrogation. Twitter watch resumed in the 11 p.m. block. As if trying to conjure an explosive tweet, Matthew Nussbaum of Politico responded, “With him and his phone after a long foreign trip, this is when he tends to get in trouble. These flights have not always been friendly to him.” Host Brian Williams’s mention of the sleep‐aid drug Ambien injected the expectation of a bewildering and irrational outburst. Still without a relevant tweet, analysis turned to the topic of messaging. Unwilling or unable to take the bait, Trump had left MSNBC with no red meat other than the breaking news, itself. Anticipation drove the day, though; just the potential for an eruption became the content.

The FBI Raids Michael Cohen’s Office, 9-10 April 2018/James Comey Releases His Memoir, 12-13 April 2018 The morning raid on Trump attorney Michael Cohen is prolog to the Comey book release, and the coverage, still fixated on tweets, offers telling moments of stress and anxiety as a result of accumulation. In primetime, no Cohen‐related tweets had emerged. A tweet from reporter Robert Costa shown on All In stated, “No one is ruling out late tweets.” (7:13 p.m. 9 Apr 2018). The news was not without Trump content; before a meeting with his war cabinet, the President had let loose an on‐camera diatribe against the investigation and the extent of Mueller’s power. Chris Hayes observed that the rant exposed “pinned, caged, cornered panic.” The exterior shot of the White House reappeared, and the waiting game continued. Once again, the primetime lineup seemed shaken by the gravity of the news, and Maddow and Hayes articulated as much in the following exchange: RM: “Maybe we won’t learn more so much as we’ll continue to be bombarded with unbelievably totally unprecedented news like we’re being struck by meteors.” CH: “I started the day in a pool with my son in the Caribbean. And that seems so remote. That seems like an ice age ago.” RM: “You’re excused from having kind of a dislocated, out‐of‐body experience with this. For me, I’m having that for the distance between what happened in my news meeting today, when we decided what was going to be on the show, and tonight.” Addressing her audience, Maddow said, “I did have a whole different show planned for tonight. We’ll do it tomorrow. Things happen. Bead up, roll off. I’m trying to be a duck about this. I’m trying to be a Zen duck. Bead up, roll off.” O’Donnell picked up on the theme at 10 p.m. when he blamed the “tidal wave” for his now‐axed show plans. No new tweets appeared, but a breaking news chyron late in the hour read, “NBC NEWS: SOURCES SAY TRUMP ‘FURIOUS AND STEWING.’” A crucial



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question underlying his mood surfaced: how would Trump handle the recent chemical attack in Syria given the Cohen news? No definitive answer came that night. The morning of 10 April finally saw two tweets from the President. The first – “Attorney‐client privilege is dead!” – appeared as a graphic, and co‐host Willie Geist simply read the second one, describing it as “all‐caps ‘total witch hunt.’” Guest Peggy Noonan imagined dire consequences and, in doing so, offered one possible timeline, one way this story could flow: “He sounds like a man who’ll need to be talked down in the next few days […] or he will begin, if he is not talked down, to fire people and usher in a new and more dramatic crisis.” Tapping into possible futures is just as important to cable news as accessing the past. The crafting of an ongoing, layered narrative rather than the reporting of disconnected events is now the norm on a channel that, through various strategies including promotional spots, has aligned itself with the “resistance,” a catch‐all term describing various progressive organizations agitating against the rollback of civil rights, environmental protections, healthcare, and other gains made or expanded under the Obama administration. Connecting the dots, which has earned Maddow, specifically, a good deal of parodic criticism, is another dimension of MSNBC’s flow and a departure from Doane’s theorization of information on TV news as “self‐destructing in order to make room for the next” (1990, p. 224). A politically engaged flow unrelentingly pieces together the breaking news with historical evidence and with warnings of plausible negative outcomes for the country. If MSNBC’s brand implicitly attaches itself to advocacy, then the accumulation of news at the end of the day must become the knowledge that informs the next day’s flow (with or without new tweets). Trump’s two morning tweets reappeared throughout a day that had yet another string of breaking news. In the 10 a.m. block, Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser resigned. In the 11 a.m. block, the Washington Post reported that the Trump Organization recruited the president of Panama to aid the company in a “hotel dispute.” From 2 to 4 p.m. MSNBC aired live congressional hearings on Facebook and Russian interference. In the 4 p.m. block a chyron announced, “WH: TRUMP ‘CERTAINLY BELIEVES’ HE HAS ‘POWER’ TO FIRE MUELLER.” Ari Melber’s 6 p.m. block began with a breaking news chyron that revealed Stormy Daniels, the woman who accused Trump of strong‐arming her into keeping quiet about their affair, was talking with Mueller’s team of investigators. And in the 7 p.m. block, the New York Times broke the story that Trump wanted to fire Mueller in December 2017. Two days later, the press received advance copies of James Comey’s memoir. Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow introduced their respective shows with a palpable sense of anxiety and doom. Chris Hayes set the scene: So now as the President sits in the White House and reportedly plots with his allies to obstruct the investigation that keeps getting closer and closer to himself and his loved ones and his campaign  –  as he thinks about potentially firing [Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Robert Mueller] – tonight as he sits and watches cable news he is seeing a barrage of excerpts from Comey’s book.

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Maddow offered viewers a grander takeaway: On any given day of chaos in this administration … of unprecedented insult and chaos and bewildering error and offense and confusion, which is now a typical weekday … it used to be that we had to decide if this was one of these days …that’s insane because of personal failure … or because of scandal. … We have now reached a point where it’s fair to say … yes, everyday it’s all of those things all at once. Failure, scandal, chaos.

Breaking news chyrons throughout the 9 p.m. hour announced that Trump would not sit for an interview with Robert Mueller and that Trump was set to pardon Scooter Libby in a bit of symbolic retaliation against obstruction charges. In the 10 p.m. block, O’Donnell called 12 April “a day of constantly cascading news.” As we saw in the Cohen raid example, a dearth of tweets from the President meant a void needed filling. Some time was spent in the 11 p.m. block discussing the expectation of a reaction to the Comey book. Philip Rucker predicted that Trump was not “going to be able to restrain himself from commenting on what he’s seeing on television tonight about this book.” The discussion then turned to Syria. Trump had issued a cagey tweet that morning about attacking Syria, which Brian Williams pointed out reversed his bellicose tweet from the previous morning. The next day on the 5 a.m. program First Look, a rare late‐night tweet from Trump made it to air. In it he reversed his position on joining the Trans‐Pacific Partnership trade deal. At 6 a.m. Morning Joe was focused on provoking an outburst from the President, most likely since nothing Comey‐related had appeared in the Twitter feed yet. Responding to the news that Trump would not submit to an interview with Mueller, co‐host Joe Scarborough made a show of goading Trump: “If I were the President of the United States and I had lawyers that thought I was too stupid to talk to Robert Mueller I’d take it personally. … What if my lawyers … think I’m a moron and I can’t sit down just right across the table and talk to this guy?” Out came the cover of that morning’s Daily News, which featured a full‐page photo of Trump with the headline “PEE BRAIN!” – a reference to the rumor that an intelligence dossier has evidence that Trump had Russian prostitutes urinate on him while he was in Moscow. At approximately two‐and‐a‐half hours into Morning Joe, they finally had what they wanted. Mika Brzezinski introduced two new tweets: “We told you earlier [Comey’s new book] was likely to set White House tempers ablaze, and here we go. The President tweeted just a short time ago. Here’s what it says.” The first read: “James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did‐until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is weak and …” (8:01 a.m. 13 Apr 2018). The follow‐up read, “… untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to



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fire James Comey!” (8:17 a.m. 13 April 2018). The hosts giggled at “slime ball” and joked that he must have seen the cover of the Daily News. Returning to a serious tone, Willie Geist pointed out that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had sent an uncharacteristic tweet, herself. The White House response had begun, and MSNBC had its viral tweets for the day. In the 9 a.m. block, the two tweets appeared twice. In the 10 a.m. block, Kelly O’Donnell commented on the heft of the tweets: “This is the president sort of packing into one tweet, probably grateful for the bump up to 280 characters, a very potent critique of James Comey. They were ready for this. The President probably had his alarm set in order to deliver it.” Evidence not only of Trump’s mood but of a plan of attack, the tweets emerged time and again as the news of the day proceeded. The Scooter Libby pardon, Trump’s interview with Mueller, Trump’s feud with the US Post office and Amazon, the Trans‐Pacific Partnership, the National Enquirer, the Michael Cohen hearing (which Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, attended), and Syria each had their moments in the spotlight. In the 12 p.m. block, Kristen Welker primed viewers for more responses to Comey’s book. The morning tweets appeared twice, once on screen with yellow highlighting and again in abbreviated form as a chyron. News broke that Rod Rosenstein expected Trump to fire him. Two bits of breaking news in the 1 p.m. block alerted viewers that Michael Cohen sought to seal the “materials” that were seized and that Trump did, in fact, pardon Scooter Libby. The 2 p.m. block repeated the tweets and announced two more breaking news items: the report on the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had been released, and Michael Cohen had arranged a “$1.6 million hush money deal” for a Republican donor. Reflecting on the news onslaught, Katie Tur remarked, “It has been an exhausting and wild twenty‐ four hours just this past hour that we’ve been in the chair here.” Only one ad break interrupted her show. In the next hour, Ali Velshi declared, “I can’t keep up.” The President’s tweets appeared on screen two more times. Toward the end of the hour, Trump tweeted again, this time responding to the report on McCabe: “DOJ just issued the McCabe report – which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey – McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!” (2:36 : 27 p.m. 13 Apr 2018). Pete Williams fact checked the tweet, and in the next hour, a chyron announced that McCabe’s lawyer had responded to Trump’s tweet with his own tweet about a possible “defamation suit.” The succession of news about Comey’s book, Cohen’s hearing, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s resignation announcement, and a possible attack on Syria prompted Chuck Todd to attempt to summarize the import: “I can’t put this week in proper terms. … I do think this week will be one we write about in ten years.” Summary was impossible, though, since the news kept breaking. The McClatchy news service released a story in the 7 p.m. block that substantiated an intelligence dossier placing Michael Cohen in Prague in 2016.

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MSNBC was again approaching the primetime block, in which the effects of accumulation translated into self‐reflexive ruminations. Chris Hayes began his program with a warning: On this Friday the 13th, the republic is feeling a bit pre‐apocalyptic, I think it’s fair to say. Amid an absolute torrent of news, the country stands on both the brink of a military attack … as well as a constitutional crisis …. And according to multiple reports, the man responsible for those decisions appears to be in the midst of a total meltdown.

Two tweets from reporters supported Hayes’s dire characterization. Referring to “an absolute avalanche of huge stories today,” Hayes promised to “get to all of that here tonight.” The nighttime shot of the exterior of the White House returned alongside text that read “RAGE.” During an interview with Representative Jerrold Nadler (D‐NY) about a possible strike on Syria, a full‐screen shot of the exterior of the White House appeared, along with the chyron stating, “HIS ANGER IS ‘BEYOND WHAT ANYONE CAN IMAGINE.’” Suddenly a breaking news chyron signaled impending action: “WSJ: TRUMP PUSHING FOR BIGGER ATTACK ON SYRIA AS MILITARY ADVISERS URGE CAUTION.” At the halfway point, viewers learned that recordings were seized from Cohen’s office, and near the end of the hour, a chyron told viewers to expect Trump to speak about Syria later that night. More live cutaways to the exterior of the White House appeared. Maddow began her show approximately two minutes early, presumably to accommodate the President’s impending appearance. After offering context for a potential US strike in Syria, MSNBC cut to Trump’s remarks. At approximately the 40‐minute mark, a breaking news chyron reported “‘HUGE’ EXPLOSIONS, SMOKE IN DAMASCUS.” What happened next reveals how deftly cable news transforms itself into a war coverage machine. Intermittent live shots of the exterior of the White House shared screen time with shots of military bases, a feed from Syrian state television, and maps of Syria. The transition to war mode came complete with “STRIKE ON SYRIA” titles. The shift from politics to war and then back to politics in the 11 p.m. block was less of a rupture than it seemed. The accumulated news of the day intimated that the strike may have been a desperate measure to distract from precisely that accumulation. Live war coverage continued after regularly scheduled programming concluded.

Conclusion If Donald Trump has a Twitter addiction, so does most of cable news. The reach of his Twitter feed even extends across the television landscape to find another welcoming home in late‐night talk shows. But whereas The Late Show with Stephen



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Colbert (CBS) can attempt to neutralize the President’s tweets through mockery and satire as broadcast flow heads toward completion, news programs hang on every tweet, parsing it, sometimes mocking it, but always waiting for the sensational morsels of content. Cable news has embraced some of what Twitter has to offer journalism, and MSNBC has found on the social networking site a way to match its brand to its distaste for the President’s policies. The channel’s treatment of breaking news and its further incorporation of tweets as more breaking news result in a type of flow that is not a single stream of information but multiple streams joining up at different points, feeding a larger stream that is heading toward something potentially catastrophic. Viewers are assured the end will be catastrophic because thus far MSNBC has treated most breaking news items in this administration as mini‐catastrophes. MSNBC has also framed the frequency of breaking news as disturbing, exhausting, and profoundly new. The reality is that while the pace of breaking news has accelerated as professional and citizen journalists with access to smartphones take advantage of more communication channels, traditional gatekeepers have had and will continue to have control over what makes it to air. MSNBC constructs breaking news as it does because MSNBC chooses to do so. As Feuer notes, flow and liveness are not natural occurrences but deliberate and ideologically fraught constructs determined by networks. The model established by CNN and perpetuated by Fox News and MSNBC has been, for the most part, one of top news stories repeated throughout the day, filtered through and refracted according to different programs’ perspectives. Cable news channels give viewers a regimented pattern of programs placed one after another in a sequence that maximizes the attention and buying power of the right kind of viewer. Even though the channels theoretically have 24 hours of time to fill, the dearth of overseas reporters coupled with predetermined assumptions about what viewers want to see means that what makes it to air frequently is US‐centric and sanitized. Not all cable channels approach the new administration in the same way, of course. Whereas Fox News will deliberately ignore a news item that is critical of Trump, MSNBC will report it and remain with it, adding it to past evidence and pulling it back out when the next related story breaks. Accumulation has the potential to situate flow as a political project for MSNBC, just as disconnectedness and omissions can serve Fox News’s own political agenda. For MSNBC, which promotes itself as diverse and left‐of‐center, close attention to how the news accumulates will reveal a larger truth that is being hidden currently. On a day‐to‐day basis, though, that accumulation presents itself in the opening monologs of stunned hosts burdened by their resurrection of a model of cable news that died in 1983. Feuer would argue that these monologs are just another facet of the ideology of liveness and flow; these hosts are forming bonds with viewers who feel just as overwhelmed as they do. The tidal wave of news is washing everyone away, but MSNBC, via its regular schedule and its spin‐off podcasts, promises to get to all of it.

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Note 1 A comparison of ratings across several years illustrates the way in which cable news has benefited from the post‐2016 political landscape. In 2014, MSNBC fell from second to third place among the three major cable news channels, losing 16% of its primetime audience from 2013 (O’Connell 2014). In May 2015, Fox News had the highest average primetime viewership of the three with 1.94 million viewers (Flood 2015). CNN averaged 637 000 and MSNBC averaged 530 000 (Flood 2015). In May 2018, Fox News remained in the number one position but strengthened its numbers with an average of 2.3 million viewers (Katz 2018). MSNBC occupied second spot with an average of 1.6 million viewers; CNN fell to third place with 835 000 (Katz 2018).

References Carr, N. (2018). Why Trump tweets (and why we listen), Politico, 26 January. https://www. politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald‐trump‐twitter‐addiction‐216530 (accessed 12 June 2018). Corner, J. (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Doane, M.A. (1990). Information, crisis, catastrophe. In: Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism (ed. P. Mellencamp), 222–239. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fairchild, C. (2011). Flow amid flux: the evolving uses of music in evening television drama. Television and New Media 12 (6): 491–512. Feuer, J. (1983). The concept of live television: ontology as ideology. In: Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology (ed. E.A. Kaplan), 12–21. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America. Fiske, J. (1987). Television Culture (Reprint, 1999). London: Routledge. Flood, B. (2015). May 2015 ratings: CNN up 55% vs. last year. Adweek, 12 June. https://www. adweek.com/tvnewser/may‐2015‐ratings‐cnn‐up‐55‐vs‐last‐year/263850 (accessed 5 May 2018). Gainous, J. and Wagner, K.M. (2013). Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Graham, D. A. (2018). The President who doesn’t understand his own positions. The Atlantic, 11 January. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump‐ fisa‐tweet‐infrastructure‐daca/550286 (accessed 12 June 2018). Ihlebaek, K.A., Syvertsen, T., and Ytreberg, E. (2013). Keeping them and moving them: TV scheduling in the phase of channel and platform proliferation. Television and New Media 15 (5): 470–486. Jaramillo, D.L. (2009). Ugly War Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Katz, A.J. (2018). Here are the top cable networks for May 2018, Adweek, 1 June. https://www. adweek.com/tvnewser/the‐top‐basic‐cable‐networks‐for‐may‐2018/366040 (accessed 5 May 2018). LaFrance, A. (2017). Donald Trump is testing Twitter’s harassment policy. The Atlantic, 2 July. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/the‐president‐of‐the‐united‐ states‐is‐testing‐twitters‐harassment‐policy/532497 (accessed 12 June 2018).



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Lawrence, R.G. (2015). Campaign news in the time of twitter. In: Controlling the Message: New Media in American Political Campaigns (eds. V.A. Farrar‐Myers and J.S. Vaughn), 93–112. New York: New York University Press. McAllister, M.P. and Giglio, J.M. (2005). The commodity flow of US children’s television. Critical Studies in Media Communication 22 (1): 26–44. Mihelj, S. and Huxtable, S. (2015). The challenge of flow: state socialist television between revolutionary time and everyday time. Media, Culture and Society 38 (3): 332–348. Modleski, T. (1983). The rhythms of reception: daytime television and women’s work. In: Regarding Television: Critical Approaches  –  An Anthology (ed. E.A. Kaplan), 67–75. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America. Morse, M. (1986). The television news personality and credibility: reflections on the news in transition. In: Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (ed. T. Modleski), 55–79. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Murthy, D. (2013). Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age. Malden, MA: Wiley. Newkirk II, V. R. (2017). Donald Trump’s eternal feud with blackness. The Atlantic 22 November. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/donald‐trump‐lavar‐ ball‐marshawn‐lynch‐tweeting/546686 (accessed 22 June 2018). Newman, M.Z. and Levine, L. (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge. O’Connell, M. (2014). MSNBC Chief Phil Griffin acknowledges “difficult” 2014 in staff memo. Hollywood Reporter, 29 December. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ msnbc‐chief‐phil‐griffin‐acknowledges‐760473 (5 May 2018). Parmelee, J.H. and Bichard, S.L. (2011). Politics and the Twitter Revolution: How Tweets Influence the Relationship between Political Leaders and the Public. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Van den Bulck, H. and Enli, G.E. (2012). Bye bye ‘hello ladies?’ In‐vision announcers as continuity technique in a European postlinear television landscape: the case of Flanders and Norway. Television and New Media 15 (5): 453–469. Waller, G.A. (1988). Flow, genre, and the television text. Journal of Popular Film & Television 16 (1): 6–11. Watkins, E. (1990). Television programming and household flow: critical analysis of mass culture in a politics of change. The Centennial Review 23 (1): 17–42. Williams, R. (2005). Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 13

Television and Sports Michael R. Real and William M. Kunz

The televising of sports events may be the best thing that ever happened to both sports and television, at least in terms of commercial growth and profitability. The benefits for sports from television contracts have been huge financial rewards for sports teams and athletes, and at the same time television has greatly increased public access to sports and sporting events. Sports feature physical action that is perfect for television’s visual quality and are unscripted dramas ideally suited to attract and retain viewers  –  especially those with the demographic and financial characteristics desired by television advertisers. There was a time when sports even provided a relatively inexpensive source of program content, and while that might no longer be the case, sporting events remain one of the last vestiges of television where live viewing is a must, which, in turn, is a force against cord‐cutting. The combination seems a marriage made in heaven.

Analyzing Telesport: Background and Players While analysts have spelled out these positive elements, many have also detected strong negatives in the combination. Is the relationship really symbiotic, in which each gains from the other, or is it parasitic, one in which television sucks the best out of sports? This latter negative position was the one adopted by Benjamin Rader (1984) in his book‐length history of the relationship, In Its Own Image: How Television Has Transformed Sports. Steven Barnett (1990), in Games and Sets: The Changing Face of Sport on Television, viewed the relationship with less nostalgia for an idealized past but with increasing anxiety about what was then a cable‐ and A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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­satellite‐driven future for televised sport. Without question, televised sports have contributed greatly to sport‐related dysfunctions: bloated player salaries, unstable sports franchises ever ready to pull up roots, unbalanced demands for victory at any cost, passivity and escapism, boozy and sexist advertising and viewing environments, gambling and fantasy addictions, the commodification of fan paraphernalia, obsessions with trivia, and a feeling of distance from the integrity of traditional, ­balanced, coherent sporting activity, the classic ideal of mens sans in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). What are the known truths behind the glamorous and controversial linkage of television and sport? The central concepts and areas of research on sports and television cover the process from start to finish. Hundreds of studies have examined: • the production of televised sport in economic, technological, and political context • the texts and audiences of televised sports, especially in reference to competition, gender, race, class, commercialization, and geographical identities and relations • the hypercommercial corporatization and globalization of televised sports • the impact of new technology on sports television and sports fandom. Sports events have been firmly established as valued program content for t­ elevision for almost three‐quarters of a century. From the first shadowy telecasts of baseball from Columbia University in May of 1937 and tennis from Wimbledon a month later, sports programming has become increasingly prominent, until today they are almost ubiquitous. Today’s many dedicated satellite and cable sports ­channels combine with broadcast networks and stations to make sporting events, stars, and controversies a constant feature of daily life and a frequent topic across all communications media. The union of television as a distribution medium and sports as program content is reminiscent of lucrative and popular alliances from Alexander’s unifying the Mediterranean world, Charlemagne’s melding into one the Roman and Christian empires, and President Monroe’s proclaiming that all the Americas are one sphere of influence. The combination is, in short, powerful – even, if you will, imperial. Critics dispute the benefits and damages of televised sports almost as vehemently as combatants on the field fight over ball, territory, and victory. Writers of stature – Nick Hornby, David Halberstam, James Michener, Michael Novak, and many others – praise the contribution of sport to human emotion, discipline, ambition, and achievement. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, watched the first prototelevision sports broadcast on kiosk monitors in Hitler’s Berlin in 1936 and maintained, as he always had, that sport promoted virtue, ­character, idealism, and international understanding. Coming from another angle, sociologists and economists document the system functions that televised sport ­fulfills as a major social force, creating regional identities, moving consumer goods, providing mythologies of upward mobility and meritocracy.



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But televised sport’s more dubious achievements include creation of “the sports geek” and “the sports nut,” self‐labels employed by those whose waking hours are dominated by a quest for the latest and greatest sports conquests and information. Are they the beer‐guzzling, chip‐chomping, passive sponge pitied by the critics of television sports, or are they rather the self‐realized, brilliantly informed worshipers of high achievement championed by defenders of “­mediasport”? Are they caught up in a web of misogyny, racism, violence, and destructive escapism, or are they celebrating human excellence expressed through the body athletic and the competition most noble? Do television and sports serve each other symbiotically? Commentaries on television and sport now flourish throughout the world in many languages and offer a variety of critical positions – the negative, the positive, the functionalist, and more. Historically, the first decades of major televised sports in the middle of the twentieth century generated very few scholarly studies. Then, as the impact of television on sports and of sports on television became apparent, excellent analyses emerged throughout the English‐speaking world. In England, Ed Buscombe (1975) published his pioneering book about soccer on television in the  same year that Michael Real’s study of the American Super Bowl appeared. The growth of the discipline since then is most evident in the launch of academic journals that focus on sports media, for which research on television and sports is a cornerstone. Central to much of the best work on television and sports has been the argument, developed in a 1983 book by Gruneau (1999, p. 114), “for a critical approach to the study of sport that combines social theory with history, interpretive cultural analysis, and political economy.” This avoids “the one‐dimensional perspectives that reduce the analysis of sport to purely material (e.g. technological, economic) or ­idealist (e.g. cultural/linguistic) determinants” (p. 115). In 1984 Sut Jhally drew attention to the central role that television plays in the “sports/media complex.” In the 1950s and 1960s, males with peak incomes were drawn to televised sports, advertisers paid significant amounts to reach that audience, broadcasters offered large television rights fees, television marketing began to influence decisions about sports schedules, times, locations, and more, the attraction of cross‐ownership of sports and media businesses increased, and there was a massive all‐round infusion of capital. From its beginnings as a mere program category on television, the coverage of sports on television, supplemented by newspaper, radio, and other media, grew into a vast and powerful sports/media complex. The decades since have witnessed an increasing abundance of research studies and scholarly examinations. Consequently, it is now possible to draw from the extensive scholarship to outline a developed understanding of the dynamics within television and sports, the vast scale, technologies, and financing associated with televised sports, the varied and far‐flung audiences, and the cultural role of ­ “­telesport” as an articulator of personal and global forces, warts and all.

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Inside the Appeal of TV Sports: Arledge, Murdoch, and “Auteurs” Televised sports have developed under the leadership of many broadcast and sport groups and individuals. Innovations and expansions are generally relatively anonymous, following the potential of the medium and subject‐matter into new techniques, graphics, representational strategies, and promotional marketing. However, Morris and Nydahl (1985) suggest that individual “auteurs” developed techniques of image, language, and technology to maximize the potential of the televised sports spectacle as drama. In the same way that Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, or Ingmar Bergman gave his personal stamp to feature films, according to French auteur film theory, so a television producer contributes a personal stamp to televised sports. While film is considered a director’s medium, television is very much a producer’s medium. If this is true, in the United States, it can plausibly be argued that television sports are indebted to one “auteur,” namely Roone Arledge, the late president of ABC Sports and ABC News. As a Columbia University graduate with a degree in English and with many career options, he was often asked why he chose a career in sports and television. He explains: Sports were life condensed, all its drama, struggle, heartbreak, and triumph embodied in artificial contests. To play a game well, endless practice was required, just as it was in mastering life. Sports always contained the unexpected – a catch that should have been made and wasn’t, a bar that shouldn’t have been leaped and was. So did life – chaos intruding on the orderly patterns of civilization. Sports could bring tears or laughter, in wonderment over its sometime absurdity. Television could capture it all, and in the 1960s, there was a chance to do it creatively. I wanted to make the game more intimate, and a lot more human. (2003, p. 28)

Arledge was dedicated to moving beyond the few fixed cameras that gave c­ omprehensive, but unexciting views of sporting events. In a long memo for ABC at the time, he pitched how sports could be done better, specifically college football: We will utilize every production technique that has been learned in producing variety shows, in covering political conventions, in shooting travel and adventure series to heighten the viewer’s feeling of actually sitting in the stands and participating personally in the excitement and color of walking through a college campus to the stadium to watch the big game. … In addition to our fixed cameras we will have cameras mounted in Jeeps, on mike booms, in risers or helicopters, or anything necessary to get the complete story of the game … all the excitement, wonder, jubilation, and despair that make this America’s number one sports spectacle, and a human drama to match bull‐fights and heavyweight championships in intensity. In short  –  WE ARE GOING TO ADD SHOW BUSINESS TO SPORTS! (pp. 30–1; emphasis in original)



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But Arledge not only championed major American sports on television; he also pioneered the addition of world sports, even fairly obscure ones, to the American television schedule. On a flight back from London during its first season in 1961, Arledge came up with the famous credo that opened each weekly episode of Wide World of Sports: Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport … The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat … The human drama of athletic competition … This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

Wide World traveled to over 50 countries in the next four decades, televising around 5000 events in more than 100 different sports. The show’s success was such that it spawned imitators around the globe. In Australia, Kerry Packer’s Nine Network dominated national television ratings for years led by strong sports ­programming, including a four‐hour Saturday afternoon clone actually called Wide World of Sports. A top British magazine‐format sports show of the time was called World of Sport. In his long tenure with ABC, Arledge also pioneered such televised sports staples as instant replay, Monday Night Football, announcer‐stars like Jim McKay and Howard Cosell, and the up‐close‐and‐personal style of Olympic television coverage. His autobiography, Roone (2003), offers an engaging look behind the scenes of television and sports. The role of the producer is somewhat diminished in the era after Arledge. His protégé, Dick Ebersol, had a clear imprint on NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games from 1992 through 2010, but that was more of a continuation of storytelling traditions than something revolutionary. David Hill, who Rupert Murdoch entrusted to build Fox Sports in 1993, also had a discernable impact on how sports are covered, most notably with the continuous on‐screen scoreboard and clock. The so‐called FoxBox debuted on NFL (National Football League) preseason games in 1994, and led to death threats against Hill, but some version of that graphic is now standard on almost all televised sporting events. That degree of uniformity is now the norm, most evident in the host feed for events such as the Olympic Games, where production manuals outline the pattern of coverage for every event. Major events include unique elements, but the day‐to‐day focus of sports television is on the volume of games and events and ancillary programming needed to fill all‐sports outlets that run around the clock.

The Telesport Text and Audience: Narrative Spectacle Intensified Central to the power of sports as presented on television are the same elements that are identified as “news values” in the press in general and as “entertainment values” in commercial media. The sporting event is programmed for television because it is “a story.” It has a narrative sequence in which protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains (even if only arbitrarily identified as such by viewers or announcers),

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engage in direct conflict resulting in victory and defeat. The news values of conflict, recency, human interest, prominence, and localness direct the selection of news for newspapers and broadcasting. These also dominate the selection and presentation of televised sports.

Telesport Narratives: Dramatic Stories and Open‐Endings Like news, movies, and most of entertainment media, sports on television are ­presented through the conventions of narrative drama. Because sporting events have a beginning, middle, and end, they are narrative events, but television is able to intensify the feeling of dramatic story build‐up in a variety of ways. Whannel (1984, p. 102) explains that the insistence that television does not simply cover events, but transforms them into stories – is to raise questions about the polarity between actuality and fiction. Television sport can clearly be seen in terms of dramatic presentation and analyzed as a form of narrative construction.

Gruneau (1989) examined how this worked in practice in the way that a World Cup ski race was covered. He found that the CBC director of the Whistler race ­consciously built his coverage around narrative conventions aimed at entertainment value. These were: “spectacle, individual performance, human interest, competitive drama, uncertainty, and risk” (p. 148). Camera placement, skier profiles, announcer commentary, sequencing of shots and information  –  all elements aim to intensify the narrative impact. The several hours between the “live to tape” videotaping and the actual airing on Sportsweekend were used to heighten the drama. The race was shot without announcers so their “live” commentary during the telecast could ­maximize the drama. Everything about their commentary was geared to create the illusion that they were seeing the action for the first time. The use of active verb tenses, emotion, and even prediction (“He should do well here!”) was all staged – it was pure show business. (p. 149)

Such storytelling is omnipresent in telesports. The well‐established power of narrative to attract and retain human interest makes such storytelling a fundamental human activity in all spheres of life. Televised sports provide this in intensified, vivid forms.

Assemblage Technique The putting together of a television sports show involves more than narrative sequencing. Whannel (1992, p. 105) notes that “assemblage” techniques dominate in televised sports, following the heritage left by Arledge and ABC’s Wide World of Sports. In the UK, Whannel finds assemblage at the core of the two programs that



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dominated television sport for two decades, Grandstand and World of Sport. This sports television magazine format “assembles” taped footage from games and events, live studio commentary, preproduced features, and a variety of sporting competitions. Even live game coverage now includes assemblage techniques, as it cuts from  live action to replay to pretaped player introductions to advertisements to ­promotional spots to more live action to sideline shots and so on.

Spectacle Television emphasizes the drama and grandeur of its sports programming with a result that places major telesports events in the class of “spectacle,” a grandly overblown visual extravaganza that captures and mesmerizes audiences not with its content and quality as a human experience, but with its overwhelming sensory stimulation and associations, sometimes reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of Will. Television, for example, long favored the one‐day match form of cricket and introduced numerous rule changes that, in the words of David Rowe (1999, p. 154), were “designed to ensure that the televised one‐day cricket match is fast and furious, encouraging high scores and high drama.” Harriss (1990, p. 118) notes, “The one‐day spectacle is packaged in much the same way as a one‐hour television melodrama.” The emergence of Twenty20 cricket over the last decade, popularized in the Indian Premier League and Australian Big Bash League and featuring a three‐hour format, is a further embrace of these trends. Rowe sees television sports capitalizing on rapid movement when it occurs and producing a sense of rapid movement when it does not. This makes “the spectacle of sports television louder and more frenetic” in order to attract, distract, and transfix viewers (Rowe 1999, p. 154). Televised sports readily lend themselves to exaggeration and overblown rhetoric and production values, seeming to expand an event, but actually reducing it to a mere spectacle. Yet, when responsibly directed without hypercommercialism, television can take sports competitions and make them more intense, personal, and dramatic. Through specific techniques, the sports television text is thus able to convey a sense of the viewer becoming an actual participant in an entertainment event, of being an active presence in breaking news. Very few other media experiences, or even non‐media cultural practices, no matter how hard they try, are able to achieve such vividness and involvement.

Gender, Race, and Class: Are Telesports Biased or Fair? Many of the sports featured on television originated and/or grew to prominence in the nineteenth century. Baseball, basketball, football, and many others took formal shape during the period when culture was becoming industrialized, urbanized, and technologically interconnected through telegraph, telephone, phonograph, film, and other precursors of television in the later decades of the 1800s. Patriarchy and

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racial discrimination were well‐established at the time, and the sports emerged as largely male and white in their publicly celebrated forms. Even sports with older traditions – such as cricket, bowling, soccer, and billiards – were reconfigured into a modern Weberian “rationalized” form of organized competition with a stuffier, white, male aura. When television emerged as a powerful venue for sports in the mid‐twentieth century, the world of sports had long been dominated by males and  whites and, as it commercialized, was also owned by the wealthy entrepreneurial class. In the first decade of major television sports in the 1950s, the producers and executives in charge of sports television decision‐making were white males. Golf was not a great ratings buster, but network executives loved the game so early on it established its continuing presence on television. Network decisions were not yet based on impersonal ratings, demographics, and profit margins. Variety television writer Les Brown (1971) recalls how a network executive during that period insisted that Sunday afternoon television programming was unimportant “because everyone is at the polo matches.” Polo matches! The exotic cultural bias of such an attitude also indicates the upper‐class status of leading television sport decision‐makers of the time. The decades since have witnessed a long struggle for gender parity, racial justice, and class egalitarianism in televised sports. While numerous studies in England, Australia, and Canada (e.g. Gruneau 1999) specifically examined the role of class in relation to sports, the majority of literature about television and sport restricts the issue of equality to gender and race. This is especially true in the case of the United States where “class” is nearly as absent from scholarship as it is from political discourse.

Gender In her pioneering anthology, Women, Media and Sport, Pamela Creedon (1994, p. 13) noted “Virtually nothing had been done to explore audience preferences for televised sports involving women until 1985.” In that year, she and colleague Lee Becker initiated a series of experimental and survey research projects that, against their hopes, revealed the lack of interest in women competing on television. In retrospect, what their methods could not measure was the collective cultural valuation that only emerged later for televised women’s sports. By 1992, women were the majority of the television audience for the CBS coverage of the Olympic Winter Games from Albertville, France. By 2003, ESPN televised all 63 games of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Women’s Basketball Tournament. By 2015, the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Women’s World Cup final between the United States and Japan recorded the highest rating ever for a soccer match in the United States, male or female, with an average of 25.4 million viewers on FOX, with another 1.3 million watching on Telemundo. That tournament was played in Canada and offered marque television windows across North



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America, unlike the 2019 competition that was held in France. That final between the United States and Netherlands did not match the ratings from 2015, attributable in large part to an 11:00 a.m. Eastern start time, but the combined rating for FOX and Telemundo surpassed 15 million and was 22% higher than the men’s final the previous year with the same start time (Fox Sports 2019). FIFA announced that, for the first time, the worldwide audience for the 2019 tournament topped one billion for the Women’s World Cup. In Europe, the United States–England semifinal reached 11.7 million viewers in the United Kingdom, the largest audience for any television to that point in the year, and the United States–Netherlands final earned a 88% share of people watching television in the latter, with the total audience the largest on Dutch television since the 2014 men’s World Cup semifinal. Huge inequalities remain in the televised coverage of men’s and women’s sports, however. The media coverage of women sports pales in comparison to the coverage of men. In a longitudinal study that compared local television news coverage in Los Angeles over 25 years, Cooky et al. (2015) found that only 3.2% of the coverage was dedicated to women’s sports in 2014, substantially lower than 10, 15, 20, and 25 years earlier. That same study found that ESPN’s SportsCenter devoted just 2.0% of the time in its hour‐long highlight show to women’s sports in 2014. What is most s­ triking about the results for ESPN is that one of three sample periods included a two‐week block in the month of March, when the network was televising the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Despite the number of hours devoted to the event and the quality of the telecasts, the coverage of the women’s tournament on SportsCenter remained “dismally low” (Cooky et al. 2015, p. 273). These findings, moreover, are consistent with others. In a 10‐year study of SportsCenter, Turner (2014) found that the percentage of stories devoted to women’s sports stood at just 4.5% in 2009, while Billings and Young (2015) found that ESPN’s SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1’s Fox Sports Live featured women’s sports less than 1% of the time in sample periods in 2013 and 2014. By any measure, this imbalance is significant. Both exclusion and improvement in the representation of women competitors in sports television can be seen in the Olympic Games and other events. The first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece in 1896, allowed only males to compete and featured only white athletes, none from outside Europe and North America. Women were allowed to compete in 1900, but by 1924, women still accounted for only 4.3% of the competitors (IOC 2016). By the time the Games reached major television exposure in 1960, women accounted for 11.4% of the competitors. That figure was just below 45% of the total athletes in the quadrennium that included the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, increasing from 20.7% in 1976 to 34.0% in 1996 to approximately 45% in 2016 (IOC 2016). The hours devoted to women’s events at the Olympic Games has also increased in most settings. In 2012, for the first time in the United States, women’s events received more coverage than men’s events based on clock‐time, 54.8–45.2% (Billings et al. 2014). These increases were not without concerns, however, since women’s ­gymnastics and women’s beach volleyball accounted for a significant share of the

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hours devoted to women’s events. While that can be attributed to the success of the American women at those venues, including a gold medal in the women’s team and all‐around competitions at gymnastics and a gold medal for Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May‐Trainor at beach volleyball, these are also among the six “socially acceptable” sports that Davis and Tuggle (2012) identified in their analysis of the 2008 Olympic Games, arguing that “for female athletes to receive media c­ overage, they must be involved in socially acceptable individual sports and/or sports that high‐light body type” (p. 61). At the collegiate level, since the creation of Title IX support for female athletes in 1971, television has slowly increased its interest in female competition. The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament now receives scheduling, exposure, and promotion that is comparable to the men’s tournament, while ESPN has expanded the time and resources dedicated to other women’s collegiate events. The Women’s World Cup increased from 16 to 24 teams in 2015, which contributed to a 31% increase in the total broadcast hours around the world, although the total number of teams remains less than the men’s tournament. Women’s tennis is now the equal of the men’s game, both in terms of coverage and prize money in the Grand Slam events, and Serena Williams can claim celebrity status comparable to that of Roger Federer. The framing of women athletes when there is coverage also remains an issue. Michela Musto et  al. (2017) argue that commentators no longer discuss women ­athletes in “overtly sexist and denigrating ways” as they did 20 or 25 years ago, but now utilize a “gender‐bland” form of sexism. In that analysis, television news and highlight shows framed women athletes in a “lackluster and uninspired manner” and, in turn, “perpetuate beliefs about men’s inherent athletic superiority” (Musto et  al. 2017, p. 575). The “gender marking” that Messner et  al. (1993) observed 25 years ago also remains, evident with the on‐court and on‐screen logos and titles for the NCAA 2018 Final Four and the NCAA 2018 Women’s Final Four basketball tournaments.

Race Growth in the inclusion of athletes of color in television sports has been especially dramatic. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 and rose to prominence in an era when television was in its infancy. Through the 1960s many college football and basketball programs, particularly dominant schools in the South that featured prominently on television, still fielded white‐only teams. In 1968, when Olympic medal‐winners Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute in full view of the global television audience, they were quickly stripped of their medals. Today, athletes of color dominate many college and professional sports in the United States, most notably in the National Basketball Association and National



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Football League, where African Americans accounted for 74.4% of players in 2016–2017 in the former and 69.7% in 2016 in the latter. Despite their prominence, media representations have long been problematic. In early studies of television play‐by‐play and commentary (Rainville and McCormick 1977), African American athletes were more often referred to as gifted with god‐given talent, while Euro‐ American athletes were referred to as disciplined and self‐actualized. Later studies (Eastman and Billings 2001), found that “gross exaggerations favoring one or other racial group” had become rare, but that the “traditional prejudices of Black players and concomitant flattering of White players persist” (p. 198). In a more recent study that focused on NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games, Angelini and Billings (2010) argued that “dialogue differences cannot be easily ascribed to fundamental ‘racist’ tendencies” and concluded that “Televised sport commentary no longer ­contains overarching, predictable trends – such as the innate skill of the Black athlete or the inherently hard‐working White athlete. The race‐oriented picture is more convoluted than before” (pp. 7–8). There is little question that the picture remains convoluted and complex. That was most evident during the 2016 NFL season when Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers kneeled during the national anthem to protest racial injustice in the United States. That created a firestorm that engulfed the presidential campaign and thrust the league and its television partners into the spotlight. A critical question for television executives was whether or not to show players kneeling during their ­coverage. Athletes becoming activists for racial equality and agents of social change was something of a throwback to the 1960s, when Muhammed Ali (boxing), Jim Brown (football), Bill Russell (basketball) and others became important voices in the civil rights movement. The #BlackLivesMatter movement that began after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting dead of African American teen Trayvon Martin in the United States in 2013 is a case in point. That activated many collegiate and professional athletes and was a precursor to Kaepernick’s protest. LeBron James was an important advocate for Black Lives Matter in the NBA as a member of both the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers, including pregame ­protests in front of television cameras. Some critics felt he was not vocal enough ­following the shooting death of Tamir Rise on a Cleveland playground in 2014, launching a Twitter campaign – #NoJusticeNoLeBron – in an attempt to force action (Coombs and Cassilo 2017).

Spectators and Viewers There are other ways in which the television experience has changed. Nowhere has  the technological transformation of television impacted more than on the fan, whether as a viewer in the home or as a spectator in the stadium. The experiences of  the viewer and the spectator were once altogether different, but the ­evolution of mobile media and social networking and the development of ever larger

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high‐definition monitors has created similarities between the two. The relative size of the video screens and WiFi capabilities are now a point of focus in the opening of new arenas and stadiums. Participants and spectators alike now look to the video boards for replays of controversial moments. There has been some backlash to the mediatization of live stadium events. Hutchins (2016) documents the reaction of PSV Eindhoven fans in the Netherlands and pronouncements by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who blogged, “We don’t need no stinking smartphones!” (p.  421). Hutchins views this reaction as a defense to the “physically proximate togetherness that generates an emotionally charged collective focus” in stadiums and arenas (p. 431). That “collective focus” could also be extended to viewing in homes, bars, and public spaces. There is little question that the experience away from the arenas and stadiums has changed as well. Above all else, new technology has given the individual viewer agency, whether in the choice of where to watch or in what to watch. Viewers can now supplement the linear television experience with information sources available on websites and apps and create their own stream of commentary on social media. With major sporting events, viewers can even make their own production decisions, whether that is streaming an outside court at Wimbledon or a non‐marquee event at the Olympic Games, or even choosing to watch a specific camera angle at the World Cup. The development of new and mobile media is often viewed as a threat to television, but with sporting events, the big television screen remains the focal point. Walter Gantz and Nicky Lewis (2014) argue that “Each fan may become his or her own media manager  –  creating a specific and unique experience through their media choice and consumption patterns – and at, the same time, still be part of the audience sold to advertisers by a small number of sprawling media corporations” (p. 767). That is consistent with the analysis of the multiscreen viewing of the 2016 Olympic Games from Hutchins and Sanderson (2017), which included broadcast television, digital live streaming, and social networking services. That study concluded that “the centrality of network television in the transmission of live sports has been further consolidated” in the 2010s. Those same technologies can create a common experience for the fans of a soccer team dispersed around the world, such as the Manchester United supporters’ clubs located on six continents, but it can also bring together the citizens of a single nation, large or small. That creation of a shared cultural experience is quite significant. Rowe (2004) argues that television is a “vital component of any current conception of sport” and that “television sport is a key component of any consideration of rights pertaining to contemporary cultural citizenship” (p. 398). Those propositions raise questions about access and equity for sports on television and what Rowe described as “viewing rights.” Public service broadcasters were once the natural home of events of national importance, but the rise of commercial broadcasting altered that relationship in many settings. Those events, however, were still available on free‐to‐air terrestrial television and could be accessed regardless of wealth. The migration of events to pay‐outlets has altered that relationship.



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Perhaps the clearest argument for “viewers rights” is seen in Europe. One of the topics addressed in the Television Without Frontiers directive issued by the European Union in 1989 was a desire to keep events deemed to be of major important to society on free‐to‐air broadcast outlets. As part of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which was endorsed in 2007, member states were allowed to label sporting events as being of “major importance to society” (European Parliament 2010). Those events, in turn, were to remain on free‐to‐air television so as not to “deprive a substantial portion of the public” from following such events. The move to list events was triggered by FIFA awarding the commercialization of the television rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cup to German media giant KirchGroup in 1996, covering worldwide rights except for the United States at that time (Katsarova 2017). Given the motivation for specific lists of protected events, it is not surprising that the men’s World Cup figures prominently on those lists. Most include the semifinals and final of the World Cup, as well as the matches for a given national team, although the United Kingdom included the entire tournament. In 2013, the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected an appeal from FIFA and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) over the listing of matches from the final stage of the World Cup in the case of Belgium and the final stage of the World Cup and European Cup in the case of England. The court acknowledged that the designation imposed certain limitations on certain freedoms and rights, but ruled “such obstacles are justified by protecting the right to information and ensuring wide public access to television coverage of those events” (UEFA & FIFA v European Commission 2013). There is tremendous variance in the lists. Germany includes only the summer and winter Olympic Games and a collection of soccer matches, whereas France extends the list to include certain rugby, basketball and handball tournaments, as well as prominent tennis, cycling, auto racing and athletic events. In each case, airing these events on free‐to‐air television was deemed to be of major importance to society. Live coverage of major international cricket is no longer on the protected list in Great Britain, which became an issue when the 2019 ICC (International Cricket Conference) Cricket World Cup was contested on home soil. In the late 1990s, the England and Wales Cricket Board lobbied for cricket to be removed from the fully protected list, the so‐called “crown jewels” of sporting events, and the board sold exclusive live rights to the Sky satellite service in 2005. That all but eliminated ­international cricket from terrestrial television in the United Kingdom and put live coverage of the 2019 tournament behind a paywall. When England defeated Australia to advance to the World Cup final for the first time since 1992, Sky reached agreement with broadcaster Channel 4 for both outlets to carry live coverage of the championship match against New Zealand. England went on to win an epic final, claiming the World Cup title for the first time, with the audience on Channel 4 ­peaking at over 4.5 million and the total audience on Channel 4 and Sky combined peaking at over 8 million (Waterson 2019).

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Production and the Political Economy of Televised Sports Televised sports have become big business in a big way. The presentation of a ­sporting event comes from a sophisticated array of technology for image capture and  distribution, league contracts with broadcast, cable, satellite and now broadband operators, advertising sales, product merchandising, event planning and crowd ­control, promotions and cross‐promotions, audience segmentation and loyalty, and, somewhere in the midst of all this, the game itself. The production of televised sport is a particular form of what Stuart Hall (1980) describes more generally as the process of “encoding into meaning structures,” a process that is based on frameworks of knowledge, relations of production, and technical infrastructures that facilitate and shape the television program and that parallel similar frameworks in the receiving audience. Public service broadcasters, such as the BBC, CBC, and NHK, remain prominent in sports television in Great Britain, Canada and Japan, respectively, but commercial broadcasters and dedicated cable and satellite sports channels are now among the units that produce and distribute most of the sports on television. These entities enter into contracts with the sporting association – whether team, league, federation, or conference – to gain the legal right to transmit the games and competitions over television. The fees paid for such television rights are often in the billions of dollars in multiyear contracts. In the United States, for example, in September 2011, ESPN agreed to a new eight‐year contract to televise Monday Night Football starting in 2014 for an estimated $15.2 billion, and three months later, broadcast networks CBS, FOX, and NBC renewed their deals with the NFL for an estimated $28 billion over nine years. In the past, commercial broadcasters recouped those costs and the actual expenses of production through the sale of advertising in and around the broadcast. The cost of advertising in major sports often involves multimillion dollar contracts. In the United States, NBC charged more than $5 million for 30 seconds of airtime for commercials in Super Bowl LII. In February 2018 alone, in fact, NBC Sports generated an estimated $1.4 billion in advertising sales between the Super Bowl and the Olympic Winter Games. The business model for sports television has become more complex and revenue streams more diversified. For example, advertising from NFL games and other programming is an important revenue stream for ESPN, generating an estimated $2.150 billion in net sales in 2017, but that total pales in ­comparison to an estimated $7.928 billion in affiliate fees in that same year, an ­average of $7.54 per subscriber per month (Kagan 2018). ESPN’s ability to raise its carriage fees while remaining on the most widely distributed tier of cable, satellite, and broadband services fueled its acquisition of major sports properties, although cord‐cutting is now a major concern. Broadcast networks and stations in the United States also have an additional revenue stream, as retransmission fees  –  payments from distribution services to local stations – have increased dramatically. Television income has become central to sports budgets. The Olympic Movement provides a striking example of this phenomenon. It is surprising to recall that in the early 1970s, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was nearly broke. Then, it



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conceived the policy of taking one‐third of the television rights fees for its own purposes, rather than leaving it all with the host city as it had done previously. Since that decision, the IOC has enjoyed huge budgets. It is also surprising to recall that in 1978, the only cities bidding to host the Olympics were Los Angeles and Tehran, Iran, a city that was a bad risk and would soon see the overthrow of the Shah. When the Los Angeles games of 1984 resulted in a surplus of funds from its half‐billion‐ dollar budget, the IOC became a convert to such sponsorship and commercialization, all made possible by the global visibility of the games through television. Nothing illustrates the growth of televised sports more vividly than the progression of fees paid to the Olympic Movement for the rights to televise the Summer Olympics in the United States. In a half century, they increased more than a thousandfold, as indicated in Table  13.1. What does this chart tell us? First, it reveals growth from nothing to financial centrality for television in the Olympics. Secondly, it reflects the expansion of access to Olympic events in the form of live or live‐to‐ tape audiovisual representation. Viewers across America and the world could “watch” the Olympics as never before; in fact, the Olympic media event becomes virtually compulsory viewing (Dayan and Katz 1992). Thirdly, it explains America’s increasingly dominant role within the Olympic Movement. In the beginning, the American television rights fees represented the vast majority of the world rights fees and remained over 70% for the Summer Games in the 1980s in Moscow, Los Angeles, and Seoul. With other national broadcasters paying increasing fees, that percentage was gradually reduced, but it was still over 50% through the 1990s and 2000s. The US percentage of total rights fees for the 2012 and 2016 Summer Games were 46.0% and 42.7%, respectively. Table 13.1  US coverage and rights fees of the Summer Olympic Games. Year

Location

Network

Hours

Rights fee

1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016

Rome Tokyo Mexico City Munich Montreal Moscow Los Angeles Seoul Barcelona Atlanta Sydney Athens Beijing London Rio de Janeiro

CBS NBC ABC ABC ABC NBC ABC NBC NBC NBC NBC NBC NBC NBC NBC

20 14 43.75 62.75 76.5 150 180 179.5 161 171 442 1,210 3,600 5,535 6,755

$394, 000 $1.5 million $4.5 million $7.5 million $25 million $87 million $225 million $300 million $401 million $465 million $705 million $793 million $894 million $1.18 billion $1.22 billion

Source: NBC Olympic (2016a).

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Television and the Olympic Games also reveals the impact from the introduction of new platforms and further conglomeration of media companies. In 1996, NBC telecast a total of 171 hours of coverage from Atlanta, with all of it on the broadcast network. That began to change in 2000 when the MSNBC and CNBC cable services supplemented the coverage on NBC, with new cable networks added in subsequent years, including USA and Bravo in 2004 and NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) in 2012. The true impact of conglomeration was evident with the Games of Rio de Janeiro in 2016, when NBCUniversal presented 2084 hours on 11 linear networks: broadcast networks NBC and Telemundo; cable channels Bravo, CNBC, Golf Channel, MSNBC, NBCSN, NBC Universo, and USA; plus, two specialty channels, one each for basketball and soccer. The total available hours surpassed 6000 with the inclusion of streaming on NBC internet platforms.

New Technologies and Methods of Delivery The Olympic Games contribute to another critical topic in the exploration of sports and television: the impact of new technologies and methods of delivery. The introduction of cable and satellite services revolutionized sports television in the 1980s and 1990s and the building of ever‐faster broadband networks for live streaming is poised to do the same. In 2016, the hours telecast on the linear networks of NBCUniversal were less than half of the 4500 hours streamed on NBC Olympics. com and the NBC Sports app. NBC streamed all events from the 2012 Olympic Games as well, and those events were available on mobile and tablet devices, but the Games of Rio de Janeiro were the first connected‐TV experience with the Olympics. That meant that many viewers could stream events through their television sets in addition to other devices. For Rio, NBC recorded 3.3 billion total streaming minutes, including 2.71 billion live‐streamed minutes (NBC Olympics 2016b). The streaming services of NBC supplemented the coverage on its linear networks, and the advertising sales are critical to off‐setting the $1.224 billion rights fee, but there are also places where such services are replacing traditional delivery methods. In 1992, the Premier League in Great Britain signed a five‐year, £304 million deal with BSkyB and the BBC, with the former retaining the rights to television live matches and the latter securing the rights for highlights, which included a Match of the Day. The decision to sign with BSkyB in 1992 proved critical for the emergence of the Premier League as the preeminent soccer league in the world, but it also advanced in Britain what was described as a “two‐tier system of television sport” in which “major events may be increasingly available only on satellite television to those able to afford the dish, the spiraling cost of channel rental, and the soon to  arrive pay‐to‐view fee” (Williams 1994). Sky remained at the heart of Premier League television coverage 25 years later, but the inclusion of British Telecom starting with the 2013–2014 campaign contributed to the further transformation of sports television in Britain. Not only did BT contribute to a 71% increase in the ­television rights for the league, reaching £3 billion over three years for Sky and BT,



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but it also added another pay platform fans had to acquire to follow the sport. BT retained rights for the 2016–2019 seasons when the rights increased again, growing to a combined £5.14 billion for three years. The Premier League case is consistent with what others have observed with networked media sports. In the early part of the 2010s, Hutchins and Rowe (2012) argued that the “case presented leads to the conclusion that the ‘digital revolution’ is so far proving less than revolutionary in the context of sport” (p. 47). There is little question that there is access to additional video streams for dominant, mainstream sports, but that abundance has not extended to other sports, and groups, that were not prominent on more traditional outlets. The launch of F1 TV in May 2018 is a case in point. That digital service, with a price tag of $99 per year or $11.99 per month, offered access to races live and on demand, onboard camera, unedited team radios, and historical archives, but Formula 1 already received extensive coverage on broadcast, cable, and satellite services around the world. Hutchins and Rowe argued that the digital opportunities have not been applied to a wide range of sports and that the “already dominant male football codes, and major sports events are becoming more so because of human, financial, and media resource advantages” (p. 47).

Critical Issues and Trends: Corporatization and Globalization Sports television in the first quarter of the twenty‐first century was altogether different, but at the same time indistinguishable, from the previous 25 years. The dramatic storytelling conventions that were embraced in the evolution of telesport remain dominant, with a focus on personalities and conflict. At the same time, there was a move from public service to commercial platforms, which has now given way to a range of pay‐per‐channels via cable, satellite, and broadband services, placing sports at the forefront in the commodification of television. Whannel (2014) argues that such dichotomies are a recurring theme in the assessment of sports television. While the dispersal of sports television on an ever‐increasing range of devices contributes to what he calls the “bifurcation of social life,” live sporting events such as the Olympic Games and World Cup remain one of the few things that can bring vast audiences together in a unifying moment. The technology also exhibits different tendencies, with television monitors at home becoming larger and larger while mobile devices become smaller and smaller. Whannel argues that sports television, in a sense, has come full circle, from the “small flickering and indistinct live sport images” characteristic of the early days of television to the “small indistinct images” on wristwatch devices, although “wristwatch sport will be sharper, easier to access, and replete with choice” (p. 770). The willingness to watch most television on a view‐on‐demand basis juxtaposed against an overwhelming need to watch most sports television live is perhaps the  most significant dichotomy to the business models of multinational media ­conglomerates. In the 1990s, Rupert Murdoch called sports the “battering ram” for

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the expansion of his global media empire, stating that it “absolutely overpowers film and everything else in the entertainment genre” (Milliken 1996). That so‐called battering ram was evident with the building of multiple Murdoch assets, most directly with the Premier League and Sky in Great Britain, National Football League and FOX in the United States, and Super League rugby and Foxtel in Australia. In the mid‐2000s, Murdoch and News Corp. held a financial interest in satellite systems that circled the globe, with DirecTV in North America, Sky in Europe, and Star across Asia. The value of live sports in the world of Murdoch was affirmed in December 2017, when Twenty‐First Century Fox, the successor to News Corp., agreed to sell some assets to the Walt Disney Co. in a $52.4 billion deal, a price that was increased to $71.3 billion in June 2018 after a counterbid from Comcast. Among the units transferred to Disney was 20th Century Fox, which gave Murdoch his entrée into Hollywood in the mid‐1980s. While control of Sky and Star, and in turn Sky Sports and Star Sports, were to transfer to Disney, FOX and Fox Sports 1 were to remain and become centerpieces in what was called “New Fox” in merger documents. After the deal was announced, Murdoch said “We’re pivoting back to our first love, which is news and sports – things that happen in real time” (Fritz and Sharma 2017). The changing business climate in which media conglomerates operate was also a factor, with Murdoch saying, “We’re conscious that the way people watch scripted entertainment has changed. It’s harder to monetize” (Fritz and Sharma 2017). While Murdoch was moving away from scripted film and television production, there was  no question that dramatic storytelling conventions would continue to guide Fox Sports. Analyses of telesport has long struggled with how the contrived presentations and transnational structures become “naturalized” in the minds of viewers and ­policy‐makers. Gruneau (1989, p. 152), among others, was concerned with how television sports treat “the existing structures and competitive promotional culture of the modern sports/media complex as natural  –  an example of ‘common sense’.” Sports on television contribute to capital accumulation and win consent for a ­definition of sport that is suited to a capitalist consumer culture. He concludes, It is a definition in which sport is widely understood as a naturally open, achievement‐ based activity, conducted to further individual sports careers and to generate investment. Equally important are the notions that specialization is the modern definition of excellence, that enjoyment is tied to skill acquisition, and that economic reward is an integral and necessary component of sporting entertainment. (p. 152)

Certainly, in this view, there is something mutually parasitic in the way sport and television have changed each other into hypercommercial vehicles over the years. The seemingly mutually beneficial symbiosis that has led to the exponential growth of each has not been without its price.



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References Angelini, J. and Billings, A. (2010). Accounting for athletic performance: race and sportscaster dialogue in NBC’s 2008 summer Olympic telecast. Communication Research Reports 27 (1): 1–10. Arledge, R. (2003). Roone. New York: Harper Collins. Barnett, S. (1990). Games and Sets: The Changing Face of Sport on Television. London: British Film Institute. Billings, A. and Young, B. (2015). Comparing flagship news programs: women’s sport ­coverage in ESPN’s SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1’s FOX Sports Live. Electronic News 9 (1): 3–16. Billings, A., Angelini, J., MacArthur, P. et al. (2014). (Re)calling London: the gender frame agenda within NBC’s primetime broadcast of the 2012 Olympiad. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 91 (1): 38–58. Brown, L. (1971). Television: The Business Behind the Box. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Buscombe, E. (ed.) (1975). Football on Television. London: British Film Institute. Cooky, C., Messner, M., and Musto, M. (2015). ‘It’s dude time!’: a quarter century of excluding women’s sports in television news and highlight shows. Communication and Sport 3 (3): 261–287. Coombs, D. and Cassilo, D. (2017). Athletes and/or activists: LeBron James and Black lives matter. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 4 (5): 425–444. Creedon, P.J. (ed.) (1994). Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Davis, K. and Tuggle, C.A. (2012). A gender analysis of NBC’s coverage of the 2008 summer Olympics. Electronic Media 6 (2): 51–66. Dayan, D. and Katz, E. (1992). Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eastman, S. and Billings, A. (2001). Biased voices of sports: racial and gender stereotyping in college basketball announcing. Howard Journal of Communication 12 (4): 183–201. European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (2010). Audiovisual Media Services Directive. https://eur‐lex.europa.eu/legal‐content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32010L001 3&from=EN. Fox Sports (2019). U.S. victory delivers 14,271,000 FOX sports viewers in FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019 Final. Press release. 8 July. Fritz, B. and Sharma, A. (2017). How the Disney deal was done. The Australian, 16 December, p. 29. Gantz, W. and Lewis, N. (2014). Sports on traditional and newer digital media: is there really a fight for fans. Television & New Media 15 (8): 760–768. Gruneau, R. (1989). Making spectacle: a case study in television sports production. In: Media, Sports, and Society (ed. L. Wenner), 134–154. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Gruneau, R. (1999). Class, Sports, and Social Development (Foreword by R. W. Connell). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Hall, S. (ed.) (1980). Encoding/decoding. In: Culture, Media, Language, 128–139. London: Hutchinson. Harriss, I. (1990). Packer, cricket and postmodernism. In: Sport and Leisure: Trends in Australian Popular Culture (eds. D. Rowe and G. Lawrence), 109–121. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Sydney.

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Hutchins, B. (2016). ’We don’t need no stinking smartphones!’ Live stadium sports events, mediatization, and the non‐use of mobile media. Media, Culture & Society 38 (3): 420–436. Hutchins, B. and Rowe, D. (2012). Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport. New York: Routledge. Hutchins, B. and Sanderson, J. (2017). The primacy of sports television: olympic media, social networking services, and multi‐screen viewing during the Rio 2016 Games. Media International Australia 164 (1): 32–43. IOC (International Olympic Committee) (2016). Factsheet: women in the olympic ­movement. Update. https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Reference_documents_ Factsheets/Women_in_Olympic_Movement.pdf. Jhally, S. (1984). The spectacle of accumulation: material and cultural factors in the evolution of the sports/media complex. Insurgent Sociologist 12 (3): 41–57. Kagan (2018). Network intelligence: ESPN (US). S&S Global Market Intelligence, accessed 22 April 2018. Katsarova, I. (2017). Audiovisual rights in sports events: an EU perspective. European Parliamentary Research Service. Messner, M., Duncan, M.C., and Jensen, K. (1993). Separating the men from the girls: the gendered language of televised sports. Gender & Society 7 (1): 121–137. Milliken, R. (1996). Sport is Murdoch’s “battering ram” for pay TV. The Independent, 16 October. Morris, B. and Nydahl, J. (1985). Sport spectacle as drama: image, language and technology. Journal of Popular Culture 18 (4): 101–110. Musto, M., Cooky, C., and Messner, M. (2017). ‘From fizzle to sizzle!’ Television sports news and the production of gender‐bland sexism. Gender & Society 31 (5): 573–596. NBC Olympics (2016a). U.S. coverage of the games. Press release, 1 August. NBC Olympics (2016b). NBC’s Rio Olympics is the most successful media event in history. Press release, 22 August. Rader, B. (1984). In Its Own Image: How Television Has Transformed Sports. New York: The Free Press. Rainville, R.E. and McCormick, E. (1977). Extent of covert racial prejudice in pro football announcers’ speech. Journalism Quarterly 54: 20–26. Real, M.R. (1975). Super bowl: mythic spectacle. Journal of Communication 25 (1): 31–43. Rowe, D. (1999). Sport, Culture and the Media. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Rowe, D. (2004). Watching brief: cultural citizenship and viewing rights. Sport in Society 7 (3): 385–402. Turner, J. (2014). A longitudinal content analysis of gender and ethnicity portrayals on ESPN’s SportsCenter from 1999 to 2009. Communication & Sport 2 (4): 303–327. Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) & Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) v. European Commission, Cases C‐201/11 P, C‐204/11 P and C‐205/11 P (Court of Justice of the European Union, 2013). Waterson, J. (2019). 4.5 million Britons watch Cricket World Cup final on Channel 4. The Guardian 15 July. Whannel, G. (1984). Fields in vision: sport and representation. Screen 25 (3): 99–107. Whannel, G. (1992). Fields in Vision: Television Sport and Cultural Transformation. London: Routledge. Whannel, G. (2014). The paradoxical character of live television sport in the twenty‐first century. Television & New Media 15 (6): 769–776. Williams, J. (1994). The local and the global in English soccer and the rise of satellite television. Sociology of Sport Journal 11: 376–397.

Part VI

Programs

Chapter 14

30 Rock and the Satirical Representation of the Television Industry Lauren Bratslavsky

The sitcom formula intrinsically relies on a status quo, or a narrative equilibrium to return to as antics and situations disrupt the characters’ universe. 30 Rock’s show‐ within‐a‐show premise establishes the following narrative status quo: a show akin to Saturday Night Live is always threatened by cancelation but manages to remain in production despite its low ratings, unproductive writing staff, and untamable stars. The macroeconomics and microeconomics of the media industry status quo are foregrounded as the writers maintain the equilibrium. We can read this text as one that “teaches the audience at home by publicly circulating insider knowledge about the televisual apparatus” (Caldwell 2006, p. 103). 30 Rock repositions key political economic concepts in a media literacy context by portraying the structure and ­strategies of conglomerate ownership. Plots and rapid‐fire jokes are self‐reflexive accounts of power structures, processes of commodification, and dimensions of concentration. Not every episode or plot carries these representations, but the media industry is always present, just as family sitcoms use the domestic sphere as the ground. This chapter analyzes how 30 Rock both criticizes and corroborates industrial media practices. First, I discuss the sitcom’s propensity for critical humor and how its commodity form limits the impact of the satire’s critique. This establishes the theoretical framework that informs the textual analysis regarding how 30 Rock critically portrays the status quo, mirrors the events surrounding one conglomerate purchasing another one, and satirizes some of the consequences and conditions of television’s industrial processes.

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The Premise and Problem of Critical Humor in Sitcoms The sitcom may be formulaic and predictable, but its form allows for critical humor. Three features can define the sitcom’s critical capacity: relevancy, intertextuality, and self‐reflexivity. These features also tend to constitute satire, which calls attention to the strictures of institutions and social relations. Relevancy refers to when plots deal with social, cultural, political, and economic realities, in addition to the sitcom’s usual core plots, misunderstandings, romantic entanglements, and so on. Early ­television sanitized ethnic diversity, civil unrest, economic uncertainty, and Cold War tensions by maintaining a sitcom schedule that mostly featured white, nuclear, suburban, and middle class families (Henry 2002/1994; Marc 1989). The socially relevant sitcoms (e.g. All in the Family, M.A.S.H., etc.) did not ignore social, political, and economic tensions, addressing issues such as working class struggles, civil rights, racial and gender inequalities, anti‐war movement, and others (Attallah 1984; Marc 1989). This relates to intertextuality as sitcom writers create a narrative ­universe that uses current affairs, politics, and conditions of contemporary life. Intertextuality addresses the ways in which a text explicitly or implicitly references other texts for the basis of its own storytelling universe. Gray (2006) distinguishes critical intertextuality as the territory where readers “subvert” preferred meanings through alternative and critical interpretations. Finally, the critical sitcom is self‐ reflexive. To be self‐reflexive is to turn the narrative gaze inward, ranging from the conventions that define a genre to the structures of the industry. Combined with intertextuality, self‐reflexivity is a critical tool that “effectively comments on itself and the culture which it is a part of ” (Henry 2002/1994, p. 268). Self‐reflexivity invites the audience to be in on the joke. The same features that define television’s critical humor can also be framed in a political economic approach, which is the study of who controls the means of ­mental production (Garnham 1995). Critical interrogations of how ­culture is made production and point to the social relations and structures that inform the ­ ­consumption of culture as commodities, which shape how we understand the world (Mosco 2009; Murdock and Golding 1995). Such an analysis focuses on institutions “most directly involved in the production of social ­meaning,” namely the media conglomerates who control powerful nexus points of production, distribution, technology, financialization, and overall exploitation of cultural products (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 11; Miege 2014). Studying the professional and creative processes of cultural workers also offers insights about how television is made by addressing the relationships between agency and structure (Havens et  al. 2009). Individuals operate under the guidance of dominant ideologies, but also have autonomy to push the boundaries in making various cultural products and ­meanings (Golding and Murdock 2000). Thus, critical humor can flourish because there is space for writers, producers, directors, and actors to ­create texts that ­negotiate the political economic constraints.



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Relevancy, intertextuality, and self‐reflexivity position the program to succeed in the industry. The socially relevant sitcom prompted ratings success in part because of its polysemic openness to be interpreted differently by different people, thus expanding the viewing audience. Likewise, networks program socially relevant content to assure advertisers of reaching desirable audiences (Attallah 1984; ­ Gitlin 1983). This is the epitome of the “audience commodity,” wherein networks sell audiences to advertisers (Smythe 1980/2006). Satirical programs reach quality audiences and elevate the network’s brand, both of which solidify satire’s place in the industry (Gray et al. 2009). This is evident for 30 Rock. Despite low ratings, it lasted because it was “upscale,” meaning it reached audiences with high, disposable incomes (AP 2007). Intertextuality is grounded in the reality of synergized media conglomerates producing product lines (Meehan et al. 1994). Both intertextuality and self‐reflexivity can be understood in terms of the audience commodity. For a program to use intertextual humor is to reward loyal audiences, thus maintaining the audience commodity and marketization (Knox 2006; Ott and Walter 2000). Critical humor and its propensity for self‐aware commentary may be satisfying to those who are in on the joke of critiquing the industry, but the sitcom’s “emancipatory beliefs” are “restricted by the commercial system” (Hamamoto 1989, p. 2). Shows that incorporate socially conscious storylines and self‐reflexive critiques demonstrate the culture industry logic to capitalize on any success. In this hegemonic process, repeating the formula of a self‐reflexive and relevant sitcom can tame content that is subversive or even oppositional (Gitlin 1983). The critical humor in 30 Rock is part of the industrial logic to reach the “quality” audience, to instruct us in how to view its own texts, and to concretize NBC’s television heritage (Caldwell 2006; Johnson 2013). Still, the show’s satire demonstrates agency within a behemoth system to develop critical and creative, albeit commodified, material. The following analysis is informed by a conception of laughter as a release valve, necessary for alleviating frustrations about conditions that are not in our control (Bergson 1956). Additionally, humor provides the space to debase and subvert power structures (Bakhtin 2007). Satire begins with the assumption that “the ideas and things it mocks – usually ideas and things invested with authority – are wrong, and that exposing this fact through satire will erode their authority and precipitate change” (Turner 2005, p. 238). Goals of satire are to skewer the values and principles that guide our social norms and political practices with the intent to challenge, undermine, and ideally, change that which satire derides. The fact that satire has long flourished within commercial spaces with few complete successes in precipitating change does not discredit the bite of attacks against the status quo. Similarly, satire’s authors still have agency to critically observe the conditions of the culture industry. Their perspectives can serve a media literacy function to “encourage one’s audience to scrutinize as well” (Gray et al. 2009, p. 11). Thus, 30 Rock illuminates the machinations of the industry, particularly from the perspective of those who create

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cultural commodities. As Golding and Murdock (2000) explain, a core task in political economy is to examine cultural production and the exercised power in making various cultural products and meanings. By satirizing material realities of media conglomeration, 30 Rock demystified some industrial processes. While the show’s satire is not a means to challenge the industry, 30 Rock serves as an entry point to critically evaluate it.

About 30 Rock and “Biting the Hands That Feed” 30 Rock aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the head writer for The Girly Show (TGS), a late night sketch comedy, with a writing staff that is mostly male. This show‐within‐a‐show premise is a rich ground to explore the dynamics of race and gender both in the culture of production, such as the writers’ room, and the TGS sketches, such as the use of clichéd stereotypes. What 30 Rock says about feminism has been fruitful subject matter for popular criticism and academic scholarship (see Patterson 2012; Swink 2017; Wallace 2010). In addition to multilayered representations of identity politics, 30 Rock portrays structural forces and relations of power in the television industry. It is among a recent trend of self‐aware programs set in media workplaces that “suggests a sophisticated meta‐commentary on the economic, cultural, and professional challenges facing media industries, as well as how one ‘traditional’ industry, broadcast television, is responding to these challenges” (Duffy et al. 2011, p. 297). Critics found the show’s commentary about working in the industry ironic: the second season clearly showcased how “writers revel in biting the hands that feed” (Lowry 2007), the fourth season “gleefully bites the hand that feeds” (Ryan 2009), and after it was all over, “not only did the show survive [the Comcast merger]; it did so while chowing down on the network hand that fed it” (Richmond and Deadline 2013). But there is more than irony in recognizing this contradiction. 30 Rock represents articulations of how the media industry functions. My analysis is divided into two main stages in the sitcom’s representation of the industry. In the first stage, 30 Rock introduces and critiques (while also reinforcing) the status quo. Writers use the logics of conglomeration as sources for humor. The show’s setting, plots, and dialog scrutinize the conglomerate’s corporate structure by satirizing (but also reifying) the logics of concentration and commodification. This first stage establishes the contours of what can be derided and what remains unchallenged. NBCUniversal (NBCU) and General Electric (GE) sanctioned a degree of critical humor about the nature of conglomerate ownership, but it was also the nature of the sitcom formula that cut short any extensive critiques. Storylines based on political economic conditions as fodder for narratives receded, but the Comcast merger rekindled the satirical jabs toward the “hand that feeds.” This marks the second stage, which is significant in the representation of media consolidation and its consequences.



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The Status Quo: Conglomeration, Concentration, and Commodification In the first stage, like most programs, 30 Rock establishes its status quo and ­characters. In doing so, 30 Rock portrays the status quo of how corporate structures shape and control television production. I first outline conglomerate ownership. Then, I highlight the ways in which the show’s premise invites viewers to evaluate the processes of concentration. I conclude this stage with examples of commodification. The result is a program that conveys meanings about relations of power and the distribution of resources.

Conglomeration The conglomerate owns multiple entities in various sectors and engages in practices of buying out competitors as strategies for growth and domination (Murdock 1982). General Electric is a transsectorial conglomerate, whose corporate structure encompasses and dominates across multiple and overlapping sectors of the economy (e.g. military, energy, finance, healthcare, etc.) (Meehan 2010). GE’s media ownership seems incongruent with its core functions. However, this ­demonstrates the logic of accumulation that is enacted through processes such as diversification, concentration, synergy, and “spread investment across a range of sectors” (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 166). GE’s entertainment and media holdings were a small slice of their overall operations. Still, GE’s interest in television served to support both consumer and industry sales (Meehan 2007). A feature of this particular conglomerate is its industry logics, as in, applying the same methods of management across its various industries. As the real Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GE, Jack Welch, had said following the NBC purchase in 1986: “People say, Jack, how can you be at NBC, you don’t know anything about dramas or comedies … Well, I can’t build a jet engine, either. I can’t build a turbine. Our job at GE is to deal with resources – human and financial” (Gunther 1997). 30 Rock began the series with this fact of corporate structure in three particular ways: the Jack Donaghy character, the application of industrial processes to the management of  television programming, and the power to leverage the conglomerate’s properties. The pilot episode establishes the satirical take on Welch’s philosophy. Liz and her co‐worker meet Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), the new executive whose years of market research and product development in GE’s Small Appliances division ­warranted a promotion to “Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming” (S1 Ep1). We may laugh with Liz as she points out the ­absurdity of his title: “It sounds like you program microwave ovens.” But the c­ ritique emphasizes GE’s structure in that expertise lies in the management of resources, regardless of sector.

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His title and method of management call attention to how the production of a television program bares the marks of industrialization. Jack applies GE’s blueprints for industry by transferring his experiences with his last invention, the GE Trifection Oven, to “retool” TGS. He determines Liz’s show is failing because it does not reach the core economic engine for commercial television –“men between 18–49.” To fix the problem, Jack forces Liz to hire Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan). Jack’s hands‐on management causes a disruption in Liz’s own status quo: a new star, new brand, and new television executive who will pay closer attention to the economics of her show. The dynamics between Liz and Jack rely on classic sitcom character dyads; they are at first foils and then grow to be friends. Their relationship becomes a stand‐in for the tensions between the creative side of the culture of production and the corporate side of the production of culture. For example, Jack insists on participating in the writers’ room, where he intercedes in the process by dictating which jokes are inappropriate due to his close relations with some of the writers’ targets (S1 Ep 4). Later episodes continue to use the dynamics of conglomerate ownership as a source of critical humor through Jack’s job title. He has an admitted learning curve to his new job overseeing NBC, but he draws on his meritocratic rise through GE to make programming decisions. He methodically studies what makes for primetime ratings success – the live spectacle, charity events, and reality shows. His first attempt is a failure. The punishment is not a demotion from his television title, but rather the CEO takes away the microwave division (S1 Ep18). He later re‐earns microwaves and occasionally returns to its management, such as commandeering the TGS writing staff to develop a name for a new microwave (S3 Ep14). Jack’s business savvy is a frequent demonstration (or really, exaggeration) of the conglomerate’s power to leverage its properties. For example, Jack learns of his similarities to a telenovela villain, which interferes with his romantic relationship. So he instructs Telemundo, which is owned by the same corporate parent, to purchase the telenovela. He coerces Liz to write an episode where the villain dies. The actor who plays the villain refuses to die and calls the president of Telemundo. The call connects back to Jack’s office and the villain gives in to a solution. The episode ends with leveraging another real NBC property – The Today Show. Jack forces a new concluding segment as a result of his romantic relationship. Matt Lauer protests, as he yells on the air, “Jack, this is ridiculous” (S3 Ep10). While these are comedic illustrations of the potential for abuses of power, other instances are more blunt. For example, Jack meets with a talent agent threatening to sue NBC for the rights to a TGS catchphrase. As Jack explains, though, “NBC employees are 80% of your clients … you need us. I’ve already talked to your lawyers and they are not interested in pursuing this” (S4 Ep5). Other examples include times when Jack mandates the use of TGS writers and resources for other shows and overrides Liz’s decision to deny a reality television crew to follow Tracy Jordan at work. Another way to reframe many of these examples is as synergistic practices, which points to how the operations of ­ ­conglomeration connect with concentration.



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Concentration The conglomerate attains its power and control over resources through the strategies of concentration. Simply noting the intertextual references to other shows and media outlets – NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Access Hollywood, Universal, theme parks, and so on – points to shared corporate ownership within the show and in reality. Concentration has three distinct dimensions: integration (horizontal, where firms consolidate holdings across a particular media sector, and vertical, where a company expands to other stages of the production and distribution ­process); diversification (mergers, takeovers, and joint‐investments of a variety of companies and points of production, distribution, and/or technologies); and internationalization (exporting to foreign markets and investing in foreign ownership) (Murdock and Golding 1995). 30 Rock best exemplifies integration, both in the ­production of the sitcom and the self‐reflexive representations of how integration operates. The representation of diversification is better addressed in the section “The Processes and Consequences of Media Conglomeration,” when 30 Rock satirizes the Comcast merger.1 More than an intertextual nod to Saturday Night Live (SNL), 30 Rock demonstrates how a conglomerate favors its own assets. 30 Rock is a joint production between NBCU and Broadway Video, which is Lorne Michaels’ production company that produces and distributes SNL. Johnson (2013) argues that rather than view this relationship as synergy, a media franchising perspective suggests “an imperative to negotiate would‐be counterclaims to identity and authority in the NBC and SNL brands” (p. 139). NBCU also distributes the program. NBC did not have to pick up its own studio‐produced programming, but the fact that it did is a facet of concentration as well as commodification of NBC’s comedy heritage. How 30 Rock satirizes integration is instructive of typical media conglomerate practices. The storylines and references that rely on concentration particularly use synergy as a source of humor. Synergy involves “cross‐promotion and cross‐selling opportunities” that are maximized by common ownership (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 166). On one level, 30 Rock’s intertextuality is predicated on using real shows and individuals within NBC’s universe. A classic example of synergy is when Tracy appears on The Late Show with Conan O’Brian to promote TGS, as well as to promote NBC’s program to 30 Rock audiences (S1 Ep7). Specially‐made segments of shows like Hardball with Chris Matthews, Nightly News, and Law and Order further enhance the realness of TGS and the NBC work environment. While the segments serve plot development by satirizing industrial logics, these nevertheless partake in the company’s own promotion. A major intervention into the workings of concentration is how 30 Rock ­reimagines NBC’s corporate structure and exaggerates synergistic practices. NBCU’s immediate corporate owner is the fictional Sheindhardt Wig Company, which is owned by GE. The intermediary owner is a running gag and is a fruitful scapegoat for corporate decisions (such as massive budget cuts and layoffs because

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Sheinhardt lost profits). The joke continues when Tracy requests that GE produce his invention, extending 30 Rock’s embellishments about GE’s trans‐sectoral holdings. GE itself is too prestigious a brand name, but Jack explains that a subsidiary can do it. Jack displays a satirical version of GE’s ownership structure and its diversification. The chart shows three main and separate divisions: energy, aeronautics (which includes financials), and domestic appliances. It comically misleads about NBC ownership, which is at the bottom of GE’s “domestic appliance” division, thus ­further satirizing television’s commodity form. NBC, in turn, owns an iron works company, which owns a North Korean meat company that ultimately produces Tracy’s invention (S1 Ep14). The exaggeration of corporate structure and lines of control is an effective tool to critically observe the logics of concentration and trans‐ sectoral conglomeration. This is among the more subversive forms of humor directed toward GE, since the chart makes light of how a corporate owner may obscure its connection to the products it produces. The chart also reinforces the scope of GE’s power across sectors, particularly to leverage commodities.

Commodification The premise that a microwave executive can manage a television network already establishes the critique of television as a commodity, like any other appliance within GE’s purview. Television, though, is not a toaster (contrary to the famous statement made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Mark Fowler in the 1980s). It is a complex system that conveys what and how we see the world. As  a system, we account for the political economic structures and the relations between those who provide their creative and physical labor and those who manage and extract value from such labor. Commodification is “the process of transforming use values into exchange values” (Mosco 2009, p. 141). More precisely for the c­ ontext of television, commodification illuminates a core tension between creative processes to craft television and the industrial processes to manage and profit off the former notions. Throughout the series, but especially in the first three seasons, the writers develop storylines and intertextual references that indicate the negotiation between the creative, aesthetic, and experiential qualities in making television and the fact of the economic structures that commodify those qualities. Two interrelated themes invite scrutiny of how commodification operates. First, characters try to evade economic structure, but the plot resolution and self‐reflexive critical reinforce how commodification are requisite conditions of conglomerate ownership and the television industry itself. This is most evident in an early episode about product placement. Second, 30 Rock portrays how an individual operates as a commodity and in relation to both the conglomerate’s properties and the labor of others. In early episodes, Liz struggles to preserve the idyllic vision of how she and the writers produce culture. But while the character defends writers’ autonomy and



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objects to corporate interference in the creative process, self‐reflexive humor nevertheless achieves the goals of commodification. Consider the following episode first from the perspective of satirical humor and attacks on product placement. Jack enters the space where culture is produced: the writers’ room. He presents to Liz and her staff a corporate directive that “suggests” ways NBC programs can integrate products such as “GE’s direct‐current drilling motor for an offshore or land‐based project” into their programming (S1 Ep5). The 30 Rock writers clearly had fun with skewering synergistic practices and corporate speak (e.g. product placement is “positive mentions or ‘pos mens’”). Using their creative labor to sell this GE product is absurd, but not GE’s consumer products; the episode ends with TGS writers including a GE microwave in the sketch. This narrative resolution points to job security and the balance of power in resisting a corporate directive. More aptly, this episode derides the sanctimonious view of television writing as removed from its economic base. Liz attempts to push back against the corporate interference and the idea to “shill” for GE. But she interrupts herself with a carefully crafted self‐aware product integration segment for Snapple. The segment’s self‐reflexivity is itself a commodification of “the ironic nod to the audience: we all know this is a money‐making enterprise” (Duffy et al. 2011, p. 305). The writers’ wit is a commodity as value is placed on reaching the self‐aware audience. These sorts of product integrations continued throughout the series, such as the very obvious Verizon placement and the more clandestine Soy Joy (Nussbaum 2008). After Liz’s rant, Jack gets the last word: “Get real, kids. You write skits mocking our presidents to fill time between car commercials” (S1 Ep5). The episode exemplifies a double‐coded commodification, one that parlays the value of self‐aware humor into the audience commodity. Liz’s ambivalence toward the conglomerate economic structure highlights agency and the commodification of labor. An ongoing joke is about Liz’s alternatives to working in the conglomerate media structure. If she does not like that her livelihood is contingent on the direct line of control from the conglomerate to using her ­creative labor to write sketches with GE products or write for Jack’s other projects (e.g. scripting for a highly constructed reality show), she is free to leave and struggle outside conglomerate strictures. But of course she remains and, at times, embraces how the conglomerate extracts value. Liz herself becomes a commodity once Jack identifies the commercial success of a catchphrase Liz wrote (“that’s a dealbreaker!”). Intertwined with postfeminist framing of women comics and self‐help culture, Liz is no longer cynical about the conglomerate as she is put through its synergistic processes. She writes a book, which leads to a television talk show deal. The talk show fails because the hyperscrutiny of Liz as commodity is incongruent with her self‐perception as a creative person who works behind the scenes (and thus, a more comfortable position where it is her labor that is commodified). Liz Lemon lost her status as a commodity. This is in contrast to Tina Fey in the real world; Fey’s success on SNL as head‐writer and onscreen actor, along with the discursive construction of her paradoxical feminism, demonstrated her commodity value (Patterson 2012).

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Tracy Jordan is another exemplar of the individual’s commodity status and particularly the relationship of celebrity to sustaining both audience commodity and productive labor. When Tracy figures out that he can swear on live television because the FCC fines are not a problem for his own financial coffers, Liz has to deal with the advertiser fallout (S3 Ep14). To preserve her own livelihood, she has to preserve Tracy’s viability as a commodity. And to do so, she tells Tracy that his actions are affecting the crew. Not wanting to hurt the crew by lost sponsorship and threats of cancelation, Tracy buys up all the advertising spots. In effect, Tracy undercuts television’s economic model and transcends his own commodity status in that he is so rich, he cannot tarnish his own reputation (and his behavior further secures his value). That attitude continues when Jack renegotiates Tracy’s contract, whose ­commodity status is more of value to NBC and TGS than it is to advancing his own brand. The economics and relations to the means of production highlights a status quo that depends on the balance of individuals as commodities, the commodity audience, and the overall show as a product. In summary, 30 Rock’s narrative complexity portrays reasonably realistic features of the structures and relations within a media conglomerate. But over time, just as we learn to be comfortable with the characters, we learn to be comfortable with the nature of the conglomerate. Not every episode directly deals with filling in the deeper details of representing the television industry. The ebbs and flows of political‐economy‐inflected storylines point to the default setting in a sitcom formula. Plots move beyond satirizing how the industry works and toward the more enduring sitcom narratives about relationships. For example, the satire in early episodes stems from Jack and Liz as metonyms for corporate structure and control, but their interpersonal dynamics and clash of character traits became a more prominent source of humor. The Comcast merger and its consequences renewed an interest in foregrounding political economic structures. As I discuss in the next section, 30 Rock portrayed a satirical but still limited view of media conglomeration when it depicted some of the real processes and consequences of the Comcast and NBCU merger.

The Processes and Consequences of Media Conglomeration The merger process and Comcast’s majority ownership, in addition to the economic realities of primetime network television, provided rich self‐reflexive ground for the 30 Rock writers. Storylines critically rerepresent to audiences key components of the merger and its aftermath. First, I sketch details of the merger to situate which elements 30 Rock uses as source material. Then, I discuss the portrayal of the merger process, focusing on regulatory hurdles. Then, I analyze how the show ­positions the satire about Comcast’s business model. This last component presents the greatest challenge to the status quo within the 30 Rock universe. Whereas Liz and TGS are under constant existential threat (which is the sitcom‐level narrative status quo), it is Jack’s status quo that is disrupted. In reading the consequences of



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the merger through Jack, the satirical challenges to Comcast diminish because the humor reifies neoliberal ideology and deflects attacks against deregulation and media consolidation. The tendency toward concentration and consolidation is itself the industry status quo. It was only a matter of time until GE would sell NBCU, given reports that it needed the capital “to stabilize its financial services arm and repay billions in crisis‐ time government loans” (Gara 2013). The official announcement referred to the Comcast deal as a “joint venture,” with Comcast purchasing 51% stake in NBC Universal and managing GE’s remaining financial stakes (General Electric 2009). A “joint venture” was a softer (and economically strategic) way of saying merger. This transaction enabled Comcast to “control major pieces of the entire circuit of production, distribution, and exhibition ….[as] participants in the reconstitution of entertainment and information networks” (Mosco 2009, p. 194). Further consolidation required attaining the means to produce and own programs, a point extolled in Comcast’s 50th anniversary video. As NBC news anchor Brian Williams explains, “all Comcast needed now was its own content business,” suggesting that NBCU fulfills a missing piece in the Comcast family. Tina Fey also appears in the video, reflecting “the timing of the takeover was great for us because … we needed a whole new source of jokes” (Comcast 2013). These instances of intertexuality are strategies to elevate and concretize the conglomerate as a legitimate media oligarchy. As evidenced by the remaining 30 Rock seasons, Comcast could tolerate the critical humor that satirized its business philosophy and some of its strategies. The first reference to Kabletown, the fictional Comcast, aired March 11, 2010, about four months after the announcement. The last episode to mention Kabletown as soon‐to‐be owner aired 27 January, 2011, only weeks after the official merger. In that span, eight episodes featured a plot related to merger processes. The show aired for two more years with about ten episodes featuring a main plot or notable jokes pertaining Comcast ownership. Weeks after the show ended, journalists noted the fulfillment of 30 Rock’s prophecies when Comcast completed its full acquisition of NBCU and ownership of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (Zuckerman 2013). Comcast bought out GE’s remaining shares to solidify their industry concentration, while GE could divest its media assets and recoup “lost NBC earnings” (Choszick and Stelter 2013; Event Brief 2013). This fact and other conditions of the merger were source material for 30 Rock writers. Of all the conditions, the writers mainly focused on the regulatory process and how the new corporate structure differed from GE.

The Merger and Regulation The Comcast merger triggered numerous congressional hearings and regulatory reviews by the FCC and the Justice Department. One episode parallels some of those proceedings and procedures. As a nod to the pleasurable logics of intertextuality, Rob Reiner plays himself as a senator, who parallels Senator Al Franken and his role.

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Franken, who had been an SNL writer, was an outspoken opponent of the merger. Reiner nearly mirrors Franken’s words, which lends credibility to the satire by ­parodying real events and scrutinizing industry discourses to rationalize the merger. For the purposes of plot development, writers focused on two particular facets: ­antitrust regulation and diversity. The episode highlights how the explanation of vertical integration varies depending on context, thereby strategically defining the term for audiences and satirizing rhetorical framing in congressional hearings. As Jack explains vertical integration to Liz: Jack:  Imagine that your favorite corn chip manufacturer also owned the number one diarrhea medication. Liz:  That would be great cuz then there could be a sample of the medicine in each bag – Jack:  Keep thinking. Liz:  (gasp) Except then, they might be tempted to make the corn chips give you – Jack:  Vertical Integration … and it’s my job to make sure that that does happen.

Past episodes critiqued vertical integration, but none had explained it so plainly to demonstrate the consequences whereby industry earns profits at the expense of public welfare. Liz’s reaction is a stand‐in for the audience; we should not accept this. But Liz has little power or incentive to resist. Jack’s testimony to the congressional committee suggests how little power politicians have to likewise oppose concentration. He recasts vertical integration as an American virtue, using the metaphor of how the American farmer operates to make a reductive argument that justifies why vertical integration is allowable, admirable, and desirable for consumers. This language echoes the statements made by the Comcast and NBC CEOs. They claim that because the market is already competitive, consumers benefit from the merger because it is “essentially vertical,” which like 30 Rock, obscures the depths of concentration because both instances frame the merger as limited to NBC’s content and Comcast’s distribution (Roberts and Zucker 2010, p. 216). The narrative flow further evades critical interrogations about antitrust regulation, thereby neutering the satirical explanations for vertical integration and ­reinforcing deregulation as normative. Rather than pursuing an attack on the logics of concentration, the writers pick up on diversity as another facet of the merger ­process. The only thing stopping the merger, then, is an accusation that NBC is ­racist in its lack of diverse representation, both on and off screen. In the real testimony, the two CEOs promised “the new venture will be able to increase the amount, quality, variety, and availability of content, thus promoting diversity. This includes content of specific interest to diverse audiences, children and families, women, and other key audience segments” (Roberts and Zucker 2010, p. 218). 30 Rock uses this rhetoric as ammunition for satire. Women are served by the new Kabletown venture by fulfilling their emotional needs with programming labeled as “porn for women” and families are served with the Blabar, an onscreen



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graphic that “allows parents to eliminate racy content” (S5 E13). Both exaggerate how the new owner will serve “diverse” audiences not as a means to create a variety of quality programming, but to further enhance the profits. Whereas the real testimony did not reference programming and ownership opportunities for African Americans, 30 Rock introduces the fictional congresswoman, Representative Bookman (Queen Latifa). She appeals to the public interest and diversity standards in the telecomm policies, explaining that it is “my responsibility to make sure that public airwaves represent the face of my public.” She raises valid objections to what is on NBC and who makes the programs behind the scene. The genuine commentary about the lack of diversity is intertwined with satirizing both political grandstanding and the rhetoric about diversity. As Jack tries to convey to Bookman (and thus, reify the nobility of neoliberal notions of diversity in the marketplace), “diversity means new ideas and new markets. It is our best hope for true innovation” since it is “the engine that drives this country …. We always need people who are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.” Essentially, the Bookman storyline is the only obstacle in Jack’s way to ensure a successful Kabletown takeover of NBC. He goes as far as bankrolling an extreme right‐wing candidate running against Bookman because that is easier than improving content and workplace diversity. While there are some storylines about the economics of the merger, such as preparing NBC to appear profitable, regulatory hurdles are the primary plot points to advance the merger storyline. Issues of diversity are relegated back to the self‐­ reflexive engagement with the politics of its representations as seen through the TGS writers and stars rather than as related to structural inequalities and regulatory ­policies. Likewise, there is little commentary about the oligopolistic practices and the consequences of little regulatory oversight. There are small moments of reflective resistance, such as Liz questioning why the government allowed for a situation where NBC negotiates carriage fees with its own transindustrial owner (S5 E15). But these are minor in that the pace of 30 Rock’s narrative quickly refocuses attention to how the characters relate to the new structure. As such, many of the plots that stem from political economic conditions are presented through Jack’s lens.

The Kabletown Business Model and the Pivot in Critical Humor 30 Rock writers mined the Comcast business model for plot development and rapid jokes. The humor functions more so as parody in that there are clear intertextual references to and signifiers of Comcast’s narrative about its business philosophy and its economic structures. The satire is undercut because while Kabletown is the butt of the joke, it comes at the expense of Jack’s struggles to fit in with the new corporate culture and the particularities of the horizontally integrated telecomm media‐­ conglomerate. This is in contrast to storytelling from the creative laborers’ ­perspectives. Liz and the writers experience the same industrial constraints on their

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productive labor as they had experienced under GE, thus their status for the purposes of the sitcom narrative remains largely the same. At first, 30 Rock attacked Jack and what he represents (the elite capitalist class). As evident in 30 Rock’s renewals, the portrayal of an executive and corporate strategies do not challenge the conglomerate’s authority. Jack shifts from a caricature to laugh at to a sympathetic character to laugh with. So when Kabletown purchases NBCU and cuts Jack off from his ­meritocratic aspirations to run GE, the narrative favors Jack’s perspectives. While episodes attack the new owner, sources of humor are closely tied to resolving Jack’s crisis in coping with shifting power balances and undermining critique. Jack serves as a valuable entry point to debase and deride Comcast’s structure. He balks at the folksy Hank Hooper, the fictional CEO who matches the traits of the Comcast patriarch. His disdain for Kabletown’s familial patina serves to identify how relations of power are reconfigured – the executive dining room is converted to a communal one, employees have the right to pitch ideas to executives, and crucially, the line of succession is nepotistic rather than meritocratic. These parodies of real events (Sorkin and Arango 2009; Waxman and Molloy 2011) underscore how a CEO sets the tone for the whole conglomerate and in particular satirize the facade placed over profit motives. But while the nature of the conglomerate changes, how it ­functions to extract value remains the same. During the whole course of the series, episodes frequently referenced the ­economics of network television, such as ratings, the cost‐efficiencies of reality ­programming, and synergies, but little else to suggest a broader economic structure. 30 Rock portrays how Comcast’s structure differed, thus highlighting the problematic business models that define twenty‐first century media conglomerates. It is through Jack that we learn not only of Kabletown’s core business model, but how to think about it, because Jack is eager to contribute and unsatisfied with the structure. As his peer explains, the cables are already laid (no infrastructure investments) and the profits all come from porn. Jack is horrified; not about the porn but because of the shock to his core identity as a GE man. Jack is a literal symbol of industrial monopoly capitalism because Jack’s new role is to “look good behind our CEO” as the classic sharp blue‐eyed executive. His peer’s last words are telling: “We won the war.” (S4 Ep15). Kabletown had reached peak post‐Fordist accumulation, as its assets self‐replicated and produced profits with little effort. Jack refuses to believe there is no more growth or rather, exploitation of a new market. So he unveils a new Kabletown product for an untapped market: porn for women (“men patiently listening”). On the one hand, this episode is a complete satire of industry logics to exploit integration, commodify desire, and create new markets. The product is an effective demonstration of concentration, since NBC produces the content and Kabletown already owns the infrastructure. This storyline also attacks the very lucrative Comcast business model, which caused controversy during the merger (Jerome 2010). On the other hand, Jack functions to ideologically link one conglomerate to the  other. Kabletown does not actually make products; GE applied the logics of



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industrial production across all its sectors. The satire continues to reprimand the ethics and limits to Kabletown’s economic structure, but in contrast to extolling the virtues of GE and a previous stage of capitalism. Moreover, it is how the episode ends that reinforces complacency. Another way to read the episode is as an example of how “capitalism produces the very culturally enriched and educated workers and citizens necessary for its own suppression” (Garnham 2013, p. 47). Whatever the depths of the astute and critical distillations about Kabletown, the episode concludes in much the same way that many 30 Rock and other satirical sitcoms conclude – by undermining its own critique. Liz eagerly uses the new Kabletown product. The episode demonstrates the cultural workers’ preference toward comedic effect (Liz sheepishly talks back to the attractive man, who just instructed her on how to order his services, which also undermines feminist critiques) rather than continue the line of attack. Or as Duffy et al. (2011) concluded, this self‐reflexive humor about the media industry is self‐preservation. After all, by ordering the porn for women, she contributes to profits that cycle back to her livelihood at TGS. The remaining episodes engaging with the Kabletown business model continue to use Jack to both critique and justify conglomeration and the control over resources. He tries to profit off the live charity event before a disaster strikes and replace the pages with automated robots. He proposes to Hank that Kabletown should make couches, which exaggerates the logics of vertical integration and the physicality of industrial production. Jack explains “Kabletown controls nearly all aspects” of the television experience except “we don’t control the couch. Why are we outsourcing the American dream?” (S6 Ep15). He evokes this myth without cynicism, thereby positioning the source of humor as his pitiful attempts to ingratiate himself to a media conglomerate structure that favors nepotism over merit. Later, Jack goes the opposite route and tanks NBC’s ratings so much that he hopes Hank sells the network, thus restarting his CEO dream (S7 Ep1). All these plans fail as they are typical sitcom ploys that disrupt the equilibrium within an episode, which in this case is that Jack now lacks autonomy to change his circumstances. The antics to elevate his status and fight his teenage competitor distract from the quick jokes that really attack the new conglomerate structure, such as references to cuts to health insurance and increased mandates to integrate Kabletown properties into programming. The logics of the sitcom formula impacted the weight of the critique by the last season in that what were once self‐reflexive and critical revelations about how the television industry operates became too familiar. The series reached its logical conclusion the way that many sitcoms do – when it was no longer economically viable for the network. Additionally, what more could be said and done after so many self‐reflexive seasons about the quandaries of staying viable within a conglomerate? The repetition of storylines to poke fun and undercut television’s ­economic model (e.g. reality shows, audience commodity) and structural constraints lost the bite that these storylines once had in the first few seasons. Even so, this stage featured a crucial set of storylines that stem from the particular disruption of Jack’s status quo.

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Conclusion: Satire’s Critical Capacity If a goal of satire is to judge and attack the status quo, then its goals can never fully be realized in the commodity form. Even the most satirical of sitcoms are scrubbed of their power to truly deride and aim for change. That is not to say, though, that texts that represent the social relations and structures of the television industry lack critical substance. While 30 Rock undoubtedly falls short of any calls for social change, its representations of the television industry intersect with some of political economy’s ontological goals to foreground the forces and relations of production (Mosco 2009). Critical humor, that which is socially relevant, intertextual, and self‐ reflexive, invites scrutiny. So what did 30 Rock scrutinize, and thus, foreground? The show‐within‐a‐show premise highlights the exertion of control over the creative worker. The satirical representation of NBC’s ownership is a lesson in conglomeration and its synergistic practices. At the meta‐level, it simultaneously tracked the demise of network television’s dominance while demonstrating to media executives that there was a market for self‐reflexive satirical humor and that that market will continue in syndication. While media content can be a site of struggle in articulating frustrations and alternatives, a text like 30 Rock demonstrates the ideological role of media to disseminate and reify ideas about economic and political structures. 30 Rock is another example of television’s hegemonic processes. Humor can be a release valve, but the pursuit of laughs at the expense of NBC and the industrial processes of television are easily lost in the trappings of the sitcom’s form. Amidst the simultaneous storylines and the visual and verbal gags, what is left outside of scrutiny? For example, in all the complaints against Kabletown, no one joked or mentioned rising cable bill costs, Comcast’s terrible customer service record, and consequences of the merger on net neutrality. The existence of an entity like Comcast is normalized and the potential power of a regulatory body as well as elected officials to stave off (or at least, better negotiate) media consolidation and conglomeration is belittled. For all the focus on Jack as the stand‐in representative of industry and capitalism, the nature of the sitcom formula means that the focus on him as an individual – his aspirations to head GE, and then Kabletown, obscures some of the core functions of the conglomerate that might have been rich springboards for plots. Would GE and then Comcast tolerate plot points and jokes at the expense of the shareholder? In this sense, a media text that is critical of a media industry defined by conglomeration, concentration, and commodification is still one that justifies capital’s existence. Satire produced within the strictures of capitalism tends toward humanizing the conglomerate that sanctions critical commentary.

Note 1 For reference, one episode aligns with internationalization, see Season 2, Episode 10.



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Executive Officer, NBC Universal, before the Committee to the Judiciary, Hearing on “Competition in the Media and Entertainment Distribution Market.” Journal of Current Issues in Media and Telecommunications 3 (3): 215–227. Ryan, M. (2009) “30 Rock” gleefully bites the hand that feeds it as Season 4 begins. Chicago Tribune, 14 October. Smythe, D. (1980/2006). On the audience commodity and its work. In: Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (eds. M.G. Durham and D.M. Kellner), 253–279. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Sorkin, A.R. and Arango, T. (2009). In secret meetings, Comcast wooed G.E. and wooed NBC. New York Times, 2 December. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/business/ media/03nbc.html?dbk. Swink, R.S. (2017). Lemony Liz and Likable Leslie: audience understandings of feminism, comedy, and gender in women‐led television comedies. Feminist Media Studies 17 (1): 14–28. Turner, C. (2005). Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Wallace, K. (2010). Open thread: feminism, fey, and funny ladies. Bitch Media, 15 April. http://bitchmagazine.org/post/open‐thread. Waxman, S. and Molloy, T. (2011). Comcast digs in at 30 Rock: Communal toilets, buffet ­dining and where’s G.E.? The Wrap, 19 June. https://www.thewrap.com/comcast‐digs‐ 30‐rock‐communal‐toilets‐buffet‐dining‐and‐wheres‐ge‐28372. Zucherman, E. (2013). Comcast buys GE stake in NBCUniversal, completing the “30 Rock” prophecy. The Atlantic, 12 Feb. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2013/02/comcast‐buys‐ge‐stake‐nbcuniversal‐completing‐30‐rock‐prophecy/ 318425.

Chapter 15

Nothing New Under the Sun: The Reimplementation of 80s Sitcom Tropes in NBC’s This is Us Novotny Lawrence

In 2016, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism released its study “Inclusion or Invisibility: Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment.” The findings revealed that on broadcast television, members of underrepresented groups comprised only 29.7% of all speaking characters, and of that number approximately 5.8% were African American (Smith et al. 2016, p. 9). This figure is reflective of black performers’ ongoing struggle for representational equality as historically their experiences have been marked by misrepresentation, exclusion, and a lack of the same consistent opportunities afforded their white counterparts. With that in mind, when a hit series prominently features African American experiences, it provides hope that perhaps network television is attempting to move beyond its traditional practices with minorities. NBC’s This is Us is a contemporary example of such a show in that it features a blended family and recounts the main characters’ arcs in a relatively original way. Because of its unconventional storytelling and the inclusion of an African American child in a white family, This is Us seems a fairly bold and original broadcast television series. However, when considering it in the pantheon of television’s representation of African Americans, the show is eerily similar to 1980s sitcoms, albeit in dramatic fashion. In particular, in its dealings with Randall, This is Us relies upon conventions popularized in another NBC hit, Diff ’rent Strokes (1978–1984), and ABC’s Webster (1983–1987; 1987–1989 syndication). While this chapter focuses on a drama, I begin with a brief historical overview of the development of African American‐themed sitcoms from the 1950s to the 1980s for two reasons. First, there

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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were relatively few attempts to develop black‐themed dramas in television’s early years and shows conceived around people of color in that genre remain a void in contemporary Hollywood. Accordingly, the development of African American‐­ oriented comedies illustrates the various strategies that networks implemented in creating black‐themed series as well as their struggles, and lack of desire to accurately depict African American life and culture. Second, I argue that This is Us ­borrows heavily from the aforementioned sitcoms, and as such, the history of African American representation in the genre lends critical insight that informs the ensuing textual analysis of the first season of This is Us. More specifically, in the second half of this chapter, I work to demonstrate how in dealing with African American character Randall (Sterling K. Brown), the series repackages tropes ­popularized on Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster, perpetuating problematic themes regarding whiteness and African American identities.

The Search for the “Right” Strategy In “Origins of the Genre: In Search of the Radio Sitcom,” David Marc relates, The introduction of a mass communication medium normally occurs when an ­economically viable commercial application is found for new technology. A second element necessary to the launch, content (i.e. something to communicate), is treated as something of an afterthought in this process. As a result, adaptations of popular works and of entire genres from previous media tend to dominate the introductory period of a new medium, even as they mutate under the developing conditions. (2002, p. 15)

Indeed, that was the case in the 1950s when television was in its infancy. In developing many of the early programs for the visual medium, networks turned to radio, adapting popular serials with strong listenership for the burgeoning technology. Hence, vaudeville‐derived comedies including The Jack Benny Program (1932–1955) and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1933–1950), as well as family‐oriented programs such as Father Knows Best (1949–1954), made the transition to television. Infused with wit, humor, and morality lessons, each of the shows presented whites with dignity and respect and enjoyed extended television runs. While radio serials based on white characters and families made the transition to television fairly seamlessly, developing highly popular comedy programs centering on African Americans proved a more challenging task for network executives. Because the shows’ humor derived from many of the most egregious stereotypes surrounding black identity, such ethnic radio serials functioned as yet another harsh example of the racial dichotomy that existed between African Americans and their white counterparts. In particular, radio serials centering on African Americans were extensions of blackface minstrelsy. Regarded as the first distinctly American theatrical form, minstrel performances featured



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white and, later, black entertainers corked up, donning absurdly exaggerated, often hideous blackface makeup to create a visual image of the comic Stage Negro; ill‐fitting clothing, malapropos, nonsensical chatter, a slavering addiction to watermelon and chicken, a shuffling gait and/or contrasting propensity to break into frenzied dance or flight when in earshot of syncopated music or eyesight of a cemetery, were added to complete the picture. (Taylor and Austen 2012, p. viii)

By the end of the 1800s, this grotesque and overtly racist misrepresentation of African American identity was the US’s most popular entertainment form. Because minstrel shows were often advertised as “a true reflection of the character and culture of former black slaves, it was accepted as such by a vast number of Americans” (Taylor and Austen 2012, p. viii). The blackface tradition featured prominently in the development of television as the medium’s first sitcom centering on an African American character, The Beulah Show (1950–1953), was adapted from a radio serial in which a white man voiced the title character. Marlin Hurt portrayed the jovial domestic, speaking in “black ­dialect,” minstrel performers’ aural signifier of African American authenticity. In Beulah’s initial guest appearances on programs such as Homeward Unincorporated (1939), That’s Life (1943), and Fibber McGee and Molly (1943), Hurt performed the character as a quintessential mammy, and thus, she emerged as a dim‐witted, ­giggly, sassy, yet lovable domestic. Listeners responded so favorably to the character that CBS Radio execs developed a successful serial focusing on Beulah and her escapades working as the surrogate matriarch for the upstanding, white middle‐class Henderson family (Bogle 2001, p. 19). In 1950 Beulah and the Hendersons made their way to television on The Beulah Show, marking the beginning of the medium’s Minstrelsy Era (1950–1953) (Means Coleman 2000, p. 81). During this short‐lived period, white television executives developed black‐themed situation comedies that relied upon the same tired and hackneyed stereotypes that had consistently circumscribed African American identity in entertainment since minstrel stage shows (Means Coleman and McIlwain 2005, p. 126). The Beulah Show starred acclaimed African American actress, Ethel Waters, (and later Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers), as the title character. Though throughout her career Waters had demonstrated an impressive ability to imbue stereotypical caricatures with glimpses of multidimensionality, Beulah emerged as a tired retread of the mammy. As Bogle notes, the character “was a type long present in American popular culture: the large, often dowdy, usually darker, all‐knowing, all‐seeing, all‐hearing, all‐understanding mammy figure, whose life is built around nurturing and nourishing those in the Big House” (Bogle 2001, p. 22). True to the archetype’s nature, each week Beulah worked to solve the Henderson family’s comical dilemmas, with little regard for her own well‐being. From helping Harry Sr. secure business deals to teaching Harry Jr. how to dance the cakewalk, Beulah had all of the answers to ensure that the family’s suburban life unfolded without a hitch.

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Although The Beulah Show attempted to position the title character as skilled, strong, and wise, the series ultimately served as another symbol of African American oppression. As if being a typical mammy was somehow not enough, the series also contradicted much of the title character’s alleged wisdom by featuring her in the show’s opening vignettes reciting degrading lines such as “She spends most of her time in the kitchen, but never seems to know what’s cooking,” and “Don’t let nobody tell you I’m in the market for a husband. Of course, I would be. But they don’t sell husbands in a market.” Beulah’s self‐deprecating quips garnered laughter at her and  African Americans’ expense by further validating what a segment of society perceived as their lack of intelligence and inferiority. Despite The Beulah Show’s flaws, the series aired on ABC for three years, undergoing numerous changes throughout its run. By the end of the first season, Waters had grown tired of playing the “white folks kitchen comedy role” and left the series as a result (Bogle 2001, p. 25). Still committed to the show, network executives shifted the filming location from New York to Hollywood, and hired Hattie McDaniel (who had briefly played Beulah on the radio after Hurt’s untimely death), to play the title character. The veteran actress appeared in just six episodes before leaving the series due to illness. In a last‐ditch effort to salvage The Beulah Show, ABC execs turned to Louise Beavers, another actress with a long history of playing mammies in motion pictures, to step into the role. She starred for the next season and a half before she too grew uneasy with the Beulah caricature. After losing its third actress, and perhaps beginning to recognize the problems associated with a minstrel‐based series, in 1953 ABC executives finally removed The Beulah Show from its broadcast schedule (Bogle 2001, p. 26). In addition to ABC, CBS also forayed into minstrel‐inspired comedy, adapting one of the most popular programs in radio history for television, Amos ‘n’ Andy. The serial was conceived by white, former vaudeville actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who also voiced the buffoonish African American title and ­supporting cast members using an exaggerated “ghetto” dialect (Barlow 1993, p.  191). The series followed Amos Jones and Andrew Brown, who had migrated from the South to Chicago and eventually Harlem. Once there, they found ­themselves incapable of navigating their Northern environs as a result of their feeble intellect. As Barlow notes, “They epitomized the gullible African American ‘country rubes’ from the rural South, comically aspiring to fame and fortune in the ‘big city’ even while being habitually victimized by the same urban milieu” (Barlow 1993, p. 192). Hence, in portraying the Amos and Andy characters, Gosden and Correll elevated minstrel shows’ Zip Coon caricature – a free slave attempting to rise above his ­position – to the next level by broadcasting its contemporized brethren to mass audiences. Though the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the African American press vehemently opposed Amos ‘n’ Andy, the radio show was wildly popular among whites and blacks. At the height of its popularity, 53% of the national radio audience tuned in to listen to the title caricatures’ latest exploits (Barlow 1993, p. 194). Additionally, Amos ‘n’ Andy was among the first



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programs to illustrate the far‐reaching financial gains of a popular radio serial. The program “sparked a boom in the sale of radio sets when it began to attract a mass audience, and it generated a number of spin‐off commercial products, like phonograph records, a feature‐length film, comic strips, toys, and even a candy bar” (Barlow 1993, p. 194). Given the Amos ‘n’ Andy radio program’s tremendous success, in 1948 CBS paid Gosden and Correll a record sum of $2.5 million for the rights to the series (Bogle 2001, p. 28). However, the network rejected the actors’ plans to play Amos and Andy in blackface makeup, a decision that illustrates that the US was at least beginning to undergo a gradual cultural shift. Still, Gosden and Correll conducted the national search to find the perfect African American actors to play the title characters on television, and trained them to perform the characters as they had on radio and in film. Aside from featuring actual African American performers, the Amos ‘n’ Andy TV series was a facsimile of the radio program. Each week it depicted the buffoonish characters as they worked to traverse a range of outlandish situations, such as Kingfish (Tim Moore) being drafted into the military, Andy’s (Spencer Williams) attempts to break off his engagement so that he can strike up a relationship with Amos’s (Alvin Childress) new neighbor, and a number of episodes focusing on the protagonists’ failed business schemes. It is important to note that the zany situations in which the characters find themselves are not necessarily problematic. Rather, it is that the humor derived from Amos, Andy, and Kingfish’s stupidity, ­dishonesty, and ineptitude, perpetuated commonly held stereotypes ­surrounding black identity. Consequently, audiences were potentially laughing at the characters, and African Americans more broadly, instead of laughing with them as Kingfish, Amos, and Andy shucked and jived their way through ridiculous dilemma after dilemma. While Amos ‘n’ Andy enjoyed a crossover viewership, a segment of the US ­population found the television show equally as objectionable as the radio program. The NAACP condemned the series, and threatened to boycott the show’s sponsor, Blatz Brewing Company, unless CBS pulled it from its broadcast schedule (Bogle 2001, p. 32). The organization also drafted a statement titled, “Why Amos ‘n’ Andy Should be Taken Off the Air,” which highlighted a number of its criticisms of the program: It tends to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed and prejudiced people that Negroes are inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest; Millions of white Americans see this Amos ‘n’ Andy picture of Negroes and think the entire race is the same; and Millions of white children learn about Negroes for the first time by seeing Amos ‘n’ Andy and carry this impression throughout their lives in one form or another. (cited in Bogle 2001, p. 33)

Realizing that the uproar over Amos ‘n’ Andy would not go away, CBS executives eventually succumbed to its detractors, canceling the series after three seasons (Bogle 2001, p. 40).

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The cancelation of The Beulah Show and the NAACP’s successful campaign to have Amos ‘n’ Andy removed from CBS’s lineup, ended television’s early forays into minstrel‐inspired comedies. However, the end of the shows drastically altered the complexion of television as network execs concluded that “Race and ethnicity, which had played so well as radio exotica, seemed to spell nothing but trouble for the new visual medium” (Marc 1998, p. 44). Instead of working more diligently to conceive of programming that presented the richness and depth of African American life and culture, networks ceased the development of shows focusing solely on blacks. TV then entered into the Era of Nonrecognition (1954–1967), a 13‐year period that “describes the absence of African Americans and Black situation comedy from ­network television” (Means Coleman 2000, p. 82). During that time, stations turned to the development of “WASPcoms,” lily‐white series such as Father Knows Best (1954–1960), Leave it to Beaver (1957–1963), and the Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) that reinforced white family values (Marc 1998, p. 45). African Americans eventually returned to situation comedy when network execs discovered a formula that was a major departure from early black‐themed comedies. With the US emerging from the Civil Rights Movement and engulfed in turmoil over the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the Gay Rights Movement, a handful of African American‐themed programs developed by legendary producer, Norman Lear, captured the zeitgeist. Robin R. Means Coleman explains that during this period, which she appropriately labels, “The Lear Era: Ridiculed Black Subjectivity and Social Relevancy” (1972–1983), African Americans appeared in a new wave of shows developed around their experiences – Sanford and Son (1972–1975), Good Times (1974–1979), and The Jeffersons (1975–1985) (2000, pp. 87–88). At the time these programs aired, “Lear’s brand of comedy was innovative. For the first time, situation comedy would confront the racial, political, economic, and social issues gripping the nation rather than sweep them under the rug or create a comforting illusion of harmony” (Means Coleman 2000, p. 88). Further, as Marc and Thompson (1995) assert, “through his ratings success, Lear proved beyond a doubt that a weekly commercial television series could in fact serve as a vehicle for personal expression (pp. 49–50).” Indeed, Lear broke new ground on his series examining African American ­experiences, yet the shows were not without their faults. Means Coleman (2000) notes that the programs were generally set in largely segregated worlds; however, she acknowledges that the series managed to inject a never‐before‐seen consciousness into the comedic discourse (p. 89). In particular, Good Times centers on the Evanses, an impoverished family living in Chicago’s Cabrini Green Housing Project. As they navigate their meager existence, they comment on a range of topics such the US’s flawed political system, gang violence, teenage pregnancy, and Jesus’s ethnicity. In contrast, The Jeffersons featured the affluent African American title family, which seized the opportunity to “move on up” from their blue‐collar neighborhood to a luxury high‐rise apartment in Manhattan after family patriarch, George (Sherman Hemsley), struck it rich in the dry‐cleaning business. The series also wove



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examinations of race and politics into its episodes, addressing topics such as interracial dating, the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, and passing throughout its 11‐season run. As the 1970s progressed, the US started to become more conservative under the leadership of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, a shift that became more deeply entrenched into the social fabric when in 1980 Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, secured the presidency. “Reaganism was built on desires to dismantle the welfare state, to curb an intrusive government, to stimulate corporate growth through unrestrained market forces, and (through key judicial appointments) to ensure a long range of conservative authority in key areas of public and private life” (Johnson 2003). Importantly, he also villainized people of color and the poor, as “race operated at the center of Reagan’s conservative political discourse as the often‐ unnamed sign of erosion, menace, threat, and permissiveness – black welfare cheats, the (liberal) welfare state (and its largely minority dependents), (black and Latino) teenage pregnancy, and purported rising crime rates (committed by largely black and Latino urban male youth)” (Gray 1995, p. 22). That Reagan further devastated the very impoverished communities that he consistently criticized by freezing the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour, cutting in half the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies, and eliminating antipoverty programs, mattered very little. As Herman Gray (1995) contends, during his presidency “Reagan functioned symbolically as the heroic (read white) savior, the symbolic embodiment of the grand American patriarch,” who would govern in a way that, as he put it, would “let America be America again” (p. 33). Under Reagan’s leadership, networks slowly abandoned Lear’s once‐popular brand of social relevancy sitcoms, developing comedic programming that served mainly as escapist entertainment. As Haynes Johnson (1991) explains, “Americans with Reagan leading them, were in no mood for being bothered by problems. Reagan and television gave them what they wanted most: a chance to feel good” (p. 140). It is in this climate that television producers conceived another highly successful strategy for depicting African Americans in situation comedies – framing their stories in white existences. NBC’s Diff ’rent Strokes was the first of two very popular sitcoms to implement the formula. Developed by the network specifically for burgeoning child star Gary Coleman, the series focuses on two African American brothers from Harlem, Arnold (Gary Coleman) and Willis Jackson (Todd Bridges) whose lives are changed forever when their single‐parent mother dies of an undisclosed illness. Fortunately, Phillip Drummond (Conrad Baines) a kindly, white millionaire for whom their mother worked for as a maid, promised to look after the boys in the event of her death. True to his word, he rescues Arnold and Willis from their tough Harlem environment, relocating them to Park Avenue where they live with him and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato) in their high‐rise apartment. Perhaps influenced by the fading Lear‐era sitcom formula, initial Diff ’rent Strokes episodes called attention to racial differences, drawing laughs from people’s stunned reactions upon learning that a white man was the father of two black sons, as well as incorporating humorous critiques of class distinctions. For instance, early on in the

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series, Arnold and Willis often remarked about poverty in Harlem, and in a 1980 episode titled “Guess Who,” Kimberly dons blackface to defend her adopted siblings against her racist boyfriend. However, as Diff ’rent Strokes’ run continued into the increasingly conservative 1980s, the show ceased addressing such issues even in passing. Though the term “colorblind” was not used at the time, Diff ’rent Strokes shifted, and began presenting a world in which racial distinctions no longer ­mattered. Instead, the show focused on universal topics such as dating, sibling rivalry, and the value of education. At times the series mixed in the occasional “A Very Special” episode to explore common pressing social concerns such as the dangers of hitchhiking and child molestation. Still, for the majority of its run, caution was usually the order of the day on the series which eventually became so deeply entrenched in Reagan‐era conservativism that to promote her “Just Say No” anti‐drug campaign, First Lady Nancy Reagan made a cameo appearance on a 1983 episode titled, “The Reporter.” The Diff ’rent Strokes formula proved extremely ­successful as the show garnered a crossover viewership and earned solid ratings ­during the majority of its eight‐year run. Seeking to capitalize on Diff ’rent Strokes’ successful black life‐in‐white‐­ existences formula, ABC developed Webster, which centered on another pint‐sized African American child actor (Bogle 2001, p. 261). Emmanuel Lewis stars as the title character, a black youth who, after losing his parents in a car accident, goes to live with his white godparents, George (Alex Karras) and Katherine (Susan Clark) Papadopolis. Aside from the minimal difference in the setup, Webster was a near clone of Diff ’rent Strokes. Racial differences mattered even less as the series also mainly focused on general themes, such as Webster’s attempts to make the football team, the importance of friendship, and the challenges of parenthood, among ­others. Webster followed the Diff ’rent Strokes formula so closely that it even featured its own “A Very Special” episodes that warned about the dangers of playing with fire, and of course, child molestation. Though it never achieved the same level of popularity as its predecessor, Webster aired on ABC for four years before moving into syndication, where it ran for two additional seasons. Although Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster were well‐intentioned programs, they dealt in skewed themes surrounding African American life, and US society more broadly. Because each series features orphaned black youth taken in by kindly whites, they suggested that outside of the characters’ biological parents, Arnold, Willis, and Webster existed in what can be described as black family isolation, meaning they had no other viable African American relatives to raise them after their parents’ deaths. In addition, as Gray notes, the shows are “assimilationist because the worlds that they construct are distinguished by the complete elimination or, at best, marginalization of social and cultural difference in the interest of shared and universal similarity” (Gray 1995). Hence, Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster’s avoidance of serious examinations of racism perpetuate post‐racial ideologies, asserting that black folk have indeed “overcome.”



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As this brief overview of African Americans in sitcoms illustrates, network executives and producers have historically lacked the insight, and more importantly, the desire to invest in programming that details the complexities of black experiences. In developing African American‐themed sitcoms from the 1950s through the 1980s, ABC, CBS, and NBC employed problematic formulas designed to appeal to mass white audiences. It is important to note that there have been notable exceptions to this rule throughout the years, such as the short‐lived Frank’s Place (1987–1988), the hit series A Different World (1987–1993), and more recently, Black‐ish and the Shonda Rhimes produced dramas, Scandal (2012–2018) and How to Get Away with Murder (2014–present). Yet these entries onto the television landscape are few and far between in Hollywood, which continues to demonstrate a lack of imagination in its conception of programs focused on African Americans. NBC’s critically acclaimed series This is Us serves a prime contemporary example, as the program marks the network’s triumphant return to the blacks‐in‐white‐existences formula popularized on Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster.

This is Us and the 1980s Sitcom Formula Twenty‐nine and 32 years respectively after Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster went off the air, NBC hit ratings gold with This is Us. Created by Dan Fogelman, who rose to prominence in Hollywood by writing screenplays for Pixar’s Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011), and directing the feature Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), This is Us chronicles the travails of the Pearsons. The family includes Jack (Milo Ventimiglia), the ruggedly handsome, uber‐devoted father, Rebecca (Mandy Moore), the equally attractive, ­caring mother, and their triplets, Kate (Chrissy Metz), Kevin (Justin Hartley), and Randall (Sterling K. Brown). The program recounts each character’s life in the present, and through the use of flashbacks, it chronicles formative events from their pasts. Those moments include Jack and Rebecca’s decision to have a baby, the ­anxiety that they experience upon learning that Rebecca is pregnant with triplets, the difficult childbirth during which the third baby is lost, and finally, their decision to fill that void by taking in an abandoned baby born on the exact same day as their children. While the main arcs on the series also include Kate’s lifelong struggle with obesity and Kevin’s efforts to become a serious actor, much of This is Us’s drama arises from the Pearson’s adoption of the third child – for Jack and Rebecca are white and Randall, the infant that they adopt, is African American. Viewers are first introduced to Randall as an adult. He works as a Weather Commodities Trader in New York City, and shares a beautiful home with his wife, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson), and their two young daughters, Tess (Eris Baker) and Annie (Faithe Herman). Despite seemingly having it all, in the episode titled “Pilot,” viewers learn that Randall still yearns to connect with his biological father. He is happy and nervous when the private detective that he hired successfully tracks him down.

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Randall visits his father, William (Ron Cephus Jones), who resides in a meager apartment in an impoverished part of the city. Randall invites him to live with him and his family, and while there, he and William quickly develop a loving relationship. William eventually shares with Randall the events that led him to abandon him, which are recounted in a flashback. Viewers meet young William (Jermel Nakia), who at the time is a 20‐something aspiring artist and musician. One day while riding a city bus he meets an attractive young woman named Laurel (Jennifer C. Holmes). The two quickly fall in love, and the young couple is depicted as doubly irresponsible – first, William and Laurel get hooked on drugs, and second, despite their vice, they conceive a child together. Laurel dies during labor, leaving a drug‐addicted William to care for his newborn son on his own. Recognizing that he is unable to do so, he leaves him on the doorsteps of a fire station. Because the flashback of the events leading up to Randall’s abandonment is set in the 1980s, William’s character reinforces Reagan‐era discourses positioning urban communities as sites of rampant drug use, welfare moms, and absentee fathers. This stereotyping formed the basis of Reagan’s war on drugs, which targeted the crack epidemic plaguing communities of color, while showing much less regard for the more potent and expensive powder form of cocaine used most frequently by middle and upper‐class whites. Additionally, the incendiary Willie Horton ad (used in George Bush’s presidential campaign), and a 1986 CBS Reports’ special, “The Vanishing Black Family,” were mediated articulations of conservatives’ skewed racialized assumptions surrounding African Americans. The documentary features an anonymous young African American mother of two, who is expecting her third child commenting, “I don’t think I would have had the second two children if I didn’t think welfare was there. I don’t like welfare because it makes me lazy.” In addition, a father of six children by four different women boasts that he does not support his children because, “What I’m not doing, the Government does.” When considering William’s backstory in the context of the 1980s, the character emerges as a clichéd embodiment of Reagan‐era rhetoric who in 2016 further reinforces ­stereotypical assumptions regarding African American men and fatherhood, drug use, and urban communities predominantly inhabited by people of color. Fortunately, Randall is liberated from the impoverished, dangerous, drug‐ infested, urban environment, not by one, but four great white saviors – Joe (Brian Oblak), Dr. Katowski (Gerald McRaney), Jack, and Rebecca. The characters’ primary function – rescuing endangered black children from lives of squalor – remains the same as Diff ’rent Strokes’ happy‐go‐lucky Phillip Drummond and Webster’s George and Karen Papadopolis. However, This is Us’s white heroes are constructed more cinematically, because, in terms of production values and storytelling, film has had a dramatic impact on network and cable television since the 1980s (Travers, 2015). This is evidenced by the late 1990s and early 2000s shows, The Sopranos (1999–2007) and 24 (2001–2010), while the more recent series, Lost (2004–2010), Breaking Bad (2008–2013), and The Blacklist (2013–present), further illustrate ­cinema’s sustained influence on television. Shot on high budgets, the shows feature



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relatively complex narratives complemented by well‐designed studio sets and location shooting, and talented actors, some of whom work in both film and television. Cinema’s influence on This is Us is apparent as it features a somewhat innovative form of storytelling. The series employs flashbacks to provide background information and manipulate temporality for dramatic effect. As a result of the manner in which the series utilizes the narrative technique, and because the series is a drama, Randall’s earnest, white heroes have more developed backstories than their sitcom predecessors. Joe, Dr. Katowski, Jack, and Rebecca are written in the tradition of Hollywood films’ abundance of great white saviors, who Matthew Hughey (2014) describes as “messianic characters in unfamiliar or hostile settings discovering something about themselves and their culture in the process of saving members of other races from terrible fates” (p. 1). Tom Cruise’s character in The Last Samurai (2003) and Emma Stone’s role in The Help are notable examples. In the former, Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a military man who after learning the beauty of their customs, fights alongside the Samurai whom his superiors ordered him to destroy, while in the latter, Stone’s Skeeter Phelan grows tired of anti‐black discrimination and anonymously authors a book highlighting a group of African American maids’ experiences to call attention to the vile racism that they consistently endure in their 1960s Mississippi town. In “The Big Day,” a prequel episode dedicated to recounting the Pearson triplets’ births, viewers learn that Randall’s great white saviors were also in somewhat hostile or unfamiliar situations when they came in contact with the abandoned child. Joe, who finds Randall on the doorstep at his fire station, is in a deteriorating marriage marked by tension and antagonism. Believing the baby a gift from God sent to save his relationship, he initially takes him home to talk with his wife about adopting him to no avail. Joe then takes the baby to the hospital where viewers encounter Randall’s second great white savior, Dr. Katowski, an elderly physician quietly s­ uffering as a result of his wife’s death. Though it has been a year since her passing, he still misses her dearly and has not been able to move on with his life. That changes when Dr. Katowski offers Jack words of support and encouragement after informing him about the loss of his and Rebecca’s third child, which is, of course, their hostile ­situation. Jack takes his comments to heart, and after a chance encounter with Joe who tells him about the abandoned baby boy, he convinces Rebecca to adopt the child. The couple’s resolve and determination inspires Dr. Katowski to improve his circumstances, and viewers also learn that Joe and his wife will recommit to their marriage. Hence, all four great saviors become better as a result of their encounters with the African American baby and are able to overcome their personal struggles. More importantly Jack, Rebecca, Dr. Katowski, and Joe’s lives converge to help save the poor abandoned black child, making viewers thankful fourfold for the kindness of good, liberal white folks. Additionally, like Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster, This is Us is also largely predicated upon post‐racial and colorblind discourses. These terms became firmly entrenched in the US lexicon after the election of President Barack Obama when

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politicians, pundits, bloggers, and the general public all used “colorblind” and “post‐ racial” interchangeably to declare that the election of an African American Commander‐in‐Chief signaled that the country had moved beyond racism (Squires 2014, p. 4). The current political climate as well as the massacre at the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Baptist Church in South Carolina in 2015, the 2017 so‐called Unite the Right Rally in which counter protestor Heather Heyer was run down by a white nationalist, and countless other events clearly illustrate that post‐racialism is a fallacy with dire consequences. Accordingly, anti‐racist activist and scholar Tim Wise (2010) problematizes colorblind ideology, elucidating that it “discourages discussions of racial matters and presumes that the best practice is to ignore the realities of racism, thereby making it more difficult to challenge those biases and increasing the likelihood of discrimination” (p. 18). Given television’s integral role in governing and creating order, it is unsurprising that This is Us relies upon colorblind discourses (Gray 2005, p. 89). Like its sitcom predecessors, the series reinforces white virtue through what seems a genuine regard for African Americans when in actuality, the characters are exemplars of post‐racial ideology. For instance, in the aforementioned “Pilot” and “The Big Day” episodes neither Joe, Dr. Katowski, Jack, nor Rebecca seem to notice or even take pause over baby Randall’s African American ancestry. This critically important oversight is a key component of perpetuating colorblind discourses that help frame Joe, Dr. Katowski, Jack, and Rebecca more favorably. Specifically, the characters’ lack of regard for Randall’s race implies (1) that none of the white saviors see color, let alone have serious concerns regarding racial differences, and (2) positions Jack and Rebecca as awestruck victims in the few instances when superficial issues surrounding race arise in the narrative. Though examinations of racial differences do not feature prominently in the first season of This is Us, Randall’s blackness is utilized as a ploy in a few episodes. For instance, “Three Sentences,” follows Jack and Rebecca as they throw separate parties simultaneously for Kate, Kevin, and Randall in celebration of their tenth birthday. The two are alarmed when only three of Randall’s friends from the predominantly white private school that he attends come to the party. Randall explains that the students did not come because they are not his friends, yet in private Rebecca wonders aloud to Jack if it is actually because he is black. The very possibility briefly shakes the foundation of their colorblind existence until Randall assures Rebecca that he is happy with his party because his three closest friends from school attended. This quickly dispels her concerns about racism and Rebecca focuses on Randall’s mature response to the situation, considering it an indication of how well she and Jack have raised him. She is inspired to engage Jack in conversation about having more children, a development that clearly reveals that seriously examining racism was never among the true intentions of “Three Sentences.” Instead, the episode simply uses Randall to further prop up white virtue (in the form of parenting) and, as is the case in African Americans‐in‐white‐existences series, the character’s “blackness simply works to reaffirm, shore up, and police the cultural and moral boundaries of the existing racial order” (Gray 1995, p. 87).



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In addition to superficial renderings of race‐themed plot elements, at times This is Us raises the bar, and like Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster, features episodes in which hegemonic whiteness is disrupted by a black threat. The evil African American‐as‐white homewrecker trope is included in all three series, albeit differently given that the programs belong to different genres. On Diff ’rent Strokes, this plays out in “Father and Son Day,” which focuses on Willis’s attempts to defeat his braggadocious archrival, James, and his dad in the local YMCA’s father and son competition. After meeting James’s muscular and athletic father, Willis realizes that  he and the older, less fit, and scrawny Mr. Drummond will be no match for them. He tells Mr. Drummond that the event has been canceled and recruits special guest star, baseball legend Reggie Jackson, to stand in as his father. Willis eventually realizes the error of his ways and confesses to Mr. Drummond, who after having found out about the lie, is relieved that Willis told him the truth. In true colorblind fashion, the show becomes less about Willis having found a black surrogate father and more of a morality tale about dishonesty. Still, there are racial implications as  the presence of the much more physically fit, Reggie Jackson, emasculates Mr. Drummond and briefly threatens his normative existence. Blackness is more overtly coded as a danger to hegemonic whiteness on Webster, when in an episode titled “Travis,” Katherine’s college friend, Dr. Ellen Franklin, visits the family. An African American mother of three who holds a PhD in Sociology and specializes in placing orphaned minority youth in good homes, Dr. Franklin tells Katherine that she does not think that white parents should raise black children. It is important to note that while Katherine admits that she had thought about the issue before, it is her African American friend who has a problem with the situation. This further perpetuates colorblind politics by illustrating that Katherine is above racial concerns, while also positioning blacks and other people of color as obsessed with race. Therefore, Dr. Franklin emerges as a danger to George and Katherine, liberal whites whose only mistake was trying to give little Webster a good home. Similarly, This is Us also presents African Americans as disruptions to the Pearsons’ hegemonic white existence in “The Pool,” part of which in flashback chronicles the family’s trip to a community pool on an especially hot summer day. In one sequence, Rebecca becomes alarmed when she discovers that Randall has wandered away from the family. She eventually finds him playing with a group of African American children and begins to scold him for wandering off. Yvette (Ryan Michelle Bathe), the parent of one of the black children with whom Randall was playing, interrupts Rebecca explaining that she was watching the child. She and Rebecca then engage in the following exchange that positions Yvette as the African American threat to the Pearsons’ white world. rebecca:  I’m sorry. I’m his mother. I was a little panicked. I’m Rebecca. yvette:  Oh, we know who you are. rebecca:  You do? yvette:  Oh yes. When a white family has a black child and they don’t introduce themselves to any of us, we tend to take notice.

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Rebeca is clearly taken aback by Yvette’s comments, and feeling as if she is being judged, she thanks Yvette for watching Randall, takes him by the hand and the two proceed to walk away. However, after taking a few steps she turns to Yvette and engages in another exchange. rebecca:  That’s my son and I’m his mother. And I don’t know if you have some sort of problem with that arrangement, but I don’t really care. Thank you very much for watching my son, but I have him now! yvette:  You need to get the child a proper haircut. The razor bumps on the back of his neck. You need a barber who knows how to cut black hair.

There are many significant implications to this scene. First, it positions Yvette as  the person obsessed with race, because as she explains, she knows Rebecca as  the  white woman with a black child who hasn’t introduced herself to the African American parents. This once again emphasizes that Rebecca is colorblind, because she and Randall’s racial distinctions clearly never occurred to her, so much so, that she did not even realize that her African American child’s hair required ­different care. Importantly, Rebecca eventually realizes that she was rude to Yvette and apologizes to her later in the episode. The two form a friendship in which Yvette becomes the Pearsons’ go‐to‐Negro on all things black, making her the televisual manifestation of cinema’s Magical African American Friends (MAAF) (Farley 2000). Depicted in several films, including The Green Mile (1999), The Family Man (2000), and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Hicks (2003) explains that these mysterious black characters possess great wisdom or mystical powers, which they use to assist white protagonists (p. 28). Specifically, Bagger Vance (Will Smith) is a magical caddy who appears seemingly out of nowhere to help down‐and‐out golfer Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon) rediscover his game, and in The Green Mile, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), uses his gift of healing to assist kindly prison guard Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks). In a 2000 Time editorial, Christopher John Farley critiques MAAFs’ reasoning that blacks are depicted as the all‐seeing, wise characters, because the screenwriters (read; white Hollywood) who created them are fundamentally ­ignorant about African American life and culture. Consequently, instead of getting backstories or histories, MAAFs get mystical powers. Indeed, This is Us screenwriters similarly construct Yvette, whose very existence as an African American, has imbued her with the mystic‐like power that she uses to benefit Rebecca and Jack. In true MAAF fashion, and unlike the great white saviors who rescued Randall, Yvette does not have a backstory. It is unclear if she works, how many children she has, or if she is married, which is a stark contradiction when compared to fireman Joe, a minor white character who appears in just two episodes. Yvette operates completely in the service of whites as the Pearsons tap into her infinite African American wisdom in each of the three episodes in which she appears in season one, “The Pool,” “Career Days,” and “The Trip.” Yvette advises Rebecca about



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African American haircare, helps Jack make the decision to send Randall to private school after they learn that he is gifted, and finally, connects Jack with a martial arts school run by African American men. He enrolls young Randall in a class, ­giving him the opportunity to spend time around strong men who look like him. Here, it is important to note that there is nothing inherently wrong with Yvette assisting the Pearsons, especially given that part of their parental duties should include preparing Randall to navigate a world in which the color of his skin places him at a social, political, and economic disadvantage. However, as previously noted, This is Us unfolds in a post‐racial world and in the first season has demonstrated that it is not concerned with critical examinations of institutional racism. Further, Yvette’s interactions with Jack and Rebecca demonstrate that, prior to meeting her, the couple did not have any meaningful relationships with any African Americans. Because she ultimately functions as a MAAF, any threat that she once posed is ­neutralized as her blackness becomes another narrative element used to strengthen white parenthood. In addition to initially presenting Yvette as a danger to hegemonic whiteness, This is Us relies upon the evil African American‐as‐threat trope in recounting Rebecca’s relationship with Randall’s biological father, William. In the third episode of the season, “Kyle,” viewers learn that Rebecca tracked down a still drug‐addicted William shortly after taking Randall home from the hospital. It becomes clear that she views him as a threat, when in one of their initial meetings she asks him not to ever come for Randall. William agrees, and in return Rebecca, unbeknownst to anyone, secretly provides him with periodic updates about Randall over the years. In a later meeting with William, Rebecca discovers that he has been sober for five years, and even though he promised that he would not seek Randall out earlier, she views him as a more legitimate danger to her. William’s role as the evil African American threat to Rebecca takes on added meaning when considering it in the context of longstanding myths surrounding black masculinity and white womanhood. In the years following the abolishment of slavery, black men were constructed as bucks, or “big, baadddd niggers, oversexed and savage, violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh” (Bogle 2016, p. 10). The archetype is presented most overtly in D.W. Griffith’s racist epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915). One of the film’s most notable sequences features a black renegade soldier, Gus (Walter Long), chasing the virginal and pure, Flora Cameron (Mae Marsh) to the top of a cliff from which she eventually leaps to her death to avoid his advances. Read as an attempted rape, Bogle (2016) explains that the sequence played up white women as the ultimate symbols of white pride and beauty while also ­articulating the great white fear that all African American men lust for white women (p. 11). These myths became so entrenched in US culture that in the late 1800s they led to countless lynchings of African American men across the South, many of which stemmed from allegations of sexual assaults. Although William does not pose a sexual threat to Rebecca, his class status and  racial difference is in stark contrast to hers. He lives in an impoverished

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­neighborhood, is seemingly unemployed, and abandoned his son, while Rebecca is the epitome of the all‐American girl. She is conventionally attractive, middle‐class, and a good mother. Rebecca and Jack have created a loving and devoted family, and like white women’s sexuality, it is to be protected at all costs. William’s presence threatens to disrupt the hegemonic white existence, an occurrence that can be read as tainting its innocence and purity. That Rebecca, or the white woman, is tasked with keeping the sanctity of the home works as an extension of racist logic suggesting that engaging in sexual relations with white men will ensure the purity of the race. In true dramatic fashion, Rebecca’s secret relationship with William eventually comes to light in a later episode titled, “Thanksgiving,” when Randall finds old ­letters that she and William had exchanged. He is extremely upset to learn that his mother kept his biological father from him. However, the two reconcile before season’s end in “What Now?” when Rebecca explains in an emotional soliloquy to Randall that she kept William a secret, because even though he was curious about his biological father, she was afraid that she would lose him. This moment positions Rebecca as a victim, essentially asking viewers to at least understand, if not forgive, her for keeping Randall’s biological father from him. In doing so, This is Us puts a premium on white womanhood rather on than the African American child who longed to know his real father so much that he eventually tracked him down in adulthood.

Conclusion Interestingly, the US’s current social and political climate is eerily similar to the era in which This is Us’s sitcom predecessors debuted on television. Just as Diff ’rent Strokes went on the air the latter stages of the Carter administration, This is Us premiered in September 2016 as former‐President Barack Obama was nearing the end of his second term. His eventual successor, Republican Donald Trump, campaigned on divisive rhetoric that echoed Reagan’s disdain for marginalized populations. Trump villainized Muslims and Mexicans, denigrated women, and spoke of African Americans as a monolith that only he could save, and all under a reminiscent slogan  –  “Make America Great Again.” Just as Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster served as escapist entertainment during Reagan’s presidency, industry analysts and executives reason that the success of This is Us can be attributed to a phenomenon that they refer to as “political fatigue” (Marcus 2017). Specifically, in the aftermath of the presidential election, edgy political dramas such as House of Cards (2013–­present) and Scandal (2012–2018), experienced ratings declines. Industry insiders partly view the dip in viewership as a direct result of Trump, whose antics are so unbelievable that TV viewers are turning away from series centered on ­fictional government scandals. Hence, the family‐based and overly sentimental This is Us has emerged as the perfect retreat from the politics of the day. Though the reason for This is Us’s success is logical, especially when considering that “in order for television to produce cultural effects and meet its economic



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i­mperatives (that is to produce identifications and pleasures necessary to maintain profitability), it has to operate on the basis of popular awareness and general common sense about the currents adrift in the society” (Gray 1955). Indeed, the series has tapped into viewers’ need for what amounts to a pause from reality. Still, it seems that no one could have predicted that This is Us would become such a ­runaway hit. The series premiere attracted 10 million viewers and has garnered consistently strong ratings (Andreeva 2016). In addition, Sterling K. Brown, the very talented actor who brings adult Randall to life, has now won two Emmy’s for his portrayal of the character. Finally, This is Us has become a global phenomenon as the series airs in several other countries, including, but not limited to France (Canal +), Turkey (FOXlife), New Zealand (TVNZ), Sweden (TV3), Switzerland (TV24), and Germany (ProSieben TV). This is Us’s success clearly illustrates that the blacks‐in‐white existences formula can reap tremendous financial gains. Yet the fact remains that it is simply a dramatic rehashing of Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster. As Means Coleman (2000) explains, in those shows, “White men became surrogate fathers to African American children, thereby ‘saving’ Black youth from their backgrounds (the ghetto), from their roots (an absentee and/or inadequate black family and community) and from their Blackness (cultural differences viewed as outside the norm)” (p. 93). Her summation of Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster also perfectly describes This is Us. As this chapter illustrates, the show relies upon a similar setup that portrays great white saviors save an African American child, functions as an assimilationist discourse, and ­presents the US as post‐racial utopia, that is until it becomes convenient to engage superficial racial issues that promote white virtues. Perhaps it is unfair to expect more from a network series that considers its staff diverse because it is comprised of three white showrunners (two men and one woman), four white men writers, three white women writers, and three African American writers (two women and one man), who showrunner Isaac Aptaker explains “get a bigger voice” in race‐related stories (Blickley 2017). Though African American input is essential to telling black stories, three black writers is equal to approximately 24%, of the This is Us team, an imbalance that may possibly explain the show’s reliance upon age‐old tropes in its presentation of Randall’s arc. Just as Diff ’rent Strokes and Webster demonstrated in the 1980s that network television did not know how to fully explore the complexities of black life, culture, and identity, the same is true of NBC’s pseudo‐significant series, which may be them, but is certainly not us.

References Andreeva, N. (2016). “This is Us” opens to strong ratings, “Bull” solid as newbies continue to impress. Deadline, 21 September. https://deadline.com/2016/09/this‐is‐us‐bull‐premiere‐ ratings‐newbies‐scream‐queens‐agents‐of‐shield‐1201823911.

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Barlow, W. (1993). Commercial and noncommerical radio. In: Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media (eds. J.L. Dates and W. Barlow), 189–266. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Blickley, L. (2017). The “This is Us” writers room is truly reflective of the show’s story. Huffington Post, 13 September. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this‐is‐us‐might‐ just‐have‐the‐most‐diverse‐writers‐room‐in‐hollywood_us_59b94b29e4b0edff97186815. Bogle, D. (2001). Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Bogle, D. (2016). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Bloomsbury. Farley, C.J. (2000). That Old Black Magic. Time, 27 November, p. 14. Gray, H. (1995). Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gray, H. (2005). Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hicks, H.J. (2003). Hoodoo economics: white men’s work and black men’s magic in contemporary American film. Camera Obscura 18 (2): 27–55. Hughey, M. (2014). The Great White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Johnson, H. (2003). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York: Anchor Books. Marc, D. (1998). Comic Visions: Television Comedy & American Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Marc, D. and Thompson, R. (1995). Prime Time, Prime Movers: From I Love Lucy to LA Law—America’s Greatest TV Shows and the People Who Created Them. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Marcus, S. (2017). From “Scandal” to “House of Cards,” political dramas are suffering in the Trump era. Huffington Post, 30 May. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump‐ political‐dramas_us_592cff26e4b0df57cbfcf211. Means Coleman, R.R. (2000). African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor. New York: Routledge. Means Coleman, R.R. and McIlwain, C.D. (2005). The hidden truths in black sitcoms. In: The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed (eds. M.M. Dalton and L.R. Linder), 125–137. New York: State University of New York. Smith, S. L., Choueiti, M., and Pieper, K. (2016). Inclusion or Invisibility. Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment. Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. Squires, C.R. (2014). The Post‐Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty‐First Century. New York and London: New York University Press. Taylor, Y. and Austen, J. (2012). Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip‐Hop. New York: W.W. Norton. Wise, T. (2010). Colorblind: The Rise of Post‐Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equality. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Part VII

Audiences

Chapter 16

Children and Television: A Special Audience for a Special Medium Dafna Lemish

The study of the relationship between children and television continues to be an enormously important topic for a variety of compelling reasons. First, children of both genders and all ages, religions, races, classes, and geographical regions of the world watch television for fun on a regular basis and learn about the world from it – probably more than from any other socializing agent. Second, a phenomenon so pervasive and central in children’s lives is bound to be of great interest to anybody concerned with children’s well‐being – be they parents, educators, scholars, policymakers, professionals, or the public‐at‐large. Indeed, there is very little else that can be so confidently claimed to be an experience shared by most children in the world today, rich or poor. Yet, given the technological changes of our times, “television” is no longer an isolated medium, as it is part of a convergent, multiplatform culture. Thus, “­watching television” can occur on a variety of screens: computers and mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, in addition to a wide array of television screens of all sizes and quality. It is, therefore, common to talk about children’s “screen culture”, and to  use “screen” and “television” interchangeably when we talk about children’s ­engagement with these media. Related is also the trend of the gradual decline of children’s viewing of broadcast or cable television that offers linear lineups of programming for live viewing and/or recording. Instead, we are witnessing acceleration of children accessing programming through digital outlets, such as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon. A recent study, for example, documented the decline of television viewing in the USA by children up to eight years old from 51% of their screen use in 2011 to 42% in 2017; DVD/ videotape viewership declined from 23% in 2011 to 12% in 2017; while their mobile A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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device screen use increased from 4% in 2011 to 35% of all screen time in 2017 (Rideout 2017). While data are shifting quickly, and by publication of this chapter these numbers will probably not be accurate anymore, the trend is very clear: “­television” is now accessed in multiple ways. No wonder that leading providers of screen content for children, such as Public Broadcasting Service [PBS], prefer to talk about children’s “content,” rather than children’s “television.” All of these and other developments continue to stimulate researcher interest in the role of screens in children’s lives as part of the phenomenon of the mediatization of childhood. As Couldry and Hepp (2013, 2017) explain, mediatization refers to the process, developed over the last few decades, when media and the institutions that run them are understood to infiltrate all aspects and all levels of our personal and social lives. Thus, it is almost impossible to discuss television in isolation from the role of the media in the ecology of children’s lives more generally. Similar to other efforts dividing the “pie” of media studies, in relation to children and television, we consider three main areas in this chapter: (1) children and ­television, focusing on children as an audience of television; (2) children on television, discussing representation studies of children; and (3) television for children, analyzing the institutions that produce television for children and the policies designed to guide them. Note that as employed in this chapter, the term “television” refers to watching content on any screen, with the exception of movie theaters (in contrast, for example, to playing games or reading texts on screens).

Children and Television (Studies of Children as Audience) The study of children as a special television audience dominates the body of scholarship in this area. The “effects studies tradition” in media studies relies heavily on developmental psychology’s working hypothesis that children are young humans in the process of gradually becoming adults  –  physically, cognitively, behaviorally, emotionally, and socially. Underlying this perspective is the assumption that children are deficient in comparison with fully developed adults, and more prone to the effects of television. Applying this approach, a significant body of research has focused on television’s role in reinforcing existing behavioral tendencies in children, as well as in creating new ones. For example, studies questioned if watching violent content reinforces violent predispositions in children and/or whether it teaches children violent behaviors regardless of preexisting tendencies? Other studies explored whether such effects would be only short term, such as imitating a specific violent behavior after exposure to it on television, or whether effects will last over time and become part of the repertoire of the child’s behaviors? The complexities involved in such studies become evident when we take into consideration that “effects” could be demonstrated not only in overt behaviors  –  but also in ­attitudes, emotional reactions, perceptions of the social world, and socialization processes (for various integrative summaries on this section, see resources



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such  as:  Calvert and Wilson 2008; Lemish 2015; Pecora et  al. 2006; Singer and Singer 2012; Valkenburg and Piotrowski 2017). While effects studies continue to explore a wide range of aspects of children’s lives, it is clearly observable that the focus continues to be on negative areas of public concern (and as a result, the availability of research funding) about the impact of television viewing of violence, sex, and advertising. A smaller body of scholarship focused on more positive aspects of television effects – such as positive learning and pro‐social behaviors. The accumulated research, which is heavily grounded in social learning theory and experimental methodologies, suggests that in the short run children do indeed learn and imitate behaviors they watch on television – both negative as well as positive. Long‐term effects of consistent exposure to television content have been mainly studied through exploration of correlations between exposure and behavior. Findings suggest that the two are indeed related. It is more difficult, however, to establish whether a child viewing violence over time is becoming more violent in his/her everyday behavior or whether the child who has a more violent personality is attracted more to violent television and thus watches it more. Similarly, correlation studies have difficulty proving whether a child who, over time, regularly watches educational and quality television content that is age appropriate and advances pro‐social behavior will indeed develop such tendencies, or whether the child who has these positive social qualities is attracted to more of this content? It does seem to be the case that there is a chicken‐and‐egg‐like vicious circle of reinforcement at play, where a child’s characteristics reinforce content choice, which in turn reinforces characteristics. Long‐term effects on attitudes, values, and worldviews of children have been also pursued in a host of topics, such as gender roles, view of the world as a scary and mean place, normative sexual expectations, relationship between consumerism and happiness, and centrality of alcohol consumption in social popularity. Commonly, survey methods are employed to study correlations between television exposure and attitudes. Analyses of findings often apply cultivation analysis approaches in order to theorize about potential relationships. Here the working assumption is that consistent, long‐term exposure to a distorted view of the social world, which is presented in much television content, cultivates in children a worldview aligned with such content. Studies demonstrated demonstrated, for example, that exposure to pornography contributes to males developing negative attitudes toward women, including tendencies to objectify them, while playing down severities of sexual harassment and crimes. A second example suggests that constant exposure to television advertising enhances materialistic attitudes. Yet another one demonstrates that watching programs originating in the United States cultivates a worldview among non‐US children that American society is mostly violent and wealthy. Following the same methodological logic, other studies found that exposure to television content that promotes tolerance, altruism, and ability to delay gratification made significant strides in breaking stereotypes, encouraging collaboration, and developing self‐­ confidence and self‐control.

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In summary, accumulated research undertaken over the last half‐century demonstrates, rather convincingly, that children learn from television: they learn behaviors, values and attitudes, positive as well as negative, that have both short‐term as well as long‐term influences. The accumulation of these studies has led researchers to ­conclude that television has been an important socializer in children’s lives. A central theme that emerged out of these studies is that findings of effects need to consider the characteristics of the child, nature of the content, as well as, the ­context of the child’s use of television [the three Cs] (Lemish 2015). For example, the family context and culture, the wider social environment of neighborhood and peers, the political system as a whole  –  all play a role in mediating the potential impact that exposure to a particular content may have on an individual child. Of all the levels of the ecology of children, the family context has received most attention from researchers, as television viewing has been perceived, until recently, to be an activity engaged in by children mostly in the privacy of their home. However, with the advent of mobile media, this is no longer the case, as children access screen ­content on their devices – while traveling, in public places, in school, and outdoors. This noted, television viewing is, still, mostly considered to be a private and/or familial activity. Indeed, understanding the family context and parental mediation of television viewing is a central theme in studies of children and screen viewing. Mediation, by parents, older siblings, grandparents, teachers, and other significant others, in particular, is assumed to play a crucial role in children’s ability to benefit from viewing content. In this respect, the processes studied include cognitive processes and learning, internalization of pro‐social behaviors, development of media literacy skills, as well as socialization processes more broadly. At the same time, effective mediation strategies are also assumed to assist in deflecting negative effects of viewing inappropriate content – be it violence, racism, non‐age appropriate sexual content, or contents that induce fear. Grounded in these findings, remediation proponents commonly argue that parental mediation is the most appropriate and effective educational path for ­incorporating screen viewing into the child’s life in ways that support healthy ­development – cognitively, emotionally, socially, behaviorally, and physically (Chen 2016; Pempek and Lauricella 2017; Zaman et al. 2016). In turn, research related to parental mediation has focused on three mediation‐viewing strategies: restrictive, co‐viewing, and active mediation. More recently, technological mediation has become a fourth strategy with advancement of digital technologies. Restrictive mediation refers to viewing‐rules parents create for their children when their aim is to control their children’s exposure. Commonly these rules relate to amount of viewing, when, where, what content, and on what device. Such mediation practices are geared toward protecting children from inappropriate content, while guiding them toward content deemed by parents to be worthwhile. Proponents also advocate developing practices that limit amount of exposure and perceived appropriate circumstances for viewing. Co‐viewing strategies propose that parents view television



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together with their children. Research underlying this proposal found that the observable interaction as well as implicit messaging to the child that there is parental support for the content viewed enhance potential benefits for learning and assimilation. Active mediation refers to the parents’ active engagement with the content through, for example, commenting and conversing about it (e.g. explaining, criticizing, adding content, calling attention, reinforcing). Finally, technological mediation refers to the role parents play in teaching their young children how to operate different devices; how to find and select content in various channels on the TV set or the vast possibilities on the internet; how to adjust volume and brightness, and the like. Clearly, it is important to remember that parental mediation is highly subjective, as are all forms of parental practices. Thus, what might be perceived as highly ­beneficial content by one family may be rejected by another. Furthermore, the amount of viewing deemed appropriate in one family may be frowned upon by another family. Probably even more important is to note that most of the parents studied to date engage in very limited positive mediation activities in everyday life; that is, most interventions exist on the restrictive side. Research suggests that gender, education, social class, race, location, and parents’ own use of media may play important roles here, as well as, children’s age and gender. Overall, it is important to note that findings from various studies are not conclusive and often contradictory. In summary, let’s recall that the approaches and results produced in studies of children and television cited in this overview are grounded in a perspective that views children as maturating persons in the process of “becoming” grown‐ups. According to this perspective, children’s lack of experience and maturity as well as their still‐developing psychological and physical processes render them “deficient” in comparison to adults: for example, they lack the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, to understand narratives and characters’ motivations, or to make moral judgments. Their cognitive skills and knowledge have been tested and judged in research studies in reference to differential developmental stages perceived as appropriate for their age. On the other hand, a different approach to investigating children as a television audience infuses approaches from cultural and feminist studies. Here we find that researchers focus on children as “being” with agency in their own right, at each stage of their development, engaged in active meaning‐making of their experiences, television included. As such, researchers applying these approaches attempt to understand how children process television content in ways that are sensible to them and serve their own developmental needs, identity formation, and social perceptions. These studies demonstrate, accumulatively, that children, not unlike adults, do not necessarily adopt the hegemonic readings of screen content. Rather, they too seek ways to interpret it in accordance with their lived experiences and needs, as well as to process it as “site of struggle” between competing interpretations and ideologies. For example, studies applying this approach found that children actively interweave screen content in their make‐believe worlds (Götz et al. 2005), their evolving understanding of conflict and war (Lemish and Götz 2007), their construction of ethnic

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identity (Durham 2004; Moran 2011), their gender identity (Beck et al. 2017; Hains 2012), and their interpretation of TV violence (Tobin 2000), among others. In employing creative qualitative methods (including imaginary journey, art work, and bedroom visits in addition to interviews, focus groups, and observations), these studies of the roles television viewing have in children’s lives continue to explore the inner world of children in less obtrusive ways and offer an alternative to the protectionist approach that assumed children are “passive vessels” of television content.

Children on Television (Representation Studies) Representations of children and childhood on television is a second major area of inquiry in the intersection of children and television. Drawing from the tradition of the study of representations in the media (Hall 1997), researchers assume, in general, that the ways children are represented on television reflect society’s perceptions and understandings of children and childhoods, and concomitantly contribute to, and in so doing, shape the social construction of children and childhoods. As such, it has become a central concern for scholars to investigate the social world presented to children in television content addressing them. The vast majority of studies of representations of children on television focus on gender portrayals (see, for example, these recent overviews: Baker and Raney 2007; Götz and Lemish 2012; Hentges and Case 2013; Lemish 2010). Indeed, the conclusion of these overviews is that children’s television, worldwide, presents a largely stereotypical and segregated gendered world. Thus, male characters continue to dominate the screen, usually in a proportion of two males to one female. This inequality is even more striking in animation, where non‐human characters are mostly defaulted into male characters. Stereotypical emphasis on female hypersexual appearance is common, even in programing for the very young, including exaggerated busts, wasp‐like waistlines, long legs, flowing hair, long eyelashes, and red lips. Producers and directors choose to portray women wearing revealing clothing, ­dominated by pink‐purple colors, complemented by girly accessories. Scripts and photoshots are designed, accordingly, to emphasize that such dress and appearances draw constant attention to women’s physical appearance in their pursuit of male interest. Furthermore, females are characterized by traditional feminine qualities of passivity, emotionality, vulnerability, and dependency. They are also caregivers or adoring bystanders of males, in many narratives, often rescued by them or portrayed following their lead. “Girl power,” the buzzword for the new image of the strong and able girl, is narrowed down to the power to be sexy and to consume goods, joined by an expectation for perfectionism. Girls are allowed to stand out as long that they are also beautiful, smart, and highly successful. Male characters on children’s television are also restricted by traditional notions of hegemonic masculinity: they appear as active, rational, brave, and resourceful. They often go out on adventures, lead the way, control nature, technology, and weaponry. They use physical force and aggression to resolve conflict, remain tough



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and non‐emotional, even in the face of crisis and danger. When boy characters break these stereotypes, they fall into the “funny loser” type of male, who in contrast to the perfect girl, is easygoing, does not care much about success and accomplishments and does not need to measure up to perfection of appearance, action, or character (Götz and Lemish 2012). Production codes and conventions reinforce producers’ use of these stereotypes, such as quick camera cuts, loud audio track, and blue and dark colors to indicate a “boys’ territory” on television, versus soft camera filters, melodic music, and pink‐ purple‐pastel colors for the “girls’ territory.” Such gender segregation is further ­reinforced by the merchandizing that supports the programs, including related toys, games, clothing, accessories, bedding, and their placements in the “appropriate” gender aisles in stores. While the above gendered themes still dominate television‐fare traveling the world today, there are many exceptions in children’s television that portray protagonists that break gender stereotypes and present alternative role models for children, including offering a more egalitarian social world, and narratives that challenge gender inequalities (Lemish 2010; Lemish and Götz 2017; Reinhard and Olson 2017). Such, for example, are images of clever and strong girls, as well as of sensitive, caring boys. Nevertheless, systematic content analyses of children’s television present quite a stagnant and old‐fashioned picture of the role of gender in social life (Götz and Lemish 2012). Related to gender inequality, children’s television remains predominantly middle‐class and white implying that a “normal” childhood, the one to which viewers should aspire, is a middle‐class white childhood. While children of color, particularly African and Afro‐Americans, rarely appear in commercial television programs popular worldwide, they do appear in programs produced by public broadcasters, independent producers, and local productions. With the massive immigration waves of the last few decades, accompanied by changing demographics of most western countries (producing the vast majority of children’s television programming), efforts have been undertaken to represent the interests of children of color without alienating the middle‐class white audience. Strategies adopted include, first, tokenism in the presentation of children of various races, one of each “kind,” each standing for the entire category; and, second, browning of characters in ways that open them up to multiple ethnic interpretations (i.e. a somewhat brown complexion can be interpreted as Latin, Middle Eastern, South Asian, biracial  –  and yet can “pass” as white for the white audience). Such strategies notwithstanding, white, ­middle‐class culture and lifestyle of childhoods are still the most prevalent norm on children’s television. A striking characteristic of the representation of children on television is the absence of adults, and more specifically, of families active in their lives. In many programs, children are portrayed as if they are fending for themselves in the world, alone or with others their own age, embarking on adventures and journeys, fighting evil forces, and resolving major crises without the support, encouragement, care, and backbone of loving adults. Such children are presented “home alone”

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(Kapur  2004; Lemish 2012), technologically adept, and in control of their own ­destiny. While adults in their worlds seem to be superfluous (and often even evil), children are presented a‐contextually: they are not part of a community, a history, a culture, and have few obligations or responsibilities that tie them to something ­bigger than themselves and their own goals. In many ways one might interpret this portrayed norm as aligned with, if not seeking to normalize, the ideology of neoliberalism in children’s lives. Other representational issues studied in relationship to children’s television have documented the prevalence of violence and unhealthy behaviors in content addressing children, topics we will return to in the conclusion, when we discuss the notion of quality television for children. Thus, following our discussion in the first two sections of this chapter – whether we take an effects approach to the influence of television on children or the meaning‐making approach to its role in their lives  –  both approaches assume that the content children are exposed to forms the basis for the effects or sense‐making processes, respectively.

Television for Children (Professional, Institutional, and Policy Studies) Production and institutional aspects of children’s television have been the least ­studied and, as a result, we know little about these aspects of the world of children’s television, and even less about those outside the English‐speaking world (Steemers 2016). This limitation noted, researchers often cite the following two sets of characteristics of production and institutional aspects of children’s television. First, despite its major role in children’s lives and its potential to make a difference in the socialization processes of generations of future citizens, children’s television has not emerged as a prestigious part of the general television industry. Historically, there are three interrelated empirical findings that support this claim: (1) Children’s media production has hardly ever been prioritized in terms of funding and human resources by major broadcast organizations; (2) In addition, it has a higher percentage of women professionals than other segments of the industry, who on the one hand can claim to have contributed to the ever‐increasing quality of children’s ­productions, but on the other hand have yet to break through the proverbial glass ceiling to become major players in setting priorities and budget allocations; (3) Finally, big media corporations have not viewed such productions as a major revenue source. Furthermore, for these and other reasons, many professionals working in children’s television production view these efforts as a stepping stone in their career to what they believe would prove to be “bigger and better” things. Second, children’s television industry has shifted its production orientation, seemingly, based on what may be referred to as their perceptions of an “implied audience.” We saw this at the undeveloped onset of children’s television in the USA



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in the mid‐twentieth century when production consisted of theatrical performances of puppeteers and local artists. Later, broadcasters designated time slots with programing deemed appropriate for children, such as the “Saturday morning cartoons.” Major shifts in this history of children’s programming occurred in the 1990s with the emergence of children’s networks, and, more recently, with current competing digital platforms (see Mitroff and Herr Stephenson 2007, for a history of television programming in the USA). Expanding on this theme of an implied audience, competing and complementing dominant discourses of childhood have become popular at different times and various cultures. These include consumer‐driven discourse that perceive children as current and future consumers; protectionist discourse of the vulnerable child who needs protection from the negative effects of television; child‐centered discourse that emphasizes the implications of developmental differences on children’s media use; and the discourse of the child as a potential citizen (Buckingham et al. 1999). Moreover, studies have demonstrated that professionals in the industry apply an axiom regarding their audience in production of children’s programming: namely, boys and girls have very different tastes and interests, and live in entirely different cultural worlds, and thus they need to be catered to in very different ways. In addition, a materialist corollary to this axiom takes it as a given that while girls will watch content designed with both boys and girls in mind, boys will only watch programs that are “boyish” in style and content, with boy leads. These working principles have  guided the industry to develop gender‐segregated television environments (e.g.  Cartoon Network for boys and Disney for girls) and to prioritize programs targeting boys and featuring male leads (Lemish 2010). From a macro‐perspective, leading major global corporations continue to be part of US‐based media conglomerates: Disney, Nickelodeon (Viacom), and Cartoon Network (Time Warner). In their attempt to hold on to fragmented child‐audiences, who currently seek digital media and multiple screens for their content needs, these corporations have responded by creating their own internal fragmentation. Disney (traditionally associated with girls), for example, now offers Disney Junior as well as Disney XD (geared more to boys). Nickelodeon now offers also Nick Jr., Nick Toons, Teen Nick, each domain branding itself for a different segment of the audience. Continuing to prioritize quality of educational content, PBS faces‐off against the competition by offering PBS Kids. Other channels popular around the world include, among others, CBBC (BBC in the UK for mid‐childhood) and CBeebie (for young viewers); BabyTV (from Israel and targeting the youngest of viewers); Sprout/ Universal Kids; and many others that come and go, and change hands and names (e.g. Jetix, Fox Kids), consolidating to create economies of scale. While it is the case that there is strong global corporate dominance in the ­production and distribution of children’s television, many local and independent companies are feeding content into this vast field of TV offerings for children, some of which are characterized by unique quality content for children of all ages. International events, such as the Prix Jeunesse in Munich (sponsored by the

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Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, BR) and the Japan Prize in Tokyo (sponsored by Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, NHK), as well as many regional events in various parts of the world, celebrate and promote quality in screen content for children (A Guide to International Events in Children’s Media 2007). This noted, the majority of the children’s market is dominated by transnational corporate commercial interests that are not necessarily driven by the developmental interests of children, ethical considerations related to their well‐being, or local needs of societies around the world. The dominance of Western – and more specifically North American – television content which is both abundant and widely available for children’s viewing worldwide, raises concerns in many countries struggling with nation‐building who would have preferred to grow their local productions, while also attempting, minimally, to resist effacing their local cultures and values by the global market. The domination of foreign products is aided by such realities as the following important considerations: local production of television programs is expensive, requires expertise and technology, caters to very small markets and has little potential to be sold globally. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to win this production battle without state support and interventions, which mainly occurs through activities of public broadcasters, and outside support (Lemish 2010). Indeed, time and time again we witness valuable, but all too rare, efforts of companies (e.g. Sesame Workshop) and independent entrepreneurs (e.g. The Blue Butterfly) that support international collaborations to achieve their long‐term aims of nourishing and building local capacity (Cole 2016). Globalization of media via the ever‐expanding global market has added another layer of complexity to our considerations. Indeed, globalization combined with user capability to access programming through global digital platforms (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon), instead of broadcast, cable, and satellite, is driving assessments and discussions of current and future states of content, distribution, and access transformations in the area of children’s television worldwide. In addition, the underregulated nature of the transnational digital media environment creates a ­context in which national production houses are left to struggle with the tension created between creative and innovative autonomy in this area and the organization, legal, and policy constraints imposed on the industry in various cultural contexts (Steemers 2016; 2017). Indeed, policy and regulatory issues related to the children’s television industry, too, have been integral aspects of debates on the nature of children and childhood. Three main policy domains have emerged around the world: content‐related issues; locally produced programs and sponsorship; and advertising for children and ­during children hours.1 Many countries and international organizations (e.g. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] and European Union) have attempted to monitor television content targeted at children. Most of these efforts are aimed at limiting children’s exposure to content deemed inappropriate for their age, and emotional and cognitive abilities, as well as content that presents a social



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world based on asocial values and behaviors that might have negative impacts on children. Policies in this realm are directed at limiting broadcast hours of such ­content to parts of the day when children are presumably not around television (e.g. late‐night hours). Some countries refer specifically to the need to protect young viewers from exposure to inappropriate content such as pornography, racism, and violence. Complementary content‐related policies are directed toward the encouragement of broadcasting quality programs for children that have added educational and social value. The struggle over the regulation of children’s television in the USA is a particularly interesting case, due to the fact that, first, many programs for children are produced there and exported globally; and, second, the USA is a point of reference for other regulatory systems, as well as for the nature of the broadcast system that is mostly commercial and privately owned. Without going into detail about the evolution of the regulatory system, we can pinpoint many of the central issues by examining the Children’s Television Act (CTA) legislated by the American Congress in 1990. Following years of public debate and many attempts at legislation, this act restricted the amount of advertising time allowed during children’s programs, required broadcasters to televise programs of educational and informative value for children, and allocated a budget for production of children’s programs. Fulfilling these requirements became a prerequisite for the renewal of the broadcast license (at the time, every five years, and since 1996 every eight years). The Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the supervising body of the broadcast system in the USA, was charged with enforcing these requirements. However, review of the impact the Children’s Television Act has had over the years suggests that it has not been able to dramatically change the landscape of television for children in the USA, and therefore, in the rest of the world. When we move away from the USA to other countries, we find that an additional policy concern is prominent  –  the requirement that broadcasters offer children locally produced, home‐grown programs that take into consideration the cultural context in which they are raised. Several mechanisms are employed by countries to support this policy, including application of programming quotas and banning imported programs, as well as supporting locally produced content and funding local and regional channels. Not surprisingly, the issue of television’s harmful content, and particularly scenes of violence and sex, is central in debates over broadcasting policy worldwide, though emphases differ from country to country. For example, while on the whole, Western and Northern European countries are less preoccupied with children’s exposure to sex and nudity in the media, they are a lot more concerned about violence. Yet the opposite is true in the USA. In fact, there does seem to be much less of a consensus on the need to limit violent content, and much more of a preoccupation with issues related to sex and nudity. Cultural differences are clearly present in public discourse and pressures exerted on regulatory bodies, resulting often in the differing policies found around the world. Quite problematic.

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Decades of shifting responsibility for this issue, back and forth between the broadcasting industry and the U.S. Congress, have resulted in development of several strategies for the supervision of violence on television. Many countries around the world have adopted and adapted some of these strategies to meet their own needs. While none of these have actually proven to provide a fully satisfactory solution, they nevertheless deserve our attention: • Banning and zoning: Limiting the broadcast of violent and sexual content to ­particular hours of broadcasting. • Balancing: A requirement to balance each violent program with the broadcast of a non‐violent one. This proposal assumes that it is possible to “counteract” ­harmful content by broadcasting “corrective” programs. • Labeling: Broadcasting a warning announcement before each program deemed problematic (“parental and viewer discretion is advised”) or rating programs, according to a scale. For example, the seven US categories for television programs are defined by age: TV‐Y Appropriate for all children TV‐Y7 For children age 7 and above TV‐Y7FV Fantasy violence that may be too intense for children under age 7 TV‐G Suitable for all ages TV‐PG Material parents may find unsuitable for younger children TV‐14 Possibly unsuitable for children under 14 years of age TV‐MA Program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. • User blocking: Using various technological means to block reception of programs at the individual home. This can be achieved through blocking a particular channel (Lockbox), blocking particular hours, or using a violence chip (the V‐chip) that is inserted into the television set and allows blocking programs selectively. Each of these strategies presents different challenges to freedom of speech, and at the same time does not offer a comprehensive solution to the complexity of the issues involved. These complexities include the fact that children view television at all hours of the day and on many devices, including on digital platforms that are not regulated; labeling programs as age‐inappropriate has been inconsistent and may have the opposite effect of even attracting more children; rating and blocking programs is dependent on predetermined criteria enforced by others and not by viewers themselves; ratings that appear on printed television program guides are not always comprehensible or inclusive of content important to parents. Despite the availability of technological blocking devices, the evidence to date suggests that parents are not particularly receptive to their adoption. Advertising is a second central concern of policymaking for broadcasting to ­children. Most policies regarding advertising for children focus on the amount of advertising, on the clear distinction between advertising and other content, and on



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the nature of the product being advertised. Here, too, the American example stands out, as it relates to a highly commercialized television environment and a strong tradition of free speech rights that serve as an example for other countries. The CTA of 1990 in the USA limits the amount of time dedicated to commercials during children’s hours: no more than 10.5 minutes per hour during the weekend and not more than 12 minutes per hour during weekdays. Programs that constitute a commercial in and of themselves are prohibited (such as program hosts promoting products during the show). Other requirements include banning of advertising ­presented by celebrities broadcast during their own programs (host selling); clear separation of commercials from programs (bumpers); and a requirement that ­advertisements must include disclaimers (such as: “assembly required”; “parts sold separately”; “batteries required”). All these regulations are directed at restricting the exploitative nature of advertising for young children who may find it difficult to understand the persuasive intent of advertising and assign it high credibility. In addition, they also try to counter specific concerns over the advertising of unhealthy and dangerous products to ­children, such as unhealthy food, tobacco, and alcohol; medication, including for age‐inappropriate content such as erectile dysfunction and depression (prevalent in the USA, for example); as well as trailers promoting programs, movies, and games with violent and sexual content. In an attempt to prevent legislative intervention, the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. (ANA) in the USA offered a substantive list of guidelines for advertisers for children, as long ago as 1972 in an attempt to advance self‐regulation. These guidelines are of interest to us because they acquaint us with what advertisers define for themselves as problematic issues in advertising for children. These guidelines can be divided into several areas of concern. The first area is c­ oncerned with values contained in advertising. The ANA recommended, for example, that commercials should not present unacceptable behaviors from the point of view of social, legal, religious, institutional, or family values; should not present disrespect for parents and/or other authorities responsible for children; should not present bad habits; and should avoid suggesting that ownership of a product will improve the child’s social position, or that without it the child will be a target of ridicule or contempt. Studies of these and many other recommendations not cited here found that there is wide breath of concerns regarding advertising for children. In practice, however, these guidelines have no legal force, are hardly applied, and cannot be enforced. Indeed, there is a huge gap between the official discourse stating the good intentions of advertisers and their everyday practices  –  which regularly divert from these guidelines, particularly with the common practice of embedding (i.e. employing, and so displaying, a specific manufacturer’s product in a media production). Admittedly, discussion of policy and regulatory environments for children’s ­television in a world of deregulated multidigital platforms seems somewhat superfluous, especially since, today, any content can be accessed at any time. As such, should policies intended to restrict broadcast hours and content be revised, even

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omitted? Furthermore, what is the effectiveness of rating programs’ local production requirements, or limits on advertising during children’s hours? These questions are becoming ever more burning challenges in this emergent era in which there are major transformations in screen culture.

Conclusion: Quality Television for Children Throughout the above discussion, the issue of quality content on children’s screens can be seen as an anchor: Maximizing quality content is hoped to provide children with enriching material for personal growth and development and to affect them in positive ways (i.e. the section on Children and Television). Similarly, quality content, it is hoped, depicts an egalitarian world of gender, race, among other diverse human demographics, and thus to model for children a social world to which we should aspire (i.e. the section on Children on Television). Quality television, too, might be held up as a model of what might be achieved if appropriate policies and regulations are adopted that facilitate appropriate training and education of television professionals, and a cultural environment that invests resources in children (i.e. the section on Television for Children). So, what is quality content for children? How can it be universally described and judged, and by whom? The debate over these complicated questions is far from resolved, if indeed possible, as quality is a shifting concept, often grounded in sociopolitical‐cultural contexts, and remains to a large degree in the eye of the beholder. An earlier attempt to summarize some of the current discussions describes quality television, regardless of delivery platform, in the following guidelines2: • Provide children with media content prepared especially for them without taking advantage of them; content that entertains, but at the same time tries to advance children physically, mentally, and socially. • Allow children to hear, see and express themselves, their culture, their language and their life experiences through their media in ways that affirm their personal identity, community, and place. • Encourage awareness and appreciation of other cultures as well as the child’s own. • Offer a variety of genres and content and not just reproduce texts according to a successful formula. • Deliver media content to children at times and through technologies that are accessible to them. • Recognize differences between children that are a result of their cognitive and emotional development, their talents, interests, personality characteristics, interpersonal relationships, and their social environment. • Take steps to protect and encourage content that reflects local and marginalized cultures and those with minority languages and needs. • Avoid unnecessary presentation of violence, sex, and racism in content delivered to children.



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A UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund). initiative to define quality media for children, with a specific emphasis of those being raised in low‐resource societies and marginalized communities, established four overarching principles for quality media (Kolucki and Lemish 2011): (1) communication for children should be age‐appropriate and child friendly; (2) it should address the child holistically; (3) it should be positive and strengths‐based; and (4) it should address the needs of all, including those who are most disadvantaged. More specifically, various criteria are often applied in assessing specific ­educational content, as in the following examples: • Does the content invite children to see things they have not seen in the past, hear things they have not heard, and – most importantly – to think or imagine things that they would not have thought or imagined before? • Does the content tell a good story? Does it rely on the familiar in order to bridge the new and unfamiliar for young children? Are the verbal and visual components compatible? • Does the content offer characters that children really care about? Is there a struggle between good and bad that is not too extreme? Are the children in the text capable of overcoming difficulties in a reasonable manner? Is the end of the story dependent on the generosity, fairness, honesty, caring, and responsibility of the main characters? • Does the content avoid preaching to children or talking to them in a condescending manner? Does it avoid presenting adults as behaving in an unfair, ­irrational or foolish manner that undermines children’s trust in the adult world? • Does the content expand the children’s world of experiences in an aesthetically attractive way? • Does the content include a degree of wittiness and humor that is not exploitative of others? The above lists are neither exhaustive nor consensual; rather they are presented to stimulate discussion over the complicated concept of “quality.” Stated succinctly, the challenge that remains is “how to apply the public service principles of universal access, diversity, independence and distinctiveness in a more deregulated digital/ landscape” (Steemers 2016, p. 124). An additional, more current, complicating factor in discussion of quality ­television for children is the fact that children themselves are now “prosumers” (producers + consumers) by generating their own screen content on their mobile phones and computers and uploading it for others to view. “Quality” in such productions, may take different forms and meanings, as the active engagement in producing ­visual content rather than consuming it is perceived to be a valuable creative endeavor that allows children a voice on their own terms. There are many stakeholders engaged in the ecology of children’s screens. These include content creators and programmers, advertisers, toy and merchandizing tie‐in companies, policymakers, advocacy groups, academics, and philanthropic

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groups (Bryant 2007). These stakeholders all play a part in a multiplatform screen environment in which children are actively immersed. Television content and its delivery forms constantly change, as do the ways children access and consume it. What should not change, however, is the need for children themselves to remain the center of the debate about television’s role in their lives–their needs, interests, pleasures, development, creativity, and well‐being. With screen content for children being created, distributed, and accessed in such diverse and unpredictable ways, the debate over it is bound to continue and to take new forms.

Notes 1 Reprinted with publisher’s permission as a shorter version from Lemish (2015), pp. 212–217. 2 The lists are reprinted with publisher’s permission from Lemish (2015), pp. 209–210.

References A Guide to International Events in Children’s Media (2007). Journal of Children and Media 1 (1): 93–100. Baker, K. and Raney, A.A. (2007). Equally super? Gender‐role stereotyping of superheroes in children’s animated programs. Mass Communication & Society 10: 24–41. Beck, S.L., Hains, R., and Russo Johnson, C. (2017). “PAL can just be Themself ”: Children in the US respond to Annedroids’ genderless TV character. In: Beyond the Stereotypes? Boys, Girls, and their Images (eds. D. Lemish and M. Götz), 225–236. Nordicom: The  International Clearinghouse of Children, Youth and Media, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Bryant, J.A. (ed.) (2007). The Children’s Television Community. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Buckingham, D., Davies, H., Jones, K., and Kelley, P. (1999). Children’s Television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy. London, UK: British Film Institute. Calvert, S. and Wilson, B. (eds.) (2008). The Handbook of Media and Child Development. New York: Blackwell. Chen, L. (2016). The role of parents on children’s media use: a meta‐analysis of parental mediation. Presented at the 2016 Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), Children, Media, and Communication Division, Fukuoka, Japan. Cole, C. F., with Lee, J. H. (ed.) (2016). The Sesame Effect: The Global Impact of the Longest Street in the World. New York: Routledge. Couldry, N. and Hepp, A. (2013). Conceptualizing mediatization: contexts, traditions, ­arguments. Communication Theory 23 (3): 191–202. Couldry, N. and Hepp, A. (2017). The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Durham, M.G. (2004). Constructing the ‘new ethnicities’: media, sexuality and diaspora identity in the lives of South Asian immigrant girls. Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (2): 140–161.



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Götz, M. and Lemish, D. (eds.) (2012). Sexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers: Gender Representations in Children’s TV Around the World. New York: Peter Lang. Götz, M., Lemish, D., Aidman, A., and Moon, H. (2005). Media and the Make‐Believe Worlds of Children: When Harry Potter Meets Pokémon in Disneyland. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hains, R.C. (2012). Growing up with Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life. New  York: Peter Lang. Hall, S. (ed.) (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hentges, B. and Case, K. (2013). Gender representations on Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon broadcasts in the United States. Journal of Children and Media 7: 319–333. Kapur, J. (2004). Coining for Capital: Movies, Marketing, and the Transformation of Childhood. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kolucki, B. and Lemish, D. (2011). Communicating with Children: Principles and Practices to Nurture, Inspire, Excite, Educate and Heal. New York: UNICEF. Lemish, D. (2010). Screening Gender in Children’s TV: The Views of Producers Around the World. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Lemish, D. (2012). ‘Without a family’: representations of families in children’s TV around the world. In: Sexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers: Gender Representations in Children’s TV Around the World (eds. M. Götz and D. Lemish), 151–168. New York: Peter Lang. Lemish, D. (2015). Children and Media: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Lemish, D. and Götz, M. (eds.) (2007). Children and Media at Times of War and Conflict. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Lemish, D. and Götz, M. (eds.) (2017). Beyond the Stereotypes? Boys, Girls, and their Images. Nordicom: The International Clearinghouse of Children, Youth and Media, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Mitroff, D. and Herr Stephenson, R. (2007). The television tug‐of‐war: a brief history of ­children’s television programming in the United States. In: The Children’s Television Community (ed. J.A. Bryant), 3–34. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Moran, K.C. (2011). Listening to Latina/O Youth Television Consumption within Families. New York: Peter Lang. Pecora, N., Murray, J.O., and Wartella, E. (eds.) (2006). Children and Television: 50 Years of Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pempek, T.A. and Lauricella, A.R. (2017). The effects of parent‐child interaction and media use on cognitive development in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. In: Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts (eds. F.C. Blumberg and P.J. Brooks), 53–74. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Reinhard, C.D. and Olson, C.J. (eds.) (2017). Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children’s Entertainment Media. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Rideout, V. (2017). The Common Sense Census: Media Used by Kids Age Zero to Eight. CA: Common Sense Media, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ research/the‐common‐sense‐census‐media‐use‐by‐kids‐age‐zero‐to‐eight‐2017. Singer, D.G. and Singer, J.L. (eds.) (2012). Handbook of Children and Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Steemers, J. (2016). Production studies, transformations in children’s television and the global turn. Journal of Children and Media 10 (1): 123–131.

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Steemers, J. (2017). Children’s television in transition: policies, platforms and production. Media International Australia 163 (1): 6–12. Tobin, J. (2000). “Good Guys Don’t Wear Hats”: Children’s Talk About the Media. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press. Valkenburg, P.M. and Piotrowski, J.T. (2017). Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Zaman, B., Nouwen, M., Vanattenhoven, J. et al. (2016). A qualitative inquiry into the contextualized parental mediation practices of young children’s digital media use at home. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 60 (1): 1–22.

Chapter 17

Watching Television: A Political Economic Approach Eileen R. Meehan

Do you watch television? For decades, watching television meant having a television set turned on and receiving programming from one or more of these distribution technologies: VHF broadcasting, UHF broadcasting, cable system, or satellite dish. In the 1970s, the advent of recording and playback technologies gave viewers more choice over viewing times and programming, but a television set was still necessary. That changed with computers and digitalization as the types and numbers of screens used to watch television proliferated and streaming joined the ranks of television’s distribution technologies. Watching television now means accessing programming through screens as small as a cell phone or as big as the largest flat screen TV set with stereophonic sound in a home theater. With mobile screen technologies, ­television truly seems to be everywhere and television content seems available whenever and wherever we want it. For political economists, watching television is a rather different matter. We  watch television by tracing political and economic entities, forces, and ­structures that foster the production, distribution, and continuation of some kinds  of expression  –  program genres, shows, plots, characters, assumptions, and  visions  –  rather than other kinds of expression. That task requires varied approaches to television. One approach analyzes markets to determine how media corporations construct the television industry (Meehan and Torre 2011). Another involves tracing ­relationships between companies, as well as between companies and governmental entities, to see how these markets are negotiated (Mosco 1996; Kunz 2012). Yet  another examines corporate structures in order to uncover the internal

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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r­ elationships and elements that shape a company’s goals, actions, and interactions (Hardy 2014; Biltereyst and Soberon 2017). Understanding the systems that comprise the television industry helps us understand why we get what we get on ­television (Meehan 2005). In this chapter, I will first discuss some of the ways in which political economists have studied television and then examine two foci for research on the political economy of programming. The initial focus examines the three interlinked markets that comprise television, i.e. the markets for programs, audiences, and television ratings. There are two points here: first, is to test the truism that television gives us what we want and thus reflects our beliefs and, second, to test the truism that ratings are scientific measures. The subsequent focus examines how corporate structure and governmental policies supporting those configurations serve to integrate industries and foster the absorption of new technologies into old economic relations. This tests the third truism that the separate industries of network television, cable television, and satellite television are fierce competitors. It also raises questions about the very notion that each new distributive technology poses a threat to television‐as‐we‐have‐known‐it. My analysis will focus on American television because of the historical dominance of American programming across international markets and the increasing legitimacy accorded to the commercial form of television articulated in the United States. That dominance was partly due to a combination of favorable export laws and foreign aid policy, which positioned American television producers to control emerging markets for programming in the 1950s and 1960s (Barnouw 1968, 1970). Within those emerging markets, American producers could charge less for their programs than local producers because the American companies had already covered their costs and earned profits in the United States. These early advantages translated into long‐term dominance in the country‐by‐ country markets for television programs outside the Communist blocs. During the mid‐1970s, the rise of right‐wing movements in Western Europe and the United States, (known, respectively, as neoliberalism and neoconservatism) intensified that dominance through consistent attacks on and underfunding of noncommercial public broadcasting. The demise of Communist governments in Eastern Europe resulted in the privatization and marketization of state‐run television systems. While national variations still exist among television systems, overall they are increasingly focused on commercialism in the American style and increasingly dominated by transindustrial media conglomerates or trans‐sectoral conglomerates with extensive media holdings (Padovani 2005; Meehan 2011; Gomez 2017; Martinez 2017; Workneh 2017). That style has intensified in the United States as neoconservative administrations have deregulated television and relaxed limitations on ownership, mergers, and commercial speech (Wittebols 2004; Meehan 2011). Over time, then, as political economists have watched television, television has  become increasingly commercialized, privatized, and marketized. This has ­globalized the American focus on media markets constrained by the preferences of



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advertisers and media conglomerates. With these reflections in mind, let us turn to a brief review of the research on the political economy of television.

Tracking Television The relevant research literature addresses the political construction of American television as an industry, the economic structures comprising that industry, and the programming delivered via television technologies. Whether addressed individually or together, these three areas intrigue political economists because they allow us to ask questions about the impact of governmental and corporate policies on television’s “universal curriculum” (Gerbner 1996) delivered via old and new technologies to homes as well as in “sites of commerce, bureaucracy, and community” (McCarthy 2001). With governmental policies and digital technologies making television accessible all the time and almost everywhere, tracing the interconnections between ­television’s owners, global operations, customers, and programming becomes the key to understanding television’s role in enculturation, ideology, and hegemony (Wittebols 2004; Miller 2006; Mirrless 2013). In commercial television, advertisers are the primary customers and television’s primary service is providing access to advertisers’ targeted viewers. Television delivers “eyeballs” through commercial interruptions during programs and product placements within programs. While advertisers and television networks share an interest in audiences comprised by targeted consumers, they have conflicting interests over the pricing of such access. I’ll address that issue later through a discussion of audience measurement and television ratings after briefly reviewing some of the scholarship on broadcasting’s history in the United States.

Political Supports for the American Television Industry From the invention of radio to the present day, broadcasting has depended upon political supports (Barnouw 1966, 1968, 1970; Douglas 1987; Horwitz 2005). At the end of World War I, when the Department of the Navy could not persuade Congress to give it a monopoly over radio, the Navy asked its long‐term contractor, General Electric (GE), to take radio in hand. GE proposed the creation of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to AT&T and Westinghouse, its partners in the Patent Pool formed during World War I. The result was RCA and its two NBC radio networks, with a Navy representative on RCA’s Board of Directors. Besides its long‐term connections to the military, the broadcasting industry has relied on legislation to define its operating rules and on regulatory agencies to enforce those rules in its favor (McChesney 1993; Streeter 1996). The industry has depended on Constitutional precedents to grant it freedom of speech, shelter its operations from local governments as a form of interstate commerce, copyright

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its programming, and protect its technologies via patents (Bettig 1996; Tillinghast 2000). Political economists have examined these supports as well as the networks’ news coverage of these topics (Brown 1998) and the shared interests that connect the primary companies within the industry to politicians, political parties, and ideological factions (Gitlin 1980; McChesney 2004). In tracing these relationships, political economists have illuminated the institutions, precedents, and structures that fold television into the American political system. More importantly, they demonstrate how these media are constructed as industries through the active involvement of corporations and the state. From this perspective, governments set in place economic rules, incentives, and protections that foster the privatization and commercialization of the relevant technologies. Analytically, this creates a picture of television in which the foreground is filled with individuals, corporations, trade associations, non‐profit organizations, and governmental entities. Each pursues its particular interest against a background of institutional structures, laws and rules, policy processes, and political agendas that together constitute the state. A focus on the foreground reveals the dynamic nature of these relationships, discourses, and outcomes. Individuals rise and fall in prominence. Debates among corporations, trade associations, and nonprofit organizations shift grounds. Administrations and Congresses argue over and alter policies. In contrast, a focus on the background reveals the stability of the political system’s commitment to a privately owned, for‐profit industry that uses public property for strictly private ends – to wit, earning the highest revenues possible by embedding advertisements and product placements in programs whose raison d’être is to deliver targeted consumers to advertisers. The extent of that commitment is noteworthy. Since 1980, Republican and Democratic administrations, Congresses, and politicians have joined with lobbyists to restructure the American economy generally and the media industries particularly. Variously called monetarism, neo‐conservatism, or neo‐liberalism, the political deregulation of the economy encouraged companies in disparate media industries to indulge in “merger mania” (Bettig and Hall 2003). Where regulation had allowed corporations to previously constitute oligopolies on an industry‐by‐industry basis, deregulation encouraged corporations to expand their single‐industry oligopolies across multiple media industries. That fostered the creation of transindustrial media conglomerates comprising oligopolies covering multiple media industries as well as trans‐sectoral conglomerates operating across multiple sectors of the economy including the entertainment‐information sector (Fitzgerald 2017; Kunz 2017; McGuigan and Pickard 2017; Meehan 2017; Murdock 2017; Wasko 2017). The impact of these oligopolies on mediated expression has been notable indeed. For television programming, it has meant an increasing number of advertisements between program segments, as well as an increasing intrusion of product placements into programming (Andersen 1995; McAllister 1996). That increases viewers’ exposure to advertising and decreases access to entertainment, information, and



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news. It has also fostered the seemingly endless recycling of old and current media products across multiple technologies, both new and old. Transindustrial media conglomerates used deregulation to erase traditional separations between advertising, news, information, and entertainment on television. They also used deregulation to erase legal separations between ownership of ­television networks, video and film production units, film studios, cable channels, and cable systems. Those separations were intended to give television viewers more choices while fostering competition between and among networks, production companies, cable channels, and cable systems. Before discussing the media oligopolies spanning those industries, let’s examine broadcast television’s interlinked markets.

Television’s Interlinked Markets Three interlinked markets comprise television in the United States: the market in which networks create or select programs; the market in which advertisers demand and buy audiences; and the market monopolized by an audience measurement company. I will refer to these three markets, respectively, as the markets for programs, audiences, and ratings. In the market for ratings, the monopolist produces and sells ratings to advertisers and networks as proof that television programs deliver the demanded audiences in acceptable numbers. Much discussion of these markets can be found in trade papers like Variety or Advertising Age, whose primary focus is on the business of media and whose primary readers are comprised of industry insiders. Industry outsiders are targeted by various commercial media products that promote television viewing. Among those products, perhaps the best known brand is TV Guide. One version of that brand is produced by NTVB Media LLC. A subscription to that company’s TV Guide results in access to daily program schedules and articles promoting television stars and programs either in print or by email. A second version of the brand is the TV Guide website (http://www.tvguide.com) owned by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Corporation, which also owns the CBS television network, half of the CW network, and various cable channels. CBS’s TV Guide also combines daily program schedules and promotional articles. Similar promotional content is featured by CBS’s Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight programs, Time Warner’s The Hollywood Minute, and the cable channel E!, owned by NBCUniversal Media, which is itself owned by Comcast. Across all of these outlets, stories are framed in terms of unique personalities, one‐of‐a‐kind events, singular relationships, outstanding programming, and unparalleled acceptance by audiences as demonstrated by television ­ratings. While this may be good public relations, it tells us nothing about the market structures in which programs are produced and distributed, audiences are targeted, and ratings are produced.

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Historically, ratings have been promoted by the television industry, the ratings monopolist, and mainstream media scholars as a product of applied social science that simply measures audience preferences and behaviors (Beville 1985; Buzzard 1990, 2012). In contrast, my research focuses on ratings as a product shaped by the shared interest of both advertisers and networks in measurements of high‐quality audiences and their conflicting interests over prices for access to such audiences – prices that are based on ratings. To clarify all of this, I will briefly review the history of the broadcast ratings industry and identify six rudimentary economic relationships undergirding the market for ratings.

Creating a Ratings Market The market for broadcast ratings was created in November 1929 when the Association of American Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers founded the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (CAB) to measure radio audiences. The Associations did not allow CAB to sell ratings to radio networks or stations, thus denying broadcasters access to the ratings market. Further, CAB’s questions appeared designed to deflate the size of radio’s audience among bona fide consumers. First, respondents were asked if they had listened to radio on the previous day. Those who said “yes” were asked to name every program that they heard. With most programs running 15 minutes, CAB was asking for a phenomenal feat of memory. Unsurprisingly, CAB found that radio attracted a small quantity of high‐quality listeners. Advertisers argued that prices for programming slots should be modest given radio’s modest number of listeners. RCA (with two networks) and CBS (with one network) each countered with their own numbers, demonstrating large quantities of high‐quality listeners, implying that prices should be higher. This situation was obviously unstable, but it illuminates some central elements of the market for ratings. Analytically, this sketch indicates an important continuity in the demand for audiences and for ratings. Both advertisers and networks shared an interest in bona fide consumers, that is, people with the income, access, and commitment to purchase name brands. The sketch also illuminates an important discontinuity. Because ad prices depended on the quantity and quality of the audience, advertisers preferred measures that underestimated the quantity of a high‐quality audience because such measures depressed the cost that they paid to advertise. In contrast, networks preferred ratings that overestimated the number of bona fide consumers, which would justify charging high prices for advertising slots. This mixture of continuity and discontinuity in demand opened the possibility of a successful challenge to CAB’s monopoly. Indeed, the C. E. Hooper Company (CEH) proposed a ratings system based on telephone subscription and redesigned the interview to get more reliable information about listening. Respondents were asked if they had listened to radio in the last 15 minutes; if so, to what. Then they were asked about the previous 15 minutes. CEH’s ratings showed that radio attracted



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a large quantity of high‐quality listeners. Further, because CEH would sell its ratings to advertisers, ad agencies, radio stations, radio networks, and any other paying customer, CEH could spread operational costs over more customers. This strategy expanded the number of buyers, lowered the cost per buyer, and produced more reliable information about listening. Here I have somewhat simplified the history of the CAB and CEH in order to clarify three of the six rudimentary economic relations in the markets for audiences and ratings. First, advertisers want bona fide consumers  –  people with sufficient disposable income, desire, and access to goods and services so that they can afford luxuries like telephones in 1929 or cable subscriptions in the 1980s, or the wide range of digital technologies and services currently used to access commercial programming. Second, networks want to produce what advertisers want to buy – thus, creating continuity in demand regarding who ought to be counted. Third, networks and advertisers have an inherent conflict of interest regarding the cost of advertising spots and product placements, which opens space for companies to argue about industrial definitions. This leads to the fourth relationship as conflicts of interest between advertisers and broadcasters create some structural wiggle room for the ratings monopolist. By creatively manipulating discontinuities in demand for ratings, CEH replaced CAB. A similar manipulation led to CEH being subsequently replaced by the original A.  C. Nielsen Company (ACN). Founded in 1923, ACN’s primary business was ­selling reports to advertisers and ad agencies detailing how retailers displayed advertisers’ products and promotional materials. Building on that connection ­ with advertisers, ACN proposed using meters to monitor radio tuning in order to eliminate human bias. Using a clever mixture of its long‐term relations with advertisers, appeals to technological snobbery, and manipulation of rivalries between NBC and CBS, ACN took over the monopoly of radio ratings. Currently known as  the Nielsen Holdings PLC, the company has maintained its ratings monopoly despite changes in its ownership and corporate structure, as well as shifts in both the ­technologies by which television programming is distributed and the technologies that viewers use to access programming. Fifth, the histories of CAB, CEH, and ACN/Nielsen illustrate how the markets for ratings, audiences, and programs are interlocked. Neither the ratings producer, nor networks, nor program producers have any economic interest in commodities that are unresponsive to advertisers’ demand for bona fide consumers. No network can afford to program for an audience that advertisers don’t target. No ratings company can afford to measure viewers who are not demanded. No producer can afford to pitch a show targeting an audience that advertisers don’t want and which the ratings monopolist doesn’t measure. All that  –  plus the relative stability of ACN’s sample  –  encourages producers to generate creative imitations of last year’s hits by recombining elements in new ways (Gitlin 2000). The market for ratings, then, also sets parameters for the market in which programs are conceptualized, pitched, and sometimes scheduled.

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Sixth and finally, the smooth and inexpensive operations of these five markets require a single source of ratings. In this way, advertising slots can be bought and sold as a matter of routine, using low‐paid employees who quickly transact their business. That encourages advertisers and broadcasters to prefer a monopoly in ­ratings production. For a new firm to enter the ratings market as a producer, that company must put together some faction comprising disgruntled networks, ­ advertisers, and agencies seeking advantages not available from the current ­ monopolist. Despite various challenges (Buzzard 2012), Nielsen remains the ­ ­ratings monopolist. But that does not mean Nielsen’s monopoly will last forever.

Continuity and Rivalry in Broadcast History These six economic factors shape the markets for ratings, audiences, and television programming regardless of the technologies delivering television ads and programs or the various screens used to watch television. Ratings are the crucial link between the relevant companies, technologies, advertisements, and programs. Thus, both continuities in demand and rivalries between or among purchasers of ratings have an impact on measurement and programming practices. To show how this works, I will briefly sketch two examples from the early history of the A. C. Nielsen Company’s operations in broadcast ratings, the first focused on continuity and the second on rivalry.

Continuity and Ratings In 1942, ACN pushed CEH out of ratings production thereby monopolizing the radio ratings industry. Part of ACN’s success was based on its methods: meters could report radio listening whenever it occurred and eliminated the possibility of respondent error or lying. Further, by monitoring its sample over a sustained period of time, ACN’s reports of audience preferences could be used by networks to design new programs that would suit the taste of households in ACN’s continuing sample. That continuity had the potential to further rationalize programming decisions. Indeed, from 1942 to 1963, ACN used the same group of metered households to calculate ratings for individual radio stations, national radio networks, and national television networks. To understand this, three key facts should be remembered. First, the Radio Corporation of America owned and operated two NBC radio ­networks, known as NBC Blue and NBC Red. The CBS operated a single radio ­network, known as CBS. Although there were three networks, there were only two owners – hence national networked radio was duopolized. Second, in 1943, RCA was required to divest its Blue Network, which comprised its weaker stations. Edward J. Noble bought the Blue Network and incorporated his radio holdings as



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the American Broadcasting Company. The network was rechristened ABC. In this way, the business of radio broadcasting became an oligopoly. All three networks transitioned into television by simulcasting their radio ­programs on radio and television. In essence, that defined television as radio‐with‐­ pictures, thus establishing radio genres and programs as the basis for television. These decisions provided no incentive for ACN to incur new operational costs by creating a separate sample comprising television’s early adapters to generate television ratings based solely on owners of television sets. Instead, ACN waited for households in its radio sample to notify it when they purchased television sets and then installed a meter on each set. This continuity in the ratings sample also set the mold for creating television shows. Put simply, radio’s genres, character types, and formats became the basis for television programming because television ratings depended on ACN’s prewar radio sample. That effectively subjugated the new medium to the old. When RCA, CBS, and advertisers agreed that ACN radio households were the measure of television’s success, they effectively agreed that television programming would not fully exploit the medium’s technological potential. This decision set the television industry on a particular road – one that favored fitting new technologies into the old economic structures. We see similar subjugations in the histories of cable television, satellite television, and internet streaming.

Rivalry and Ratings Rivalry can refer both to corporate relations based on one company trying to achieve dominance and to industrial relations in which one industry seeks to minimize the operations and profits of a rival industry. In neither case do we see the rough‐and‐ tumble of competition where each company seeks to assimilate or destroy the others and thereby monopolize the industry. The key to rivalry is limiting the number of firms in an industry while each firm strives to be “number one.” For example, as mentioned above, although the Radio Corporation of America owned two networks while the CBS owned only one, the two companies effectively duopolized national radio networking, and when RCA was forced to sell one of its networks, the industry was restructured as an oligopoly. At this point NBC became the strongest network and ABC became the weakest (Barnouw 1966). When the three radio networks moved into television, they simultaneously broadcast programs on radio and television, thereby extending radio’s oligopoly into the new medium of television. This was cost effective for the networks, advertisers, and ACN. With radio’s stars, programs, and genres migrating to the new medium, television was going to be radio with pictures. ACN’s radio homes would generate television ratings from its radio sample and, with a meter being added to the TV when a household bought a television set, advertisers and broadcasters could reasonably expect that radio hits would become television hits. Within that business

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context, the Great Talent Raid of 1948 makes sense: CBS recruited NBC’s radio stars for CBS’s television network, giving CBS a boost in the ratings. Indeed, the 1963 Congressional hearings that focused on ratings revealed that ACN’s television ­ratings were based on its original radio sample, which included an experimental installation in Appleton, Wisconsin (U.S. Congress 1963). The political pressure exerted in those Congressional hearings combined with pressure from the networks and advertisers for ACN to draw a sample that would be more typical of advertisers’ targeted consumers. ACN announced that it would focus on upscale, contemporary television households located in cities and suburbs. That fostered a shift in programming sometimes referred to as “the year of relevance” and other times as “the rural purge.” Canceled programs included The Lawrence Welk Show (ABC, 1955–1971), The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 1962–1971), and The Virginian (NBC, 1962–1971). Their replacements had younger casts and more contemporary themes. Among those programs were The Mod Squad (ABC, 1962–1971), All in the Family (CBS, 1971–1979) and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh‐In (NBC, 1968–1971).

Merging the Broadcast and Cable Television Industries Another shift in ratings production occurred in the early 1980s and produced a new form of corporate rivalry. At the time, ACN reported ratings for broadcast and cable programs separately. In 1976, Ted Turner, who owned Atlanta’s WTCG broadcast station, contracted with TelePrompTer cable system to carry WTCG. In 1980, he had launched the Cable News Network (CNN), followed by the Cable Music Channel in 1981. Turner successfully lobbied ACN to include the ratings for his cable channels with ratings for broadcast channels in a single report. That allowed advertisers to compare network and cable audiences and effectively pushed the networks into cable television. Their initial channels – ABC’s Alpha Repertory Television (ARTS), CBS’s CBS‐C, and NBC’s The Entertainment Channel – targeted an upscale audience with programming that drew from classical music, serious drama, Broadway musicals, and PBS‐style light entertainment. However, the ratings indicated that viewership was low. By 1982, CBS‐C was defunct due to high production costs and low ratings. ABC and NBC merged their channels to form A&E, which targeted the Nielsen sample with programming typical of commercial television. Ultimately, ABC, CBS, and NBC launched various cable channels whose schedules recycled the network programs and older films with new programs and films that featured harsher language, more explicit violence, and more adult themes than allowed on broadcast television. In 1986, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network and cable channels joined the mix adding a neoconservative twist to network and cable programming (Murdock 2017). The corporate ownership of both networks and cable channels effectively merged the broadcasting and cable industries, thereby expanding the number of channels through which television programs were accessed and across which the commodity audience was measured.



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Transindustrial Media Conglomeration The installation of neoliberal/neoconservative administrations in United States and across Europe in the 1980s had a dramatic impact on national media systems. Those administrations supported the transformation of companies operating in specific media industries into conglomerates that spanned the global entertainment‐information sector of the world economy. In 2017, five of these global media giants had major operations in the US: Comcast, National Amusements, News Corporation/21st Century Fox, Time Warner, and the Walt Disney Company. With Republican majorities in Congress and the Trump Administration in the White House, it appeared that concentration in media ownership would continue and perhaps intensify. Indeed, in 2018, the Department of Justice approved, first, the telecommunications giant AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner for $85.4 billion and then Disney’s move to acquire 21st Century Fox for $73.1 billion. The deal with Disney did not include the Fox network and news operation, as NewsCorp planned to leave entertainment media and build on its information services and marketing operations in real estate, finance, newspapers, and publishing. Below are brief sketches of the four companies that dominated all aspects of US television and constituted television’s global giants: AT&T, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, and National Amusements. AT&T is best known as a provider of telephone services, internet service, satellite communications, and interconnectivity including interconnection for radio and television broadcasting. In the early 2000s, AT&T owned enough stock in Liberty Media to take a seat on Time Warner’s board of directors but that relationship had dissolved by 2005 (Meehan 2005). Subsequently, AT&T executed a direct acquisition of Time Warner with HBO, Turner, and Warner Brothers comprising its key operations. Time Warner’s main foci are the production and distribution of films and television programs; co‐ownership of the CW broadcast network; and multiple cable channels including CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Turner Sports, and Cartoon Network. Other notable operations include Warner Digital Networks, Warner Theatre Ventures, DC comic books, the licensing operation Warner International Consumer Products, Warner’s extensive film and television library, and Time’s involvement in book, magazine, and newspaper publishing. Comcast provides broadcast, cable, and pay television as well as residential telephone and internet service. Its NBC Universal Media subsidiary owns the NBC and Telemundo networks plus numerous cable channels including MSNBC, USA, E!, and the Weather Channel. NBCUniversal produces films through various divisions including Universal Films, Focus Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation. It also produces television programs under various brands including Working Title Television (The Tudors for Showtime) and Universal Cable Productions (I Just Want My Pants Back for MTV). Comcast has a majority interest in Universal Studios Japan and a minority interest in Universal Studies Singapore. Under the Universal brand, it operates theme parks and attractions in the US (Orlando and Hollywood) as well as Hong Kong and Singapore. Comcast also owns a stake in Hulu (32%) and, through

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Comcast Spectator, owns the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team and provides ­management services to sport and entertainment venues. The Walt Disney Company divides itself into four segments: Media Networks, Parks & Resorts, Studio Entertainment, and Consumer Products & Interactive Media. Disney media networks include multiple cable channels organized under the ESPN, Disney, or Freeform brands. Parks and Resorts include locations in Florida, California, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; an upscale spa in Hawaii; timeshare operations using Disney’s resorts; and a cruise line. While Disney has always deployed Mickey Mouse and other characters in its parks, the company took a bold step in 2017 when it opened “Pandora – The World of Avatar” at the Walt Disney World Resort. That attraction was based on James Cameron’s film Avatar, which mixed ecological themes with stunning visual effects to earn $760 million at the box office for 21st Century Fox. Subsequently, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox for $71 billion. That acquisition was approved by the Department of Justice with the stipulation that Disney sell Fox’s sports operations rather than blend them into Disney’s ESPN holdings. Disney uses its Studio Entertainment segment to produce movies and television programs and to build on Disney’s operations in recorded music, radio network, music publishing, concerts, and Broadway shows. The Consumer Products and Interactive Media Segment markets licensed merchandise via the internet, Disney stores, and other retail outlets. Disney is particularly noted for its proactive defense of its intellectual property (Wasko 2017). National Amusements Incorporated (NAI) was founded in 1936 as a family‐ owned, drive‐in theater operation in the Midwest. In 1967, Sumner Redstone replaced his father as chairman and built the company into a major owner of multiplex theaters. Over the years, multiplexes have been sold to finance other ventures, leaving NAI with only 950 screens. In 1987, Redstone acquired Viacom and subsequently CBS, which he merged into Viacom. In 2005, he undid the merger. Redstone controls 79.8% of class A voting stock in Viacom and 79.5% of Class A voting stock in CBS. His daughter, Shari Redstone, owns the remainder of Viacom’s and CBS’s voting stock. Sumner’s deteriorating health led Shari to take active roles on both boards and as chair of NAI (Meehan 2017). Her attempt to remerge CBS and Viacom was opposed by Les Moonves, the chair of the CBS board. Moonves attempted to undercut Shari Redstone’s standing by diluting the value of the Redstones’ voting stock and she sued but with mixed results. However, subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct forced Moonves’s resignation and strengthened Shari Redstone’s position on CBS’s board. National Amusements controls the CBS television network, 50% of the CW network and three branded groups of cable channels: BET, targeting African Americans and their cultural allies; Nickelodeon, targeting children and families; and Global Entertainment Group, targeting audiences based on social identity, e.g. CMT for country music fans and MTV for rock music fans. Both CBS and Viacom produce



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and distribute movies, television series, and new media. Both have extensive ­libraries and numerous franchises, e.g. CBS owns Star Trek and Viacom owns The  Transformers. Films are released under various brands including Paramount Vantage and Insurge Pictures. These operations feed National Amusements’ multiplexes and provide content for DVDs, Blu‐rays, and download‐to‐own operations as well for pay, cable/satellite, and broadcast television. In summary, then, these four companies have structured themselves as transindustrial conglomerates that integrate multiple media industries through their use of traditional and new technologies. These integrated operations facilitate redeployment of each media property across all media outlets and allow the companies to fully exploit their media holdings by recycling content across as many operations as possible. That can transform a television series into a product line comprised by multiple television series, films, novels, live events, licensed merchandise, etc. The proverbial “poster child” for this phenomenon is Star Trek, broadcast from 1966 to 1969 on CBS. That series formed the basis for an animated series (1973– 1974) and generated six films using the original cast (1979–1991). Between 1994 and 2005, Star Trek provided the basis for four prime time television series: The Next Generation (1987–1994), Deep Space Nine (1993–1999), Voyager (1995–2001), and Enterprise (2001–2005). Further, the original television series was rebooted with the release of three big budget films: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek into Darkness (2013), and Star Trek Beyond (2016). The latest Star Trek series, Discovery, was launched in 2016 with first part of the two‐part premier episode available on the CBS broadcast network as well as the internet subscription channel CBS All Access. The episode’s second half was only available on CBS All Access, which will stream the entire series. CBS has stated that subscriptions to CBS All Access have increased by more than 200% since it began streaming Discovery. Licensing revenues based on the Star Trek franchise earned over $300 million for CBS in 2016 (Salkowitz 2016). As this brief discussion of Star Trek suggests, the economics of media franchising and licensing surely influence creative processes and programming decisions. Take a tried‐and‐true media product and give it a twist and voilà a new product appears (Meehan 2005). We begin with Captain Kirk, a white man in the prime of life from Iowa, ready “to go where no man has gone before.” Make the captain an older, sophisticated Frenchman with an English accent and Captain Picard is ready “to go where no one has gone before.” Transform Picard into a white American woman who needs to get her ship and crew back home: Captain Janeway results. Change Janeway into an African American man on a space station orbiting a distant planet and Commander Sisko materializes. While the white male captains lead voyages of discovery, Janeway’s ship is stranded in the Delta Quadrant and Sisko orbits Bajor over and over again. Interestingly, the captains in both the Enterprise and Discovery (2017) prequels are white American males. However, Discovery’s lead character is science officer Michael Burnham: an African American woman who was raised on the planet Vulcan by Spock’s father. Within the Star Trek universe, the creative tactic of “tried‐and‐true

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with a twist” connects the brand’s product lines, while also differentiating each new line and each lead character as “totally new” yet completely familiar.

Television’s Truisms Versus Industrial Facts In 2007, Nielsen Holdings PLC responded to the unified demand of the television industry and its advertisers for ratings that measured the number of unique ­individuals viewing content using television sets, computers, mobile devices, video‐ on‐demand, or home recording technologies (LaPorte 2016; Nielsen 2017; Nielsen Insights 2018). Called Total Content Ratings (TCR), these measures also report whether the content carried the same commercials as the broadcast version, different commercials, or no commercials. The reports are augmented with point‐of‐ purchase data from scanners as well as information gleaned from a panel of 100 000 households (Biltereyst and Soberon 2017). Currently, Nielsen dominates the US and global markets for both ratings and information on consumers’ buying habits. When considered in the historical context of the broadcast ratings industry, Nielsen’s TCRs are no more objective, scientific mesasures of television’s global audience than ACN’s meter‐based sample or the telephone‐based ratings produced by CEH and CAB. Historically and currently, ratings production is shaped by the need to control costs of production and satisfy corporate customers’ demand for measurements of bona fide consumers. The truism that ratings are scientific measurements is simply false: ratings are products manufactured by a monopolist within constraints of cost and demand. As we have seen, the broadcast, cable, pay, and satellite television industries are  fully integrated. Program production and program distribution systems are organized as a series of overlapping oligopolies. The current oligopolists are AT&T, Comcast, National Amusements, and the Walt Disney Company. These firms are not only major players but also frequent partners. Another truism is proven false: network television, cable television, and satellite television are not separate industries comprising fierce competitors. Given these economic conditions, the final truism – that television programming reflects the public’s tastes  –  is untenable. This picture of the television industry ­differs startlingly from that presented in the popular and trade presses. While rivalry over ratings evokes fractious rhetoric among networks, that rivalry is softened through contracts and joint ventures that marry the interests of the networks’ owners. When we watch television as political economists, we uncover relationships and structures that define the field upon which the game of television is played. As long as that game is played by these corporate rules and rulers, we can only expect more of the same, regardless of the number of channels or available technologies. Combining political economy with the common experience that hundreds of ­channels can still be characterized as having “nothin’ on” (Springsteen 1992) gives us the tools necessary to explain why that is so.



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References Andersen, R. (1995). Consumer Culture and TV Programming. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Barnouw, E. (1966). A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnouw, E. (1968). The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnouw, E. (1970). The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bettig, R.V. (1996). Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bettig, R.V. and Hall, J. (2003). Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Beville, H.M. (1985). Audience Ratings: Radio, Television, and Cable. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Biltereyst, D. and Soberon, L. (2017). Nielsen Holdings. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkenbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 447–463. New York and London: Routledge. Brown, D. (1998). Dealing with a conflict of interest: How ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Paper presented at the Broadcast Education Association Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada (6–9 April). Buzzard, K. (2012). Tracking the Audience: The Ratings from Analog to Digital. New York: Routledge. Douglas, S.J. (1987). Inventing American Broadcasting 1899–1922. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fitzgerald, S. (2017). Time Warner. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 51–71. New York and London: Routledge. Gerbner, G. (1996). The hidden side of television violence. In: Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of the Media Means for America and the World (eds. G. Gerbner, H. Mowlana and H.I. Schiller), 27–34. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gitlin, T. (1980). The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gitlin, T. (2000). Inside Prime Time. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hardy, J. (2014). Critical Political Economy of the Media: An Introduction. New York and London: Routledge. Horwitz, R.B. (2005). On media concentration and the diversity questions. The Information Society 21: 181–204. Kunz, W. (2017). Sony Corporation. In: Global Media Giants, (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 239–253. New York and London: Routledge. Kunz, W.M. (2012). FCC studies of the television marketplace under George W. Bush: flawed measurements and invalid conclusions. Democratic Communique, 1–21. LaPorte, N. (2016). How Nielsen plans to solve the audience puzzle. Fast Company. https:// www.fastcompany.com/3057388/how‐nielsen‐plans‐to‐solve‐the‐audience‐puzzle. Martinez, G. (2017). Grupo Televisa. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 191–205. New York and London: Routledge. McAllister, M.P. (1996). The Commercialization of American Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McCarthy, A. (2001). Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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McChesney, R.W. (1993). Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of US Broadcasting, 1928–1935. New York: Oxford University Press. McChesney, R.W. (2004). The Problem of Media: U.S. Communication Products in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. McGuigan, L. and Picard, V. (2017). Comcast Corporation. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 72–91. New York and London: Routledge. Meehan, E.R. (2005). Transindustrialism and synergy: structural supports for decreasing diversity in commercial culture. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 1 (1): 123–126. Meehan, E.R. (2011). A legacy of Neoliberalism: patterns in media conglomeration. In: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique (eds. J. Kapur and K. Wagner), 38–58. Routledge. Meehan, E.R. (2017). National Amusements. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 26–50. New York and London: Routledge. Meehan, E.R. and Torre, P. (2011). Markets in theory and markets in television. In: The Handbook of Political Economy of Communication (eds. J. Wasko, G. Murdock and H. Sousa), 62–82. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Miller, T. (2006). Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Mirrless, T. (2013). Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization. New York: Routledge. Mosco, V. (1996). The Political Economy of Communication. London: Sage. Murdock, G. (2017). News Corporation. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 92–108. New York and London: Routledge. Nielsen (2017). Nielsen Annual Report. https://s1.q4cdn.com/199638165/files/doc_ financials/Annual/2018/04/2017‐Annual‐Report.pdf Nielsen Insights (2018). Total content ratings. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/ capabilities/total‐content‐ratings. Padovani, C. (2005). A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Salkowitz, R. (2016). “Star Trek” lives long and prospers with galaxy‐class swag. Forbes, 8  September. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2016/09/08/star‐trek‐lives‐ long‐and‐prospers‐with‐galaxy‐class‐licensing‐strategy/#1f17069d1e77 Springsteen, B. (1992). 57 channels (and nothin’ on). Human Touch [Album]. New York: Columbia. Streeter, T. (1996). Selling the Air: A Critique of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillinghast, C.H. (2000). American Broadcast Regulation and the First Amendment: Another Look. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives. (1963). Broadcast ratings: Hearings before a  Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Eighty‐eighth Congress, vol. 1. Wasko, J. (2017). The Walt Disney Company. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 11–25. New York and London: Routledge. Wittebols, J.H. (2004). The Soap Opera Paradigm. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Workneh, T.W. (2017). Sub‐Saharan Africa. In: Global Media Giants (eds. B.J. Birkinbine, R. Gomez and J. Wasko), 287–311. New York and London: Routledge.

Chapter 18

The Female Television Audience Updated: Women’s Television Culture in the Age of New Media Andrea Press and Sarah R. Johnson

Television audience research focusing on women’s use of television now constitutes a sizeable body of work with its own history, subfields and criticisms. In this chapter, we will trace the history of feminist audience research that led up to feminist ­television audience research in the new media context. This will lead us through a discussion of other media as well, as antecedent to the current tradition of feminist television audience study.

Before Television: Female Audiences in Film and Literature Studies No discussion of women’s use of television would be complete without discussion of the role of one early seminal scholar in the tradition of audience study, Austrian‐ American social scientist Herta Herzog. Herzog produced the first audience study that could be termed “feminist,” as it was a study of the particular role radio soap operas  –  previously an overlooked genre  –  played in the lives of their female ­listeners. Often termed a “uses and gratifications” study, and dismissed as being too limited in scope to be useful in the era of interpretive media audience study, Herzog’s work nevertheless probed themes and issues which continued to be important to feminist television audience work, such as the role of the content of radio soaps in the everyday domestic lives of their largely female listeners. Her most famous piece, entitled “On Borrowed Experience,” (1941) indicates the perspective she adapted as she analyzed women’s unique attachment to the characters and storylines of these ongoing soap opera narratives. A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The other foundational piece for feminist television audience study occurred in the world of theoretical film analysis, which began in earnest in the 1960s and 1970s. The most important work of this era is undoubtedly Laura Mulvey’s seminal piece about the case of film spectatorship, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, first published in the theoretical film journal Screen (1975). Mulvey challenged the notion that audiences unilaterally watch classical Hollywood film, by introducing a distinctly gendered “gaze” concept into this discussion. This work was influential in bringing gender as social context into academic understandings of all forms of media production and reception. Mulvey’s essay followed from earlier work by Metz (1974, 1975, 1982) and Baudry and Williams (1974), appropriating from them the paradigm and methods of ­psychoanalysis to help us understand the impact of film on society. Yet Mulvey transformed the feminist discourse about film, arguing that dominant Hollywood cinema was usually organized around a central male figure, and that it was through his “gaze” that representations of women were envisioned. Women, Mulvey argued, were filmed and projected primarily as objects of the male gaze. Mulvey’s work and the subsequent popularity of her central thesis cemented the fact that psychoanalytic theory became the cornerstone of feminist film analysis for 15–20 years ­following her article. But in addition, framing gendered audiences as distinct and worthwhile of separate attention pioneered a decades‐long discussion on the way women view and interact with media. While much‐cited and highly influential in feminist cinema analysis, Mulvey’s claims about the representation of gender in dominant cinema, and the mechanisms by which spectators desired pleasure from film, were immediately challenged by many other feminist film theorists working in a psychoanalytic paradigm. Williams (1999, 2008), Doane (1987, 1991), Geraghty (1991) and others countered with ­arguments about the woman’s film and melodramas, female‐centered dramas that focused on a central female figure, or an ensemble of leading women, genres that sometimes presented and filmed women in ways other than through the objectifying conventions of classical Hollywood cinema, or that allowed for different modes of identification than Mulvey theorized, sometimes with multiple characters, or with female characters. These critiques foreshadowed the study of female‐centric media that was to follow. However, Mulvey’s influence remained a significant one, in that she shifted the dominant paradigm for the discussion of gender, feminism, and film from an images‐based discourse to one focusing on audience reception; yet it was a discussion of reception that was theoretical rather than empirical or even interpretive, dominated as it was by abstract psychoanalytic concepts. In fact, the analysis of the reception of literature and other types of cultural products was often accomplished through the use of similar psychoanalytic theory (Holland 1975, 1994; Frye 2000). This paradigm was to remain dominant in feminist film studies until approximately the past 20 years, when a newly historical perspective emerged. The work of scholars like Miriam Hansen (1991), Janet Staiger (1992), and Lauren Rabinovitz (1991, 1998) approached the analysis of film culture differently from those using a purely



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psychoanalytic perspective. They historicized Mulvey’s discussion of “dominant Hollywood cinema” and extended this analysis of Hollywood paradigms to include the periods both before (the silent era) and after (the breakdown of the studio system) the rise and demise of this framework. Hansen’s (1991) work detailed the actual forms of women’s spectatorship of early silent film, and their activities as fans of Rudolf Valentino, a prominent silent film star. She uses this data to comment on the way immigrant women in the early twentieth‐century US negotiated their identities and formulated their emergent American identities. Staiger (1992) tends to focus on analyzing the critical reception, in popular and alternative press outlets, of films interesting to gender theorists. These works often combine ­psychoanalytic discussions with a more historicized sense of film’s production and reception by different groups in the population. Newer work examines the feminist and postfeminist eras of Hollywood film in the post‐studio years (Haskell 1997; Projansky 2001; Press and Liebes 2003, 2004), or connects film and media use more generally to women’s broader consumption patterns and activities (Peiss 1986; Cohen 2003). Later feminist audience analysis broadened Mulvey’s discussion of female ­audiences by including both traditional media as well as specialized “female” genres, and by using the interpretive methods of qualitative sociology rather than relying exclusively on psychoanalytically informed theory. Angela McRobbie, writing in the mid‐1970s as a part of the “Birmingham School” of cultural studies, studied working‐class girls who consumed popular magazines, such as Jackie (1991), aimed at young women. She connected their magazine consumption to their broader cultural practices. Her work was an early example of the importance of intersectionality in feminist work, as it connected women’s social class membership to their gender identities as it discussed the particular cultural worlds of these readers. The readership for Jackie was composed primarily of working‐class girls. One of the most influential authors to take “women’s media” seriously was Janice Radway. In Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984), she provided a powerful understanding of the way Midwestern women, as a form of escape from the daily demands of their lives, used romance novels, which, like radio soap operas, teen girls’ magazines, and much of the other media aimed at a female audience, had formerly been considered too “trashy” for scholarly attention. Using interviewing and ethnography of a group of romance readers, Radway illustrated how women fans found great value in romance novels, admiring the portrayal of strong and independent heroines. Radway’s work was innovative for a myriad of reasons, including her qualitative social‐scientific study of the audience in addition to the text, and her focus on a “women’s” genre previously deemed too trivial for scholastic attention. By talking with women on their own terms and using their own language and space, using interviews, ethnography, and short‐answer small surveys, Radway was able to understand how women used romance novels to evade household duties and to claim time to indulge their own needs and fantasies. Her work paved the way for a coming generation of feminist television scholars.

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Female Television Audiences: From Soap Operas to Sex and the City The feminist literature about television images, production, and reception has emerged more out of the social science literature than from the humanistic background more central to film studies. Partly as a result of this background, a psychoanalytic paradigm has never been as central to feminist television studies as has been the case with film studies, though there have been a few exceptions such as the work of Mimi White (1992). Feminist television scholars have often focused on the production and reception of what are considered female genres like soap opera (Cantor and Pingree 1983; Press 1990; Brown 1994), and of other “feminist” television (D’Acci 1994). They have produced textual analyses galore of these products, as well (Press and Strathman 1993; Dow 1996). An early example of this is the work of Dorothy Hobson (1982), who studied the widely popular British television soap opera Crossroads, initially as her dissertation under the supervision of Birmingham School scholars, and later publishing it in book form. Hobson pioneered the ­qualitative, ethnographic study of the female television audience with this work which again, in the Birmingham School tradition, foregrounded both gender and social class identities. Like Herzog (1941), Hobson found that viewers related the problems of the fictional soap opera characters on Crossroads to real problems in their own lives. Charlotte Brunsdon (1991) continued this tradition of analyzing women’s ­television, merging textual analyses with discussions of the television audience in her book The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera (Brunsdon 2000). This book is a wonderful summary and review of the work thus far in feminist television studies, including an evaluation of the types of methods which had been used in the Hobson study to evaluate the impact of television soap operas on the female audience. Brunsdon’s book proceeded largely from her training in the humanistic tradition of cinema studies. Yet others who began writing about the female television audience were grounded in a more social scientific heritage. For this reason, the emphasis in feminist television studies has often focused rather explicitly on questions of television’s influence on women – or, more generally, on television culture’s influence on gender roles, and ideas about gender, in our society (Dow 1996; Projansky 2001).1 Studies like Brown’s research on soap operas (1994) argue that women work out their day‐to‐day problems and identity issues through their discussions of television soaps. D’Acci (1994), in a particularly ambitious study of the show Cagney and Lacey, ­examines the production of what she defines as a feminist television show, its representation of gendered issues, and viewers’ responses to the show, including the impact of viewers’ responses on the show itself as the network attempted to cancel it. Spigel (1992) in Make Room for TV argues that the way women received television into their homes in the 1940s and 1950s, and structured its place in the family, played a large role in determining television’s impact and continuing influence on our society.



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Later work in feminist television studies critiqued and analyzed television images from a number of perspectives, ranging from the examination of women’s or LGBTQ individual’s particular position on television talk shows (Gamson 1998; Illouz 2003), to examinations of “women’s networks” on television or shows particularly appealing to women (Dow 1996; Akass and McCabe 2004), to discussions of women’s issues as portrayed on the new “reality” television (Andrejevic 2004; Murray and Ouellette 2004). These works reflect the growing influence of intersectionality on feminist theory and often range beyond discussions of gender, including it in a wide sweep of other theoretically important issues. Sometimes work also broadens its  analytical focus beyond television, contextualizing television study within the much broader matrix of issues pertaining to the study of “culture” more broadly conceived. Foundational to this work on women, television, and culture is that from Press (1991), one of the authors of this chapter. Press continued in Radway’s tradition with her influential book, Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience (1991), exploring the ways women watch and connect with television. Rather than assume “one” female audience, like other feminist scholars, Press employed intersectional analysis, seeking to understand the way class and generation varied the viewing experiences by interviewing women of different ages in both the working‐class and the middle‐class. In doing so, Press documents the differing role television plays in reinforcing our culture’s hegemonic values, ­finding that “popular television images represent certain social groups, issues, and institutions systematically and repetitively in a manner that often reflects the position of these groups within our society’s hierarchical power structure” (1991, p. 27). These findings were a critical juncture for feminist audience research as emerging researchers began combining the contributions of both Press and Radway. While Radway’s work validated that female genres warrant scholarly attention, Press brought to light that women’s audiences are not unidimensional and that variables other than gender, such as socioeconomic status and generation, must be considered. Press argues that television exerts a “class‐specific” hegemony for working‐class women, and a “gender‐specific” hegemony for middle‐class women. Thus put, her findings challenge both hegemony and what is known in cultural studies as “­resistance theory” – the reigning theories of media reception dominant in critical cultural studies. In contrast to hegemony theory, which tends to offer totalizing explanations for media reception, Press’s results suggest important differences in the way reception operates for different groups of women. Resistance theory is also belied by her results, since it has considered almost all viewers’ interpretive activity in response to television to be resistance. Its proponents tend to downplay evidence of limits to the critical content of viewer interpretations, which her interviews ­illustrate. Using the evidence of in‐depth interviews with women about television, Press argues that television reception is a contradictory process, one fully explained neither by the ideas of hegemony nor of resistance. Women resist television at some levels yet are susceptible to its hegemonic meanings at others.

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This is particularly evident in her findings about class differences in receptivity. Press found that middle‐class women used television portrayals of gender relations to help solve relationship issues plaguing their own lives; often they identified with television’s largely middle‐class characters and families. In contrast, working‐class women identified less with television characters, yet judged television portrayals and situations to be more realistic than did their middle‐class counterparts. They used television to formulate their own ideas of “normal” life and found their own lives to be lacking in comparison with television’s more affluent families. Thus, working‐class women were able to resist hegemonic meanings about appropriate gender roles encoded in entertainment television, while they quite uncritically appropriated many aspects of television’s pictures of social class. The middle‐class women, in contrast, talked more of television’s images of gender role issues, and used television’s treatment of these issues more uncritically as a springboard for working out their own family and work roles, often a troubled and rapidly changing part of their lives. Women Watching Television has important implications specifically for feminist theory. In particular, it helps resolve two major debates. First, Press challenges the false unity underlying the concept of “woman” by examining important differences between women; in particular, she focuses on social class and generational differences. In addition, Press challenges prior feminist theories of women’s interpretations of television which generally argue that women in the postwar US use television and other media products to construct autonomously their own self‐identities and to express resistance to the effects of gender discrimination on their lives. Press’s interview data portray a more complicated picture in which women use television images both to reinforce and to resist traditional ideas about women’s proper roles in work and family. This is most evident in her findings about generational differences between women. For the older women Press interviewed, television was a source of new ideas, particularly about women’s increasing opportunities in the labor force. For the younger women, television served as a repository of nostalgic notions of the traditional family. It exacerbated their feelings about leaving their own families, often deemed imperfect according to television family images. Recent feminist theory has exposed this idyllic nuclear family image to be largely a creation of television and other media. (See, for example, Coontz (2016) [1993]). Women Watching Television centers on the question of how women interpret television, and the related issue of how women use television to make sense of their lives and identities. In a later book, Speaking of Abortion: Television and Authority in the Lives of Women, Press and Cole (1999) focus more specifically on the social issue of abortion, and the way television is used creatively by small groups of women friends as they formulate and express their feelings, opinions, and convictions about the issue. The politically charged issue of abortion has been the focus of an ongoing public debate, as well as an issue with which most women have some private experience. In the book, Press and Cole examine non‐activist women’s discourse about abortion, which has been slighted in a literature focusing primarily on activists.



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In particular, they examine how women’s views on abortion are formed in dialog with, and against the background of, mass media discourse about the issue. Methodologically, the book extends the interpretive methodology of Women Watching Television. While, there, Press interviewed individual women about their experiences with television, here Press and Cole interview groups of women who are asked to discuss television they watch together. The research is based on focus‐group discussions with pro‐life and pro‐choice women of different social classes. To create groups, contact women were asked to organize a group of their friends, for a meeting in their home. With this methodology, Press and Cole amended traditional focus groups in an ethnographic direction, to approximate more fully the setting in which television is most often watched, and to approximate the type of public discussion in which women most often engage. They asked each group to discuss the issue of abortion, and then to view and interpret, collectively, a selected fictional television show about the issue. Using their discussions of this issue, Press and Cole explored women’s views on abortion generally, focusing on the way different class and opinion groups understand distinctions between the public and the private, and how they critically interpret different presentations of this issue on entertainment ­television, and use these presentations in conceptualizing and expressing their own political, moral, and private positions on the issue. Whereas most studies of media and public opinion overlook the political, moral, and social content of entertainment television, this book adds a dimension to the debate about the way media content is used by viewers as they interpret, understand, and formulate their views. In addition, extant views of the separation of public and private spheres in modern American life ignore the particular experience of women, who are often identified with the private realm and dismissed as public actors. Press and Cole argue in their book that the public sphere for women is not actually absent, but exists in part in realms largely unexamined by current scholarship. They address the way the private realm often serves as a setting for formulating and expressing contending views about public issues, the role of television in that forum, and the particular form this debate takes for women. In this respect, the study expands the theoretical tradition established by the many feminist scholars who have challenged traditional definitions of the public/private distinction such as, above all, Nancy Fraser (2004, 2008), whose work challenged the fundamental divide between the public sphere (identified with men) and the private sphere (traditionally identified with women) by demonstrating the fundamental interconnectedness of these realms. This work influenced an entire school of philosophy which came to be known as “feminist” philosophy, setting the stage for the important work of scholars such as: Seyla Benhabib (1992), a democratic theorist whose work focuses on issues “minority” groups face in seeking democratic process within a majoritarian culture; political theorist Iris Marion Young (1990), who argued “structural injustice,” challenging liberal philosophers who advocated procedural equality by saying this did not address the structural inequities between groups; and historian Joan Scott (1986), who began to challenge the ahistoricity of feminists’ use of the analytic term

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“gender” in her masterful critique of feminist work in many disciplines, which allowed her nevertheless to establish gender as a primary access of domination throughout history. In addition, prior to Press and Cole, the feminist literature about abortion had either focused on activist women only in two polarized opinion camps (Luker 1985; Ginsburg 1998), or falsely generalized reasoning processes about abortion and other moral issues to all women based on samples composed primarily of middle‐class women (Gilligan 2016). In this study, Press and Cole focus on non‐activist women, many of whom do not fall neatly into either opinion camp, or into the conventional definition of political actors. Building on Press’s earlier study, they emphasize the  social class differences which divide the interpretations and self‐conceptions of women. While scholars in several social science disciplines have been interested in the impact of television exposure on measurable attitudes, and some in both humanities and social science fields have critically interpreted television itself from a scholarly perspective, few have looked at the way television is used by viewers as they create meanings, develop self‐interpretations, and formulate and express their feelings and ideas, as Press, and Press and Cole, do in these works. These explorations of the social and cultural context of television use by women, and other works following from this tradition (Heide 1995; McKinley 1997; Bacon‐Smith 1999; Wood 2009; Skeggs and Wood 2012), have been influential for recent work on television which explores new cultural contexts (postfeminism), new forms of television (reality ­television, quality television), and the interaction of television with new media.

Postfeminism, Television, and the New Cultural Context Recently, scholars have explored how “postfeminist” audiences contextualize and interact with various media. Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1990) theory that sexual, economic, and racial facets complicate the category of “woman,” postfeminism emphasizes a multidimensional female audience. Postfeminist theory suggests that feminist audience researchers must develop a complex theory of the relationship between culture, politics, agency, and women’s consumption (Tasker and Negra 2007). A leader in researching and theorizing postfeminist audiences, Angela McRobbie questioned how women in today’s media environment interact with content that assumes feminism as a “spent force” that must be both “taken into account,” but framed as though it has already “passed away” (McRobbie 2004, p. 256). Her recent works (McRobbie 2007, 2009) focus on the way female audiences negotiate education, earnings, sexual power, and fashion to maintain an aura of femininity, while challenging hegemonic masculinity. In particular, her contribution to audience research conceptualizes the absence of critique as an active force in the lives of today’s female audiences who may not have the power to react when their voice is “called upon to be silent … as a condition to her freedom” (McRobbie 2007, p. 34).



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Other scholars have also looked at the way postfeminist audiences interact with media. For example, new media scholars (e.g. White and Schwoch 2006) have explored “postfeminist” expression in the public sphere through online forums. Explorations of postfeminism and postfeminist media are not without criticism, however. Tasker and Negra (2007) allege that postfeminist culture is “exemplified by the figure of a white, middle‐class, heterosexual woman” and does not consider the varied experiences of women. International scholars (Parameswaran 2013; Lemish and Reznik 2008; Lemish 2006, 2015; Hegde 2011) have attempted to bridge this gap by broadening the idea of female audience to look not only at US and Western audiences, but to look more globally and to understand issues of transnationalism and imperialism as they affect female audiences worldwide.

Quality TV, Postfeminism and New Television Products Recently, a new genre (of sorts) has risen to great popularity in the field of feminist television studies: “quality” television. Speaking not to normative judgment but rather to a specific style identified as “quality,” the rise of quality television in America can been seen in the successes of high‐production value programming on subscription channels like HBO and Showtime, along with innovative, critically acclaimed programming from online services like Netflix and Amazon. As this new type of programming has grown, so has research into its relationship with female viewers. Though difficult to define (see Newman and Levine 2011 for a scholarly attempt), many viewers feel they recognize quality television when they see it. For scholars, the umbrella term often references shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Sex and the City, current shows like HBO’s Game of Thrones and Girls, along with original online programming like Netflix’s House of Cards, and Amazon’s Transparent. While quality television has been traditionally associated with HBO, the style has been picked up by many other premium networks (Starz, Showtime), web‐based distributors (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu), and some basic cable and traditional network ­distributors, (e.g. AMC’s Mad Men and Breaking Bad, FX’s Fargo, see Nygaard 2013). Scholars argue that the identification of a show as quality is not based on ­experience with, or an individual’s normative judgment of, a show, “but on [the] recognition of particular aesthetic features it contains” (Cardwell 2007, pp. 20–21). To say a program is quality is to categorize it, based on its production attributes, into a genre of sorts with a shared set of aesthetics and content patterns (Feuer 2007; Nelson 2007). This serious, complex content often calls for a different kind of interaction from the viewers. Cardwell suggests that the shows “encourage interpretative work on the part of the viewer” and then reward viewers “for seeking out greater symbolic or emotional resonance within the details of the programme” (2007, pp. 26, 28). This has great implications for female audience of quality television, as such audiences are often heavily drawn into the fictionalized worlds of the show.

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Importantly, though, scholars have identified another important characteristic of this genre, namely, its masculinization of the traditionally feminized genre of the drama (Kackman 2010). This comes with both advantages and caveats, as detailed by Williams and Press in discussing the quality television show The Wire (2017a, b). Because of its rich dramatic format, quality TV has the potential to show complex female characters and narratives (Akass and McCabe 2007), as it does with some African American female characters in The Wire (specifically Briana Barksdale, De’Londa Brice, and Donnette). However, because of the masculinization of this genre, the main characters of interest are predominantly men (as is the case with the  antiheroes of The Wire; see Williams and Press 2017b), and these shows often  “[succumb] to the sexist, patriarchal norms that characterize much of the ­representation of women in popular entertainment products” (Williams and Press 2017a, p.  1). If, as these scholars suggest, women are interacting with quality TV content on a deeper and more involved level (Nelson 2007), the masculinization of such a genre would have important implications.

Feminized Quality Television and Postfeminism A portion of the scholarship on quality television focuses on quality programming in a feminized, postfeminist context, largely on HBO. McCabe and Akass, for example, look to HBO to see “some of the most compelling women on our television screens” (2009, p. 303). The portrayal of women on many HBO shows feels like something new to these scholars as well as to many viewers, as something that is both feminist yet not feminist enough, articulating the postfeminist paradox as it exists in quality television. A large part of this literature has to do with the complex sexualities portrayed in the programming, compounded by HBO’s freedom from traditional broadcasting censorship and regulation (McCabe and Akass 2007). Many of the female characters in the HBO programming discussed (e.g. Carmella Soprano from The Sopranos and the women of Sex and the City) are more complex, but as with The Wire, are still beholden to the masculine characteristics of the gender: HBO may be offering new forms of female subjectivity, new opportunities for ­transforming how women are represented on television, but it cannot avoid the broader cultural ambivalence toward women, female identities, and feminism … These women have much to tell us about the contradictions we all live with each and every day. (McCabe and Akass 2009, p. 312)

Anikó Imre (2009) also explores this postfeminist paradox in quality television, focusing on its international, transcultural effects. She suggests that because of ­quality television’s male‐gaze oriented sexualization and its heightened prestige (e.g. from art‐cinema style aesthetics), quality television can be seen, on one hand, as a masculinization of television. This is made apparent by the common evaluation



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of Sex and the City as being of lower quality than other male‐centric quality television precisely, Imre argues, because of the female‐centric narrative. On the other hand, Imre positions quality television programming as the direct result of interactions between the feminist movement and traditional patriarchy in popular culture. As detailed by McCabe and Akass (2009), this results in more complicated female characters and a serious consideration of women’s issues. Because of this intersection, quality television, despite its paradoxical nature, has the power to stimulate conversation around feminism, which has global implications. Ashley Sayeau (2007) provides a similar reading of Sex and the City, also suggesting that it has been seen as lower‐quality quality television because of its female‐centric content. Sayeau also points to quality television as having politicized roots in feminism and other social movements (e.g. All in the Family’s dealings with issues of race). These characteristics further the argument that quality television is itself uniquely postfeminist. With Sex and the City again at the center of study, Fien Adriaens and Sofie Van Bauwel approach the show in addressing its postfeminist content (2014). They specify their definition of the postfeminist era, defining it not as anti‐feminism, but more as an era that is forced to critically engage (both with support and reproach) with second‐wave feminism. In the context of Sex and the City, postfeminism, then, is a discourse that pressures women to be feminine, attractive, and feminist at the same time, sometimes in contradictory ways. Through this discourse, the show can deal with issues like consumer culture, fashion, independence, sexual pleasure, individual choice, humor, hybridism (androgyny and gender bending), technology, and the social focus on the female body. Like Imre (2009), Adriaens and Van Bauwel suggest that Sex and the City provided the postfeminist debate with a mass media forum. Joke Hermes (2006) puts forth a review of ­opinions of Sex and the City and Ally McBeal that echoes this debate, suggesting that  critics, viewers, and scholars alike are aware of and contending with the ­paradoxical content of these shows.

Television Reception in the New Media Context In the era of new media, audience research, and specifically research concerning specific kinds of audiences, is more important than ever. The television fan has become both consumer and producer online, participating in an interactive space that opens up new opportunities for audience action (Press and Livingstone 2006). Women’s uses of television have adapted to new media, which provides a new space to interact with television content. This space is one of negotiation and play in which engaged viewers and fans work through and relate to televisual content in an online community. This often provides exciting opportunities for TV consumers and ­producers alike, as fans shift from a passive, lean‐back role to an active, lean‐in consumer that contributes to talk around and about content (Wilson 2016), connecting fans to content and to each other in a multitude of ways (Doughty et  al. 2012).

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While women adopt this interactive and participatory role with television in a multitude of ways, scholarly literature has paid particular attention to the ways in which ­television fans use new media to negotiate and play with different aspects of identity, like race, ethnicity, and feminism. Building on the idea that online spaces provide a potential alternative space for people of color, e.g. Black Twitter, some scholars have explored the ways in which viewers use and interact with television through this new media in ways that explore shared meaning structures held by women of color. Williams and Gonlin (2017) explore how black female fans of the television show How to Get Away with Murder drive conversation around the show, often in ways that contend with broader social discussions about black femininity. Through discussing the show on Twitter, fans discuss issues of representation, stereotyping, authenticity, and identity. Similarly, Warner (2015) examines black women’s conversations around the show Scandal as a rich discursive site, arguing that conversations like these on Twitter provide a unique look into black fandoms. In the same volume as Warner, Báez (2015) explores how online spaces can also be a site for negatively interacting with television. Exploring the Facebook fan page for Lifetime’s show Devious Maids, Báez finds that many women come to this online space to air grievances about the show and its representation of Latina femininity. This online conversation, she argues, is indicative of broader problems traditional television networks have with diversification and representation. The recent work of Sarah Johnson (2017) shows a similarly interactive use of online space but for the purpose of negotiating and playing with feminist identity. Her exploration of fans of the show Game of Thrones takes as its data online articles and blog posts that aim to address the online debate addressing the questions “Is Game of Thrones feminist?” and perhaps more importantly, as seen on Bitch Magazine’s website (2013), “Does it matter if Game of Thrones is feminist?” (Zeisler, 2013). In these articles and the comment sections of such posts, women use both television and online spaces to work through and negotiate what she calls a hybrid definition of feminism, blending elements of different kinds of feminism into a personal, complex, and at times contradictory definition. New media and online spaces provide women with a forum in which to interact with television in new and creative ways, increasing the realm and importance of the scholarly work on audience, television, and identity.

Media Convergence: Moving Beyond Television with Gossip and the Kardashians These interactions suggest women are interacting with television within a broader sociotechnical period of convergence, in which content is flowing across media platforms (Jenkins 2008). While entertainment television content is an exemplary site of



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convergence, celebrity and gossip culture acts as another, perhaps more feminized, space for new and old media to interact. As a type of new, interactive soap opera (De Kosnik 2011) online celebrity gossip allows for celebrity gossip audiences, a largely feminized group, to interact with and construct their own gossip dramas and narratives. These narratives often involve film and TV stars, providing one source of convergence, but these narratives also often themselves interact deeply with reality television, a different kind of gossip‐laden soap opera. Women use online gossip culture to interact with television in a multitude of ways: following Kylie Kardashian’s pregnancy rumors, then, is a creative production among the gossip community of a narrative surrounding a TV star, as well as a convergence phenomenon reflecting the movement of TV content, Keeping up with the Kardashians, across TV and online platforms. The Kardashians as television phenomenon reveal much about women’s use  of  television. Beyond their convergence potential, conversations around the Kardashians also reveal how online spaces are sites in which women may use ­television, and specifically in this case reality television, to negotiate and consider feminism. A mixed bag of feminine messaging, the Kardashians provide much for fans to discuss while working through their definitions of feminism and female culture (Leppert 2015), in‐person, online, and in a multitude of online platforms. The Kardashians provide another example of how female television audiences might use new media resources to interact with traditional media while considering broader issues of race, gender, and sexuality.

Conclusion From its foundation in feminist film and literary theory, feminist television audience studies is a broad and growing field of research. Exploring a multitude of genres, some explicitly female‐centric and some not, this field and its varied subfields have elucidated the ways in which women use television in their daily social lives. New works have broadened this field to explore the use of television in our convergence culture, showing how women incorporate television and new media in new and creative ways, all taking place in an ever‐changing social and cultural context. From soap operas to the Kardashians, women have used television in diverse and creative ways, and we look forward to the future research that continues exploring these interactions.

Note 1 Of course, there are certainly works in feminist film studies which emphasize issues of influence as well; Stacey (1994) and Kuhn (2002) are excellent recent examples.

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Chapter 19

Television as a Moving Aesthetic: In Search of the Ultimate Aesthetic – The Self1 Julianne H. Newton

It is the mark of our period that everything can be regarded as a work of art and seen in textual terms …. Contemporary art replaces beauty, everywhere threatened, with meaning. —Arthur Danto, The Madonna of the Future (2000, p. xxx) The etymology of all human technologies is to be found in the human body itself: they are, as it were, prosthetic devices, mutations, metaphors of the body or its parts. —Marshall and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media (1988, p. 128)

I remember it well: the most amazing sight – on television. In the 2004 debut of a Fox television program, what may be the ultimate aesthetic unfolded before my eyes. The classic book‐form fairy tale The Ugly Duckling transformed into the video‐form The Swan, in the same breath manifesting the wisdom of the ages, the fantasies of the many, the belief that we can become whomever/whatever we decide to become, a  spectacle to be devoured by the voyeur or condemned by the critical gaze, and the virtual made incarnate. I could not believe my eyes. Two women self‐described as Ugly Ducklings (but termed average by one of their significant others) were visited by the Swan team (twenty‐first‐century fairy godmothers?) and whisked away for a three‐month bout of plastic surgery, dental work, self‐esteem therapy, dieting, exercise, and expert makeup, hair styling, and costuming. All mirrors – those symbols of narcissism and self‐confrontation – were removed from the women’s environments, as were family members and significant others  –  our less‐obvious but all‐too‐real embodied

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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­mirrors (or co‐determinants?) of self. At season’s end, a group of semi‐Swans competed, not only against each other, but also along with the virtual presence of their past selves cast beside them through the magic of television reality, to be adorned with the title and crown of The Swan. The debut of The Swan manifested a shift in our cultures of the aesthetic, the ultimate blending of reality and fantasy into a purposeful physical transformation toward a beauty deemed worthy of the gazes of millions and cast within the mythology of fairy tale through the intersection of wishful thinking, culture, technology, medicine, media, and commoditization. Not content to express ourselves solely with brush, camera, or sculptor’s hand, we add the surgeon’s scalpel to mold the body through a process, at once disturbing yet strangely appealing to our desire to acknowledge and alter our destinies. Following Extreme Makeover, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,2 and I Want a Famous Face, The Swan magnified issues of aesthetic judgment of the body by introducing the competitive runway – that apparatus for parading the body as an aesthetic for the mass gaze.3 But The Swan was the ultimate aesthetic for two seasons only – the fleeting bulls‐eye of a perpetually moving target and an apt metaphor for my exploration of an aesthetic of television. Even more germane to the idea of a dynamic aesthetic of self are the unique distinctions of the aesthetics of self relating to experiences of gender fluid and transgender individuals and those who undergo gender confirmation surgery. The matters at stake in acknowledging and expressing internal and external sexual identity are acute, as evidenced by high rates of suicide among transgender individuals (Howe, personal communication, 2019). Those issues, which require their own treatise, though related, differ substantially from women seeking to alter their physical appearances and must not be conflated with “cosmetic surgery or whimsical self‐ transformation (or common tropes of trans people being deceivers or dupes)” (­Andrew Robbins, personal communication, 2019). Yet we can acknowledge the often deeply conflicted feelings of the women who sought to be “swans” and the potential impact of such makeover programs on participants and viewers. That television programming served as a catalyst for such experiences illustrates the rationale for exploring television aesthetics as a moving aesthetic of the self: The Swan, a spectacle of self modification, drew an average of 9.1 million viewers a week (Bastanmehr 2016). While watching the swollen, bruised faces of the women visually documented in the physical and psychological agony of their performances, I could not help but think about Orlan. For years, the French performance artist has been the embodied manifestation of the “anti‐aesthetic,” a term Hal Foster (1983) wisely explicates as a continual “practice of resistance” (p. xvi). Orlan’s unique, video‐recorded performances of purposeful, conscious transformation into a physical form of her choosing challenges all who gaze upon her or hear her story to consider the idea of the body as an ultimate aesthetic of self. “I can observe my own body cut open, without suffering!” Orlan (2004) says in her “Carnal Art Manifesto.” “I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new mirror stage.”



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The Swan moved Orlan’s unique performance of the anti‐aesthetic into mass ­culture, at once conveying and betraying her sacrificial expression. Her message that we can alter our bodily aesthetic as a way to alter identity resonates with Swan participants’ motivations. Yet the aesthetic the women in the program pursued was an assumed aesthetic, a stereotype of Western, light‐skinned female beauty characterized by svelte bodies with large breasts, carefully made‐up faces with smooth skin and full lips, perfect bright‐white teeth, flowing and coiffed long hair, revealing ­costumes, and newly proclaimed self‐confidence evidenced through exhibition in swimsuits, evening gowns, and lingerie (an overt bow to stereotypical female ­sexuality perhaps influenced by the soft‐porn aesthetic of lingerie advertising). The conflicted feelings a number of the women later expressed about the internal effects of the changes to their external bodies call attention to the experiences of some transwomen. Bethany Grace Howe writes (personal communication, 2019): As I have transitioned it has amazed me how much of the feminine body aesthetic transwomen CAN’T choose. For while the ugly ducking can undergo many changes to become the swan, transgender women cannot get shorter, they cannot change male pattern baldness, they cannot make their hands daintier. I can’t tell you how many transgender people I know, both out and otherwise, who are forever tormented by what they know they cannot EVER change. The female aesthethic is impossible, and yet because our society does not recognize nor even remotely begin to embrace the transgender aesthetic, they are forever trapped in being unable to appreciate their uniqueness because the world does not value it in any way.

Orlan (2004) declares, “Carnal Art is anti‐formalist and anti‐conformist.” In reference to Orlan, Swift (2000) writes, “We need a reminder that beauty isn’t always pretty. Beauty can also be painful, shocking, controversial, and even fatal …. Some people give their bodies to science when they die; Orlan has given her body to art while still alive.” The challenge of understanding even an iota of the experiences of Orlan, The Swan, women, and transwomen is to comprehend the paradoxical and competing forces at play within our aesthetic explorations of the inner and outer worlds of human existence. And therein lies the key to understanding the moving aesthetic of television.

The Moving Aesthetic The concept of a moving aesthetic is one that dances between convention and the transgressive, between established codes and the challenging of codes through an anti‐aesthetic. The moving aesthetic is a kind of expanded frame – one that shifts and sways in the breezes of time and perception as part of the dialogic process of sensing, interpreting, and knowing that is human communication, regardless of

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medium, message, or intent. Until the internet began to command significant attention as the technology of the moment, television epitomized that moving aesthetic through its ability to reinvent itself at will – and quickly – and to take viewers along for the ride. As the internet and social media increasingly carry our global communications – television has entered a new era of aesthetic exploration, as art did when photography came along, as photography did when movies came along, as radio, films, and print publications did when television came along. It is the way of dynamic entities, be they driven by economic, cultural, political, artistic, or basic human needs, emotions, and expressions of self. In this way, television is both manifestation and metaphor for the fleeting aesthetics of human expression and living.

Asking the Right Question Over the course of the last 80‐plus years, many scholars and critics have argued about whether television is an art form. “Television is a relative of the motorcar and airplane,” wrote psychologist Rudolph Arnheim in 1935 (in Adler 1981, p. 7). “To be sure, it is a mere instrument of transmission, which does not offer new means for the artistic interpretation of reality – as radio and film did.” Yet, predating Edward Hall’s (1959) and Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) extensions‐of‐man concept, Arnheim recognized the importance of television in helping humankind extend one’s “range of interest … beyond the reach of his senses” (p. 7). “Like the transportation machines,” Arnheim wrote, “television changes our attitude to reality: it makes us know the world better and in particular gives us a feeling for the multiplicity of what happens simultaneously in different places” (p. 7). Rather than ask, “Is there an aesthetic of television?”, I join scholars who assert television aesthetics as a given. In developing his now‐classic theory of applied ­television aesthetics, Herbert Zettl (1981) argued that the television medium “has precise and decisive aesthetic requirements that can make or break a message, regardless of the significance and integrity of the initial intent of the ‘communicators’” (p. 116). In her synthesis of “The Aesthetic Aspects of Television,” Ruth Lorand (2002) points out that television’s “influencing power … for better or worse – has something to do with its aesthetic qualities” (p. 5). We may not understand how those qualities work; we may even fear “the uncontrollable aesthetic power to convey implied messages” (Lorand 2002, p. 5). Yet the fact that a “theory of TV aesthetics is undoubtedly at its very inception” does not preclude the benefits of reflecting on its qualities (Lorand 2002, pp. 29–30). Arthur Danto (2000) puts it another way: “What does it mean to live in a world in which anything could be a work of art? … It is to imagine what could be meant by the object if it were the vehicle of an artistic statement” (p. xxix). So, one challenge in a discussion of television aesthetics is to focus our conception of television on interface – our interplay with that which we perpetually create and which perpetually creates us.



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Among the questions we might ask are: • What are the key qualities of television aesthetics? What are the core aesthetic characteristics of television as a medium? • How have cultural, political, and economic forces shaped those aesthetics? • How have television aesthetics affected the way we perceive and act in the world, in terms of personal psychology, sexuality, visual perception, ideology, and ­personal and public power? A number of scholars have addressed those questions in detail. Zettl (1990) explores the production and perception of “a number of aesthetic phenomena, including light, space, time‐motion, and sound” (p. 14). Metallinos (1996) offers a useful synthesis of key ideas inherent in classical Western debates of “philosophical aesthetics” ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Kant to Nietzsche to Dewey, movements shaping contemporary artists (Marxism, Freudianism, Existentialism, and Semantics), and four influential “media aesthetics theories that emerged from the literature of contemporary media”: traditional (philosophical), formalist, contextualist, and empiricist (pp. 2–9). Metallinos asserts that, while the latter four theories bridged “aesthetic concepts of the arts with those of the media products,” they do not address “the processes of perceiving visual and auditory images in motion, recognizing or interpreting such images, and synthesizing, or composing moving images with sound” (p. 9). Metallinos advocates that study of television aesthetics focus “on the analysis of three factors: perception, cognition, and composition of television images” (p. 9). In their edited book on television aesthetics, Agger and Jensen (2001) emphasize three theoretical areas: medium, genres, and aesthetics (p. 11). In the book’s first chapter, Jorgen Stigel uses his assessment of television’s unique strengths and limitations, which are founded “on proximity, participation and immediacy” (p. 28), to explicate his concept of the “aesthetics of the moment.” “The central dimension of the aesthetics of television,” Stigel (2001) writes, “has become the aesthetics of expediency which make a virtue of making and communicating contingence and circular, or cyclical, recurrence” (p. 47). This “instant aesthetic,” which “makes things literally accessible at a glance, so that the viewer is given an immediate experience” (“‘it is as though I were being directly spoken to’ and, ‘things are shown to me as though I were actually present’”) plays against formal, recurring frameworks with lengthy periods (pp. 47–48). “This mix of lengthiness and momentary intensity exists in a form of symbiosis with the everyday lives of the viewers,” Stigel notes (p. 48). I want to focus on two aspects of these issues: • What more do we need to consider in our effort to define an aesthetic of television? • What happens when we experience television aesthetics?

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The answers to these questions lie in reconceptualizing television aesthetics, often described as flat‐fielded and two‐dimensional, as multidimensional, with infinite ramifications for human life and our perception of that life. I suggest we study these issues within the context of human visual behavior grounded in an ecology of the visual.

Definitions Aesthetics in popular usage refers to theories of art and people’s responses to art. Often associated with beauty and the judgment of what is beautiful, an aesthetic might be defined as a property or set of properties characteristic of a particular kind of artistic expression. But defining aesthetics is not that simple, of course. The task has challenged the best thinkers and artists over the course of millennia. Twentieth‐ century scholars were particularly occupied with trying to determine the relation (or non‐relation) between aesthetics and ideology, with valid concern about issues of power and the use of aesthetics to inculcate ideology and reinforce social control. Some scholars call for the elimination of aesthetics as a separate field, arguing that “conceptual categories themselves manifest and reinforce certain kinds of cultural attitudes and power relationships” (Feagin 1995, p. 11). “They favor instead a c­ ritique of the roles that images (not only painting, but film, photography, and advertising), sounds, narrative, and three‐dimensional constructions, have in expressing and shaping human attitudes and experiences. My position on aesthetics resonates with concerns about ideology, power, cultural attitudes, and critiques the roles of images of all kinds in human experience. However, examining these issues under a centralizing rubric termed aesthetics is crucial to understanding what happens when we experience a particular aesthetic or combination of aesthetics via a particular medium. Television aesthetics encompass concerns ranging from artistic processes through mass persuasion techniques. Aesthetics include such creative concerns as frame, composition, proxemics, movement, color, and sound; such technical issues as film versus video versus digital media, single or multiple cameras, light placement and quality, high‐definition or LED TV, stereo versus surround sound, studio versus location shooting, and recorded versus live performance; such cultural issues as genre, violence, sex, pornography, representation, stereotyping, and manipulation; such economic issues as the relationship between advertising and programming, cable versus satellite transmission, networks vs. streaming media, monitor location, and frequency of use; and such cognitive and psychophysiological issues as television effects on brain waves, long‐term and subconscious memory, information retention, social learning and construction of reality. Of course, each of the processes and techniques involves the others. Color and sound, for example, resonate between creative and technical concerns. Economic concerns of advertising and programming resonate with content issues of representation. And so on.



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As noted earlier, many excellent works address these varied and interrelated aspects of television aesthetics in more detail. My discussion here focuses on the broader problems of defining an aesthetic of television and illuminating the significance of that aesthetic to our lives.

Approaches One approach is to consider the ways different fields of inquiry might pose the questions before us. This immediately raises flags of complexity. Communication scholars, for example, might begin with the classic messenger‐message‐receiver model. To that we must add perspectives of the Birmingham, American, and Australian schools of cultural studies. Critical scholars might focus on the political and economic dynamics of television as a commodity and means of social control. Cognitive and perceptual scholars might examine the neurological and physiological bases of practices of watching television and the ensuing effects on mind and body. Psychologists might study the intrapersonal and interpersonal factors ­affecting ways people engage television imagery. Sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists might focus on the social and psychological patterns of viewing television as art – or not – and of using television, whether owner, creator, participant, or viewer. One astute approach is David Thorburn’s (1987) call for an anthropology of ­television aesthetics. In his discussion of American television, Thorburn suggests: The best understanding of television … will be reached by those among us who can achieve something of the outsider’s objectivity or partial neutrality but who can remain also something of a native informant: alive to the lies and deceptions inscribed in and by the medium, aware of its obedience to advertising and the ideology of consumption, yet responsive also to its status as America’s central institution for storytelling. (p. 172)

Thorburn’s call echoes Sol Worth’s 1980 article defining a shift in visual a­ nthropology as a field of study using the camera for illustration and information gathering toward an anthropology of visual communication. To fully comprehend the complexities of television in our lives, we need to make a similar shift and adopt a participant observation mode, combining methods of inquiry and reflecting upon  “televisual aesthetics” as part of the larger environment in which humans participate. Piccirillo (1986) asserts that the “study of television will be enriched greatly as technological and transcendentally aesthetic biases give way to practical consideration of everyday televisual experience” (p. 353). Piccirillo concludes not only that television is capable of originality, but also that television experience is authentic (p. 352). She suggests television can be understood in terms of “rhetorical ­aesthetics,”

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which facilitates the study of television “in terms of the aura in which program and viewer are united” (p. 347): “Good” and “bad” television can be identified, if it is essential to risk such transcendental judgments; but good and bad cannot be abstract aesthetic criteria associated with such primitive art forms as painting and theater. Television needs an ­aesthetic  developed from analysis of that aura which arises in consequence of ­everyday aesthetic experience. (p. 347)

In an entry to the 2004 edition of the Encyclopedia of Television, Thorburn (2004) writes of American television: Though we are still too close to the Broadcast Era for a definitive verdict, it is probable that American television of the second half of the twentieth century will be recognized as a significant aesthetic achievement, the result of a never‐to‐be‐repeated confluence of social, technological and historical forces, a unique precursor to the digital entertainment future now impending. It would not be the first time that popular diversions scarcely valued by the society that produced them were judged by the future to be works of art. (p. 13)

Literature about the aesthetics of television might lead one to conclude that television aesthetics have emerged from a resounding triumph of the popular over the elite, a redefining of the social, and an unavoidable merging of the technological and the ideological (or abstract) through the fires of capitalism, mass audiences, global corporatization, and individual perception into the messy, murky geography of a “moving aesthetic” of the self manifested in the form of television. Consider a typical evening of watching television using the technology of your choice. In a period of a mere few hours, one can witness and choose from among an astounding array of images. During that time, a viewer might see scripted programs, so‐called reality shows, commercials and public service announcements, news, sports events, historical and scientific documentaries, civic meetings, and videotaped classroom events– or binge watch a series or a couple of movies. The key word missing in the above scenarios is “conscious.” For often we watch with an eye  for distraction, seeking to leave the world that requires us to act and think in purposeful ways for a world that requires virtual and – we assume – minimal ­participation instead. But what holds us is movement – not our own through physical shifting of body through space, for we often are “vegging” in front of the television, but rather the flickering of lines or shifting of pixels on a screen and our brain’s ability to combine them into identifiable patterns. The television aesthetic constantly shifts objects of viewing, forms of presentation, ease of interpretation, as well as sounds and cadences. Just as the moving elements constantly refresh the image in order to maintain and convey the images, so do the characteristics of television visual and aural content stimuli constantly refresh in order to engage our perceptions.



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Others have noted this movement and its metaphorical implications for ­understanding the nature of television perception. Referencing technology, television studies pioneer Herb Zettl (1981) wrote, “The television image is composed of electrical energy, a rapidly scanning electron beam or series of beams which we perceive as variations in light and color …. The material [author’s italics] of television are not illuminated objects and people, but constantly changing patterns of light and color whose very existence depends upon the fluctuating energy of the electron beam” (p. 117). Noting that “the scanning beam is constantly trying to complete an always incomplete image,” Zettl writes, “the basic television unit is ephemeral, forever fleeting … It is in a continual process of becoming, regardless of whether the screen image has at its electronic base the television camera, the videotape, or any other electronic storage device” (p. 130). One excellent analysis of this phenomenon is Thorburn and Jenkins’s (2003) “­aesthetics of transition”: We must resist notions of media purity, recognizing that each medium is touched by and in turn touches its neighbors and rivals. And we must also reject static definitions of media, resisting the idea that a communications system may adhere to a definitive form once the initial process of experimentation and innovation yields to institutionalization and standardization. In fact, as the history of cinema shows, decisive changes follow upon improvements in technology (such as the advent of sound, the development of lighter, more mobile cameras and more sensitive film stock, the introduction of digital special effects and editing systems); and seismic shifts in the very nature of film, in its relation to its audience and its society, occur with the birth of television. (pp. 11–12) These processes of imitation, self‐discovery, remediation and transformation are recurring and inevitable, part of the way in which cultures define and renew ­themselves. Old media rarely die; their original functions are adapted and absorbed by new media, and they themselves may mutate into new cultural niches and new purposes. The process of media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation, always declaring for evolution, not revolution. (p. 12)

My emphasis on a moving aesthetic necessarily encompasses the transition and evolution of aesthetic forms. But I want to focus on an aesthetic of television as a process of “imitation, self‐discovery, remediation and transformation” that is rooted in the human organism more than in culture, technology, or any external form of expression. We know from studies of the human visual system that our eyes are drawn to movement. This is part of our vision instinct, a key to how we have s­ urvived as a species. When something moves in our field of vision, it draws our attention, demanding that we determine whether it is a threat to our bodies or merely something we notice.4 Similarly, our ears are quick to note differences in aural stimuli, an instinctual response television advertising has exploited in order to arouse our attention to their interruptions in programming.

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A key function of mass media is to meet our need for information. The first thing many of us do when disaster strikes, as when the planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings, is to turn on the television, simultaneously tending our fears and participating in a collective consciousness made possible by signals transmitted through mass technology. In this way, television supplies the information we are instinctively driven to seek in order to survive as a species. We have learned over time that the world is larger than the field of view we can directly scan with our own eyes. This is one reason we find the world of images so compelling, in all their forms, whether a painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or a row of plasma screens at a sports bar – they offer points of view and content we would not otherwise see. But certainly, you say as you read these words, watching The Swan was not essential to our survival. Consider that, in some ways, watching The Swan or The Voice or even reruns of Friends is indeed essential to our survival, as essential as touch is to the survival of an infant. Survival is about more than physical safety. It encompasses the state of an organism, for better or worse, which exists in relation to other organisms. The state of the human organism depends upon the millions of living cells, each possessing its own consciousness and function, that compose the body. In the same way, society and culture depend upon millions of bodies, each possessing its own consciousness and function, that compose the various groupings into which humans find or put themselves. In the process of living, we humans constantly attempt to refresh ourselves, much as the television signal refreshes the images on the screen as it creates them, by seeking information from sources we deem important to the state of our organisms. So, watching The Swan informed some of those who watched about the potential for altering themselves literally and metaphorically and also evoked the vulnerabilities of identity so many experience. The Swan was a twenty‐first century fairy (or horror) tale made incarnate through the bodies of the real‐life actors on the stage of television, yet safely virtual for mass consumption, contemplation, critique, and even shock. As DiTommaso (2003) writes, To witness the incomprehensible possibility of the play of light and movement in a “life‐less” object is to witness the sublime event of life being created …. We simply need to switch on our set to encounter and appreciate this continual event of becoming and creation. Indeed, it is precisely at the moment of instantiation that we become confronted with our aesthetic experience of television as sublime. It is at the very threshold where we turn on the TV, in the moment of tension – where we are consumed with the anticipation of television’s capacity and delighted by television’s ability to satisfy this anticipation – that we are engaged in an aesthetic experience. We are in awe, if only for a moment, enraptured by the sublime and unthinkable movement of life in an inorganic object. It is this encounter with the TV at the very threshold of instantiation that permits us to think of television as capable of promoting and inducing an aesthetic experience. (n.p.)



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DiTommaso stresses the importance of conceptualizing television “as a medium of light and movement,” rather than critiquing the mundanity of broadcasting: “The aesthetic experience of television is available to all who sit in front of the TV, and in  the moment of turning on the box, we experience our postmodern identity; an identity that is perpetually in flux” (n.p.). We need not agree about whether television evokes a sublime aesthetic experience in order to appreciate DiTommaso’s point that the very process of encountering televised stimuli captures our attention enough to habituate us to turning to the screen. That process is an aesthetic interface – that which causes, enables, provokes, stimulates, annoys, and draws a person to experience something outside the self, to experience something that evokes a response within the self … that commands our attention … resonating, articulating, enunciating, mesmerizing, prodding, challenging, threatening, obfuscating, cloaking.

Aesthetics and Survival What is the role of art – and, therefore, of aesthetics – in our survival? Beyond the issue of the physical safety function of surveying our environments rests the distinction humans have assumed  –  rightly or wrongly  –  that makes them unique among creatures of the earth – the ability to consciously reflect upon the nature of our existence. We may debate our so‐called distinction from other species; consider, for example, that Koko, the gorilla, painted self‐portraits, and that an elephant at Portland’s Oregon Zoo painted work that has sold for thousands of dollars. My discussion here is not intended to assert human superiority over other organisms of the earth, but rather to spark discussion of a form of activity in which many of us regularly engage. Most important is the need to express, to find and share common experiences – or communications – within the projected space between living organisms. Forest algae and microbial entities communicate via cellular conveyance of chemical substances, from the base of the forest floor to the tips of the leaves on the tallest tree. Humans communicate within their bodies in much the same way, creating and sending forth chemical messages from cells in the neural pathways of the brain to cells in far reaches of the toes. Those are all a kind of aesthetic consideration. We can imagine, and, through the technologies of magnetic resonance imaging, positron‐emission tomography (PET) scans, computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans, angioplasty, X‐rays and the tiniest of optical probes, we can see inside the body to observe the spectacle of its internal media system. A human being sitting before a television screen can be likened to a cell at the tip of a toe – at once a fully conscious entity capable of independent and unique action, yet also dependent upon the stimuli received via the device that collects and transmits signals from the larger self of the world. In that way, the aesthetics of television

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are linked to the well‐being of that human as information, in both form and content, to be dealt with – whether absorbed or rejected – for the improvement or to the detriment of the human organism. Can we identify aesthetic codes of television? This chapter is not the venue to explore the full range of codes.5 However, two holistic points are important here. One, television’s aesthetic codes are as complex as any expressive form we can imagine, except perhaps holography and virtual and augmented reality. Two, because they are mediated through electronic signals collected and transmitted to us via a boxed frame, they are always a multiple‐dimension translation of stimuli created by humans in hundreds of other spaces and times, people who performed, manipulated, reflected, and recorded their light and sound waves for collection and transmission through space in a kind of quantum transmigration of energy not unlike a Star Trek “beaming up” of bodies from a planet to the U.S.S. Enterprise. The manner in which the human sitting before the screen collects the quanta is unique to that human’s cellular programming and memory. And yet that human, too, is part of a collective consciousness that is larger than the one body. So the aesthetic codes of television encompass the stimuli of the real and the fantastic, the translation of those stimuli into electronic form for transmission through space and time, the reformulation of the transmitted stimuli onto a cathode ray tube screen, the human brain’s perception via ear and eye of those stimuli projected by the screen, the interpretation of perceived stimuli by the brain, and the encoding into memory and/or action by the body. To exemplify the aesthetic experience of television, I offer a fascinating email found on the website for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2004).6 According to the site, the email was from the mother of two boys who watch the program: I wanted to express how thankful I am for your show. I have two young boys, Tyler age 10, and Kevin age 8. They get picked on because Kevin is heavy and Tyler is in the enrichment program in school and has red hair and a mole on his face. It is so sad to see this, and hard as a mom to encourage them to be strong. Then your show came along and it opened up a whole new world for them. They watch it every week and they enjoy every part of it. They love Carson when he jokes, especially since he is from our area. Kevin tries to pick up hints on how to dress. Tyler loves to watch Ted cook, he tries to remember the desserts. He is a very thoughtful young man. He knows I work two jobs and he wants to cook for me. They also panic when I threaten them that I will write to all of you about the mess they call a room. You are such role models, all of you, for my wonderful sons. You have such a gift. God bless you all. Now my boys know it’s ok to be creative and caring and still be men. Kevin asked for his birthday in October for a portable CD player and a new copy of your CD. He now plays and listens to my copy of your CD on this old player, but he wants his own copy. He is also looking for a poster of the Fab 5 to hang in his room, he is hoping someday to meet all of you and get you to sign his poster. I tried to explain



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how busy you all are, and he understands. He’s a good eight year old. You would be right in the middle of the Eagle’s and Giant’s football teams! Thank you again for all you have done for my family. Sincerely and with lots of love to all of you, Susan

I interpret the mother’s email as an aesthetic experience of television in terms of an ecology of the visual rooted in human visual behavior. Human visual behavior refers to “all the ways human beings use seeing and images in everyday life” (Newton 2001, p. 19). Visual activity can be either external, “meaning that people can observe something outside of themselves, such as someone else or a photograph” or internal, in experiences such as imagining or dreaming. Visual behavior includes how people act in front of cameras, as well as behind them. It includes seeing of every kind: looking at photographs, watching a sunset, noting the way a cat slowly stalks a bird, absorbing the beauty of a sleeping child, scanning the galaxy for changes through a telescope. It includes witnessing the enactment of countless deaths in the movie Die Hard II, watching in mesmerized numbness the real‐time bombing of Baghdad via a medium that is more often about make‐believe, consumerism, and entertainment than about attempts to convey truth. It includes police mug shots, family albums, roadside billboards, and internet zines. It includes all the ways people use these visual artifacts, both consciously and subconsciously. It includes the ways people pose, mask their intimate personalities, project false personae, take on roles in order to manipulate opinion, model clothing, and unconsciously reveal that they are lying. It includes an editor’s decision to use one photograph over another, a judge’s decision to forbid cameras in the courtroom, a school board’s decision to use video cameras on school buses, the military’s decision to use a satellite to spy on another country. It includes an artist’s decision to use bright red and yellow acrylic paints, a teenager’s decision to sport purple hair, or an aging person’s decision not to color graying hair (Newton 2001, pp. 20–21). One way to understand the complexities of human interaction with television stimuli, then, is in the context of human visual behavior. The concept evolved from Stanley Milgram’s (1977) work with photographic behavior and the work of non‐ verbal communication theorists Jürgen Streeck and Mark Knapp (1992). I mean the term to include the larger whole of human creation, interaction without and within, and responses to imaging systems. These include interior imaging systems of dreaming, imagining, self‐imaging, and unconscious memory, as well as more obvious exterior imaging systems such as painting, photographing, filming, gesturing, and video recording. The term encompasses not only looking behaviors, but also performing, interacting, perceiving, and remembering behaviors. The concept helps amelioratethe challenges of translating visual activities into inevitably inadequate verbal interpretations because it keeps before us the fact that, although we can observe some behaviors and things, we can never explain them fully through words. Visual behavior has non‐translatable, organic roots, whether the behavior is external  –  caused in part by responses to other organisms or

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­stimuli – or internal – perhaps caused by chemical interactions within the human nervous system. Our process of observing and explaining changes our understanding of the behavior or thing. As Heisenberg observed, the act of observing something changes what is observed.7 Edmund Carpenter (1975), criticized for his anthropological experiments of introducing mirrors and cameras to New Guineans in the 1970s, noted their quick adaptability to the act of “seeing themselves.” Evidence of the effect of videotaping on the culture of the New Guineans was their immediate decision to discontinue the ritual of scarification through which young men were painfully admitted to manhood – once they saw the ritual on tape (p. 457). Eric Michaels (2000) recounts a similar response of the Warlpiri in Australia after the filming of their Fire Ceremony in 1972: “Remarkably, the ceremony lapsed shortly after this film was made” (p. 708). When the Yuendumu community decided to perform the ceremony again in 1984, the 1972 film was considered “Law,” a script for shooting the new videotape (though Michaels notes, “When this did not happen, no one in fact remarked on the difference” [p. 709]). But that is not the whole story. The main point of Michaels’s article is that, through the leadership of Warlpiri broadcaster Francis Jupurrurla Kelly, the Yuendumu community worked to insure its “cultural future” by using television as political resistance. Human visual behavior, then, includes Los Angeles policemen beating Rodney King under cloak of darkness, King’s bodily movements during the beating, the opportune videotaping of a chance observer while witnessing the beating, public broadcast of the video as news, breaking the video into still frames for print media and for courtroom analysis, scholarly analysis of the video, and the images in your own mind called to your attention by reading these words just now.8 Human visual behavior is also manifest in the horrific images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq: making the men strip naked or masturbate in front of others, sodomizing them in front of others and the camera, taking pictures of the activities, sharing the images with each other and via the internet, the publication of the images, public viewing of the images, public response to the images, public memory of the images, the impact of the images on world perceptions of the United States, the use of the images as evidence against military personnel, and so on, are all encompassed in the concept of human visual behavior.9 Among the most extreme examples of human visual behavior are Buddhist monk Quang Duc’s 1963 visual statement in protest against religious oppression through burning himself to death in front of cameras, as well as the 2004 beheading of Nick Berg in front of a video camera and for mass distribution.10 A visual act deemed outrageous by some, but naïve compared with the above examples, was the baring of rock star Janet Jackson’s breast (was the behavior hers, that of co‐star Justin Timberlake, or an act of collusion?) during the 2004 Super Bowl half‐time show; the subsequent outcry called for censoring live broadcasts.11 Though we can analyze these behaviors in terms of Blumer’s (1969) explication of symbolic interaction theory (preceded by McLuhan’s Mechanical Bride, 1951), conceptualizing them as behaviors rather than as “symbolic interactions” encourages us



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to remember the organisms who produce, enact, respond to, and change as a result of encountering the stimuli. I focus here on “visual” behavior, as opposed to “aural” behavior. Because so much of the information humans process is visual, because visual stimuli influence memory, and because the visual is the dominant mode of television and most digital media, specific attention to human interaction with visual stimuli is essential. Research indicates that when visual and aural stimuli send different messages via televised media, we direct our attention, comprehension, and memory to the visual, not the aural. One notorious example of this phenomenon was CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl’s critical analysis of discrepancies between then President Ronald Reagan’s actual policies and televised images about the president’s activities. Lance Bennett (1996) writes: Stahl was nervous about the piece, because of its critical tone and the practice of the White House Communications Office to call reporters and their employers about ­negative coverage. The phone rang after the report was aired, and it was a “senior White House official.” Stahl prepared herself for the worst. In her own words, here is what happened: And the voice said: Great piece. I said: What? And he said: Great piece! I said: Did you listen to what I said? He said: Lesley, when you’re showing four and a half minutes of great pictures of Ronald Reagan, no one listens to what you say. Don’t you know that the pictures are overriding your message because they conflict with your message? The public sees those pictures and they block your message. They didn’t even hear what you said. So, in our minds, it was a four‐and‐a‐half minute free ad for the Ronald Reagan campaign for re‐election. I sat there numb. I began to feel dumb because I’d covered him four years and I hadn’t figured it out. Somebody had to explain it to me. Well none of us had figured it out. I called the executive producer of the Evening News … and he went dead on the phone. And he said, Oh My God. (Smith 1988, in Bennett 1996, p. 98)

Repeated, controlled experiments have reliably documented the validity of the phenomenon illustrated by Stahl’s experience. Especially important to note is that not only are visuals – even subtle facial expressions – more likely to grab and hold our attention and frame our understanding of what is before us, but they also are what we are most likely to remember (Graber 1990; Mullen 1986; Schultz 1993). In addition, neuroscientists have documented compelling evidence that visual information stored in the subconscious mind is a key determinant of how we respond to subsequent stimuli we encounter. One other element is essential to connecting mediated imagery with human behavior: we have strong evidence that our memory galleries do not differentiate between images we obtained via media and images we obtained in real life. An ecology of the visual encompasses human visual behavior within an integrated cultural and physiological system, simultaneously core and primal to

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human ­organisms and evolving even as the organisms evolve.12 Applied to our current discussion, and recalling Orlan, it is as if the aesthetic of television is both creating and showing us our entrails. By addressing our deepest fears, anxieties, and desires through the experiences of real people (however constructed their video presentations may be) and fictional personae, we cut open the raw innards of the human psyche for mass view. Like it or not whether thinking it to be art or trash, aesthetic experience compels us. We hunger for the aesthetic because it offers a touch of the experience of feeling, seeing, and hearing that may otherwise be absent in our lives. In this way the aesthetic of television draws and repels us, informs, fools, alters us. All is “human visual behavior.” As Hill (2005) wrote in the first edition of this volume: Viewers of reality programming are most likely to talk about the truth of what they are seeing in relation to the way real people act in front of television cameras. The more ordinary people are perceived to perform for the cameras, the less real the program appears to be to viewers. Thus, performance becomes a powerful framing device for judging reality TV’s claims to the real. And, television audiences are highly skeptical of the truth claims of much reality programming precisely because they expect people to act up in order to make entertaining factual television. (p. 449)

Hill notes that the reality television phenomenon is global: “After the ‘smash hit’ of Survivor, the networks scrambled to glut the market with a winning formula of game show, observational documentary and high drama.” In her earlier research on Big Brother, she “noted that the tension between performance and authenticity in the documentary game show format invites viewers to look for ‘moments of truth’ in a constructed television environment” (Hill 2002, cited in Hill 2005). We seek these “moments of truth,” which we need not define metaphysically but rather as a kind of resonant knowing evoked by the recognition of something positively or negatively meaningful to us, in everything we watch  –  that is the vision instinct, in part the surveillance function. Yet good theater, a good painting – and good television, whether fictional or so‐called reality based – also offer us opportunities for connecting with these moments of truth, whether in a conscious moment of profound realization or in a casual moment of everyday watching.

The Tetrad Marshall and Eric McLuhan’s (1988) concept of the tetrad can help us comprehend the complexities of television activity as one form of human behavior within an ecology of the visual. The tetrad expresses the McLuhan’s ideas of the Four Laws of Media: Enhancement, Obsolescence, Retrieval and Reversal. Eric McLuhan (personal communication, 2004) conceived the tetrad as a resounding chord, through



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which media play their music. The tetrad is a “heuristic device, a set of four ­questions, that can be asked (and the answers checked) by anyone, anywhere, at any time, about any human artefact [sic]”: What does it enhance or intensify? What does it render obsolete or displace? What does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced? What does it produce or become when pressed to an extreme? (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, p. 7)

McLuhan and McLuhan (1988) expressed a tetrad for television (pp. 158–159) as shown in Figure 19.1. In The Global Village (McLuhan and Powers 1989), a second book on the tetrad and also published after Marshall McLuhan’s death, television is presented as a resonating Mobius strip expressing figure‐ground ebb and flow of conscious attention: After the Apollo astronauts had revolved around the moon’s surface in December of 1968, they assembled a television camera and focused it on the earth. All of us who were watching had an enormous reflexive response. We “outered” and “innered” at the same time. We were on earth and the moon simultaneously. And it was our individual recognition of that event which gave it meaning. A resonating interval had been set up. The true action in the event was not on earth or on the moon, but rather in the airless void between, in the play of the axle and the wheel as it were. We had become newly aware of the separate physical foundations of these two different worlds and were willing, after some initial shock, to accept both as an environment for man. (McLuhan and Powers 1989, p. 4)

Returning now to the earlier email example, the tetrad helps in understanding the aesthetic significance of the two boys’ experiences of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. For the boys, the program enhanced creative aspects of masculinity, obsolescing (Enhance)

(Reverse)

the multisensuous using the eye as hand and ear (Retrieve) the occult

inner trip: exchange of inner and outer (Obsolesce) radio, movie, point of view

Figure 19.1  A tetrad for television. Source: adapted from McLuhan and McLuhan (1988).

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their frustrations with trying to adapt to a conventionalized peer masculinity. The program facilitated the boys’ retrieving their own personal sense of aesthetic value of the self and reversed into a space through which not only could they validate themselves, but their mother could also find support for validating her sons’ nascent individuality. In this way, television is a powerful medium in our arsenal of extensions of self, of efforts to be more or less than self, and of efforts to understand self. And that aesthetic, while always moving, is the ultimate we seek. What many consider to be a dominating ideological weapon of the corporate elite can, with conscious effort, be reversed into an instrument for self‐actualization. Visual communication theorist Rick Williams developed a number of techniques to help people achieve this. Williams (2018) asserted, “It is critical to our survival as self‐aware, self‐determining individuals and to the survival of our planet, that we learn to reverse the effects of these messages of consumerism on the psyche and to reverse the subsequent, ­unbridled development of the consumer culture that is, itself, consuming our self‐ identities, our resources, and our environments.” We can, then, learn to understand contemporary aesthetic life by pondering the nature of our interactions with ­television, by paying closer attention to its aesthetic power. Television is of the world, in the world, and a world – and so are we. An intersection of multiple gazes (Lutz and Collins 1993) prevails – viewer, camera person, producer, actor, sponsor, network, corporation, earth  –  all within a framed box, a moving painting, if you will, in which the strokes are lines of video and images that seem to move too fast to ponder. Yet we do ponder … both consciously and unconsciously. This moving aesthetic is a fugue, a kind of “mosaic that results from the collaboration” (Arnheim 1981, p. 4), or a “mosaic logic” (Barry 1997), ­resonating through time and space, physical and virtual realities, through us and surrounding us and emanating from us.13 The television equivalent of the future may project a holographic image far more compelling than any we now encounter, projecting the visual and aural signals, in turn inviting ever‐more‐real‐seeming projection of self, into the shared communication space between us and the reception apparatus as a continually transforming, dynamic gaze.14 McCarthy (2001) wisely calls our attention to the idea that television is far more than a living room or bedroom presence; rather, it is an “ambience” surrounding us in such public spaces as sports bars and airline terminals. Many of us have experienced the startling realization that we have transported our minds out of our bodies, which are sitting on stadium bleachers at a major sporting event, via watching the virtual (and closer‐ appearing) version on a giant arena screen. Smartphones and smartwatches t­ ransport us through tiny screens. Rather than decry our aesthetic involvement with technologies such as television, we would do well to embrace Haraway’s (1991) cyborg manifesto. “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine” (p. 177), Haraway writes, adding, “The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our ­embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they [author’s italics] do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they” (p. 180). It



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is time, as Williams (personal communication, 2004) says, to mandate “a paradigm change in the ways we ponder and understand the illusive images of television.” For the Warlpiri, the path to control over their cultural future means television that reaches “forward and backwards through various temporal orders,” a political resistance conceived “in terms of the convoluted temporalities” of the present (Michaels 2000, p. 714). Media scholars should be so courageous. In a call for the serious study of media aesthetics in Europe, Wolfgang Schirmacher (1991) argued, “In media we are challenged to write our own lives…. Mouse and remote control are only the beginning of inter‐active features in media which allow us to edit and cut, stop and go, break and flow whatever situation we encounter…. In media we write our ­autobiography – and if we don’t, somebody else will do it for us.”

Conclusion I conclude in a place similar to where I began, but with a different “beauty” pageant. While Rick Williams and I were surfing with the remote years ago, the opening moments of The Miss Universe Pageant caught our attention. One after another, the women deemed most beautiful in the world introduced themselves. “I’ll bet we won’t see a Miss Iran or Miss Iraq,” Williams said. Nor did we see a Miss Pakistan or a Miss Afghanistan. We made an easy conjecture  –  that those countries of Islam would not want to be represented by scantily clad women put on public display. Our perceptions were a product of stereotypical thinking of the time, joining those who were quick to criticize a religion‐ and culture‐based norm. Yet in 2019, it has become the norm to criticize the public voyeurism and objectification of all women’s bodies in beauty pageants. The point here is not to determine what is morally or religiously acceptable, but to note that through the “geographic phenomenon” (as one of the announcers termed it) of the 2004 Miss Universe Pageant broadcast live from Quito, Ecuador, we participated in a global aesthetic experience in which we observed absences and found ourselves discussing public and private displays of female beauty. When we pause to consciously consider what is happening through the ­aesthetic of television, we deepen our understanding of self and others. In the final chapter of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto (1981) discusses the etymology of the stilus [sic], noting that its “specific inscriptional use” redeems the term from the “certain sexual hilarity” of overtones connoted by its “near of kin stimulus (point, goad) and instigare (to goad or prick)” (p. 197): It is as an instrument of representation that the stilus has an interest for us and, beyond that, its interesting property of depositing something of its own character on the ­surfaces it scores. I am referring to the palpable qualities of differing lines made with differing orders of stiluses: the toothed quality of pencil against paper, the granular quality of crayon against stone, the furred line thrown up as the drypoint needle leaves its wake of metal shavings, the variegated lines left by brushes, the churned lines made by sticks through viscous pigment, the cast lines made by paint dripped violently off

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the end of another stick. It is as if, in addition to representing whatever it does represent, the instrument of representation imparts and impresses something of its own character in the act of representing it, so that in addition to knowing what it is of, the practiced eye will know how it was done. (p. 197)

One challenge in understanding television aesthetics is that many of us who view the art of television do not think about “how it was done,” a process that encompasses the infinite possibilities of dots, lines, frames, forms, sounds, and images the television stylus and its users employ to represent various views of the world – and ourselves – to us. Therein lies the source of the aesthetic of television and answers to what happens when we experience television aesthetics. Just as television is technologically possible because of the way the eye, as part of the brain, puts together bits of visual stimuli to interpret patterns of meaning, so we can draw upon our brains to reflect upon the content the television stylus represents to us as a profoundly evocative, moving aesthetic that simultaneously entreats, repels, enchants, horrifies, soars, falls, and moves forward and backward along the winding path by which we seek the ultimate aesthetic of the self. As Schirmacher (1991) wrote, “It is in aesthetics, when we are open to the phenomenon itself, that we discover media’s authenticity as ­mediation” (n.p.). Television gathers and transmits visual and aural stimuli in concentrated form for our perusal accessible through various technologies. The space between our bodies and the “set” of reality with which we choose to engage in any viewing period is the aesthetic. We are in a constant state of change, in which any object perceived, including the self, is at once known and knower, author and work. We are simultaneously pushing the limits of conscious understanding of the known world and creating new spaces in which to connect. What some scholars describe as parasocial relationships, what I have called mass‐interpersonal communication (Newton 2001), is the ­conceptual experience of the aesthetic self and the aesthetic other meeting in the spaces of the mind and heart. Whether the stylus of television continues to draw precisely articulated narratives, such as genres of carefully crafted situation comedies or ­dramas, or more loosely conceived stages on which reality plays such as The Voice and The Swan are celebrated, the visual/acoustic aesthetics of television will ­continue to gage collective and individual yearnings to experience … to experience. A stained‐glass window in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City features the evolution of media from quill‐holding scribes to a then‐futuristic medium: television (see Figure  19.2). As hard as it is to believe, the turn‐of‐the‐­ century (nineteenth to twentieth) rendition of a glowing rectangular screen, along with an entranced viewer, looks all too familiar. Is it a television? Or is it a computer? If we want to attempt to isolate the aesthetic qualities exhibited by television, the distinction is significant. But in the larger scheme of the ecology of human visual behavior, it matters little. Television is one means through which we experience and become aware of aspects of living along the path of our search for the Ultimate Aesthetic – the Self.



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Figure 19.2  A prototype of the television, stained glass panel, communications bay, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York, NY.

Notes 1 This chapter is updated from the 1st edition of A Companion for Television (2005). My appreciation goes to Janet Wasko, Beck Banks, Bethany Grace Howe, and Andrew Robbins for their helpful comments on the revision – and, even now, to my muse, Rick Williams, whose insights into identity continue to inform my work. 2 Later shortened to Queer Eye. 3 The concept of the “mass gaze” shifts gaze theory from the male gaze to include the ­complex continuum of gaze points of men, women, and trans individuals. 4 For an exploration of the Vision Instinct, see Newton’s (2001), Chapter 3, “The Burden of Visual Truth.” For an exploration of surveillance theory applied to news, see Shoemaker (1996) “Hardwired for News.” 5 See Fiske and Hartley’s (1989) chapters on “The Signs of Television” (pp. 37–58) and “The Codes of Television” (pp. 59–67) for their seminal explication of “bardic television” within a semiotics framework.

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6 The program is now considered “highly problematic by some” (Bethany Grace Howe, personal communication, 2019). 7 See Babbie (1986) for a discussion of applying Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, as well as the implications of the Hawthorne effect to social science research. 8 See, for example, Gerland (1994) for an analysis of defense attorneys’ frame‐by‐frame deconstruction of George Holliday’s videotape “in order to dismantle the judgment to which it ‘naturally’ gives rise: that the police officers are guilty” (p. 306). 9 See Newton (2004) and Sontag (2004) for analyses of visual behaviors related to the images. 10 See Goldberg (1991, pp. 212–215) for the story of the protest event and the uses and misuses of Associated Press photographer Malcolm Browne’s images. See USA Today (2004) for a visual/verbal report on the Berg slaying. 11 See Drudge (2004) for verbal and visual description of the media event. 12 See Newton (2001, Chapter 9) for a full explanation of the ecology of the visual. 13 See Winston (1996) for an excellent exposition on technological possibilities and the forces contributing to and constraining their diffusion in mass culture. 14 For an explication of the dynamic gaze, see Newton (2017).

References Adler, R.P. (ed.) (1981). Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Force. New York: Praeger Publishers. Agger, G. and Jensen, J.F. (eds.) (2001). The Aesthetics of Television. Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg University Press. Arnheim, R. (1981). A forecast of television. In: Understanding Television (Original article published in 1935) (ed. R.P. Adler), 3–9. New York: Praeger Publishers. Babbie, E. (1986). Observing Ourselves: Essays in Social Research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Barry, A.M.S. (1997). Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image and Manipulation in Visual Communication. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bastanmehr, R. (2016). How the most bizarre and offensive reality TV show of all time got made.Vice.com, 4 September. https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dpkpmk/how‐the‐most‐ bizarre‐and‐offensive‐reality‐tv‐show‐of‐all‐time‐got‐made‐the‐swan. Bennett, W.L. (1996). News: The Politics of Illusion, 3e. White Plains, NY: Longman. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Theory and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Carpenter, E. (1975). The tribal terror of self awareness. In: Principles of Visual Anthropology (ed. P. Hockings), 452–461. The Hague: Mouton. Danto, A. (1981). The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Danto, A. (2000). The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. DiTommaso, T. (2003). The aesthetics of television. Crossings: A Journal of Art and Technology 3 (1): n.p. http://crossings.tcd.ie/issues/3.1/DiTommaso/#25 (accessed 28 May 2004). Drudge, M. (2004). Outrage at CBS after Janet bares breast during dinner hour; Super Bowl show pushes limits, 1 February. http://www.drudgereport.com/mattjj.htm (accessed 11 June 2004).



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Feagin, S.L. (1995). Aesthetics [sic]. In: The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (ed. R. Audi), 10–11. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fiske, J. and Hartley, J. (1989). Reading Television (Originally published in 1978 by Methuen & Co.). London: Routledge. Foster, H. (1983). The Anti‐Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press. Gerland, O. (1994). Brecht and the courtroom: alienating evidence in the ‘Rodney King’ ­trials. Text and Performance Quarterly 14: 305–318. Goldberg, V. (1991). The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives. New York: Abbeville Press. Graber, D.A. (1990). Seeing is remembering: how visuals contribute to learning in television news. Journal of Communication 40 (3): 134–155. Hall, E.T. (1959). The Silent Language. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: performance, authenticity and television audiences. In: A Companion to Television (ed. J. Wasko). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lorand, R. (ed.) (2002). Television: Aesthetic Reflections. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Lutz, C.A. and Collins, J.L. (1993). Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCarthy, A. (2001). Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McLuhan, M. (1951). The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill. McLuhan, M. and McLuhan, E. (1988). Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McLuhan, M. and Powers, B.R. (1989). The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Culture in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Metallinos, N. (1996). Television Aesthetics: Perceptual, Cognitive, and Compositional Bases. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Michaels, E. (2000). For a cultural future. In: Television: The Critical View (Originally published in 1987), 6e (ed. H. Newcomb), 701–715. New York: Oxford University Press. Milgram, S. (1977). The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments. Reading, MA: Addison‐Wesley. Mullen, B. (1986). Newscasters’ facial expressions and voting behavior of viewers: can a smile elect a president? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 291–295. Newton, J.H. (2001). The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Newton, J. H. (16 May 2004). Indelible images: photos reveal truth, shake us from complacency. The Anniston Star. http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2004/as‐insight‐0516‐0‐ 4e14q2316.htm (accessed 11 June 2004). Newton, J.H. (2017). Toward a transformative ethic for seeing–and living. Visual Communication Quarterly 24 (4): 243–256. Orlan (2004). Official ORLAN WebSite. http://www.orlan.net (accessed 27 May 2004).

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Piccirillo, M.S. (1986). On the authenticity of televisual experience: a critical exploration of para‐social closure. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 3: 337–355. Schirmacher, W. (1991). Media aesthetics in Europe. Association Descartes and the College International de Philosophie, Paris. Schultz, M. (1993). The effect of visual presentation, story complexity and story familiarity on recall and comprehension of television news. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington. Shoemaker, P. (1996). Hardwired for news. Journal of Communication 46 (3): 32–47. Smith, H. (1988). The Power Game: How Washington Works. New York: Ballantine. Sontag, S. (2004). Regarding the torture of others. The New York Times Sunday Magazine. 23 May. http://www.donswaim.com/nytimes.sontag.html. Stigel, J. (2001). Aesthetics of the moment in television: Actualisations [sic] in time and space. In: The Aesthetics of Television (eds. G. Agger and J.F. Jensen), 25–52. Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg University Press. Streeck, J. and Knapp, M.L. (1992). The interaction of visual and verbal features in human communication. In: Non‐Verbal Communication (ed. F. Poyatos), 3–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Susan 2004. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Community/Viewer email. (web page accessed 25 May, 2004, no longer available). Swift, E. (2 March 2000). “Skin deep”: Orlan takes beauty to a whole new level. Jolique http://www.jolique.com/orlan/skin_deep.htm (accessed 27 May 2004). Thorburn, D. (1987). Television as an aesthetic medium. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4: 161–173. Thorburn, D. (2004). Television aesthetics. In: The Television Encyclopedia, 2e (ed. H. Newcomb). London: Taylor and Francis. Thorburn, D. and Jenkins, H. (2003). Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. USA Today (2004). The tragic death of Nick Berg. 11 May. (web page accessed 11 June, 2004, no longer available). Williams, R. (2018). Theorizing visual intelligence: practices, development and methodologies for visual communication. In: Visual Communication and Social Change: Rhetorics and Technologies (ed. D. Hope). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Winston, B. (1996). Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television. London: British Film Institute. Worth, S. (1980). Margaret Mead and the shift from ‘visual anthropology,’ to the ‘anthropology of visual communication. Studies in Visual Communication 6: 15–22. Zettl, H. (1981). Television aesthetics. In: Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Force (ed. R.P. Adler), 115–141. New York: Praeger Publishers. Zettl, H. (1990). Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics, 2e. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Part VIII

International Case Studies

Chapter 20

Television in Latin America: Stages of Transition John Sinclair

Relative to most other world regions, Latin America exhibits much in common among the 20 or so nations which constitute it. Although long independent from Spain and Portugal, the countries that created them as colonies in the heyday of their expansion after 1492, Latin American nations have inherited considerable cultural similarities. Above all, what makes them “Latin” are the languages of Spanish, ­dominant in nearly every country of the region, and Portuguese, as spoken in the region’s largest nation, Brazil. This relative homogeneity of language and culture has greatly facilitated the growth of trade in television programs and services on a region‐wide basis, in that this region is as much “geolinguistic” and “geocultural” as it is geographic (Sinclair and Straubhaar 2013). On the other hand, what makes Latin America “American” is not just the region’s hemispherical continuity with North America, but the political hegemony of the United States. This dates back at least to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which sought to warn off European powers from what the US saw as its “natural” sphere of influence. Apart from its several subsequent military interventions in the region, the US has been significant for its economic influence via trade and investment, not to mention its “cultural imperialism” (imperialismo cultural). However, we shall see that although the nations of Latin America almost universally adopted the commercial model of broadcasting as defined by the US, the development of television in the region is to be explained in terms of its own “Latin” dynamic over a number of stages, not just as a mere, unproblematic, and passive consequence of direct ­influence extending from the US.

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Understanding Television Development in Latin America In attempts to critically explain the development of television in Latin America, the traditional emphasis has been placed primarily on the influence of the US, meaning variously its government and the several private sectors with a stake in television development, namely the networks, the equipment manufacturers, and the transnational advertisers and their agencies. However, other factors need to be taken into account. Clearly, US influence needs to be balanced against that of the governments of the Latin American nations themselves, and the highly variable positions which they have assumed with regard to television at different stages. These have lurched from strict hands‐on dictatorial control to the permission of quite lawless environments in which “primitive capitalism” (capitalismo salvaje) could flourish. Similarly, a third set of factors is constituted by the role of the broadcasting entrepreneurs and other commercial interests in Latin America, and their influence on their national governments. In addition, there is an important background factor which is easy to take for granted, and that is the degree to which the establishment of radio in Latin America in the period between the World Wars already had cast the mold in which the subsequent development of television was to be formed. Since radio involved the same sets of interests as television – that is, government and private companies, both in the US and Latin America – we have to take account of the continuities found from one broadcasting medium to the next so as to understand how television became institutionalized as it did in Latin America. As radio networks began to form in the US in the 1920s, Latin American entrepreneurs formed partnerships with them, so as to bring the new medium to their own countries. This was in response to the active presence of US radio equipment manufacturers in the region, as well as to the encouragement of US officials in favor of institutionalizing radio as a commercial, rather than a public, medium (Schwoch 1990, pp. 96–123). Thus, by the 1930s, commercial radio had become well established in Latin America. With the advent of World War Two, as one of various ­initiatives to shore up the ideological defense of the hemisphere, the US Government set up the Office of Coordinator of Inter‐American Affairs under Nelson Rockefeller. From 1940 until 1946, this gave full encouragement to the expansion of the US ­networks into Latin America, and also supplied programming in Spanish and Portuguese (Fox 1997, pp. 19–22). In 1945, the links between the Latin American entrepreneurs and the US networks NBC and CBS were formalized with the establishment of the intercontinental organization AIR (Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión  –  Interamerican Broadcasting Association). An immediate objective was the establishment of television in the region, and AIR resolved to lobby the various national governments to ensure that, like radio, television would be introduced on a commercial American model, rather than a European state‐operated basis. For this reason, the prevalence of the commercial model in Latin America should be seen to be at least as much due



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to its adoption by Latin interests, as to the influence of US ones (Fernández Christlieb 1987, pp. 35–37). Latin American entrepreneurs positioned themselves to take advantage of the fact that there was US official and corporate interest in their region, and supported each other in resisting attempts by national governments to impose regulation. Indeed, the fact that the US government was interested in setting up its own service to Latin America drove NBC and CBS to find common cause with the Latin American entrepreneurs (Fox 1997, p. 17). Some of these entrepreneurs were significant figures not only in their own countries, but elsewhere in Latin America. Goar Mestre, the first president of AIR, had been one of the first exporters of radio programs to the region, including the then innovative Latin commercial genre of the radionovela. This was an immediate ancestor of the telenovela, a popular cultural form which was to become the dominant export genre of the television era. Mestre was involved with radio and television in  Cuba, where he and his brother Abel were backed in their station CMQ with investment from the US network NBC, at that time the broadcast division of the equipment manufacturer, RCA. After being exiled from Cuba in the revolution of 1959, Mestre went to Argentina, and became active in television broadcasting and production there, in association with US interests in the form of CBS and Time‐Life. The following president of AIR was Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, the leading entrepreneur in Mexican radio, where he had built up a chain of stations affiliated with  NBC, and then another with CBS. Working through Azcárraga’s program ­distribution connections, NBC also formed affiliates in several other Latin American ­countries (Fernández Christlieb 1987, pp. 36–43; Muraro 1985, p. 80). Clearly, over this time the various US interests were looking for opportunities and developing strategies to gain a foothold in the region. In his analysis, Silvio Waisbord (1998) discerns three stages in the development of Latin American television, and its relation to US interests is a defining feature of each stage. The first is characterized by the US networks’ support for Latin entrepreneurs such as Mestre and Azcárraga, as just outlined, together with the sale of US‐manufactured equipment, both for setting up stations and for reception by an audience. Because the US networks were still building up their home market during the early 1950s, when television was still new in the US itself and Latin markets were too small to be profitable, they had little interest in direct investment in Latin America. However, the Latin American entrepreneurs were not waiting for this. Television stations were established early, not far behind the US and well ahead of most other world regions. Mexico and Brazil, subsequently the major national markets of the region, set up their first stations in 1950, as did Cuba. Two other nations which went on to become prominent in regional television production and distribution, Argentina and Venezuela, had their first ­stations in 1951 and 1952 respectively (Waisbord 1998, pp. 254–255). After 1959, by which time US corporations had supplied equipment, technical assistance, and in some countries up to 80% of programming to Latin American ­stations, they did begin to take an active interest in direct investment. NBC exploited the advent of reliable videotape recording around this time by investing in program

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production (Frappier 1968, pp. 1–7). As has been noted, CBS was backing Mestre, and had its association with Time‐Life, which in its own right, made a most consequential investment in Brazil in 1962 to establish TV Globo, a subsequent regional leader (Marques de Melo 1988, pp. 13–15). The ambition of advertisers was the motivating force behind all of the networks’ manoeuvering to internationalize and commercialize the medium. This was the crucial stage at which US‐based corporations were in the process of transforming themselves from national into what were then called the “transnational” (or “multinational”) corporations of the 1960s and 1970s, and television offered them access to their prospective markets. However, it was not yet clear just how that was to be achieved. For example, ABC attempted to provide a transnational medium for transnational advertisers, enabling them to standardize their campaigns. On the other hand, the US‐based advertising agencies that were setting up offices in the region at the time were offering their services on a market‐by‐market basis. It was like a rehearsal for the debate about “global” media for global advertisers which was to occur later, in the 1980s (Mattelart 1991, pp. 48–67). However, when their strategies proved futile and direct investments did not meet their expectations, the networks began to withdraw, ushering in Waisbord’s second stage of Latin American television as defined by its relation to US interests. The networks were faced with increasing competition in the region, while at home, the US regulatory body, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) ruled in 1971 that they had to separate their distribution from their syndication activities. Given these circumstances, CBS and NBC sold off their foreign investments (Read 1976, p. 80), while ABC drastically curtailed its activities, retaining only very minor overseas holdings (Varis 1978, pp. 16–17). Although the networks continued to supply programs to the region, this period saw a significant maturing of Latin American production companies and the increase of program exports on a regional basis, accompanied by considerable growth in several key domestic markets. During the era of US network intervention, critics had denounced it as “cultural imperialism” (Schiller 1969), or more specifically, “picture‐tube imperialism” (Wells 1972). Such critics were later criticized in turn for having jumped too soon to the conclusion that the dependence upon direct investments and the apparent high levels of programming imported from the US were going to be permanent structural features of Latin American television, rather than the inevitable compromises of a transitional start‐up stage which would be followed by local development (Tunstall 1977, pp. 38–40). Indeed, this is now seen to be a common pattern in the adoption of television in other world regions. Nevertheless, the active role of US influence cannot be denied. As in the days of radio, US officials encouraged Latin American governments and media entrepreneurs to adhere to the US commercial model, at the same time as the US networks were selling them the equipment and the management services, and even investing directly. Yet the overarching conclusion to be drawn at this point is that US influence was significant not because of the incidence of foreign ownership, nor the high levels



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of program imports, neither of which was to last, but because of the institutionalization of the commercial model itself throughout the region (McAnany 1984, pp. 194–195). During the 1970s and 1980s, much international attention was given to patterns of television programming exports and imports. The “flows” of television “traffic” even became one of the issues around which the movement for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) was mobilized in UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) during those decades. Part of this mobilization was a movement, particularly among the developing countries, to formulate national communication policies so as to defend themselves against the threat of cultural imperialism, which they saw in the news, entertainment and advertising carried via television. Some studies of television flows from this era had special significance for Latin America. A wide‐ranging comparative study by Tapio Varis confirmed the pattern of flows found in earlier work, that there was a “one‐way street” from the US to the rest of the world, but identified “a trend toward greater regional exchanges,” particularly in Latin America (1984). Confirming the same tendency, Everett Rogers and Livia Antola went further, documenting the very considerable extent to which the ­telenovela had emerged as the preferred commercial genre within the Latin American program trade (1985). This was a trend which Jeremy Tunstall had seen as early as 1977, when he had predicted that “hybrid media forms,” such as the telenovela (usually described as “the Latin American soap opera”) would emerge at an intermediate level in world program trade, between the global and the local (1977, p. 274). In that same year, Ithiel de Sola Pool also argued prophetically that audiences would come to prefer programming which was made in their own language, and had cultural familiarity for them (1977, p. 143). Now that we can see the development of broadcast television in a longer‐term and comparative perspective, it appears that the Latin American experience typifies the common pattern of transition through an initial stage of dependence to an ­eventual maturity of the national market. This process involves not just growth in audience size, but also of domestic program production. The common wisdom among researchers has become that audiences prefer television programming from their own country, and in their own vernacular, or if that is not available, from other countries which are culturally and linguistically similar, what Joseph Straubhaar calls “cultural proximity”: “audiences will tend to prefer that programming which is closest or most proximate to their own culture: national programming if it can be supported by the local economy, regional programming in genres that small countries cannot afford” (1992, p. 14). If we look at the hierarchy which emerged at the end of the century among Latin American national markets for television programming, and follow Rafael Roncagliolo’s classification of them at that time, we find the largest and oldest ones, Mexico and Brazil, were preeminent as “net exporters” within the region; Venezuela and Argentina were “new exporters,” with Colombia, Chile, and Peru seeking to join

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them, although from far behind; while the rest of the nations in the region, were “net importers” (1995, p. 337). Geographical proximity still mattered; the importing nations were tending to draw their programming from the nearest exporter, with flows developing on a subregional basis  –  in Central America from Mexico, for example (Fox and Waisbord 2002, pp. 16–19). Returning to Waisbord’s periodization, the third stage in which the relation to US interests must be assessed in the development of Latin American television is the “postbroadcast” cable and satellite era (Sinclair 1999, p. 162). New service and content providers, US corporations prominent among them, were attracted by opportunities in the new multichannel environment made possible by these modes of distribution. In particular, the advent of digital direct‐to‐home (DTH) satellite delivery encouraged the major Latin American producers and distributors to enter strategic alliances with US satellite and cable services, bringing Latin American ­television into the mainstream of globalization. Even before the end of the 1980s, during which cable channels such as CNN and HBO had achieved national distribution in the US, they were moving into Latin America. CNN began a news service in Spanish in 1988, and the following year, HBO and ESPN both launched special services for Latin America (Wilkinson 1992, pp.  13–16). During the 1990s they were joined by several others, such as Discovery and MTV, along with services from the US networks CBS and Fox. By 1996, 90% of television services (that is, satellite and cable transmissions, as ­distinct from programs) imported into the Iberoamerican region (that includes Spain and Portugal as well as Latin America) were from the US (Media Research and Consultancy Spain 1997). The “trend toward greater regional exchanges” in television program flows observed by Varis (1984) continued, but becoming ever more a trade in services rather than of programs. In the case of DTH, the 1990s saw US‐based satellite and cable companies combine with the largest Latin American broadcast and satellite‐ to‐cable networks to create multileveled corporate structures able to distribute subscription services throughout the whole region. Following a series of mergers and takeovers among the US corporations involved, AT&T emerged as owner of DirecTV in partnership with Televisa at Sky Mexico, and Globo at Sky Brasil (Reuters 2014). Televisa and Globo, it is important to note, are the dominant television conglomerates in each of their countries, which in turn are the largest national markets in the entire Spanish‐speaking and Portuguese‐speaking worlds respectively. The companies are each owned and controlled by family dynasties, in strong contrast to the thoroughly corporate character of their venture partners in the US.

Digital Transition and Diversification How are the television industries of Latin America dealing with the global transition from the age of mass media to the digital era? Significantly, the convergence of television and telecommunications has presented a new and complex landscape for



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regulation, and opportunities for foreign corporate investment. As well, television globalization has brought about changes in content, generating new transnational formats and genres, and enabling national‐regional‐global corporate ventures which are producing them. Particularly with increased hemispheric integration between the US and Latin America, all this transition amounts to a new, fourth stage of development. Although the penetration of analog free‐to‐air television in Latin American countries had been relatively high for decades, the aforementioned cable and ­satellite subscription services (“pay TV”) were fairly restricted until the digital era. Convergence since has facilitated the digitization of television systems and stimulated the take‐up of internet access, which is bundled with cable television services in some countries, and at the same time, greatly expanded the market for mobile telephony. Also, video streaming services, notably Netflix and its Latin American competitor, Claro, are rapidly gaining ground. These developments have created new and varied forms of reception available to audiences, and even for their participation: “transmedia,” where television is integrated with social media, and where user‐generated content is invited. Being well‐entrenched into the everyday lives of the mass of the population in Latin American countries (Orozco and Miller 2016), free‐to‐air television is surviving the transition to the digital era. However, recent years have seen a great increase in the number of pay TV subscribers in most countries of the region, which, in conjunction with the enthusiastic take‐up of OTT (“over‐the‐top”) video streaming via the internet, has put a squeeze in some major markets on advertising revenues, the basis of the free‐to‐air business (MUVI 2017). Increased options for receiving television, and the disruption caused by new services, Netflix in particular, have obliged the traditional monopolies to adapt: Globo in Brazil has launched its own digital platform, Globo Play (de Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, p. 27), a “freemium” service giving mobile access to a wide range of its content, while similarly in Mexico, Televisa has launched Blim, its own video‐on‐demand subscription service (El Economista 2016). But yet, while Globo and Televisa have a home‐ground advantage of being able to offer familiar national fiction programming, such as ­telenovelas, appealing to television’s “affective economy” (Orozco and Miller 2016, p. 103), Netflix clearly dominates the OTT market. For instance, as of 2017, Blim had only 3% of OTT subscribers in Mexico (Forbes 2017). The challenge which streaming services have made to the former television ecology is not to be underestimated, and will be playing itself out for some time yet to come (Bloomberg 2017). As for the pay TV business, Globo, Televisa, and other key players in the traditional television industry in Latin America have for some years held strategic stakes in cable and satellite. But whereas pay TV was formerly the prerogative of upper socioeconomic households and hence a restricted market relative to the free‐to‐air business, latter years saw a great surge in subscriptions. This transformation has been attributed to the much‐vaunted rise of the “middle class,” but more concretely to the marketing of convergent technologies and the advent of broadband since about 2010. While national aspirations for broadband development in the region

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Table 20.1  Millions of pay TV subscriptions, selected markets, 2018. Mexico Brazil Argentina Colombia

19.3 17.8 9.4 5.7

Source: Digital TV Research, cited in O’Halloran (2018).

have remained limited by insufficient fixed line infrastructure, low computer penetration, and lack of bandwidth, some cable companies have been able to offer “triple play,” that is, to provide internet and telephone services over the same connection as television. With the addition of WiFi, “quadruple play” has also been on offer, which has presented a new field of competition, and complex regulatory issues for governments (PR Newswire 2013). Table  20.1 shows the estimated number of pay TV subscriptions in the major national markets, as of 2018. These countries make up the majority of the total Latin American pay TV market. Note, however, that number of subscriptions is not an indicator of household penetration. Thus, Brazil has twice as many TV households as Mexico, where subscriptions are cheaper. The regional average of pay TV penetration is 44% of TV households. The service providers include Televisa of Mexico, Clarín of Argentina, and Telefónica of Spain, but the market leaders, accounting for nearly half the region’s subscriptions, are DirecTV/Sky (owned by AT&T in the US), and América Movil, trading as Claro. Claro is owned by telecommunications mogul, Carlos Slim, in his home base of Mexico (O’Halloran 2018). The pay TV markets in the table are also where OTT services are fastest growing; indeed, Brazil and Mexico are fourth and fifth fastest in the world (MUVI 2017). As noted, Netflix dominates these markets, but with nationally based content providers emerging to compete. Interestingly, whereas consumers in the US regard pay TV and OTT as alternatives, with pay TV subscribers “cutting the cord” of their pay TV  service when they take out their subscription to a streaming service such as Netflix or Hulu, Latin American consumers seem to be embracing both technologies, at least in the short term. A global study by Nielsen in 2016 found that 76% of Latin American respondents who paid for a subscription to a streaming platform also had a pay TV service, yet 24% were “thinking about” dropping the cable service (ttvnews 2016). In Latin America, you can never have too much television, it seems. Digitization, the nascent streaming services, catch‐up facilities, “TV Everywhere,” new genres adapted for mobile and internet reception, the integration of social media with television watching, the hybridization of cinema with television, and other ­ “­transmedia” innovations (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, pp. 72–77) all amount to a reconstitution of audiences around the new technologies, a process of ­segmentation or “audiencación” (Orozco and Miller 2016, p. 106) in a multichannel



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environment. Increased penetration of pay TV and internet access, as mentioned, along with mobile telephony (eMarketer 2015), especially in the same countries as in the table, are indicators of the great expansion of a “middle class” in the first ­decade of the century. As of 2012, almost a third of the continent’s population was considered to be middle class. However, with regional economic growth based on commodity exports having since stalled, so has socioeconomic mobility, revealing the fragility of the emergent social structure, and hence the vulnerability of large sectors of the population (Open Democracy 2016). Accordingly, while the immense transformation in access to new communication options and modes of reception cannot be denied, the trajectories once prophesized in the trade press are not to be believed. Future growth in media markets will be slower, and continue to be uneven, both between and within countries. This has been evident in the flattening out of pay TV subscriptions (O’Halloran 2018). With the balance shifting from broadcast to digital delivery, various Latin American governments are creating a relatively deregulated environment for television as it comes to be redefined more as a series of consumer telecommunication services than as a unique form of social communication over public airwaves. In the broadcast era, the values of national culture, the public interest, and national security were protected by restrictions on foreign ownership. Yet even before the end of the 1990s, with the advent of globalization and the new postbroadcast distribution platforms, the national character of television was under challenge, and opportunities were opened up for foreign investment in the sector. The resultant regulatory landscape has become highly variable across the region, however. In Venezuela, the ruling regime controls television both by severe regulation and intervention. This includes command over public television, occasional censorship of telenovelas, and notably, the anomalous restrictions put upon the network RCTV, which is a major producer and exporter of content, but forbidden to broadcast within Venezuela (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, pp. 34–35). On the other hand, Chile is quite open to foreign investment (Piñon 2014a, p. 215); Argentina’s relaxed laws have permitted Viacom to buy its largest broadcaster, Telefe, formerly owned by Telefónica of Spain; Mexico has recently granted new free‐to‐air licenses, although to Mexican companies; Colombia by contrast has allowed a Miami‐based company to acquire one of its three broadcast licenses; while Brazil permits foreign ownership in the sector, but prevents distributors from owning content assets (Variety 2016a). So, the current drivers of transformation of television in Latin America are the growth and diffusion of the relatively new convergent technologies of distribution, notably pay TV and OTT; the rise of a middle class of consumers, however fragile; and the opportunities for foreign investment in deregulated national markets. Looking at the last more closely, a complex process of transnationalization of ­production and distribution can be seen in the region, particularly if the Spanish‐ language market in the US is taken into account, yielding a kind of hemispheric integration. As noted, the drying up of the traditional advertising revenue stream from broadcast television has motivated Latin American television companies to

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enter into new business ventures. As well as the new forms of delivery already discussed, these ventures include program production for export. Formerly, programs produced for the domestic market could be sold internationally with all costs already recouped, but now, the national markets no longer provide sufficient returns (Uribe‐ Jongbloed and Pis Diez 2017, p. 108). In these circumstances, producers are amenable to transnational alliances in the form of joint‐venture, licensing, co‐production and distribution agreements, in which respect, north–south links between Latin American and US Spanish‐language producers have become pronounced. Observers agree that “the Latin American market must be understood in a relationship of interconnection, transfer and juxtaposition, with the US market” (Uribe‐Jongbloed and Pis Diez 2017, p. 101). Miami, the principal center in the US of Spanish‐language television production and exchange (Sinclair 2003), is home both to Latin American producers such as Venevisión, of Venezuela, as well as ­production entities owned by companies from Spain, notably Prisa (Piñon 2014a, pp. 218–219). Not only does this make Miami a key media production capital within the entire geolinguistic region of Spanish, but to the extent that, demographically and linguistically, the US Hispanic market is a kind of diaspora in reverse, a cosmopolitan microcosm of the Spanish‐speaking world (Piñon 2014b, p. 659), Miami enjoys a cultural‐linguistic flexibility for transnational export not so easily achieved by producers in the national markets. The dominant US Spanish‐ language network is Univisión, which has strategic program licensing agreements with its largest shareholder by far and source of programming, Televisa of Mexico (Gómez 2016). Miami‐based Telemundo is historically the second‐largest Spanish‐ language network, but has been gaining market share on Univisión, and is very prominent in the regional trade, having co‐production agreements with producers in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, as well as distribution agreements in Mexico and Venezuela. The Mexican connection is with Argos, an independent production house. Notably, Telemundo is owned by US media giant Comcast/NBCUniversal. It should be understood that the US is a significant Spanish‐language television market in its own right, being second only to Mexico in terms of the number of its Spanish‐speaking inhabitants (The Guardian 2015). While Mexico and Brazil still remain the largest producers and exporters of programming in the region, the maturing of the format trade has opened up opportunities for some countries, notably Colombia and Argentina, to cultivate niches in both scripted (principally telenovelas) and unscripted formats (reality, talent, and game shows). Particularly since the remarkable global success of Betty la fea, the telenovela from RCN in Colombia that took off after its domestic airing in 1999 (Sinclair 2014), Colombian television studios have become specialized in producing telenovelas with transnational appeal, “based on co‐production, multinational casts, generic narratives, and the privileging of beauty over talent” (Piñon 2014b, p. 663). Facilitated by deregulation and tax breaks for foreign investment, Telemundo has been at the forefront of forging alliances with Colombian producers, specifically TV Caracol and RTI‐Colombia, while Televisa of Mexico has a programming agreement with their



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rival RCN (Piñon 2014a, pp. 225–226). Telemundo’s relationship with RTI‐Colombia, which since 2009 actually involves direct investment, can be seen as “a quite widespread new model of U.S. involvement in Latin American productions for global audiences,” other major US‐based corporations producing program content in co‐ operation with Colombian companies or their own subsidiaries in the country being Sony, Disney, and NewsCorp (Piñon 2014b, p. 663). In addition, Netflix has been co‐producing exclusive material with Colombia, notably the very successful series Narcos, in which Brazil also participated (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, p. 88). Juan Piñon argues that Colombia provides “the perfect socio‐cultural and technological infrastructure to re‐work a U.S. Hispanic fictional Latinidad with regional appeal” (2014b, p. 661). Looking beyond the particular case of Telemundo’s alliances in Colombia, Piñon has coined the term “reglocalization” to describe the commerciocultural strategy of producing and distributing programs which are neutral enough to be embraced throughout the region by national audiences that accept them as their own. Since it remains the common wisdom that audiences vastly ­prefer national programming when available, transnational producers must strive to simulate such national programming in each nation of the geolinguistic region: in this view, “cultural proximity is industrially manufactured” (Piñon 2014a, p. 230). This is where the trade in formats comes into its own, for instead of offering a generic pan‐Latin cultural‐linguistic environment, the acquisition of production bibles and scripts allows producers to develop formats and remakes that are adapted to and closely crafted for each particular national market (Uribe‐Jongbloed and Pis Diez 2017, p. 107). So, whereas the big producers like Globo and Televisa could once rely on their predominance over their respective national audiences and enjoyed hegemony over the “televisual grammar” of the region (Piñon 2014a, p. 232), the format trade, along with co‐production arrangements and all the other manifestations of transnationalization of the industry, has opened up the field not only for producers in competing Latin American countries, but also for Anglomorph global companies based in the US, as noted above. Something of a new regional hierarchy has been emerging: for the triennium 2013–2015, Obitel found that while Brazil and Mexico remained the greatest in their capacity to produce television fiction, Colombia and the US formed the next tier, followed by Argentina and Chile on the next rung down, with Venezuela and Peru below them (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, p. 51). Whereas Colombian producers are distinguished by their ability to project a hemispheric pan‐Hispanic culture in their telenovelas, and specifically by their ­collaborations with the US and Mexico, Argentina’s industry and its outputs are ­oriented to countries outside as well as within the region. Until 2015, Telefe was the major network, owned, as mentioned above, by the huge Spanish telecommunications company, Telefónica, which, in a newly deregulated situation, then sold it to US media conglomerate Viacom (Variety 2016a). Telefe produces in conjunction with the Italian‐owned production house Endemol, and a number of smaller

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­independent companies (Piñon 2014a, p. 220). The competing network is El Trece, owned by the Argentine media conglomerate Grupo Clarín, who have their own production entity, Pol‐ka. A link with the US is via the Time‐Warner company, TNT, which has produced in partnership with El Trece (Variety 2016b). The most striking international connection, however, has been through Argentine‐Israeli, Yair Dori, whose Dori Media Group produces telenovelas and a range of other programming shown on dedicated cable television channels in Israel, and distributed into Europe and Asia (Dori Media 2017). In terms of both scripted and unscripted genres, Argentina is distinguished not so much by its program exports, but by its sales of formats: it is “the most relevant international format trader by far in Latin America” (Uribe‐Jongbloed and Pis Diez 2017, p. 109). Argentina is also distinct in that its television industry is supported by its film industry, and vice versa. Argentina has the largest film production output in Latin America, and television producers have capitalized on the film industry’s expertise, reputation for quality, and international marketing experience and contacts. Uribe‐Jongbloed and Pis Diez cite the example of the Argentine company Promofilm producing format adaptation services for other countries (2017, p. 104). Yet although television production and exhibition receives selective financial support from a state entity, the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (Spanish acronym: INCAA) (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, p. 45), most of the funding for film and television subsidies actually comes from taxes on  commercial television producers and foreign‐owned cineplexes (Kumari Drapkin 2010). A striking recent issue about popular television content in Latin America that needs to be addressed is the unexpected vogue for Turkish telenovelas in most of the main markets of the region, including large exporters like Mexico. Whereas the dominance of its characteristic telenovela genre in the Iberoamerican world had previously been explained by researchers largely in terms of the region’s historical, geolinguistic, and geocultural similarities, the embrace of apparently alien Turkish telenovelas demands other explanations. The inroads made by these programs seems to challenge the cultural proximity perspective that has become almost ­axiomatic: that audiences will always prefer programming that is culturally, and ­linguistically, familiar to them; preferably from their own culture where available, or if not, from a culturally similar source. The converse is the “cultural discount”: audiences will reject culturally unfamiliar programming, but with the possible exception of where the genre of the programming is familiar, in other words, “genre proximity” (Sinclair and Straubhaar 2013, pp. 2–3). Indeed, Latin American audiences overwhelmingly continue to prefer their national or culturally proximate regionally sourced programming (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, pp. 70–71), but it is also the case that several Turkish telenovelas have found favor in the region since first introduced by the Mega channel in Chile in 2013. Latin America is not unique in its uptake of Turkish telenovelas: as of 2015, Turkey was exporting them to 70 countries worldwide, which included



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not only Chile, but Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay, and Turkey had become second only to the US in volume of exports (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2016, pp. 78–79). In Latin America, where the narrative conventions and the scheduling of the telenovela as a genre are deeply entrenched in popular culture and everyday life, genre proximity provides the beginning of an explanation for the attraction of the Turkish product, but some observers go further. In terms of their content, an Argentine consulting firm refers to the “close exoticism” of their narrative themes, meaning that beneath their Orientalist appeal, Latin Americans recognize “a loose, global kinship of experience linking emerging world countries grappling with similar challenges of urbanisation, societal change, shifting gender roles, and tradition vs modernity” (emerge85 2016). Others note, from a political economy perspective, how the programs are being actively marketed, and that they enjoy the support of the Turkish government, possibly as a form of “soft power” (International Business Times 2016). A more mundane, necessary‐but‐not‐sufficient explanation which applies is that, given the high production values and technical quality of the Turkish telenovelas, there is a trade‐off or “bounded rationality” common to both the TV  channels and their audiences, such that they both “will accept a cheaper if high‐quality foreign product that lacks cultural consanguinity” (Orozco and Miller 2016, p. 104).

Conclusion and Summary From its earliest days, broadcasting in Latin America has been shaped by the dynamic interplay between US corporate interests, Latin American governments, and Latin American entrepreneurs. The establishment of radio as a relatively unregulated commercial institution on the US model set the mold for the subsequent development of television, which has been traced here over four stages. In the initial era, US networks supported Latin American entrepreneurs with technology, ­program supply, and some direct investment. Such investment was subsequently withdrawn, marking a further stage, but the US remained a significant source of programming, provoking charges of “cultural imperialism.” However, as Latin American television industries matured, and audiences showed their preferences for their own cultural and linguistic content, some countries emerged as major centers of production and distribution, both in their domestic markets and for the region. This stage was something of a “golden age” for Latin American television, morphing into a third stage in which mass free‐to‐air national audiences co‐existed alongside elite pay TV delivered by the post‐broadcast technologies of satellite and cable. The significance of the role of international satellite transmission in the globalization of television has been somewhat overshadowed by the more recent convergence of television, telecommunications, and the internet, which has ushered in the fourth, contemporary stage. The reception of television now not only occurs across a diverse range of home‐based and mobile delivery technologies, as elsewhere, but

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access to these technologies has been democratized in the sense that triple play offers have made them affordable for the ostensibly “middle class” audiences that have emerged in Latin America. US corporate ownership is prominent in the pay TV and streaming services available, though not without competition from Latin American companies. In terms of the production and distribution of television programming, close relations are being forged between Latin American producers and the major Spanish‐language television networks in the US. Deregulation of foreign investment, in conjunction with the rise of the international trade in formats rather than programs, has given US and other foreign producers unprecedented access to Latin American creative resources, while at the same time, greatly expanding the range of national markets in which programming can be sold. In these circumstances, the cultural proximity that has determined audience preferences in the past becomes a rather abstracted quality of formats that can be customized to each of the national markets, this at the same time causing shifts to take place in the regional hierarchy of program‐producing countries. From the English‐speaking countries, it might be difficult to appreciate the vastness of the television markets of the Iberoamerican world, and the predominance of Latin American countries within it, particularly Mexico and Brazil, yet these nations stand in the same relation to their respective geolinguistic regions as the US does to the English‐speaking world. Indeed, Spanish is now spoken by more people in the  world than English, with Portuguese some distance behind English, but still in the top 10 (Ethnologue 2018), and these speakers are predominantly, and by a large margin, in Latin America. Just as those in the Anglophone world experience it, ­television in Latin America is being transformed by convergent and mobile technologies, and the business models upon which they are being instigated, in largely unregulated environments. What is distinct in Latin America about the ensuing reconstitution of audiences around these technologies is the economic and political uncertainty endemic to the region, and its hemispheric entanglement with corporate interests in the US.

References Bloomberg (2017). Mexico’s steamy soap operas lose out to Netflix, Snapchat. https://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017‐05‐19/mexicans‐abandon‐telenovelas‐in‐the‐era‐ of‐affordable‐internet (accessed 13 April 2018). Dori Media (2017). What we do. http://dorimedia.com/what‐we‐do (accessed 13 April 2018). El Economista (2016). Televisa lanza servicio de contenido bajo demanda. http://eleconomista. com.mx/industrias/2016/02/22/televisa‐lanza‐servicio‐entretenimiento‐bajo‐demanda (accessed 13 April /2018). eMarketer (2015). Latin America home to 155.9 million smartphone users. https://www. emarketer.com/Article/Latin‐America‐Home‐1559‐Million‐Smartphone‐Users/1012794 15/06/2017 (accessed 13 April 2018).



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emerge85 (2016). Turkish soap operas, Latin America, and emerging world kinship. http:// emerge85.io/blog/turkish‐soap‐operas‐latin‐america‐and‐emerging‐world‐kinship (accessed 13 April 2018). Ethnologue (2018). Summary by language size. https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size (accessed 13 April 2018). Fernández Christlieb, F. (1987). Algo más sobre los origenes de la televisión latinoamericana. [Something more about the origins of Latin American television]. DIA.Logos de la Comunicación. 18: 32–45. Forbes (2017). Mexicanos prefieren a Claro Video por encima de Blim. www.forbes.com.mx/ mexicanos‐prefieren‐claro‐video‐que‐blim (accessed 13 April 2018). Fox, E. (1997). Latin American Broadcasting: From Tango to Telenovela. Luton, UK: University of Luton Press. Fox, E. and Waisbord, S. (2002). Latin politics, global media. In: Latin Politics, Global Media (eds. E. Fox and S. Waisbord), 1–21. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Frappier, J. (1968). US media empire/Latin America. NACLA Newsletter 2 (9): 1–11. Gómez, R. (2016). Latino television in the United States: addressing networks, dynamics, and alliances. International Journal of Communication 10: 2811–2830. International Business Times (2016). From telenovelas to Turkish dramas: why Turkey’s soap operas are captivating Latin America. http://www.ibtimes.com/telenovelas‐turkish‐ dramas‐why‐turkeys‐soap‐operas‐are‐captivating‐latin‐america‐2296321 25/06/2017 (accessed 13 April 2018). Kumari Drapkin, J. (2010). Argentina: haven for independent films. https://www.pri.org/ stories/2010‐04‐25/argentina‐haven‐independent‐films (accessed 13 April 2018). Marques de Melo, J. (1988). As Telenovelas de Globo [The Telenovelas of Globo]. São Paulo: Summus Editorial. Mattelart, A. (1991). Advertising International: The Privatisation of Public Space. London and New York: Routledge. McAnany, E. (1984). The logic of the cultural industries in Latin America: the television industry in Brazil. In: The Critical Communications Review Volume II: Changing Patterns  of Communications Control (eds. V. Mosco and J. Wasko), 185–208. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Media Research and Consultancy Spain (1997). La industria audiovisual iberoamericana: datos de sus principales mercados 1997. [The Iberoamerican Audiovisual Industry: Data from Principal Markets, 1997]. Madrid: Federación de Asociaciones de Productores Audiovisuales Españoles and Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional. Muraro, H. (1985). El ‘Modelo’ latinoamericano [The Latin American ‘Model’]. Telos 3: 78–82. MUVI (2017). A peek into Latin America’s video streaming market. https://www.muvi.com/ peek‐latin‐americas‐video‐streaming‐market.html (accessed 13 April 2018). O’Halloran, J. (2018). Latin American pay‐TV market growth stalls. RAPIDTVNews. https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2018030651164/latin‐american‐pay‐tv‐market‐growth‐ stalls.html#axzz5CR0S6ROq (accessed 13 April 2018). Open Democracy (2016). Middle classes in Latin America (1): falling fortunes? https://www. opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/ludolfo‐paramio/middle‐classes‐in‐latin‐ america‐1‐falling‐fortunes (accessed 13 April 2018). Orozco, G. and Miller, T. (2016). Television in Latin America is ‘everywhere’: not dead, not dying, but converging and thriving. Media and Communication 4 (3): 99–108.

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Piñon, J. (2014a). A multilayered transnational broadcasting television industry: the case of Latin America. International Communication Gazette 76 (3): 211–236. Piñon, J. (2014b). Reglocalization and the rise of the network cities media system in ­producing telenovelas for hemispheric audiences. International Journal of Cultural Studies 17 (6): 655–671. Pool, I. (1977). The changing flow of television. Journal of Communication 27 (2): 139–179. PR Newswire (2013). Latin America  –  digital media and pay TV market. http://www. prnewswire.com/news‐releases/latin‐america‐‐‐digital‐media‐and‐pay‐tv‐market‐ 199055881.html (accessed 13 April 2018). Read, W. (1976). America’s Mass Media Merchants. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Reuters (2014). Latin America Could be jewel of AT&T‐DirecTV deal. https://www.reuters. com/article/us‐att‐mergers‐directtv/latin‐america‐could‐be‐jewel‐of‐att‐directv‐deal‐ idUSBREA4I02320140519 (accessed 13 April 2018). Rogers, E. and Antola, L. (1985). Telenovelas: a Latin American success story. Journal of Communication 35 (4): 24–35. Roncagliolo, R. (1995). Trade integration and communication networks in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Communication 20 (3): 335–342. Schiller, H. (1969). Mass Communications and American Empire. New York: Augustus M. Kelley. Schwoch, J. (1990). The American Radio Industry and its Latin American Activities, 1900–1939. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Sinclair, J. (1999). Latin American Television: A Global View. London: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. (2003). ‘The hollywood of Latin America’: Miami as regional center in television trade. Television and New Media 4 (3): 211–229. Sinclair, J. (2014). Transnationalisation of television programming in the Iberoamerican region. Matrizes 8 (2): 63–76. Sinclair, J. and Straubhaar, J. (2013). Latin American Television Industries. London: British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan. Straubhaar, J. (1992). Assymetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity: A Critical Review of the International Flow of Television Programs. São Paulo: Asociación Latinoamericana de Investigadores de la Comunicación. The Guardian (2015). US now has more Spanish speakers than Spain  –  only Mexico has more. https://www.theguardian.com/us‐news/2015/jun/29/us‐second‐biggest‐spanish‐ speaking‐country (accessed 13 April 2018). ttvnews (2016). 24% of Latin Americans consider cutting the cord. http://www.todotvnews.com/ news/24‐of‐Latin‐Americans‐Consider‐Cutting‐the‐Cord.html (accessed 13 April 2018). Tunstall, J. (1977). The Media Are American: Anglo‐American Media in the World. London: Constable. Uribe‐Jongbloed, E. and Pis Diez, E. (2017). The TV format market in Latin America: trends and opportunities. International Journal of Digital Television 8 (1): 99–115. Variety (2016a). Latin American TV sees long‐term growth with deregulation, new affluence. http://variety.com/2016/tv/features/latin‐america‐tv‐market‐growth‐2016‐1201941085 (accessed 13 April 2018).



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Variety (2016b). What’s hot in Latin America? www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/whats‐hot‐ in‐latin‐america/5098859.article (accessed 13 April 2018). Varis, T. (1978). The Mass Media TNCs: An Overall View of Their Operations and Control Options. Kuala Lumpur: Asian and Pacific Development Administration Centre. Varis, T. (1984). The international flow of television programmes. Journal of Communication 34 (1): 143–152. Vassallo de Lopes, M.I. and Orozco Gómez, G. (eds.) (2016). Obitel Yearbook 2016: (Re) Invention of TV Fiction Genres and Formats. Porto Alegre: Sulina. Waisbord, S. (1998). Television in Latin America. In: Television: An International History (ed. A. Smith), 254–263. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wells, A. (1972). Picture Tube Imperialism? The Impact of US Television in Latin America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Wilkinson, K. (1992). Southern Exposure: US Cable Programmers and Spanish‐Language Networks Enter Latin America. Guarujá, Brazil: International Association for Mass Communication Research conference.

Further Reading Dávila, A. and Rivero, Y. (eds.) (2014). Contemporary Latina/O Media: Production, Circulation, Politics. New York and London: New York University Press. Vassallo de Lopes, M.I. and Orozco Gómez, G. (eds.) (2017). One Decade of Television Fiction in Ibero‐America. Analysis of Ten Years of Obitel (2007–2016). Porto Alegre: Editora Meridional. Wilkinson, K. (2015). Spanish‐Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 21

Drama, Audiences, and Authenticity: Television Programming and Audiences in Post‐Apartheid South Africa Ruth Teer‐Tomaselli

Television came to South Africa relatively late. The first broadcast was in 1976, with a single channel that was on air for 37 hours a week, in only two languages, English and Afrikaans. Today, the medium offers substantially more choice, with 24/7 viewing on 180 channels in 11 languages. The changes within the televisionscape of the country parallel many of the changes in other countries; however, the stark differences since its inception seem all the more startling because of the relatively short time span when compared to mature television cultures. The previous edition of this A Companion to Television is now 10 years old, and even in that short time, there has been a significant break with the past. In the last edition, I wrote about the paradigmatic structural transformation of South African television in the 15 or so years following the first democratic election. In this chapter, I have concentrated on the available channels and their programming content, particularly in relation to the ways in which these have changed in the past decade; while at the same time ­attempting to relate these to the audience dynamics they serve.

Television in the South African Mediascape The South African television landscape consists of four free‐to‐air (FTA) channels, two subscription services, and a small number of over‐the‐top (OTT) subscription streaming services. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is a public service broadcaster with three channels, (SABC1, SABC2, and SABC3) each with a different language mandate. SABC1, with the largest footprint, broadcasts most of its primetime programming in the Nguni group of languages, isiZulu and isiXhosa, A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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which are also the most widely spoken languages in the country, as well as isiNdebele and Tshivenda, spoken by a smaller number of people. SABC2, with the second largest footprint, carries seSotho, seTswana, and siSwati that alternates with Afrikaans during primetime. SABC3, which is defined as a “public commercial channel,” uses mainly English, and caters to the professional middle classes, a mainly urban population of all races and languages. The fourth FTA channel, eTV, is a privately owned, commercial channel. DStv/MultiChoice is part of the mega‐corporation Naspers’ media stable. MultiChoice is the subscription and distribution arm, while DStv is responsible for the acquisition, commissioning, and scheduling of content. While the majority of their television programming is imported either as complete self‐standing global brands or individual programs for scheduling on curated channels, there is a significant amount of locally commissioned programming available on DStv’s own branded channels. Historically the preserve of the wealthy and privileged, DStv has extended its local offerings through a series of dedicated channels, Mzanzi Magic (South African Magic), that broadcast only in South African indigenous languages. The large volume of content produced for these channels is all commissioned from independent production companies. A second subscription platform, StarSat ­ (first  launched as TopTV in 2012), was launched in 2015 (Teer‐Tomaselli 2019). Both subscription platforms are required to carry the four FTA channels in terms of the regulations laid down by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). This is to ensure that even those areas of the country that are not served by terrestrial broadcasting are able (in theory at least) to receive the output of the national public service broadcaster (SABC) and its FTA competitor, eTV. In addition to the SABC1, SABC2, and SABC3, the Corporation broadcasts two further 24‐hour channels (SABC News and SABC Encore, a selection of local drama), while eTV produces eNCA and four additional entertainment channels on the DStv/ MultiChoice platform.

Consumption of Television and the Profile of Television Audiences Of the little over 14.5 million households with access to television, nearly 8 million (55%) are reliant solely on FTA channels, while a little more than 6 million (41%) have access to subscription television, most of whom subscribe to DStv. Fewer than a million viewers subscribe to StarTV, a rival satellite subscription service (BRC 2018). There are no reliable figures for OTT viewing, although they are considered to be very low at the present time. While the SABC and eTV command the largest viewing numbers, in terms of socioeconomic trends, the order is reversed: DStv caters to the top economic brackets; SABC3 and eTV sit in middle‐class and upper middle‐class brackets; while SABC1 and SABC2 cater for the lower‐ and middle‐ class audiences. The significant expansion of Mzanzi Magic, which is also available



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on less expensive “compact” bouquets,1 is changing this situation, and making ­subscription television more accessible to a larger part of the working class population. FTA broadcasting is dominated by black viewers (86%) with 10% of viewership identifying themselves as colored, 3% as white, and only 1% as Indian. Together, isiZulu and isiXhosa speakers make up nearly half the entire viewership, Afrikaans and seSotho about 10% each, English a mere 5%, while the other African languages make up the balance (BRC 2018, p. 4). The attribution of race and language here is not meant to enforce some apartheid vision of broadcasting or society, but rather to reflect the interests of the different audiences. These language preferences are reflected in the channel viewership. Viewing for SABC1, which caters to isiZulu, isiXhosa, and other Nguni languages as well as a smattering of English, peaks at 20:30 with close to 17.8 million viewers. SABC2, broadcasting in seSotho, seTswana, and Afrikaans, commands 9.5 million viewers at 21:30, while SABC3 broadcasts almost entirely in English, with a peak audience of 6.9 million viewers at 20:00. eTV, also predominantly English, reaches 5.3 million at 19:30. The different times of peak viewing indicate the schedulers strategy of “staggering” their flagship programs in order not to compete head‐on with one another. The total accumulated viewing for DStv peaks at 21:00 with approximately 15 million viewers. Channel share of ­viewers reflects these numbers with SABC1 averaging 25% of viewership over the year; eTV between 13 and 15%; SABC2 runs at about 11%, and SABC has the ­smallest share at approximately 5%. DStv attracts about a third of all viewers. Historically, DStv was the preserve of the white, coloured, and Indian middle classes; however, with the economic dividend of post‐apartheid economic growth (albeit far too slow), this has changed gradually. Of the 17.2 viewers (over the age of 15 years), 71% were classified as black, 15% white, 9% and 4% respectively for colored and Indian. Approximately one third speak English or Afrikaans as their home language, a quarter speak isiZulu, and the rest are distributed among other South African indigenous languages (BRC 2018, p. 5).

Programming and Genre Preferences on South African Television The viewing habits, tastes and preferences of the viewers have remained remarkably unchanged over the past decade. As an indication of the viewer preferences, the top 20 most watched programs over five channels (SABC1, SABC2, SABC3, eTV, and DStv) were selected, using the television audience measure survey (TAMS) database for February 2018 (BRC 2018). These 100 programs were then divided by genre in order to ascertain patterns of viewership (see Table 21.1). Some genres were grouped, partly a consequence of the apparent genre‐confusion in the TAMS designations, and partly because of the merging genre conventions apparent in South African programs, a theme that will be expanded on later in the chapter.

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Table 21.1  The top 20 most watched programs over five channels.

Drama/soaps Music/variety Local magazine/reality Imported movies Sports News Sitcoms Documentaries Quizzes Total

SABC1

SABC2

SABC3

eTV

DStv

Total

5 6 6 — — 2 1 — — 20

10 4 — — 1 2 1 — 2 20

3 3 6 3b — — 1b 4b

3 — — 11b 1 2 2b — 1 20

7a 3a 2a — 7 1c — —

28 16 14 14b 9 7 5 4b 3 100

20

20

 Mzanzi channel(s).  Imported program. c  eNCA channel. a b

Soap operas, which morph into telenovelas and drama, remain the most watched genre on television across all channels. “Reality” programming and music follow on. News programming, both of the primetime variety as well as rolling 24‐hour ­channels, are not as popular as they are in other countries, and indeed there is ­evidence that they have lost popularity over the past decade. Contrary to common perception, sports programming draws relatively small audiences.

Local Drama and Soap Operas Local dramas soap operas are by far the most watched programs on South African television, commanding huge audiences. Uzalo (SABC1/2) commands a nightly audience of 9.1 million (9.1 m) or 63% of available audience (AA) on its first showing and a further 7.8 m on the following day’s repeat (70% AA). Vying with Uzalo is Generations (SABC1), a long‐time favorite with 8.9 m primetime viewership (68% AA) and 8.5 m repeat on SABC3 (64%AA). These audience figures are unprecedented in South African television viewing. Nor are they alone: Skeem Saam (SABC1/2) commands a viewership of 7.8 m (64% AA) with a 6.7 m (52%) on the repeat broadcast, while Muvhango racks up 5.3 (51AA) and 7de Laan (SABC2) attracts a very respectable 4.2 m (46AA). These five programs are the behemoths of television viewing, and it is no surprise that they are all broadcast on the national FTA channels of the SABC. Local drama on eTV also commands the first two slots in their “most watched” list with Scandal drawing an audience of 4.7 m (38% AA) and Rhythm City 3.6 m (28% AA). The most‐watched program on DStv is The Queen which attracts 1.7 m (11.3% AA), while Isibaya is the third most watched with 1.1 (8.5% AA). Thus,



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across all five channels/bouquets, locally produced drama programs attract the highest audiences and are considered to be South African television’s most ­successful programs (BRC 2018).

What Accounts for the Popularity of Soap Operas and Dramas? Television entertainment in South Africa is dominated by the soap opera, often ­denigrated as banal. South African “soap operas” are clearly more than mindless low‐prestige programming; they are the primary form of television’s dramatic expression. “In developing countries such as ours, soapies are prioritized above all else,” noted scriptwriter Rohan Dickson (Chronis 2013), “People’s lives are tough here. The currency in soaps is pure emotion. Soapies take viewers on a heightened emotional journey, letting them live vicariously through characters who resemble them, or letting them escape into the glamorous lives of characters in exotic locations” (Chronis 2013). Unlike the United Kingdom, where soap operas are an early evening standard, or the United States, where they are regarded as daytime viewing, in South Africa soap operas are scheduled as primetime staples, “primetime” being defined as the hours between 18:00 and 22:00 in the evening. Furthermore, there is a good deal of genre crossover and hybridization. Famed South African scriptwriter and producer, Duma Ka Ndlovu, puts it this way: “In South Africa we take a ­primetime drama and call it a soapie because we use the ingredients of a soapie, a telenovela and a thriller to tell a story” (Mkwanazi 2015). Soapie‐dramas in South Africa are culturally proximate (Straubhaar 2007, p. 26) and are a daily record of the concerns, obsessions, ethos, and values of the society that produces it (Teer‐Tomaselli 2011, p. 414). The soapie‐drama is able to offer “stories that authenticate the audience’s world by reflecting that world back to them” (King’ara 2013, p. 90). Joseph Straubhaar (2007) argues that in South American telenovelas cultural proximity is a condition of television production whereby certain local audiences prefer local or regional productions with which they share cultural elements, and this is the same phenomenon that occurs in South Africa. In this way, audiences relate to cultural similarities that are not necessarily part of the general national expression.

Themes: Family and Community in Soapie‐Dramas A universal theme in soap operas around the world is the life within families. While in other genres, family is viewed as intrusive, for soap operas, it is a continuum of life, it increases the relatability and appeal of the characters to the audience. Tamar Liebes and Sonia Livingstone (2005) identified three soap opera models as dynastic, community, and dyadic. It can be argued that recent South African primetime soapie‐dramas inhabit all three models.

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The first model is premised on two competing dynasties, headed by the patriarchs, and here Uzalo and Muvhango are prime examples. For Uzalo (first series, 2016), the story starts on the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison. On 11 February 1990 two baby boys are born, but accidentally switched. A preacher’s son is raised by a gangster and vice versa. The story is set in KwaMashu, a Durban township, 25 years after this event. True to the telenovela‐drama genre, Uzalo is premised on intrigue and the audience follows the journey and obstacles faced by the two prominent middle class families, the Mdletshes and the Xulus, as they negotiate the trials and tribulations of family, money, love and legacy (Gibson et al. 2019). In the second series (2017), the writers added a neat twist, effectively banishing both male leads from the storyline by killing off one and sending the other to prison. Thus, the story was now headed by two matriarchs, allowing for some interesting feminist discourses in the plot. However, by the third series (2018), the adult sons have asserted their narrative dominance, lending to a more mainstream gendered storytelling. Muvhango is a Tshvenda‐language program now in its 15th year. The storyline continues to revolve around opposing families, the Mojalefa’s, who were the newcomers, and the Mukwevhos. The two families battle for power, pitted against each other, from one generation and the next. The second model follows the British soap opera structure, where kinship is formed through the community. Within the South African context, there is little to distinguish this model from the third, which renegotiates the conventional idea of family and community through destabilized relationships (Liebes and Livingstone 2005). It is thus evident that the central theme of family in soapie‐drama has moved beyond the traditional nuclear family, incorporating the community and the workplace as an extension of family. The majority of early South African soapie‐dramas established imagined communities, without much attention afforded to race and class. Suidooster, a soapie‐drama on the DStv Afrikaans channel, Kyknet, has a ­community‐type structure. The setting is a small, fictional location in suburban Cape Town. The storyline pivots around three families who, in the words of the promotional documentation, “share their joys, sorrows, disputes, romances, revenges and retaliations, misunderstandings, and jealousies” (Kyknet 2015). It is “the story of a multicultural South African community,” featuring different races, religions, and differently‐constituted non‐nuclear family units. Their interactions may be ­dramatic, but they are also strongly scripted to focus on individualistic traits and traumas, and to override any idea of difference based on race, ethnicity, or religion. A longer‐running example can be found in in the SABC2 Afrikaans soap opera, 7de Laan. Set in fictional “Hillside,” the narrative community is diverse, and people are all equal, irrespective of race. The inhabitants of Hillside community are neighborly and collegial, exhibiting kinship through their shared community (Marx‐ Knoetze 2016, p. 35). This idealization has led scholars to critique the program as failing to deal with the contested areas of racial and cultural differences and ­similarities, thus presenting a South Africa “deprived of race, gender or class discrimination” (Milton 2008, p. 265). This idealized and stereotypical depiction may



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be seen as symbolic of South Africa’s success as a country, in “using popular television programming to shape a nation that rises above its apartheid past” (Heyns and Tager 2013), while at the same time invoking a “cultural amnesia” (Van der Merwe 2013, p. 100) that elides traces of the past.

Changes in Television’s Drama Formats in the Past Decade Television in the immediate post‐apartheid period was characterized by an emphasis on nation‐building, reconciliation and the ideal of coming together as a “rainbow nation” (Barnett 1999; Roome 1997. This chimed with the after effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to create a rapprochement between different racial, cultural and linguistic groups. In television drama, this thrust was evident in the themes of the entertainment programming, and in the frequently multilingual languages of the programming. As late as 2014, the SABC’s Educational wing produced a series of brochures and pamphlets designed to “inspire” script writers that pointed directly to the need for “togetherness.” Apart from entertainment, the SABC intoned that “in a nation like South Africa, storytelling has another purpose to service, namely, to heal, reconcile and bear testimony to the experience under apartheid” (SABC Education 2014). Locally produced soap operas in the 1990s, such as Generations and 7de Laan, focused on representing multicultural South Africa. The tropes of reconciliation are still evident in some of the soaps, especially those with multiracial, multilingual casts, evidenced in the above discussion of 7de Laan and Suidooster. However, I contend that from 2010 onwards, the refrains of nation‐ building have given way to the more overt issues of identity‐related concerns in which diversity across programming is the compensation for the niche‐oriented approach within programs. Furthermore, the broadcasting regulator, ICASA, has set in place a series of highly specific local content regulations that reward the use of single (African) language production in localities outside of the main Johannesburg and Cape Town hubs (Teer‐Tomaselli 2019). In line with this, the national broadcaster has adopted a tight division of language broadcasting, as discussed. The predominantly large number of isiZulu and isiXhosa viewers ensures that dramas produced in these languages receive the largest audiences, but other smaller ­language groups are also catered to. The commercial broadcasters, including eTV and the Mzanzi channels of DStv, have emphasized the production of programs that foreground the viewing preferences of people who prefer to be entertained in their own language. Thus, programs are more unilingual, and ethnically and culturally specific, while making space for intercultural and interlinguistic sharing. Contemporary drama storylines focusing on local communities with unique cultural identities and practices have started to problematize the previous message of multiculturalism; the emphasis now is on “authentic” African experiences in the contemporary situation. The pull between tradition and modernity is a repeated leitmotif; but it is the here and now that is being explored, rather than a nostalgia for

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a world long‐gone. Yolisa Pahle, head of General Entertainment at Naspers (the holding company of DStv), emphasized this point in her stirring statement that the company’s focus is on “sharing powerful stories for Africans, by Africans, because we understand the importance of unique, home grown content” (City Press 2016). For some writers, directors and producers, this has been a liberation of sorts, as the fixed notion of apartheid, post‐apartheid, and reconciliation as being the only South African stories is being supplanted by a range of explorations into identity, relationships, crime, and extravagant lifestyles. Duma Ka Ndlovu noted that “South Africans want stories that reflect their lives. But they don’t want stories that look down on them or patronize them. They want people to understand black life, township life and African life; something that gives them a sense of pride” (Mkwanazi 2015). Ndlovu went on to say, “the interesting thing about the sudden upheaval of local content is we don’t have to toyi‐toyi, march or to ask for it. The time is right” (Mkwanazi 2015). In a similar fashion, contemporary storylines are less didactic than previously. The “new” South Africa coincided with the rise of HIV/AIDS pandemic and for a decade and a half, resources from both government departments and the foreign aid donor community financed a slew of “edu‐entertainment” programs carrying pro‐ social messages to inform and educate the South African public on the transmission, prevention, and treatment of HIV, and more importantly, on the need for support for those living with AIDS. Several important and well‐received series were produced, including Soul City (1994–2014), Gaz’lam (2002–2004) and Intersextions (2010–2014), all of which commanded large audiences at the time (Goldstein et al. 2005; Govender et  al. 2013; King’ara 2013). Although the HIV crisis is far from resolved, and AIDS is now regarded as a chronic, rather than a life‐ending, condition, there are fewer programs with the prime objective of changing attitudes. Televisual programming has shifted in focus from behavior change that pertains to attitudes and beliefs and practices, to social change, including empowerment and social cohesion.

Language Language is clearly a factor in cultural proximity and differentiation. Whereas multilingualism was the norm 20 years ago with English  –  both spoken and as subtitles – being used as an anchor, this highly constructed notion of linguistic inclusiveness is no longer dominant. Now the majority of entertainment programs use a single language, often with subtitling to expand audience accessibility. Additionally, this language usage differs from the apartheid‐era notion of ethnic separation with its pristine use of vernacular words and phrases; today angloisms and slang are common. African languages in television dramas and even advertisements are not only used as “carriers of information but as exploitable symbols of trustworthiness, ­multiculturalism, belonging and innovation” (Dowling and Grier 2015).



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Locality A second difference that is apparent in the past decade is the increased emphasis on locality. Generally, soap operas are relatively “generic” in their identified location, yet productions like Uzalo, Muvhango, and The Queen are very specifically set in a particular locale. Locality has always been an important index of authenticity in both South African cinema and television, where “‘township space’ is utilized as a  central location to represent the dynamics of authentic black South African ­stories” (Ellapen 2007). Jordache Ellapen (2007) has argued that in the past the “place images” of the “township space” in post‐apartheid South Africa subscribed to “place myths” that informed the space of the township during apartheid. This idea carried with it a highly constructed “othering” to suit the political ideology of apartheid, resulting in a “fixing” or “freezing” of subsequent portrayals. However, more recent programs have attempted to redefine these representations. The shooting of Uzalo in a township location like KwaMashu, where poverty, color, and vibrancy collide, subverts the often‐typical glamorous setting of many other South African soap operas which are usually shot on set in Johannesburg. KwaMashu, located in the north of Durban, was built specifically in terms of the 1950 Group Areas Act, with its residents having been forcibly removed from other, usually multiracial, areas in Durban. Sarah Gibson (2018) argues that the social realism and cultural proximity are complemented through the distinctive aesthetic of Uzalo that foregrounds the spectacular realism of landscapes of KwaZulu‐Natal and KwaMashu. The Uzalo producers consciously used the township as a character in its own right (Gibson 2018). In an interview, Thuli Zuma, one of the Uzalo directors, elaborated: I think one of the really cool things about being in KwaMashu is that it makes it more relatable. Like Generations is great. They have opened up more but for a while a large part of their world was one of high flying, which is really entertaining and fun to watch but is not necessarily the lead experience of a lot of people watching the show. [Uzalo is] set in townships; I think that’s another way in which the audience is able to relate to the world and to our characters. (Gibson 2018)

Consumerism Consumerism is the third most notable change in the last decade. The contradiction of the SABC’s mandate as a public service broadcaster and its predominantly commercial funding model, which in turn encourages programming that is attractive to audiences rather than being necessarily “good” for them, is well documented. The tendency to celebrate consumption has been lamented by a number of theorists (Barnett 1999; Leslie 2009; Smit 2016). It is not surprising, therefore, that television programming follows the impulse of conspicuous display, a hallmark of a greatly

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unequal society. As far back as 2009, Michael Leslie explored the way in which the South African television industry generated newly constituted visual images of black people, while reinforcing the institutional and ideological hegemony of capitalism in South African society (Leslie 2009). While his analysis verged on the conspiratorial idea that a “hidden hand” dictated the content of television to some shadowy ideological end, there is no doubt that conspicuous spending and display permeate many of the current television shows. Generations, that historically most‐loved of all soapie‐dramas, is set in the glamorous world of advertising agencies, fast cars, fast living, and sumptuous wardrobes. In her ethnographic audience research, Michele Tager (2010) explored the manner in which the program motivated viewers toward social mobility, social action, and social change. Uzalo contrasts the worldly and opulent lifestyles of the Xulu gangster family with the spirituality, humility, and morality of the church‐going Mdlesthe family (Gibson et al. 2019). With respect to previous soapies, Gaz’lam and The Lab, Loren Kruger (2010, p. 78) labeled this implied critique of excess as a “critique of stealth” which identifies the confusion between “the empowerment of the majority with the enrichment of the few.” These programs contrast poverty and struggle with the “celebration of conspicuous consumption and (its) emulation in mass market entertainment” (Kruger 2010, p. 76).

Variety, Magazines, and Reality Programs The second most popular set of genres include variety, magazine programs, and reality shows. While each of these can be divided into multiple subgenres, as with soapies and dramas, there is a degree of overlap: variety and reality shows take on the guise of game‐show and competition formats, with the winners from these moving onto being the celebrity hosts of magazines, and in turn, starring in their own reality programming. Therefore, in this overview it is useful to consider some of the overarching attributes they all share, notably the celebration of consumerism and celebrity, two tropes that often go hand in hand. While drama may surreptitiously critique material excess, magazine and “reality” shows acclaim it less ambiguously. Our Perfect Wedding, now in its third season, was the subject of Alexia Smit’s incisive analysis of the way in which consumer freedom is associated with the freedom offered by post‐apartheid South Africa and “post‐ feminist discourses” that allow “simultaneity of freedoms, obligations, allegiances and choices” (Smit 2016, p. 71). She explores “the relationship between peoples’ financial means and their capacity to celebrate and confirm love,” while at the same time noting that “the show also demonstrates an awareness of the precariousness of the upward class mobility that it celebrates” (Smit 2016, p. 68). More obviously extravagant is the three‐part docu‐reality Becoming Mrs. Jones, showcasing the wedding preparations, the traditional African ceremony, the all‐ white church service, and reception of “celeb” Minnie Dlamini to businessman Quinton Jones. Dlamini is the star, director, and producer of the program, accolades



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she added to her previous roles of actress, model, radio, and television presenter. The show, produced for ShowMax, the add‐on pay service to DStv, is a joyous and unashamed salutation to fashion, lifestyle, and class mobility. The Real Housewives of Johannesburg, a spinoff of the international franchise of a similar name, promises to give viewers a glimpse into the high life. Needlessly to say, the affluent “housewives” featured in the program are hardly representative of many viewers: a rainbow selection of a beauty‐spa owner, socialite and golfer, second‐princesses in sminor beauty pageants and the like provide an exercise in glamorous voyeurism. Franchises, such has the one above, have been a staple of South African television over the years, including The Apprentice, Big Brother, So You Think You Can Dance, and Idols. Idols is instructive, since its format lends itself to the promotion of the channel (DStv) beyond the screen, with regional auditions and competitions held in every province. It also identifies emerging musicians and performers, although few of these have achieved lasting success. More successfully promoted in this regard are the judges, for whom one or two on‐air seasons can catapult a minor DIY celebrity into a household name as a full‐blown celebrity. Following Daniel Boornstin’s classic (if circular) definition of a celebrity as “a person who is well‐known for his well‐ knowness” (cited in van Krieken 2012), the phenomenon of personality‐­ construction is clearly illustrated in a number of reality, magazine, and variety programs. Idols judge, choreographer and all‐round celeb Somizi “Somgaga” Mhlongo, typifies this trend. Characterized as “flamboyant” and “charismatic,” his fame rests in large part on his outrageous wardrobe, extremely expensive cars and accessories, and his openly gay lifestyle (very unusual in Black African society) that includes an ongoing saga of his romances, engagements and planned nuptials. All this makes him an ideal candidate to host his own reality show, Living the Life with Somizi. Of course, what the DYI‐celeb critique underplays is the commitment to performance and tenacity, since successful elevation to a “television darling” with extensive social media exposure is not assured, but can be seen as a measure of good planning and hard work.

Sports The sale of sports rights across the world is a billion dollar industry, connecting sponsors, television companies and sporting authorities. South Africans have the reputation of being a “sports mad nation” and so it is somewhat surprising that the viewership for sports programs is relatively low on the list of most viewed programs. Most coverage is given to soccer (football), rugby, and cricket. The South African Broadcasting Act (RSA 1999, clause 30[7]) stipulates that “national sporting events, as identified in the public interest,” cannot be broadcast exclusively by subscription television and should be available to the general public. The intention of the Act in respect of the broadcast of sport is therefore very clear. It implicitly recognizes the enormous importance of sports in the lives of South Africans and further obliges the public broadcaster to ensure that South Africans can watch the sports of their choice,

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be they national events or minority sports. However, this “national imperative” jars with economic reality that among key demographic groups  –  affluent male ­viewers – sports content is seen as a pivotal driving force in television marketing (Evens and Iosfidis 2013). DStv, through its subsidiary channels SuperSport, has long pursued a strategy of acquiring extensive – and sometimes exclusive – coverage of the three main sporting codes, along with high profile international events. By the mid‐1990s, it was estimated that around 50% of subscription decoders were sold on the basis of providing sports coverage (Baker and Glovovic 1996, p. 255). Despite a succession of meetings between the SABC and DStv in an attempt to come to an agreement on the acquisition and broadcasting of sporting events, the fierce competition for sports rights between the two has pushed the price of both domestic and international sport into stratospheric levels. The SABC has on occasion lamented that it “does not have the proper funding to go after high‐name events such as World Cup Soccer Games or Olympic Games because those rights are held by international federations that charge exorbitant fees” (RSA Parliament Briefing 2001). In place of “live” coverage which is broadcast by DStv, the SABC broadcasts time‐delayed versions of sporting events that reach the public long after the conclusion of the actual event. The SABC, with its emphasis on local events, also realizes less financial value from both sponsorship and advertising, since much of local sport is appreciated by lower socioeconomic audiences, while more affluent audiences, who attract high‐ value advertising, tend to watch international events. Despite this, however, the SABC has consistently overspent its sports acquisition budget each year for the past five years. DStv has not published a breakdown of acquisition spend for South Africa, but programming acquired for the whole of its African networks exceeds ZAR2billion annually (ICASA 2018).

Primetime News on Television Within the literature that advocates the media’s contribution to a rational “public sphere” the news media, including television, are considered to be facilitators of the democratic process. Audiences are constituted as “citizens” rather than simply consumers. The role of news is to disseminate authoritative information to the public, allowing for a better understanding of current issues, and in this way, to promote a higher level of more informed civic participation. This public information role led ICASA to include a stipulation in the licensing of FTA channels that they include at least two hours of news programs daily, of which at least 30 minutes packaged as a single program had to be broadcasting during primetime, i.e. between 18:00 and 22:00 hours. These broadcasts hark back to a pre‐multichannel era when programming choices were sparse, and when it could be assumed that a large proportion of the country’s citizenry would simultaneously tune into the same news broadcast, contributing a shared view of issues that affected the nation. It is worth remembering that 55% of the South African population rely entirely on FTA transmissions.



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The three SABC channels still operate largely on the concept of “shared information” through shared news bulletins. There are four evening bulletins across the three channels during primetime, and two bulletins at 17:30 just outside the window. Each bulletin runs for 30 minutes. All bulletins are produced by the news division within the SABC and comprise the international standard mix of domestic and global news, followed by business, sport, and the weather. The bulletins are essentially the same over all six broadcasts, written primarily in English and translated into the various broadcast languages. Where interviews are included, these are subtitled from the original language in which they were recorded to match the language of the bulletin. The bulletins produced in African languages are grouped into mutually intelligible, cognate languages that alternate over different evenings. For instance, the flagship 19:00 bulletin on SABC1 is broadcast in isiZulu on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday; and in isiXhosa on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. In this way, the SABC is able to cover all the official languages over a 48‐hour period. Thus, while there are six bulletins within the primetime window, there is a single, uniform narrative from the SABC bulletins. Nevertheless, there is a different look and feel to the bulletins, partly through the use of different languages, and partly through the mobilization of different presenters, thus creating a “personality system employing virtual direct address to the viewer […] in a ‘here’ and ‘now’ that is composed of what are actually highly processed and symbolic images” (Morse 2004, p. 210). This juxtaposition of apparent authenticity and objective “fact” versus the scripted, edited. and highly constructed reportage and its embedded ideological stance is very clear in the South African daily television news bulletins. The only other FTA channel, eTV, is also obliged to provide a primetime bulletin in English, the format being similar to that of the SABC, but the source of the news is entirely different, as eTV has its own newsroom, journalists, and editing teams. Primetime news viewing has remained relatively stable. The share of viewership across the four FTA channels reflects the general level of viewership for most programming and is indicative of the language divide, ranging from 4.3 million viewers for SABC1 (isiZulu and isiXhosa), 1.2 million for (Afrikaans bulletin), and about half a million for the SeSotho, Setswana, and Sepedi bulletin on SABC2. The competition for audience numbers between the two English language bulletins is robust, with eTV at 670 000 consistently surpassing SABC3 (English) at 450 000 (Bratton 2017). Compared to other formats, the viewership for news has been stable over the past five years (from 2012 to 2018) (Bratton 2017). However, the viewership is far smaller than the entertainment genres – soaps, dramas, and reality/game shows – that are also broadcast in primetime. In the period before multichannel broadcasting, news bulletins used to be the most prestigious (and profitable) segment of daily broadcast schedule. However, in 2016, with falling audiences, the pressure to use primetime for high‐audience viewing (particularly soap operas and drama), and the increasing cost of producing news, prompted eTV to request ICASA to relax the stipulation requiring news within primetime, a request that was denied on public interest grounds.

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News on Subscription Television DStv and StarTV are the two main players in subscription television space, and each carries an array of 24‐hour news channels. BBC World News, CNN, and Sky are featured on both services. In total, StarSat carries 11 services, including Fox News and two African channels, TV/C from Nigeria and African News from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; however, it does not carry any South African channels. DStv has a wider variety, in addition to the international services, it carries News and eNCA (specifically produced as a 24‐hour channel, not to be confused with the primetime bulletins discussed above), a wide variety of state‐sponsored services including Russia Today, Al Jazeera (broadcast from the Qatar Emirate), CGTN (the official Chinese news channel for foreign countries, and NDTV from India; and a spread of business news channels  –  CNBC, Bloomberg and Business Day (a local channel owned by print‐media company, Times Media). Some of these state‐sponsored channels appear on both bouquets. Since the subscription channels are required to carry all FTA broadcasters, the daily primetime bulletins are also available on both services. The viewing figures of news channels on satellite television are extremely low. Local news channels are viewed more than their international counterparts, with eNCA leading the way (69 321 average monthly viewers in February 2018), followed by SABC News (39 594 average monthly viewers in February 2018). International news channels have just a few thousand viewers a night.

Conclusion In this brief overview of audiences and programming, this chapter has illustrated the expansion of choice available to South African audiences in the past 10 years, especially with respect to local content programs, many in African languages. These shows are carried not only by the public broadcaster (SABC), but by the commercial broadcasters as well, who have found that local content makes good business sense. The entertainment genres of soapie‐dramas continue to be the most watched of all programming, but increasing reality programming, based on the enjoyment of conspicuous consumption and celebrity, is attracting greater audiences. News programming has lost much of its prestige, with primetime bulletins drawing lackluster audiences, and 24‐hour channels on subscription television relegated to niche viewing. Television in South Africa remains the default medium of choice for the great majority of people. The changes and continuities that characterize it provide an ongoing opportunity for research and commentary.

Note 1 “Bouquet” is a term used to designate a selection of television or audio channels marketed as a subscription unit. It is ubiquitously used in South Africa, and is interchangeable with the term “package” to denote the same thing.



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References Baker, R. and Glovovic, J. (1996). Sport on SABC. In: Public Service Broadcasting: Policy Directions Towards 2000 (ed. A. Mpofu), 250–274. Cape Town: Anthropos. Barnett, C. (1999). Broadcasting the rainbow nation: media, democracy and national ­building in South Africa. Antipode 31 (3): 274–303. Bratton, M. (2017). Primetime News by the numbers. The Media Online. https:// themediaonline.co.za/2017/09/breaking‐down‐prime‐time‐television‐news‐ viewers. BRC (Broadcasting Research Council) (2018). BRC TAMS update, April, 2018. http://brcsa. org.za/brc‐tams‐update‐april‐2018. Chronis, M. (2013). Tracking South Africa’s tastes in television. The Media Online. https:// themediaonline.co.za/2013/06/tracking‐south‐africas‐tastes‐in‐television. City Press (2016). Future of South Africa’s television entertainment lies with our creatives. https://www.news24.com/Opinions/Voices/future‐of‐sas‐tv‐entertainment‐lies‐ with‐our‐creatives‐20161118. Dowling, T. and Grier, L. (2015). ‘Mnandi‐licious!’ Trends in African language usage in South African television advertising. Journal of Social Dynamics 41 (3): 555–575. Ellapen, J. (2007). The cinematic township: cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and who can claim the rights to representation in post‐apartheid cinema. Journal of African Cultural Studies 19 (1): 113–138. Evens, T. and Iosfidis, P. (2013). The Political Economy of Television Sports Rights. New York: Springer, Palgrave MacMillan. Gibson, S. (2018). The landscapes and aesthetics of soap opera: townships, television and tourism. Journal of African Cinemas 10 (1–2): 95–110. Gibson, S., Dyll, L., and Teer‐Tomaselli, R. (2019). Entertaining the nation: incentivising indigenous soap opera in South Africa. In: World Entertainment Media: Global, Regional and Local Perspectives (ed. P. Sigismondi), 142–152. London: Routledge. Goldstein, S., Usdin, S., Scheepers, E., and Japhet, G. (2005). Communicating HIV/AIDS: what works? A report on the impact evaluation of Soul City’s fourth series. Journal of Health Communication 10 (5): 465–483. Govender, E., Dyll‐Myklebust, L., Delate, R., and Sundar, T. (2013). Social networks as a platform to discuss sexual networks: Intersexions and Facebook as catalysts for behaviour change. The African Communication Research Journal: Using Entertainment Formats in Educational Broadcasting 6 (1): 65–88. Heyns, A. and Tager, M. (2013). 7de Laan and selected Afrikaans viewers. In: Tuning in (eds. M. Tager and C. Chasi). Cape Town: Pearson. Icasa (2018). Inquiry into Subscription‐TV. https://www.icasa.org.za/uploads/files/ multichoice‐Inquiry‐into‐Subscription‐TV‐Presentation.pdf. King’ara, G.N. (2013). Mining edutainment from mainstream soap operas. The African Communication Research Journal: Using Entertainment Formats in Educational Broadcasting 6 (1): 89–110. Kruger, L. (2010). Critique by stealth: aspiration, consumption and class in post‐apartheid television drama. Critical Arts 24 (1): 75–98. Kyknet (2015). Suidooster. https://kyknet.DStv.com/program/suidooster. Leslie, M. (2009). Television and capitalist hegemony in the “new South Africa.” Howard Journal of Communication 6 (3): 164–172.

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Liebes, T. and Livingstone, S. (2005). European soap operas: the diversification of a genre. In: Communication Theory & Research (eds. D. McQuail, P. Golding and E. de Bens), 235–254. London: Sage. Marx‐Knoetze, H. (2016). Ignorance‐making in 7de Laan: a critical whiteness studies ­perspective. Communicatio 42 (4): 27–46. Milton, V. (2008). Local is Lekker: nation, narration and the SABC’s Afrikaans programmes. Communicatio 34 (2): 255–277. Mkwanazi, K. (2015) Telenovela fever steams up. https://mg.co.za/article/2015‐09‐23‐telenovela‐ fever‐steams‐up‐sa Morse, M. (2004). News as performance. In: The Television Studies Reader (eds. R.C. Allen and A. Hill), 209–225. London and New York: Routledge. Roome, D. (1997). Transformation and reconciliation: ‘Simunye,’ a flexible model. Critical Arts 11 (1–2): 66–94. RSA (1999). Republic of South Africa, Broadcasting Act, [No 4/1999]. https://www.gov.za/ sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/20042gon584.pdf RSA (2001). South African Parliamentary Briefing of the Sport and Recreation Portfolio Committee, 12 June 2001. https://pmg.org.za/committee‐meeting/577. SABC Education (2014). Telling the South African story through storytelling. http://www. sabceducation.co.za/kweek/heritage‐arts‐culture/item/the‐power‐of‐arts‐1‐telling‐the‐south‐ african‐story‐through‐storytelling. Smit, A. (2016). Reading South African bridal television: consumption, fantasy and ­judgement. Communicatio 42 (4): 63–78. Straubhaar, J. (2007). World Television: From Global to Local. London: Sage. Tager, M. (2010). The black and the beautiful: Perceptions of (a) new generation(s). Critical Arts: A Journal of Cultural Studies 24 (1). Teer‐Tomaselli, R. (2011). Legislation, regulation, and management in the South African broadcasting landscape: a case study of the South African broadcasting corporation. In:  The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy (eds. R. Mansell and M. Raboy), 414–431. Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell. Teer‐Tomaselli, R. (2019). South African television moves into the global age. In: Routledge Companion to Global Television (ed. S. Shimpach). London: Routledge. Van der Merwe, N. (2013). “We are all equals there”: selected viewers’ reception of multi‐­ culturalism in 7de Laan. In: Tuning In (eds. M. Tager and C. Chasi), 97–114. Cape Town: Pearson. van Krieken, R. (2012). Celebrity Society. London: Routledge.

Chapter 22

Television in the Arab Region: History, Structure, and Transformations Joe F. Khalil

This chapter focuses on Arab‐language television directed toward Arab audiences. Aside from their shared Arabic language (with its own regional and local variations), these audiences could not be more politically, economically, culturally, and even religiously diverse. Politically, the audiences are citizens of 21 countries, each ­subscribing to a different political system, from religious monarchies to republics. Spread over Western Asia and North Africa, these independent states form three distinct groups: the Levant on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula, and the Maghreb in the North African states. Economically, the Gulf states are the richest because of their reliance on oil revenues in comparison to the Levant with its service‐oriented economies and the North African states with their vast natural resources and large population (Mahajan 2012). Demographically, the region is characterized by a large youth bulge with ­staggering unemployment figures (United Nations Development Programme 2016). Culturally, the Arab Middle East is a cradle of world civilizations, a crossroads of cultures with a long colonial history in North Africa; this is less the case in the Levant and the Gulf. The result is a complex set of cultural norms and practices that tends to value collectivism, conservatism, and religiosity. Yet, these norms take different meanings and are differently practiced across the region. While much of the Arab world is Muslim, there are also other religious and ethnic minorities in the Arab‐speaking world that make up its ethnoreligious social mosaic. This chapter consists of four parts. The first is a brief overview of the development of Arab television since its introduction in the late 1950s until today. It is ­followed by an analytical description of the structure of Arab television with a focus on ownership, production, distribution, and advertising. The third part provides an A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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in‐depth discussion of television content and programming practices. Finally, the last section is dedicated to an analysis of how Arab television is integrating into global TV industries.

Background The Arab Region Two highly distinctive features of the region have significantly marked the ­development of contemporary Arab television. First, pan‐Arabism, which rests on the ideology of developing a united Arab nation, was a proclaimed ideal and shared feeling among Arabs since the turn of the last century. In practice, inter‐Arab divisions and the political realities of post‐World War II state formations, coupled with economic and cultural divisions, made pan‐Arabism an impossibility (Abu‐Rabi 2004). However, dreams of pan‐Arabism were reenergized in the 1990s with the emergence of satellite television, which allowed for signals to cross borders and unite Arabs around shared media content (Alterman 1998). The tensions between the economic promises of a regional television market of more than 350 million people and the particular needs of local audiences in national contexts has often animated decisions regarding television content. In fact, pan‐Arab satellite, just like pan‐Arabism, attracted a handful of states with economic, political, or cultural clout: Gulf States were financing television content produced in the Levant and Egypt and often ignored North African states (Kraidy and Khalil 2009). The second feature relates to armed conflicts that have characterized the contemporary Middle East. The links between these conflicts and the development of Arab television cannot be overstated. The ongoing Israeli–Arab conflict (1948–) has been central to the development of Arab news networks to provide propaganda, alternative accounts, and an Arab voice. The Gulf War (1990–1991) precipitated satellite broadcasting and inspired the establishment of private television channels in Europe. The Lebanese war (1975–1990) paved the way for the development of unofficial television stations that became the foundation of private commercial channels in peace time. A similar path was taken in Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011) following the fall of their dictators. The various movements associated with Arab uprisings (2010–) have prompted careful restructuring of the television landscape in Egypt (2011), Tunisia (2010), Syria (2011–), and elsewhere (Sakr et  al. 2015). Conflicts have served the emergence, financing, and programming of a number of channels in the region. By way of background, the following is an abridged discussion of significant developments in the history of television in the region, which spans more than 50 years. From the 1960s to the 1990s, television was primarily terrestrial and state owned. Between 1990 and 2010, satellite televisions emerged as a technologically affordable commercial enterprise beaming its signals across the region, first from



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Europe and then from the Arab world. In 2010, the Arab region entered the era of convergence with traditional television, the internet, and a proliferation of devices intersecting to offer new opportunities for producers and consumers.

1960–1990: The Era of State Television Television was first introduced to Morocco in 1954 and to Lebanon in 1956 as commercial operations (Boyd 1999). By the early 1960s, Arab governments across the region raced to launch terrestrial television channels. Initiating a new era in reaching the masses, these pioneer broadcasting states (Egypt, Syria, and Iraq) used the airwaves to establish their sociopolitical, and in some cases religious, legitimacy (Saudi Arabia) (Kraidy and Khalil 2009). Television not only completed their media systems  –  which already included print and radio  –  but also complemented a ­declaration of legitimacy by parading images of rulers and their achievements. Local and inter‐Arab productions were encouraged, Western series and movies were ­regularly scheduled, and specialized channels were created (religious, youth, foreign programs, etc.) In post‐independence Arab states, the programming of terrestrial broadcasts focused on anti‐colonial, development, and modernization discourses. Egyptian ­television, in particular, was a beacon for the Nasserite pan‐Arabism, a nationalist rhetoric that provided a cultural and political cement to unite much of the Arab world. For much of the 1960s, Arab states, with the exception of Lebanon, maintained their control over television by sustaining and expanding government‐run programming. Closely associated with both nationalist discourse and inter‐Arab rivalries, some Arab states aimed to use television for political leverage outside their national borders. With equipment purchased from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in the 1960s, Egyptian television expanded its coverage to reach the Eastern Mediterranean, the Eastern borders of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, parts of both Sudan, and Libya (Khalil 2009). Opting for a different approach, Kuwait offered technical and managerial assistance to establish and maintain a television service in the Emirate of Dubai between 1969 and 1972 (Kraidy and Khalil 2009). After using satellite technology to link up its terrestrial broadcasts, Saudi Arabia began offering live coverage of the holy Hajj ceremonies in 1972. The introduction of satellite broadcasts initiated a new era in Arab television. Although the first satellite broadcasts in the Arab world were religious, the decision to venture into satellite broadcasts was purely political. In the aftermath of the third Arab–Israeli war in 1967, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Tunisia recommended using new satellite technology to develop Arab communication systems. Initially, satellites were supposed to serve Arab states with independent telephone systems, news exchanges, and inter‐Arab development projects, particularly in education and the arts. The polemics surrounding ArabSat were reflective of inter‐Arab conflicts and the ability of Saudi Arabia to outmaneuver other Arab states in making

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significant decisions about the objectives of the project (Sakr 2007). The first ArabSat satellite was put into orbit in 1985, but the potential for effective satellite media would have to wait few years.

1990–2010: Satellite Television When Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, they immediately blocked all international media coverage from Iraq except for CNN. Little did Saddam know that his efforts to limit access to information would be the incentive for many Arabs to acquire receivers and tune to satellite television. For many Arab states, the introduction of satellite television was a necessary evil: Arab soldiers ­stationed in the Arabian Peninsula to liberate Kuwait needed access to some form of entertainment and information. Egypt, which had just launched its own satellite into orbit, led the way with the broadcast of a satellite version of its terrestrial channel, the Egyptian Space Channel (ESC). During the Gulf War/Desert Storm, Arab governments realized that their publics had migrated from the screens of state‐owned media to surfing any available satellite channel. Driven by a combination of economic imperatives, technological restrictions, and political pressures, Arab media entrepreneurs or opposition parties decided to locate their satellite broadcasting operations in London or Rome. Liberal economic policies in Europe in the 1990s provided an incentive for housing and supporting a number of operations. The launch of the first private Arab satellite channel, the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), came in 1991; it was owned by Walid Al Ibrahim, a nephew of the then Saudi King Fahed. At first, Arab governments were concerned about the political implications of these European‐based satellite channels criticizing them or showing dissenting opinions. The launch and termination of BBC Arabic over its broadcast of a program highly critical of Saudi Arabia inspired the launch of Al Jazeera in 1996. The case of BBC Arabic was only the tip of an iceberg in a series of moves to ban, co‐opt, and harass channels or journalists. But for the most part, private channels toed the line in terms of politics while presenting a range of alternative programming to Arab terrestrial, mostly state‐owned, channels. During the 1990s, entertainment programs became the object of religious and political moral panics. The politico‐religious alliance used government regulations and religious sermons in an attempt to curb possible effects of entertainment television. Saudi Arabia banned satellite receivers and its clerics issued a fatwa against specific programs, while Egypt tried to make access to satellite programming prohibitive to the majority of its population. Both attempts failed to keep audiences from seeking free‐to‐air channels or even illegally accessing pay TV programming. The events of 9/11 had direct and indirect implications on the satellite media landscape. The United States and its allies called on Arab governments to support democratic reforms, particularly issues related to freedom of speech. Leading up to the Iraq War, Arab governments were reluctant to be perceived as limiting basic freedoms and, consequently, they allowed media expansion in specific areas. As a



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result, the Arab television landscape tilted toward niche entertainment channels ranging from music to sports and Western content. Starting in 2001, Arab channels located in Europe precipitated their relocation to the region. Coupled with repatriation of Arab funds and unprecedented oil revenues, investment in media‐related projects became a needed and attractive proposition. Also eager for foreign direct investments (FDI), Arab governments competed to provide the necessary infrastructure for media investments, particularly the development of economic free zones dedicated to media activities (Khalil 2017). With the onset of the Iraq War in 2003, Arab governments saw the demise of their national systems. With the exception of Abu Dhabi Television, state‐owned channels were unable to provide either adequate coverage or relevant analysis of the war. Moreover, these channels reflected the opinions of authorities and not the pulse on the street. Instead, 24‐hour news channels Al Jazeera and al‐Arabiya served as the preferred information sources for much of the Arab world. In fact, these channels carry two distinct visions of who the Arabs are and what should be their social, economic, cultural, and  –  of course  – political priorities: Al Jazeera adopts an anti‐globalization, pro‐Islamic slant, in ­contrast to the very liberal slant of al‐Arabiya’s content (Kraidy and Khalil 2009).

2010–Today: The Era of Post‐Broadcast TV The various movements and revolutions, known as the Arab Spring, which started in 2010, have signaled significant shifts in the development of Arab television. First, the transnational satellite system that dominated the previous two decades demonstrated its relevance, but the national systems also proved their resilience and returned en force (Guaaybess 2013). While regional and international news channels played a significant role in covering the various uprisings, state‐owned or private national channels played an equally important role in information and misinformation. In this news vacuum, citizens relied on a multitude of sources to corroborate and make sense of these uprisings. In addition to television, viral content in the form of citizen‐journalists’ YouTube videos became a valuable source for the public and news reporters alike (Anden‐Papadopoulos 2013). Closely linked is the emergence of a renewed interest in local issues, stories, and representations. In news, current affairs, and entertainment, the television industry started to look inward to develop programs with a clear national focus. In post‐­ revolutionary Tunisia, television regulation, licensing, and program mandates emphasized the need to recognize and address the desires of Tunisian citizens. Even entertainment programs like the late‐night show Labess (How Are You Doing?) ­ventures into critical political, social, and cultural issues. Similarly, dramatic series such as Wled Moufida (The Sons of Moufida) display an unprecedented portrayal of  the plights of poor people and their communities. Tunisia’s new or rebranded channels are competing to cover local issues, produce local dramas, and play a role in local politics. While Tunisia may have successfully, albeit cautiously, transferred to a more democratic media landscape, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen have yet to do so.

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In fact, the current regime in Egypt is successfully reconfiguring private television stations under the umbrella of the president’s office, while Syrian and Yemeni ­opposition channels have had to relocate or establish themselves in Dubai or Beirut for fear of retaliation. Third, the vast adoption of social media outlets and media sharing practices allowed YouTube to play a role in opening up spaces for alternative voices and talents to express themselves in the Arab world. It allowed Saudi (U‐Turn and Telefaz 11) or Jordanian (Kharabeesh) talents to develop their own YouTube channels and produce web series, stand‐up, and sketch comedies for an increasingly dissatisfied youth audience (Khalil 2016). Increased and wider access to internet and mobile connectivity, cheaper and more accessible production tools, and a yearning for ­representation led to the emergence of these alternative media. In fact, consumer demand is so strong that Saudi Arabia leads the world in YouTube downloads (Dubai Press Club and Dubai Media City 2017). Traditional broadcasters took note of these changing audience tastes and tried to attract talent away from these platforms. For example, Egyptian Bassem Youssef, also known as the Jon Stewart of the Arab world, started on YouTube with a show titled B+ before moving to television with al Bernameg in 2011. The show was canceled several times due to political pressures, and moved to three different channels before being terminated in 2014. Whether it is due to conflicts, audience tastes, or technological affordances, the current era of Arab television has signaled the emergence of a post‐broadcast scene that, as we shall discuss, is characterized by local content production, multiplatform distribution, and an integration in global television industries.

Structure of Arab Television Ownership This section explores the structure of Arab television with a focus on broadcast channels. Because television is perceived as having significant political, social, and cultural impact, the ownership of television channels is subject to close state control. In states such as Lebanon, where private television ownership is permitted, the broadcast license is subject to a ministerial decree that reflects the rights of political groups represented in the government. In other states, such as the United Arab Emirates, a media‐free zone system with specific legal structures to control the establishment of private television channels has been developed to allow private  ownership of television channels. In many states, such as Syria and Egypt, ­private channels were licensed to regime‐proxy businessmen who could be trusted not to use television against the regimes (Khalil 2014b). By law, Arab states maintain control over terrestrial broadcasting and control satellite access for channels operating within their territories. Terrestrial channels are, for the most part, state‐owned commercial enterprises funded by the state with



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some advertising revenues. In the 1990s, Arab television went from government‐ owned terrestrial services to private regional satellite channels. This second model of commercial free‐to‐air channels aims to attract an Arab audience across the region; the channels are often supported by a political or investor patron and receive advertising revenues. Free‐to‐air channels represent the majority of Arab satellite channels. Between 2014 and 2017, the number of free‐to‐air channels grew by over 800% to more than 1000 channels broadcasting in Standard Definition (SD), High Definition (HD), or both (Al Atiyat and Khreisha 2017). Since 2010, there has been a strong return for the states as owners of television channels. In Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, the heir to the throne, managed to take substantial control in the two largest regional private television networks, Rotana and MBC. In Egypt, president Sissi consolidated his grip on private television satellite channels through a process of forced mergers and acquisitions. The third model includes non‐commercial and free‐to‐air satellite channels that are often funded by Arab or foreign states, or religious or dissident groups. The declared objectives of these broadcasters are as varied as the number of countries involved in funding and hosting them. Some groups, such as Lebanese Hizbollah and Yemeni Houthis, have developed channels to advance their political agendas and support their radical activities. Some countries aim to promote cultural interests, including the Italian Rai and the German Deutsche Welle (DW), providing news as well as documentaries about their countries. Other channels, such as the relaunched BBC Arabic and Russiya al‐Yaum (Russia Today), aim to explain British and Russian policies, respectively, toward the region. The fourth model is multichannel, subscription‐based pay TV providers. This model is dominated by three  main players: the Qatar‐owned beIN Networks, the Saudi‐Kuwaiti‐owned Orbit Showtime Network (OSN), and the Saudi‐owned Al Majid. These are large ­investments supported by subscriptions and often involve forms of political (beIN and OSN) or religious (al Majid) patronage.

Production There is a long and rich history of producing television content in the region. It is characterized by the large role that production clusters – particularly Beirut, Cairo, and Dubai  –  play in the development, production, and marketing of television ­content. With the introduction of satellite television broadcasting, there has been a shift away from in‐house productions toward independent producers operating in various production clusters. Television productions in Beirut are the outcome of historical, sociocultural, and geopolitical factors. The country has a history of free press, commercial ­television, and established media education. In fact, the experience of Lebanese television ­ executives has been instrumental in establishing and managing ­commercial satellite channels. In this pluralistic cosmopolitan city, Lebanese and

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Arab talent have found fertile ground in which to develop, produce, and distribute programs that otherwise would have been censored. Beirut is not only a production cluster, but also a significant player in shaping the advertising aspect of regional television. Similarly, television production in Cairo is intertwined with the city’s media legacy and Egypt’s national security, political, and economic policies. The result is a cohabitation of a command and market economy. The Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC), also known as Cairo Media City, was created in 1997 in the Economic Free Zone. As the largest media company in Egypt, EMPC provides outdoor shooting areas, accommodations, studios, conference halls, and extras with no taxation. EMPC contributes to the growth of satellite television by ­providing infrastructure and facilitating production. However, informal media productions taking place in the city itself are increasing. Producers cite cheaper costs, flexible schedules, less bureaucracy, and creative freedom as reasons for locating their offices and productions outside EMPC. Media activity in the small emirate of Dubai is a byproduct of direct government policies. Since the late 1970s, Dubai has been a pioneer in pan‐Arab production and broadcasting. In fact, the government financed multinational Arabic dramas in the 1980s and Dubai TV was the first Arab government‐owned channel to broadcast globally. However, media activities remained a purview of the emirate’s rulers. Seeing the growth of private, “offshore” media, Dubai capitalized on its cosmopolitan appeal, quality of life, and zero‐level taxation to attract media professionals and companies. Launched in January 2001, Dubai Media City (DMC) was established to create an environment that would attract technology and media enterprises to operate locally, regionally, and globally from Dubai. At an initial investment of US $816 million, DMC currently awards licenses, organizes leases, and provides legal and governmental services (Khalil 2013). This model was ­successfully replicated in Dubai with several production‐specific zones, and across the rest of the emirates. Investments in regional production centers allowed for the growth of a “media  elite” comprised of independent producers who develop transnational co‐productions. As demand for content soared with the increase in television outlets, these independent producers commanded large budgets that allowed them to seek the talents, formats, locations, and production logistics to execute their ­projects. First, budgets supported the specialization in jobs. For instance, until recently directors were also producers. Second, budgets allowed the purchase of international formats such as Idol, Survivor, Fear Factor, and Star Academy. Third, budgets allowed productions to be de‐territorial and multiterritorial. In other words, a show could be conceived in Dubai, filmed in Cairo, and edited in Beirut, while at the same time, its talents could be Saudi, Lebanese, and Egyptian. With the emergence of subscription‐based, video‐on‐demand (VOD) platforms and their need for content with long‐term shelf life, producers shifted their operations to funding drama series, known as Musalsalat. These series employ multinational ­talent and are often filmed in multiple locations around the Arab world.



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Distribution Content is distributed through terrestrial and digital television, satellite channels and IPTV (Internet Protocol television). Although Arab states are mandated to shift their existing analog terrestrial broadcasts to digital, the move has been slow and riddled with technological and financial challenges. It is unlikely to be completed before 2030 (Miller et al. 2015). Direct‐to‐home satellite broadcasts are either free‐ to‐air or pay TV. They are primarily received across the Arab region and some of their content can be (and is) received in certain parts of Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Primarily, they both use three major satellite systems: Egypt‐owned Nilesat, Qatar‐owned Es’hailSat, and ArabSat, which is owned by a consortium of Arab states. Most channels are available on one or more satellites. Pay TV services are also available on cable TV and IPTV providers that operate locally in several countries, such as Kuwait Cable Vision in Kuwait, Invision in Saudi Arabia, Etisalat and du in the UAE, and Ooredoo in Qatar. By April 2017, there were 15 service ­providers in 10 countries in the Arab region offering commercial IPTV services (Al Atiyat 2017). The average rate for these services is around US $72.64 per month. Finally, a number of international and local broadcasting networks offer subscription‐based VOD services for viewers in the Middle East and North Africa. Such providers include Starz Play, icflix, Shahid, and Netflix.

Advertising Revenues There is enough evidence supported by industry insights to suggest that very few (if any) of these broadcast channels command a sizeable market share. In the US and many parts of the world, there is a symbiotic relationship between a television channel’s market share and advertising. Measuring a channel’s market share – its proportion of total television viewership – is essential to its worth to advertisers. In the Arab world, the relationship between market share and advertising is complicated by a long history of channel patronage, dubious advertising practices, and a lack of reliable ­audience research. The pan‐Arab market is estimated at 300 million viewers, and television advertising alone is estimated at US $740 million, dwarfing North America’s US $70.8 billion television ad expenditures in the same period. The advertising ­revenues are also in decline from a peak of US $1.43 billion in 2010 (Zenith n.d.). Even with additional revenue streams such as sponsorship, value‐added services, and program sales, there is a large disconnect between the number of channels and advertising revenue expenditure. For one, very few television channels handle their own media sales, instead outsourcing this role in return for a flat fee, yearly allowance, or both. In many cases, this has led to monopolistic practices where two or more media outlets are handled by the same company (Sakr et al. 2015). As a result, media representatives use various means, including aggressive promotional campaigns’ manipulation of results to ensure that their media portfolio is perceived as the most popular.

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The lack of reliable audience research is believed to hinder the development of a fully commercial satellite television sector. The main methods used for research are diaries, computer‐assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), surveys, and focus groups. In spite of the best efforts of internationally affiliated local companies such as Nielsen and Ipsos, the results are limited in sampling methods, accuracy of collection, and scope of coverage. They are primarily focused on Saudi Arabia as the most lucrative advertising market, and largely ignore the Maghreb countries of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Nevertheless, broadcasters, advertising agencies, and research companies agree that the tools and methods used in the region do not adequately or evenly assess the markets (Khalil 2014a). These multi‐stakeholders also agree that the “people meter”  –  a device attached to a television that electronically records ­audiences – is one way to get reliable audience measurement, but they disagree on who should bear its costs. Few markets, such the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon, have successfully adopted the people meter. The proliferation of satellite channels offering a range of various and attractive programming has resulted in a highly segmented viewership. With the introduction of pay TV and over‐the‐top (OTT) services, Arab audiences are finding themselves increasingly in control of their program choices, no longer beholden to specific channels. In addition to geographic and demographic considerations, viewers tend to look for specific types of programs depending on the time of day, season, and general sociopolitical environment. In times of crisis, they channel surf, looking for special footage or analysis. Thematic channels are late‐night or daytime favorites with youth and women. Serials, sitcoms, and reality TV command the majority of viewership during primetime. During the holy month of Ramadan, viewers return to terrestrial television for religious and more conservative programming. This brief, and rather unsophisticated, approach to viewership patterns suggests the ­shifting media landscape in the Arab world is part and parcel of the same forces segmenting the global television industry. In fact, audiences are becoming program‐ driven and not channel‐driven.

Television Content Programming Another way of engaging with the Arab satellite landscape is to examine its content. While acknowledging specific variations between state‐owned channels and privately owned channels in the acquisition, censorship, and scheduling structures, this discussion aims to assess the variety and complexity of this landscape. Broadly defined, the programming available on Arab television can be divided into news and current affairs, and entertainment programs. This section will also examine special programs associated with Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.



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Traditionally, state‐owned channels have adopted a programming policy that addresses the regime needs rather than public needs (Ayish 2010). As a result, their programming follows a top‐down approach that often results in a stale, didactic, and aesthetically unappealing image. With the growth and popularity of satellite and pay television, and in order to address an eroding audience, state channels such as Dubai TV started to revamp and relaunch their channels as early as 2004. This triggered a series of channel relaunches across the Arab region, in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Algeria, and Morocco. Still, in 2018, Saudi television is reorganizing to reflect the leadership’s current agenda of promoting a modern, prosperous state. Throughout the 1990s, the main competition was between commercial free‐to‐ air channels and pay TV channels. The former successfully replaced state channels and provided exciting, bold programming that attracts a transnational audience across demographic groups. The latter had to compete against a culture of “free television” by providing unique content while fighting rampant piracy. By the early 2000s, pay TV offered a number of thematic channels that included recent Hollywood and Arab blockbusters, sports, Western series, music videos, and documentaries. Noticing the popularity of these programs, well‐established free‐to‐air media groups as well as broadcasting newcomers, repositioned their offerings to compete with pay TV. Media groups such as MBC and Rotana have closed the programming gap by  transforming themselves into multichannel platforms with niche programs. In response, pay TV has been forced to find alternative means to survive, such as aggressively acquiring exclusive sports content or offering uncensored access to the internet, streaming services, catch‐up TV, and others. It is precisely with the growth of a multiscreen environment, the increased access and availability of streaming platforms (legal and pirated), and younger demographics that traditional programming is challenged by the “anywhere, anytime” media. Even with live sports, format entertainment programs (such as The Voice and Arabs Got Talent), and news, television content is increasingly produced, promoted, and positioned for web streaming, social media, and smart TVs (Dubai Press Club and Dubai Media City 2017). Television talent and their programs are now evaluated by their social media presence, their Twitter following, and their YouTube likes. Within this changing environment, there are pioneers such the MBC Group, which in 2010 established Shahid.net as catch‐up TV, and Al Jazeera English, which simultaneously streamed its Arab Spring coverage on the web to extend its reach. Of course, there are also laggards; these are primarily state‐owned television channels ­constrained by bureaucracies and editorial structures.

News and Current Affairs For many Arabs, television news programs are the primary source of information about world, regional, and national events, as well as sports. However, television news is mostly received with mistrust and cynicism  –  a legacy of long‐standing

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­governmental control of news and information. Across the region, viewers have mastered the art of cross‐checking news sources; television news only becomes “truthful” when it is corroborated by various sources. Currently, Arab viewers have access to more than 20 sources of television news, not to mention terrestrial channels and other media. Since 1996, Arab audiences have been able to access 24‐hour news in Arabic. The format resembles US cable news networks: it combines hourly newscasts, a number of current‐affairs programs, documentaries, and talk shows. For seven years, Qatari‐ owned Al Jazeera news reigned almost exclusively as the only 24‐hour news channel broadcasting from the Arab world, until Saudi‐owned al‐Arabiya was launched from Dubai in 2003. With a massive regional and international web of bureaus and stringers, these channels are able to provide continuous coverage. Like any news channel, their viewership is modest except during conflict‐related news stories. Editorially, these channels are still associated with the politics of their patrons; ­however, this is often disguised under a promise of free and unfiltered speech. Governments, political groups, or private investors established channels that responded to a growing interest in local or niche news. The Saudi government’s al‐Ekhbariya (2004) or al‐Iraqiya News (2005) are 24‐hour news channels with a primary focus on local issues. Similarly, al Manar, the television arm of the Lebanese radical group Hezbollah, launched its satellite broadcasts in 2001. Also, multiple television channels in Iraq and Palestine represent political parties, religious authorities, and local interest groups. While programming may include some entertainment genres, Iraqi and Palestinian channels remain focused on offering extensive coverage of local news. In the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, the region witnessed an economic boom. Keen on attracting established and new investors, niche channels offering general business or sector news were established. In addition to CNBC’s Arabic franchise (2003) and Sky News Arabia (2012), private ­investors launched channels focusing on real estate, travel and tourism, technology, and other sectors. To varying degrees, these channels cover general political, regional, or international stories.

Entertainment In the 1990s, when satellite television channels started, most were inspired by the American and European network model: family‐oriented programming that included both informative and entertaining elements. They offered newscasts, news bulletins, and current affairs programming such as documentaries and talk shows. But the main programming grid was heavily populated by entertainment programs: Western series and films, Indian Bollywood productions, and Arab movies, as well as Arab series, game shows, variety, and music programming. The success of these entertainment formats, the growing commercial interest in specific demographics, access to satellite technology, and the growth in television production outlets are



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some of the contributing factors in the move toward specialized entertainment channels. Building on pay TV programming models, these thematic niche channels were built around entertainment genres (music, movies), demographic targets (youth, women), or specific interests (religion, yachting). Government‐owned channels have long invested in sports programming because it attracts a male‐dominated demographic. More importantly, sports programming is often thought of as a means to develop social and national cohesion. Furthermore, national sports achievements are perceived as reflective of the popularity of the country’s leaders. The popularity of sports programming has often stirred controversies, particularly surrounding the increased commercialization of broadcast rights (Dubai Press Club and Deloitte 2012). Sports programming, perhaps the last stronghold of pay TV, is competing for a handful of popular local and international sporting events. When Arab Radio and Television (ART) acquired the rights to broadcast soccer’s World Cup in 2006, government‐owned terrestrial channels were forbidden from broadcasting these games. In countries such as Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, high‐ranking government officials pleaded to broadcast the national games on terrestrial channels. Similarly, beIN network, the official broadcaster of the World Cup 2018, accused Saudi Arabia of using its proprietary signal to broadcast games under the name beOUT Q. The move is seen as part of an embargo established by Saudi Arabia and its allies against Qatar. As the fastest growing niche in the free‐to‐air satellite sector, music channels rose from just one in 2002 to more than 70 by 2008. Factors such as low establishing and operating costs, often free access to music videos, multiple income streams (advertising, sponsorships, value‐added services), and industry integration (music production, event management) have contributed to this growth. Music television channels range from simple play‐out operations (music acquired and played) to a fully integrated network operation (production and promotion of artists). The field is defined by experimentation: investors test various approaches to music video scheduling, screen layouts, and possible programs. Since 2010, music video channels have been in sharp decline with the rise of YouTube, the economic downturn, and the Arab uprisings (Kraidy 2012). Since 2002, dedicated movie channels have been on the increase in spite of a highly competitive market for broadcast rights. Channels vary both in terms of movie origin (Arab or Western) and in terms of genres (blockbusters, action, etc.). In addition to channels solely dedicated to movies, there are channels that offer a combination of movies, series, and light entertainment magazines. The competition over Hollywood’s productions has resulted in inflating broadcast rights fees. The appeal of movies has prompted an increase in Arab movie production and is often credited for resurrecting Egyptian cinema. Local movie production is set to grow as pay TV and OTT expand their libraries and their offerings. Since 2001, religious channels have grown in number and have become more diverse in program offerings. Religious channels are not restricted to Islamic‐­ compliant channels, but also include channels representing various Christian Arab

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minorities, such as Nour TV (Light TV) and Sat7. Islamic channels are available on various platforms – both free‐to‐air, such as Iqraa’ (Read, launched 1998) or al‐Resalah (The Message, launched 2006), and pay TV, such as al‐Majd (The Glory, launched 2002). These channels have developed programming fare that emulates entertainment channels with a religious twist, including inspirational and interactive talk shows, historical dramas, and children’s programs. Focusing on youth and women, these channels offer an alternative to violent Islamic underground media available on DVDs or the internet. At the same time, they are becoming integrated into the broader Arab‐television landscape as they embrace modern technology and consumerism, and compete for audiences (Ferjani 2010).

Ramadan TV Since the 1970s, the Islamic month of Ramadan has been associated with unique programming fare intended to support people’s fasting from dusk until dawn. Television content is developed to accommodate lifestyle changes that include limited working hours, family gatherings, and community engagement. This is the period in which Muslim audiences tend to watch local channels to reconnect with their local stories and stars. In addition to religious programming, television programmers reserve the best Musalsalat, a combination of soap operas and telenovelas, for this holy month. These melodramatic series are built around historical, social, political, or religious narratives and often include a romantic plot. Aired daily and repeated during a 24‐hour period, these series are full of cliffhangers, twists, and surprises that keep audiences in suspense for a grand finale that coincides with the end of Ramadan. The growth of satellite television in the 1990s translated into greater demand for Musalsalat. With its film legacy, Egypt was able to capitalize on its movie stars to dominate Ramadan schedules, but not enough to satisfy programming demands. By 2008, off‐primetime schedules were filled with dubbed series from Latin America, South Korea, Iran, and particularly Turkey. Given the geocultural connection, Turkish series were dubbed into Syrian dialect and broadcast on free‐to‐air and pay TV satellite channels. Despite the political tensions between Turkey and some Arab states (especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), Turkish television industries benefited from sales revenue and direct investments from various Arab channels. Similarly, Syrian drama benefited from popularizing its dialect and led to a resurgence of Syrian Musalsalat, despite the ongoing war. With the introduction of Shahid.net as a catch‐up‐TV platform, MBC developed a pattern of watching Musalsalat during and after the end of Ramadan. With streaming, new audiences are rediscovering Musalsalat and producers have found new markets. The competition over these series is no longer between terrestrial and free‐ to‐air channels, but between pay TV and OTTs, who are vying to distinguish themselves and their sources of revenues through unique offerings. But for now, Ramadan programming on all platforms remains dominated by Musalsalat.



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Global Arab TV: International Broadcasters The Arab world has always been a target of international media broadcasts – both radio and, more recently, television. Ever since they acquired satellite receivers, Arab viewers have been exposed to international broadcasts, particularly news channels such as CNN and Euronews, but also pornographic channels promoting phone sex. After 9/11, the global concerns over the spread of terrorism in the Arab world have enhanced, prompted, and sometimes accelerated plans for satellite broadcasts in Arabic sponsored by foreign governments. These foreign services are well‐funded organizations with Arabic‐speaking staff. Unlike global broadcasts, these channels have different objectives prompted by the national interests of the sponsoring states. Three different models have emerged.

Iranian Model Originally using ArabSat and three other satellites, the Iranian‐financed channel, al‐‘Alam (the World) was launched from Iran and Lebanon in February 2003. The Iranian links to the Lebanese group Hezbollah are multilayered, and media is only one facet. Benefiting from Hezbollah’s experience with al‐Manar, al‐‘Alam is staffed and managed by a number of Lebanese journalists recruited from al‐Manar’s circles. Officially, the channel is part of the Iranian broadcasting system and was established to counter Al Jazeera and al‐Arabiya’s dominance over Arab public opinion. Iran’s vested interests in Arab public opinion were magnified in the aftermath of the Iraq War, when the channel filled the information void for many Iraqis, particularly the  Shia’a. Al‐‘Alam was proactive in increasing their broadcast hours, setting up terrestrial transmission, and using Iraqi journalists to report from and about Iraq. Al‐‘Alam’s visually appealing virtual sets, graphics, and Western‐style news presentation are one aspect of its novelty that is very similar to its Arab competitors. The other aspect is editorial: the channel attempts to distance itself from an anti‐ Western militant tone and instead, leaves its guests and viewers to comment on “US imperialism,” “Western colonialism,” “Zionist entities,” and “occupation.” The channel also devotes airtime to Hezbollah, Hamas, Saudi, and Yemeni dissidents and anti‐American groups. As a model, al‐‘Alam is a platform for anti‐American news and opinions; in many ways, it is in line with Hezbollah’s al‐Manar and Hamas’s al‐Aqsa TV.

Euro‐Russian Model Europeans have a long history with Arab audiences. As former colonial powers, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy have used radio for various propaganda purposes. As part of restructuring efforts in European national media systems since the 1990s, satellite television broadcasts aim to develop areas of economic,

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cultural, and political influence. In 2002, German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle expanded DW‐World TV’s broadcasts into Arabic in addition to German, French, and Spanish. In December 2006, the French government launched France 24, an international news channel in English, Spanish, and Arabic. The channel is co‐managed by the private network TF1 Group and the public channel Antenne 2; its programming is internally produced or acquired from various French channels. In 2007, the Italian national broadcaster developed RAI Med to address Italy’s neighbors with limited Arabic broadcasts. Also in 2007, the state‐owned Russian news agency RIA‐Novosti launched Russia al‐Yaum (Russia Today), an Arabic channel offering the Russian perspective on news stories. In 2008, BBC Arabic was resurrected as part of BBC World and funded by the British Foreign Office; it aims to build on the credibility of BBC radio as an impartial, independent, and reliable source of information. Also in 2008, the newswire‐like broadcaster Euronews was selected by the European commission to offer an Arabic broadcast. Broadcasting reports and features in eight languages, Euronews does not offer any current‐affairs programs or newscasts. Although Egyptian media mogul Naguib Sawiris acquired a 53% ownership stake in the channel, Euronews is still perceived as a channel reflecting European interests. This European model of Arabic satellite channels follows the traditions of ­language‐based radio broadcasts. The channels are multilingual and their schedules are divided among various languages and time zones. The German and Italian services are part of the international broadcasting arm of national broadcast systems, while the French and European commissions are managed by private or semi‐­ private entities. At the core, these European channels have two common features: they offer a European perspective on world news, and they tend to deliver more national news than news about the Arab world.

American Model American outreach to the Arab world is dominated by a significant investment in two broadcasting outlets, Radio Sawa and Al‐Hurra television, both of which report to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Tax‐funded with more than US $100 million per year, Al‐Hurra (the Free One) offered three services: a general service aimed at the Arab world, a dedicated service to Iraq, and another for Arabs living in Europe. Al‐Hurra is unique in emphasizing a public‐service mission to provide news and information about the Arab world with an independent perspective on news. Since its launch in 2004, critics both inside and outside the US Congress have questioned the value of financing and maintaining these broadcasts, which have suffered from a series of managerial shortcomings, editorial blunders, and financial scandals. In practice, Al‐Hurra’s mission had different, sometimes opposing, interpretations by the U.S. Agency, the undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, channel managers, and



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staff, most of whom were recruited from the Arab world. In fact, the channel seems to advocate competing and perhaps contradictory objectives: an Arabic version of PBS, the US administration’s Arab voice, an Arabic CNN, and an Al Jazeera competitor. In short, the channel suffers from lack of identity and clear mission. For all its disadvantages, Al‐Hurra’s current‐affairs programming has provided some interesting public diplomacy initiatives, particularly programs that provide platforms for liberal discourse on democratic practices and women’s rights. At the same time, some documentaries have provided insights on the working of American politics and Arab‐Americans’ participation in US public life. Since the election of President Trump, the fate of these media outlets is precarious; there are plans to fold Radio Sawa into Voice of America’s Arabic service and relocate Al‐Hurra TV to Dubai.

Global Channels Pay TV, particularly OSN and beIN Networks, has experimented extensively with customizing international channels to the region, namely through agreements with ESPN, Disney, Turner Broadcasting, and others. More recently, free‐to‐air channels have sought international franchise licensees in business news (CNBC Arabiya), music (MTV Arabia), documentaries (Abu Dhabi National Geographic), children’s (Nickelodeon Arabia), and movies (Fox Movies). In return for franchise fees, these channels hope to break into the cluttered market with a global brand image and resource sharing (programming, promotions, marketing). Building on a core audience familiar with Western brands, these channels have negotiated their ­acceptance with the audience by carefully acquiring or producing culturally relevant programming. There is also a reverse interest from global media conglomerates in securing a stake in the regional market. In 2012, Discovery Communications acquired the Dubai‐based media company Takhayal Entertainment and its flagship food channel, Fatafeat TV. Developed as a start‐up in 2008, the channel operated with modest budgets, but managed to attract a sizable audience. It expanded into publishing and digital platforms, offering a print magazine and video‐on‐demand. Under Discovery, the channel expanded its productions and its digital presence, but since 2016 has been available only on the pay TV platform beIN. This acquisition also allowed Discovery to increase its presence in the region with partnership deals with OSN, beIN, and Image Nation (Singh 2017). The story of Fatafeat has yet to be replicated. The multichannel, multiplatform Al Jazeera Media network is the parent company of Al Jazeera News Channels. The impact of Al Jazeera cannot be overestimated; aside from its contribution to news from and about the Arab world, Al Jazeera became a global media player (Zayani 2005). In 2006, 10 years after the launch of its Arab service, Al Jazeera English was born in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, and  London. The channel became a major source of news and current‐affairs

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­programming on a global scale, amassing awards and accolades for its coverage. However, the failure of Al Jazeera America (2013–2016), a service dedicated to the US market, proves that such Arab ventures may not be ready for the US market – or vice versa. Born out of the rebranding of Al Jazeera Sports and the France‐based beIN Sports, beIN Media Group has been able to leave a global mark in sports and entertainment broadcasting. The Doha‐based group has been in operation since 2014, and operates in 43 countries on five continents. It expanded from sports programming to entertainment and content development. While it focuses on acquiring local channels and global sports rights, the group has succeeded in developing a global brand from its base in the Arab world. With this strategic investment from the Qatari government, beIN media is now a multinational media conglomerate.

Over‐the‐Top Players In the last eight years, the television landscape has shifted toward OTT players as a new generation of tech‐savvy consumers is connected to global media trends. The adoption of OTT services is facilitated by increased access and speed of both fixed and mobile connectivity. Traditional broadcast players, regional entrepreneurs, and global providers are all contributing to the development of this emerging era of content production and distribution. Originally, traditional broadcast players adopted web‐based live streaming and catch‐up television to reserve an online presence. For some television channels, such as the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI), subscription‐based revenues are becoming vital for their survival. They specifically target these services to a diaspora eager to maintain a sense of connection with their home countries. Other channels, such as MBC’s Shahid.net, have designed their platforms to capitalize on a growing demand for a digital advertising market. For pay TV channels, OTTs provide a great opportunity to expand their paid services to online platforms through a “TV everywhere” approach. Making use of their marketing and subscriber bases, OTTs such as beIN Media and OSN’s Wado are expanding their consumer base and demographics. The promises of lucrative revenues from OTT services have attracted several regional entrepreneurs who benefited from a first‐mover strategy to establish services in the absence of a legal structure and foreign competition. Working from Beirut, Dubai, Cairo, or Saudi Arabia, these entrepreneurs amassed a large portfolio of old movies and series, and started investing in exclusive content. To ensure their survival, OTTs adopt digital advertising (Cinemoz) and subscriptions (ICflix, Istikana) as revenue streams. Given the low credit card penetration, these platforms developed partnerships with mobile providers, offering them highly valued traffic and revenues in return for billing services.



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The Arab market has managed to attract global OTTs that focus on the wealthier Gulf countries with their large expatriate population. Starz Play Arabia was the first comer in 2014, partnering with IPTV and telecommunications to expand its ­customer base to 700 000 and offer subscribers a unified bill. In line with its global expansion, Netflix was introduced to the region in 2016 and has expanded its customer base to three million (Digital TV Research n.d.). It offers a selection of its global content, while developing and acquiring local movies and series. Finally, Amazon Prime Video has been available since 2016 with limited access to its catalog. In 2017, both Netflix and Amazon accounted for 21% of the Middle East and North Africa market.

Conclusion Television content is increasingly produced in the Arab region in new or reclaimed cultural centers. While Egypt and Lebanon controlled much of the cultural production in the twentieth century, both are losing ground to Kuwait, Dubai, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Programs are Western‐looking, but in Arabic. Adaptation and licensing of formats has not only integrated the Arab world into the global television industry, it has amplified technology and the transfer of ideas. Moreover, marginalized or dissident groups have joined the media forays. Indeed, a macro‐view of the range in television‐ownership structures has demonstrated that many ideological, religious, political, and aesthetic flavors are available to viewers. In line with global trends, these audiences can increasingly access content in a multiscreen environment (TV, computers, and mobile devices). Such content is produced or acquired by both traditional and emerging platforms. The result is an increased integration of Arab television audiences, producers, and channels in global market practices.

References Abu‐Rabi, I.M. (2004). Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post‐1967 Arab Intellectual History. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. Al Atiyat, H. (2017). IPTV in the Arab World 2017. Amman, Jordan: Arab Advisors Group. Al Atiyat, H. and Khreisha, D. (2017). Satellite TV in the Arab World. Amman, Jordan: Arab Advisors Group. Alterman, J.B. (1998). New Media, New Politics?: From Satellite Television to the Internet in the Arab World. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Anden‐Papadopoulos, K. (2013). Media witnessing and the crowd‐sourced video revolution. Visual Communication 12: 341–357. Ayish, M.I. (2010). Arab State broadcasting systems in transition: the promise of the public service broadcasting model. Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication 3: 9–25. Boyd, D.A. (1999). Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of the Electronic Media in the Middle East, 3e. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.

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Digital TV Research (n.d.) Number of Netflix subscribers worldwide from 2017 to 2023, by region (in millions). Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/483112/netflix‐subscribers (accessed 3 August 2018). Dubai Press Club and Deloitte (2012). Arab Media Outlook 2011‐2015 – Arab Media: Exposure and Transition. Dubai, UAE: Dubai Press Club. Dubai Press Club and Dubai Media City (2017). Arab Media Outlook 2016‐2018 – Youth… Content… Digital Media. Dubai, UAE: Dubai Press Club. Ferjani, R. (2010). Religion and television in the Arab World: towards a communication ­studies approach. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 3: 82–100. Guaaybess, T. (2013). National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Khalil, J.F. (2009). Arab Entertainment Satellite Television: Opportunities for Public Diplomacy. Carbondale, IL: Smith Richardson Foundation & Global Media Research Center. Khalil, J.F. (2013). Towards a supranational analysis of Arab media: the role of cities. In: National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries (ed. T. Guaaybess), 188–208. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Khalil, J.F. (2014a). The mass wants this!’: how politics, religion, and media industries shape discourses about audiences in the Arab World. In: Meanings of Audiences: Comparative Discourses (eds. R. Butsch and S. Livingstone), 111–122. London: Routledge. Khalil, J.F. (2014b). Modalities of media governance in the Arab World. In: Arab Media Moguls (eds. J. Sakr and D. Della Ratta), 13–30. London/New York: I. B. Tauris. Khalil, J.F. (2016). The business push and audience pull in Arab entertainment television. International Journal of Communication 10: 3632–3646. Khalil, J.F. (2017). Change and continuity in Arab media: a political economy of media cities. In: Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (eds. M. Zayani and S. Mirgani), 13. Qatar: Georgetown University. Kraidy, M.M. (2012). Contention and circulation in the digital Middle East. Television & New Media 14: 271–285. Kraidy, M.M. and Khalil, J.F. (2009). Arab Television Industries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahajan, V. (2012). The Arab World Unbound Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass. Miller, T., Jervis, V., and Hogg, T. (2015). Terrestrial Broadcasting and Spectrum Use in the Arab States, a Report for the GSMA. London: Plum Consulting. Sakr, N. (2007). Arab Television Today. London: I.B. Tauris. Sakr, N., Skovgaard‐Petersen, J., and Della Ratta, D. (2015). Arab Media Moguls. London: I.B. Tauris. Singh, S. (2017) There is a trend amongst MENA pay TV operators to be more affordable. Gulf Marketing Review. https://www.omnesmedia.com/en/post/2832 (accessed 27 July 2019). United Nations Development Programme (2016). Arab Human Development Report 2016: Youth and Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality. New York: United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States. Zayani, M. (2005). The Al Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on New Arab Media. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Zenith (n.d.). TV advertising spending worldwide from 2000 to 2021, by region (in million U.S. dollars). Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/268666/tv‐advertising‐spending‐ worldwide‐by‐region (accessed 31 July 2018).

Chapter 23

Sixty Years of Chinese Television: History, Political Economy, and Ideology in a Conflicted Global Order Yuezhi Zhao and Zhenzhi Guo

2018 marked the 60‐year anniversary of the birth of Chinese television. On the one hand, the country’s astonishing technological, politico‐economic, and sociocultural transformations and the shifting terms of its global integration have provided the context for the evolution of Chinese television and the making of a “television culture with ‘Chinese characteristics’” (Sun and Zhao 2009). On the other hand, Chinese television has also played a pivotal role in shaping the country’s ongoing transformation and the terms of its global integration. In this chapter, we offer an overview of the evolution of Chinese television in terms of its technological, polit‑ ico‐economic, and ideological dimensions and in relation to China’s evolving role in a highly conflicted and rapidly changing global order. We break our analysis into four historical periods: the Mao era (1958–1977), the early reform era (1978–1989), the market reform era (1990–2012), and the Xi Jinping era (2013–present). As it will become clear later, our periodization is reflective of not only significant changes in Chinese politics, but also specific milestones in the political economy and cultural politics of Chinese television. As we describe major changes over time, we also underscore the historical continuities of these periods.

The Mao Era (1958–1977): Nationalistic Ambitions, Shifting Foreign Models The first period of Chinese television development runs from the birth of television in China in 1958 to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Although television enjoyed only a marginal existence as a simple political and educational instrument, A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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with little social and cultural impact, this period demonstrates the inextricable link‑ ages between television, China’s nationalistic ambitions, and twentieth‐century global Cold War politics. Reports about the planned launch of television by China’s Nationalist government in Taiwan – on its National Day of 10 October 1958 – led the Communist government in the mainland to abruptly inaugurate three stations in order to trump its political rival. On May Day 1958, Beijing Television was launched, with Shanghai Television and Harbin Television following later the same year (in fact, television in Taiwan was delayed for four years, until 10 October 1962). In the face of political and economic sanctions imposed by the US‐led capitalist world, China was assisted by countries in the socialist bloc, with transmission tech‑ nologies from Czechoslovakia, program formats from the Soviet Union and East Germany, and television sets from the Soviet Union. The utopian impulse of the Great Leap Forward in 1958, and the imperative of competing with the capitalist world, led to trial broadcasts in many other provincial capitals shortly after the three inaugural broadcasts. However, inadequate infrastructures, massive economic mis‑ management  –  compounded by the loss of technological and financial assistance from the Soviet Union as the result of ideological conflicts – led to a profound eco‑ nomic crisis in China in the early 1960s and, with it, a deep retrenchment of the fledgling Chinese television system (Guo 1991; Hong 1998). From its inception, Chinese television was institutionally and ideologically incor‑ porated into the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) preexisting media system. Inadequate production capacity limited the activities of early Chinese television to the transmission of existing media content, such as newsreels produced by film stu‑ dios. Entertainment programming consisted primarily of feature films. Because of the small audience and the lack of independent economic interests under the planned economy, film studios often showcased new films on television either simultaneously with or even ahead of cinema releases. New content was limited to major political events and state policies. Television’s entertainment function was hardly explored, and, later, explicitly suppressed. Between 1960 and 1962, Beijing Television tried to provide some diversion by broadcasting a light entertainment variety show, while the population endured the devastating consequences of the Great Leap Forward. However, this show was condemned as “vulgar,” “superficial,” and in “low taste,” and eventually canceled, as leftist cultural policies began to ­dominate the Chinese cultural scene, eventually leading to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The launching of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 was a second major setback to the still‐embryonic Chinese television system. News and cultural programming was broadcast on an ad hoc basis according to the vicissitudes of political necessity. As leftist politics reached its climax, Chinese television also shut its doors to the Western world, canceling a 1963 content exchange agreement with London‐based VISNEWS. Significant technological and infrastructure developments, however, were made during the later stages of the Cultural Revolution. Under the slogan of “carrying the shining image of Chairman Mao to every part of the country,” many cities set up



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stations, interconnecting with each other and transmitting Beijing Television ­programs via the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication’s microwave networks. These interconnected stations provided the initial technological and institutional basis for a national network. Although the national television audience was still extremely small at the time, with one television set for every 1600 people, the popu‑ lation coverage rate had reached 36% (Guo 1991, p. 123). In an important techno‑ logical move, the leadership decided to abandon China’s own efforts to develop a color television system, beginning a trial color broadcast in 1973 using the German PAL system. This choice was made for political reasons, as China’s political enemies of the time, the United States and the Soviet Union, used the NTSC and SECOM systems respectively. The breakthrough in US–China relations, symbolized by US president Richard Nixon’s visit in 1972, was a pivotal moment for Chinese political history, in general, and for Chinese television, in particular. The professional sophistication and tech‑ nological prowess of the US television networks that transmitted live reports of Nixon’s visit via satellite back to American audiences had a powerful impression on their Chinese hosts. Thus, if it was the Soviet bloc that had helped introduce televi‑ sion to China, it was through US television that Chinese television saw an image of its future in the early reform era.

The Early Reform Era (1978–1989): Westernization and Intellectual Vanguardism The death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and the subsequent political coup by forces opposing the “ultra‐leftists” within the CPC leadership, marked the beginning of the reform era. Changes in Chinese television were both immediate and drastic. On May Day 1978, Beijing Television was renamed China Central Television (CCTV), marking the debut of a centrally controlled national television station that would eventually grow into a dynamic media conglomerate with the world’s single largest audience (Zhu 2012). Television programs were revamped and those with foreign content, from international news to dubbed television drama programs, quickly became the most attractive fare and key cultural sources for the construction of the Chinese transnational imagination. Far‐reaching institutional and ideological transformations took place inside China’s television system to shape the country’s most popular new window to the world. First, advertising was introduced in 1979, marking the beginning of Chinese television’s historical transformation from a state‐subsidized propaganda operation to a mass medium with both ideological and commercial objectives. Second came the market‐based provision of television programs and Chinese television’s quick development of its own productive capacities, as well as the importation of foreign programs. Third, the ascendancy of television as the most important means of ­political communication was formalized during the CPC’s 12th National Congress

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in 1982, when central propaganda authorities replaced the 8:00 p.m. national radio news program with CCTV’s 7:00 p.m. primetime national news program Xinwen Lianbo (Joint Newscast) as the primary outlet for the day’s most important political news. Fourth, reflective of a mounting desire to develop a national television ­infrastructure as quickly as possible, the newly established Ministry of Radio and Television adopted a “four‐level policy” of television operation in 1983. Through this policy, the operation of television was decentralized from the national and pro‑ vincial levels to allow municipal and county level governments to mobilize local resources to launch their own stations. With a mandate both to transmit central and provincial programming and to provide local programming, municipal and county level stations quickly emerged to play a crucial role in the rapid build‐up of a nation‑ ally connected and locally grounded television system. By 1984, when CCTV made a highly successful broadcast of its second Spring Festival Gala, television’s status as the country’s most popular medium had been fully established. Despite its popularity, China’s post‐Mao reform program was pregnant with political, economic, ideological, and cultural contradictions. Chinese television was not only implicated in these contradictions, but also became one of the primary sites of contestation by different political and social forces (Lull 1991). On the one hand, television was a key promotional instrument for the Chinese state’s modernization program. On the other hand, in the context of a broad intellectual and cultural fer‑ ment in the 1980s, television became a powerful forum for promoting the liberal ideas favored by increasing numbers of China’s westernizing intellectual elite. The relatively liberal political environment of the early and mid‐1980s provided the space for liberal intellectuals to explore television as a serious medium of political communication. At the same time, although commercialism had crept into Chinese television, audience ratings, niche marketing, and advertising contracts were not yet the primary preoccupations of Chinese television professionals. The result was a rare historical opportunity in which television played an unprecedented role in pop‑ ularizing an elite discourse promoting not only China’s modernization and global integration, but also an overtly westernizing ideological and cultural agenda. No single media text more forcefully expressed the ideological orientations of the liberal intellectual ferment than CCTV’s controversial 1988 six‐episode documen‑ tary Heshang (River Elegy). This program, produced by a group of young university lecturers, writers, and television producers, assaulted China’s so‐called “yellow civi‑ lization” – river‐based agrarian civilization – for its authoritarianism, insularity, and fatalism. By contrast, the program expressed an urgent desire for Western moder‑ nity and China’s further integration with global capitalism. Rather than promoting conformism and aiming to amuse its audience, this program was an exemplar of the mid‐1980s “high‐culture fever” (Wang 1996), which advocated Westernization by constructing a powerful discourse of national and even civilizational crisis. Articulated as part and parcel of an ongoing debate on the direction of the reform at a critical juncture in modern Chinese history, this politically charged and rhetori‑ cally powerful program was broadcast twice on CCTV within a short period, because



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of popular demand, and with the support of the reformist fraction of an ideologi‑ cally divided CPC leadership. The broadcast of Heshang and the subsequent “Heshang fever” among the urban intelligentsia epitomized the explosive political, economic, and cultural tensions of the late 1980s. The future direction of the reforms was in the balance as urban ­middle‐class anxieties over such issues as inflation, corruption, and growing social inequality intersected with intensified elite power struggles and ideological divi‑ sions within the CPC itself (Zhao 2001). The resulting political drama ended in tragedy on 4 June 1989, when a student‐ and intellectual‐led urban uprising was suppressed with the violent imposition of martial law in Beijing. Much of the political drama of 1989 was played out on Chinese television. When the CPC’s chain of propaganda command was paralyzed due to internal division during the height of student protests in May 1989, television helped mobilize and legitimize the movement with its sympathetic coverage of the protests by students and urban residents (Lull 1991, pp. 188–189). For a short period of time, Chinese television served as a powerful instrument of its journalists and producers, who expressed the modernizing and westernizing inspirations of China’s liberal intellec‑ tuals and had political patrons such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang at CPC’s top leadership. The international context was also highly supportive of the ideological agenda of these westernizing Chinese television professionals. Reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s May 1989 visit to China galvanized their push for Soviet‐style glasnost. The US television networks, initially arriving in China to report Gorbachev’s historical visit to China, were overwhelmingly supportive of the protesting students and intellectuals, as well as their Chinese media counterparts. Nevertheless, in a development that marks a great divergence between China and the Soviet bloc, the revolutionary “old guards” within the CPC leadership used ­military power to suppress China’s westernizing intellectual vanguards inside and outside Chinese television.

The Market Reform Era (1990–2012): The Possibilities and Limits of State‐Controlled Commercialization The suppression of the 1989 movement marked a turning point in both Chinese his‑ tory and television. On the one hand, political control was reinforced and tightened. The mass media, television in particular, retreated from active engagement with elite political and cultural debates of the day, and shied away from further attempts to assert relative autonomy from Party‐state authorities. In 1992, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Deng Xiaoping called for accelerated market‐ori‑ ented economic developments. Market forces quickly swept through the Chinese media system and transformed it from the inside out (Zhao 1998, 2008). As part of this new political imperative, in June 1992, the CPC redefined the mass media and other traditionally state‐subsidized ideological and cultural institutions as part of a

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tertiary industry to be run according to the principles of self‐financing (i.e. market‐ based financing) and profit‐making. Advertising, in the context of a rapidly expand‑ ing market economy, quickly became the lifeblood of Chinese television. With the exception of television stations in economically underdeveloped areas, state subsi‑ dies ceased to be a significant revenue source for Chinese television. By 1999, ­commercial revenue had accounted for more than 85% of the Chinese broadcasting industry’s revenues, with television advertising accounting for 90% of total revenues. The most profitable television station was CCTV, whose dominant market position was guaranteed by its monopoly status at the national level. Chinese television’s rapid commercialized development took place in a system characterized by a hierarchical structure of administrative monopoly and amidst the rapid deployment of satellite and cable technologies. While “administrative monop‑ oly” describes the overall structure of the Chinese television industry, it does not, however, fully explain the complexity and internal dynamics of the system. First, domestic private and foreign capital, along with the audiovisual production units of various Party‐state departments, started to be involved in entertainment program‑ ming, advertising sponsorships, and co‐production arrangements with television stations. The result was a unique system of state and private collaboration: while the state continued to monopolize broadcasting and exercise macro‐control of produc‑ tion through mechanisms such as the television drama production permit system and preproduction content clearance (Yin 2002, pp. 36–37), advertisers, private investors, and the audiovisual production units of various Party‐state departments, contributed significantly to the system’s economic foundation and profoundly shaped its content orientation (Zhao 2008). Secondly, there was intensive competition in the Chinese television system, both within and across different administrative boundaries and technological platforms. In addition to the increased commercial imperatives of television stations at all lev‑ els, the popularization of satellite and cable technologies in the delivery of television programs in the 1990s played a pivotal role in intensifying market competition. At  the national level, by 1999, each provincial broadcasting administration had established a general interest satellite channel, which was carried by most local cable networks and had national audience reach. At the same time, provincial and munici‑ pal broadcasting administrations exploited new market opportunities by launching multiple terrestrial and cable channels, each of them financially autonomous and competing for similar audiences. Competitive market mechanisms were also intro‑ duced into the micro‐management of television production, leading to the creation of relatively autonomous programming units within a television station. These units, in turn, produced innovative programs by borrowing commercially proven popular Western formats, from morning news magazines to investigative documentaries, reality programs, talk shows, and game shows. Finally, by the early 2000s and as a response to external pressures and domestic demands, more than 30 Hong Kong and foreign satellite television channels had been granted access to selected markets such as the Pearl River Delta and luxury



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hotels. Consequently, the Chinese television market operated on “a scale of ­competition larger than any other market in the world” (Fung 2009, p. 179). However, just as uneven development was a key feature of the Chinese market economy, so it was in the Chinese television industry. Many stations in economically depressed interior areas, for example, maintained a marginal existence, due both to the lack of advertising revenues and to the inadequate level of state subsidies. By the late 1990s, extensive market competition and audience fragmentation had also led central authorities to pursue a policy of recentralization and market consolidation. The four‐level policy was effectively reversed and municipal and county broadcast‑ ers were forced to limit their self‐programming powers and devolve to the status of relay stations of central and provincial programming. Furthermore, the state ­mandated provincial broadcasting administrations to merge the existing radio, ter‑ restrial, and cable television stations into a single corporate structure. The merger mania in Western media markets and the increasing pressure of global competition, together with potential domestic competition posed by an aggressive telecommuni‑ cations industry, which had been increasingly encroaching into cable distribution territory in the context of technological convergence, provided further rationales for  state‐mandated industrial consolidation in broadcasting and cable in the first decade of the new century. In terms of content, a state‐controlled and highly commercialized television culture championed nationalism as a unifying ideology, offered mass entertainment as a popular diversion, while upholding social morality during a period of China’s rapid social polarization and intensive engagement with neoliberal globalization (Sun and Zhao 2009). Starting from television broadcasting of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, nationalism has become the dominant ideological framework for post‐1989 Chinese television. By projecting national cultural symbols into Chinese households, staging political and cultural spectacles, invoking popular sentiments, and rallying viewers under the national flag during important events such as Hong Kong’s return in 1997, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, television became by far the most powerful site for the construction of an official discourse on nationalism and the mobilization of patriotic sentiments, or what Fung calls “soft nationalism with pleasure” (Sun and Zhao 2009). As Sun (2002) observes, “the nationalistic agenda of the Chinese state converged with the ‘gut feelings’ of ordinary Chinese people” (p. 213) and their “spectatorial desire” (p. 191). It was also in 1990 that Chinese television, which had played an intellectual van‑ guard role with the politically and intellectually challenging documentary Heshang in the pre‐1989 period, turned to mass entertainment. The “culture industry” for‑ mally arrived in China in 1990 with CCTV’s broadcast of Kewang (Aspirations), a 51‐episode drama series that effectively imitated the story format and conventions of dramatic shows from Asia and Latin America. Centered around the life of a young and attractive working‐class woman living in Beijing, Kewang is the first Chinese drama series that took popular entertainment, rather than political mobilization, as its explicit aim. The wild popularity of Kewang marked an ideological breakthrough

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in Chinese television: for the first time, the CPC’s highest ideological establishments not only accepted, but also praised a show centering around a traditional Chinese morality play. By the late 1990s, intense competition between proliferating television channels and a vibrant private and quasi‐private entertainment production industry had fully developed television’s entertainment role. Televisual entertainment, in the form of variety shows, dating games, sitcoms, law and order series, reality television, and the endless parade of emperors and empresses in costume dramas, filled Chinese televi‑ sion screens. Hunan Satellite Television, in explicitly developing itself into an enter‑ tainment‐oriented channel in a crowded nationally accessible provincial satellite television market, carried this entertainment wave to new heights. This channel’s popularity and rising economic fortunes between the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s confirmed a simple truth to the Chinese television industry: uplifting light entertainment was the safest and fastest means to popularity and capital ­accumulation. If the “vulgar” was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, “­kowtowing to the vulgar” (Barmé 1999) was the de facto operative mode of Chinese television during this period. Television’s roles in championing nationalism and offering mass entertainment were complemented by its journalistic “watchdog” role and its pedagogical role in the making of neoliberal subjects. The watchdog role was pioneered by CCTV’s News Commentary Department, a relatively autonomous and financially independ‑ ent production unit established in 1993 (Zhao 1998, 2000). This department not only produced some of the country’s most celebrated watchdog and talk show pro‑ grams during this period, but also inspired similar programs in provincial and local television stations, and even in the print media. By developing narratives that exposed select cases of official corruption, redressed economic and social injustices inflicted upon powerless individuals, and revealed various social problems and ethi‑ cal dilemmas of the reform process, these programs both provided a much‐needed forum for the expression of popular concerns and helped sustained the political legitimacy of the Party‐state. Although these programs could be best described as “watchdogs on Party leashes” (Zhao 2000) and they tended to individualize, localize, and moralize systemic social problems, thus avoiding “a critical interrogation of overall social structure” (Xu 2000, p. 646), their relative openness and professional‑ ism were both real, and their political and social impact was profound (Li 2002). A related, but less journalistic‐oriented genre is the Ji Shi or factual‐based story‑ telling programming. Popular on CCTV‐12, which specializes in law and order issues, and provincial satellite channels, these programs typically revolve around ordinary individuals caught in various personal dilemmas and social relationships. In describing individualized social problems and their solutions, they “turned the private experiences into public discourses” and provided “moral compass and prac‑ tical knowledge” that individuals need in order to survive a market society (Sun and Zhao 2009, p. 103). By engaging with social norms and upholding social morality, these programs helped to police the political, economic, and social boundaries of



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China’s rapidly transforming social order, while providing quotidian guidance to a citizenry caught in maelstroms of neoliberal‐oriented economic development. Concomitantly, they enhanced the credibility of television itself and massaged its ideological role from that of straightforward propaganda to subtler forms of ­hegemony (Zhao 1998; Chan 2002) and neoliberal social engineering centering on a “politics of compassion and education” (Sun and Zhao 2009). The different genres and ideological dimensions of television often intertwined, contributing to the polysemic and hybrid nature of Chinese television discourses in this period. Official propaganda, commercial popular culture, middle‐class reform‑ ism, the neoliberal politics of compassion and subject‐making, and even traces of elite intellectual discourse of the mid‐1980s, coexisted in Chinese television culture. While entertainment and commercial culture was “jamming” and to some extent dissolving both serious Party propaganda and “the autonomous culture of the ­intellectual elites” (Zhao 1998, p. 55), different ideological fragments and genres also borrowed from and reinforced each other both in form and substance. Overall, how‑ ever, the heavy dependence on advertising revenues, intensive market competition, and the urban and affluent sociocultural composition of the television labor force skew Chinese television heavily toward the cultural needs and sensibilities of urban consumers. Two contrasting case studies underscore the ideological potentialities and limits of state‐controlled and commercialized television in China. The first revolves around the rise and demise of Hunan Satellite Television’s Chaoji Nvsheng (Super Girl), the unofficial Chinese version of the global television franchise Pop Idol. Debuting in 2004, Super Girl attracted 400 million viewers during its peak in the 2005 season, the largest audience ever in Chinese television history, surpassing the largest one‐time audience size of CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. Furthermore, rather than simply engendering passive viewing, the show involved millions of mobile phone voters actively participating in the judging process by sending text messages to vote for their favorite contestants. The proven format of a popular global commercial tal‑ ent program and the technological configuration of satellite distribution and mobile phone text messaging, in the context of a highly competitive and image‐driven urban youth culture, delivered the ultimate televisual spectacle in a mass‐mediated popular culture in the market reform era of China. As media and telephone compa‑ nies reaped record profits and pop stars were crowned, audience members were fully mobilized to participate in the production of a popular culture spectacle. To the extent that Super Girl was a derivative of a global format, it was testament to the extent of Chinese television’s integration with transnational commercial tele‑ vision. The program provoked intense domestic and international media coverage. However, the show was also controversial, with polarizing ideological and cultural impacts. Market populists and the foreign media celebrated the show’s use of the vot‑ ing mechanism and its 2005 season’s top star Li Yuchun’s “unabashed individuality,” especially the ways her tomboy‐style challenged received gender norms. The politicized celebration of the show by domestic market populists and their ­

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Western media supporters was evident when Time magazine, in featuring Li Yuchun on the cover of its 2005 Special Issue as one of its “Asian Heroes,” commented: “Like American Idol, but unlike China itself, Super Girl’s Voice is run democratically” (Jakes 2005). For their part, moral conservatives criticized the show for its poten‑ tially corrosive impact on youth, while others noted the manipulative nature of its voting process, the fact that a seemingly democratic process would end up selecting Li Yuchun, a singer whose voice and singing abilities were clearly not the best, as the ultimate winner, and more critically, the ways in which market forces usurped politi‑ cal power through the politics of depoliticization and the cultural industry’s mass audiences substitute, “the people” (Lu 2006). A complex process of administrative disciplining by the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and accommodation by the show’s producers has kept modified versions of the show going after its 2005 peak. As Fung observed (2009, p. 185), the case of Super Girl demonstrated the Chinese state’s role in compelling television producers to modify global formats to comply with its agendas. Meanwhile, Chongqing Satellite Television (CQTV), whose director was arrested in 2010 on corruption charges and was subsequently sentenced to a suspended death penalty, shocked the Chinese television industry with its March 2011 suspension of any commercial advertising in an attempt to build itself into a “public interest” channel. Undertaken as part of then Chongqing CPC head Bo Xilai’s bold and fate‑ ful political program in the year leading up to the CPC’s leadership change at its pivotal 18th National Congress in late 2012, CQTV bid farewell to commercialism and experimented with the decommercialization and repoliticization of television. In doing so, CQTV addressed a profound crisis in the CPC’s politics and ideology by rebranding itself as a “red channel,” carrying high the flag of Chinese socialism and the ideals of common prosperity. With high‐profile current affairs programs such as Gongfu Dajiatan (Forum on Common Prosperity), historical documentaries on the Chinese communist revolution and its heroic figures, as well as variety shows featur‑ ing the mass singing of Mao‐era revolutionary songs, what CQTV attempted to do was nothing short of the resumption of radical instrumentalism for a television sta‑ tion that had reached an impasse on the road of neoliberal commercialization. CQTV’s decommercialization move, however, was not only highly controversial, but also contingent upon Bo Xilai’s political career and was short‐lived (Zhao 2012).

The Xi Jinping Era (2013–Present): Chinese Dreams, Global Ambitions, and the New Politics of Chinese Television The downfall of Bo Xilai in a highly mediated global political drama that started with the defection of the Chongqing police chief to the US Consulate in spring 2012 and the implosion of Bo’s reform experiments served as a precursor to the Xi Jinping era, inaugurated at the CPC’s 18th National Congress in the fall of 2012. If the end of Super Girl in 2011 symbolized the political limits to commercialism, the resumption



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of advertising at CQTV after the downfall of Bo Xilai was testament to the fact that commercialism remains a force to reckon with in Chinese television. After all, as the official rhetoric has it, market‐oriented reforms will be “deepened,” rather than reverted, under the Xi Jinping leadership. However, if market expansion, adminis‑ trative recentralization, industrial consolidation and protection of the national ­televisual space against foreign penetration were the primary operating keywords for Chinese television in the 1990s and 2000s, the most important key aspects of the Xi Jinping era have become: the reaffirmation of the political and ideological role of television, the pursuit of technological and administrative convergence and the struggle to keep mainstream television’s “commanding heights” position in the face of growing online video and IPTV (Internet Protocol television) industries, the ­celebration of traditional Chinese culture, as well as the projection of China’s image abroad through the outward expansion of Chinese television. As it has been widely noted, the Xi Jinping leadership has tightened up political and ideological control of the media against liberalizing and Westernizing tenden‑ cies. In a series of speeches on the governance of the arts, journalism, and China’s cyber space, Xi Jinping persistently promoted the CPC’s role in ideological and cul‑ tural leadership, leaving no space for any liberalizing developments of the Chinese media and internet industries. Nationalism was rearticulated in terms of the “Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” while the CPC’s commitment to socialism and the welfare of the people was reaffirmed in the catch‑ phrase of Buwang chuxin (never forget why you started). Within such a new political environment, excessive commercialism, including TV’s single‐minded reliance on audience ratings and sky‐high pop star incomes, has been publicly criticized; efforts have been made to contain “vulgarity,” and Chinese television is being reshaped to meet the CPC leadership’s renewed sense of national purpose and idealism. Thus, if the pre‐1989 period saw the increasing power of television professionals and the post‐1989 period witnessed the expanding power of the market, the Xi Jinping ­leadership is trying to reestablish political orthodoxy and reassert the CPC’s com‑ manding role in ideology and culture in the new media environment. Such a development is also evident in the restructuring of China’s television industry and its governance. In early 2018, as part of the restructuring of China’s Party‐state system and in the last round of reform in the industrial and governance structure of Chinese media, CCTV was merged with China National Radio and China Radio International to form the China Central Radio and Television General Station at the national level. While this culminated a process that started with the merging of radio and television stations at the county, municipal and provincial ­levels in the late 1990s, the new national‐level broadcasting superstation is now ­affiliated directly with the CPC’s central propaganda department, rather than with the government’s broadcasting administrator, as was previously the case. In an era of economic slowdown, internet expansion and increasing market ­fragmentation, both the market share and the growth rates for Chinese television industry’s advertising revenues have been in steady decline since 2011. While some

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content production companies and provincial satellite channels team up with social media platforms to produce Super Girl type of foreign format‐based talent shows, others have become reliant on official subsidies to produce “mainstream” ideologi‑ cal and cultural content both as a means for economic survival and as a strategy for market differentiation. It is precisely within such a context that one can understand CCTV’s broadcast of programs such as Why Marx Was Right between April and May 2018, a five‐episode chat show in the format of “theoretical dialogues” aiming at youth in commemoration of Karl Marx’s 200th birthday. Regardless of whether such “quirky efforts that the Communist Party under Xi Jinping is making to win over China’s millennials” (Buckley 2018) would be successful or not, Chinese television is clearly taking a new turn in the Xi Jinping era. In the meantime, Chinese television’s journalistic watchdog role has also been transformed, or more precisely, largely diminished. The Xi Jinping leadership’s high‐ profile and sustained anti‐corruption campaign has meant that the powerful and yet faceless army of investigators of the CPC Central Disciplinary Commission, rather than CCTV’s investigative journalists, have become the true corruption busters. As the Chinese public are being informed of the downfall of one high‐profile official after another through regular news and social media platforms since the downfall of Bo Xilai in early 2012, the attractiveness of Focus Interviews and News Probe type of television programming, which typically expose “flies,” not “tigers,” in the anti‐ corruption front, is diminishing. Meanwhile, the entertainment genre of anti‐corruption TV drama has been ­harnessed by high‐level propaganda authorities to provide the most powerful ideo‑ logical support for the leadership’s anti‐corruption campaign and its struggle to win back the hearts and minds of the population. Anti‐corruption drama emerged as a distinctive and highly popular genre in Chinese television in late 1995 with the debut of Cangtian zaishang (Heaven Above) (Bai 2015). After a brief period of decline in the late 2000s, the genre delivered its most riveting show ever through Renmin de Mingyi (In the Name of the People), premiered at Hunan Provincial Satellite TV in early 2017. With vivid depiction of power abuses, bold critique of the inequalities and injustices of the market reform process, as well as passionate expressions of popular indignation against economic exploitation and official manipulation, the series offered a devastating political economic and social critique of what had gone wrong in China’s market reforms. The technological and political economic foundations of Chinese television had been dramatically transformed by the time In the Name of the People drew a huge cross‐sectional national audience, including young audience members who had migrated to online video and IPTV, and back to traditional TV. Although online video and IPTV services are regulated through a permit system and the Chinese state bans access to foreign online video services such as YouTube, Chinese versions of YouTube such as Tudou and Youku have since 2005 captured a significant ­segment of the traditional television audience. By 2014 and 2015, China’s online video industry had not only developed a massive self‐production capacity that rivals



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that of regular TV, but also sent popular shows to the traditional television system. In an era of technological convergence and multiple platforms of distribution, access to institutional and financial power matters, and television shows that strike a responsive chord among the population have the potential to achieve phenomenal success. In fact, according to the show’s scriptwriter Zhou Meisen, In the Name of the People was conceptualized after “concerned authorities” explicitly instructed the tel‑ evisual drama portrayal of anti‐corruption to complement the CPC’s ongoing anti‐ corruption campaign (Liu 2017). The fact that it was co‐produced by the audiovisual production units of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the CPC Central Military Commission’s Logistics Department also indicated that it had a very high level of clearance in terms of the permissible political boundaries. At the same time, exemplifying a case of successful collaboration between private capital and public television, and skillful fusion of the Party line and the bottom line, all the show’s investors were private, while Hunan Satellite TV was chosen over CCTV as the broadcaster for the former’s ability to offer a high purchasing price. Hunan Satellite TV, in turn, ensured the show’s producers full autonomy during the production (Liu 2017). To be sure, the show does not call for a fundamental structural change of the Chinese political system; instead, it reaffirms the Party‐state system and ­celebrates upright individuals and their adherence to the CPC’s revolutionary ideals. Still, the astonishing popularity of the show demonstrated that audience fragmenta‑ tion in the new media age is not always inevitable. Following Xi Jinping’s advocacy of promoting Chinese traditional culture, a new wave of state‐supported documentaries and educational television programs have emerged to celebrate the richness, uniqueness, as well as the everyday embedded‑ ness of traditional culture in all its aesthetic, material, and lived forms. From Jizhu Xiangchou (Remembering Rural Nostalgia), a documentary series featuring China’s hundreds of traditional rural villages, and Shejian Shang de Zhongguo (A Bit of China), a documentary series about folkloric Chinese food, to innovative game‐ style shows centering on the wisdoms and aesthetics of Chinese language and classic poetry such as Zhongguo Shici Dahui (Chinese Poetry Conference), these programs have proven to be both commercially successful and culturally appealing. They have not only demonstrated the potentialities of a more “wholesome” television fare in competition with online entertainment, but also served to boost the Xi Jinping lead‑ ership’s agenda of promoting Chinese cultural self‐confidence. In doing so, they have also reversed River Elegy’s highly politicized grand narrative against the back‑ wardness of Chinese culture and its advocacy of Westernization. Whether these kinds of culturally oriented content can reach beyond China, however, is another question. Starting from importing foreign documentaries in 1977 and exporting abroad the first television drama series Dreams in the Red Chamber in 1987, the Chinese television industry had reached a critical turning point in its global integration by the beginning of the 2010s. On the one hand, although China continues to maintain a deficit in the global television programs trade and the influence of foreign television content and formats remains profound,

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foreign penetration in the forms of foreign ownership and direct satellite broadcast‑ ing has been limited. Most notably, despite Rupert Murdoch’s widely cited claim that the spread of transnational satellite television would bring an end to authoritarian regimes everywhere, by 2005, a frustrated Murdoch had accused the Chinese ­government of “being paranoid”, as his plan to expand his satellite television empire in China had “hit a brick wall” (Zhao 2008, p. 137). On the other hand, Chinese television has progressively pursued foreign ­expansion in the past three decades. The first step was the launch of CCTV‐4 in 1992, CCTV’s first international satellite channel aimed at overseas Chinese lan‑ guage audience. By 1998, CCTV‐4, which broadcast 24 hours a day with four rotat‑ ing program units to serve audiences in different time zones, was able to cover 98% of the world’s countries and regions (Hong and Liu 2015, p. 440). The second step was to reach a non‐Chinese speaking global audience. Again, CCTV has been the primary agent of this global outreach effort. In 2000, CCTV launched its English language channel, CCTV‐9, with the slogan “Your window on China.” Between 2000 and 2010, CCTV not only launched four additional foreign language channels (French, Spanish, Russia, Arabic), but also pursued various overseas landing pro‑ jects to increase its access to foreign households under the Chinese state’s “going out” strategy (Hong and Liu 2015). Chinese television’s globalizing effort has accelerated since 2010, in light of a growing elite consensus about China’s disadvantaged discursive position in the global arena and the country’s inability to tell its side of the story (Cheng 2017). CCTV‐9 was renamed CCTV‐News in April 2010 to enhance the channel’s news and current affairs orientation, while CCTV‐9 was relaunched as an English language documentary channel on 1 January 2011. In 2012, CCTV branched out to Africa and North America respectively with the establishment of the Nairobi‐based CCTV Africa and Washington, DC‐based CCTV America. The 31 December 2016, reorganization of CCTV’s global channels under the new corporate subsidiary entity of China Global Television Network (CGTN) and the rebranding all CCTV’s global channels under the CGTN logo epitomized Chinese television’s global ambition. CCTV, which operates as many as 46 domestic and global channels encompass‑ ing a whole range of audience types, program genres, market niches, linguistic ­differentiations, as well as technological specifications, is without doubt leading Chinese television’s globalizing efforts. However, it is by no means alone in this endeavor. Since the early 2010s, provincial broadcasting authorities and other Chinese corporate entities have also played important roles in providing digital tel‑ evision services, exporting indigenous Chinese IPTV technologies, and providing dubbed Chinese television programs overseas, especially to selected Southeast Asia and African markets. The Belt and Road Initiative, which since 2013 has updated the Chinese state’s earlier and more modest “going out” strategy to embody China’s ambition in fashioning its own version of globalization with an emphasis on infra‑ structural connectivity and the expansion of trade networks across the Euro‐Asia and Africa continents, has provided a new impetus for Chinese television’s global expansion. For example, as the Yunnan provincial broadcasting corporation set up a



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joint venture with Cambodian national television to provide IPTV services to Cambodian households, its Guangxi counterpart is providing dubbed Chinese tel‑ evision content for the Cambodian audience (Yunnan Net 2016). For its part, Chinese corporation StarTimes has made significant inroads in the provision of both digital television services and dubbed Chinese television content in many East African countries (Guo et al. 2017). While developments such as these have been framed inside China as win‐win collaborations between China and the developing world and as efforts in telling China’s story in a global symbolic order that continues to be dominated by the West, they have also provoked hostile charges of “Chinese imperialism” and led to inten‑ sive academic debates (e.g. Wasserman 2013). The US government‐supported National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in particular, has sponsored studies that have accused the Chinese government for trying to “fundamentally reshape much of the world’s media in its own image” (Farah and Mosher 2010, p. 4). In a 2017 NED‐sponsored study, Chinese and Russian overseas media and cultural out‑ reach and public diplomacy efforts were characterized as a form of “sharp power” that “pierces, penetrates, or perforates the political and information environments in the targeted countries” (NED 2017, p. 6). In language that provokes a new US‑led Cold War and reminds communication scholars of the “magic bullet” or “hypoder‑ mic needle model” of media effects, Russian and Chinese “sharp power” techniques are seen as “the tip of their dagger – or indeed as their syringe” (NED 2017, p. 6).

Concluding Remarks Sixty years constitute a full cycle in the traditional Chinese calendar. Chinese televi‑ sion, which had a tortured beginning during the Mao era, has played a pivotal role in China’s modernization, marketization, and global integration in the past 40 years. CCTV River Elegy in 1988 epitomized Chinese television’s politically driven and Westernization‐oriented adolescent era, while the debut of Yearning as China’s first indoor television drama and the story of Hunan Satellite TV’s Super Girl demon‑ strated the possibilities and limits of state‐controlled, commercialized, and Western‐ influenced Chinese television during the two decades of neck‐breaking market‐oriented economic development in the 1990s and 2000s. Although Chongqing Satellite TV’s abrupt and short‐lived decommercialization experiment between 2011 and 2012 was tied to Bo Xilai’s personal political fortune and the CPC’s succession struggles, it was also symptomatic of the profound political economic and ideological crises of a Chinese television system that was no longer able to accommodate the tensions “between the Party line and the bottom line” (Zhao 1998). By the time In the Name of the People repoliticized Chinese television entertainment and recaptured the ­popular imagination of the Chinese nation in spring 2017, Chinese television, along with the CPC, was clearly pushing the limits of censorship to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people in an explosive new media environment and at a c­ ritical juncture of China’s reform process. The CPC continues to insist on pursuing the

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socialist orientation of this process, claiming that it exercises power “in the name of the people.” Achievements in areas such as poverty reduction, increased life expec‑ tancy, and improved infrastructures are real and even spectacular. However, 40 years of reckless development have also engendered a Chinese society that displays all the trappings of a capitalist modernity with rampant consumerism, deep social ­divisions, a corrupted bureaucratic elite, and profound cultural and ecological ­crises. Chinese television, symbolized by CCTV as an octopus‐like modern media con‑ glomerate with a controversial foreign‐designed headquarters building in Beijing’s central business district, embodies all the glories and pitfalls of China’s 40 years of world‐historical transformation. From a global perspective, it seems likely that a medium based on foreign tech‑ nology and carrying the birthmark of Chinese nationalism during the twentieth‐ century Cold War is now being caught at the crossroads of a potential twenty‐first century Cold War. As the US, the world’s dominant capitalist power, is determined to contain a CPC‐led China that has not only become more confident in its own revolutionary history and political system, but also aims to project its own version of globalization through its Belt and Road Initiative and other attempts at reshaping the global capitalist order, Chinese television, along with other forms of old and new Chinese media, is undergoing a far‐reaching process of technological and institu‑ tional reconfiguration, ideological and cultural reorientation, as well as redefinition of global discursive parameters. How to fashion ideological and cultural leadership over a deeply fragmented domestic population, while forging ahead with the agenda of telling a coherent “China story” in a highly conflicted and rapidly unraveling global order, will be Chinese television’s herculean challenge as it enters a new life cycle after its first 60 years.

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Fung, A.Y.H. (2009). Globalizing televised culture: the case of China. In: Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post‐Broadcast Era (eds. G. Turner and J. Tay), 178–188. London: Routledge. Guo, Z.Z. (1991). A History of Chinese Television (Zhongguo Dianshi Shi). Beijing: China Renmin University Press. Guo, Z.Z., Liang, Y.Y., and Li, Y.D. (2017). Zhongguo yingshi zuopin zai dongfei de shuzihua chuanbo. Dianshi Yanjiu (TV Research) 1: 23–26. Hong, J.H. (1998). The Internationalization of Television in China: The Evolution of Ideology, Society, and Media Since the Reform. Westport, CT: Praeger. Hong, J.H. and Liu, Y.L. (2015). Internationalization of China’s television. In: Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (eds. G.D. Rawnsley and M.T. Rawnsley), 427–445. London: Routledge. Jakes, Susan (2005). Li Yuchun. Time. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/ 0,8599,2054304,00.html. Li, X.P. (2002). ‘Focus’ (Jiaodian Fangtan) and the changes in the Chinese television industry. Journal of Contemporary China 11 (30): 17–34. Liu, Z.P. (2017). Zhuanfang renmin de mingyi bianju Zhou Meisen (Interview with Zhou Meisen, scriptwriter of In the Name of the People). Zhongguo Jingji Zhoukan (China Economic Weekly) 14: 32–37. Lu, X.Y. (2006). Yishi, dianshi yu guojia yishi xingtai (Rituals, television and state ideology). Dushu (Reading) 8: 123–132. Lull, J. (1991). China Turned on: Television, Reform, and Resistance. London and New York: Routledge. National Endowment for Democracy (2017). Sharp power: raising authoritarian influence. https://www.ned.org/wp‐content/uploads/2017/12/Sharp‐Power‐Rising‐Authoritarian‐ Influence‐Full‐Report.pdf. Sun, W.N. (2002). Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination. Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Sun, W.N. and Zhao, Y.Z. (2009). Television culture with ‘Chinese characteristics. In:  Television Studies after TV: Understanding Television in the Post‐Broadcast Era (eds. G. Turner and J. Tay), 96–104. London: Routledge. Wang, J. (1996). High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wasserman, H. (2013). China in Africa: the implications for journalism. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 34 (3): 1–5. Xu, H. (2000). Morality discourse in the marketplace: narratives in the Chinese television news magazine Oriental Horizon. Journalism Studies 1 (4): 637–449. Yin, H. (2002). Meaning, production, consumption: the history and reality of television drama in China. In: Media in China: Consumption, Content, Crisis (eds. S.H. Donald, M. Keane and H. Yin), 28–39. London: Routledge/Curzon. Yunnan Net (2016). Yunnan guangdian jituan yu Jianpuzhai guojia dianshitai qianshu ­hulianwang dianshi xiangmu jianshe xieyi (Yunnan Broadcasting Group and Cambodian National Television signed agreement for an IPTV Construction Project). http://info. broadcast.hc360.com/2016/10/130924700874.shtml. Zhao, Y.Z. (1998). Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. Urbana, IL, and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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Index

Page references to Figures or Tables are followed by the letters ‘f ’ or ‘t’ respectively, while Notes are indicated by the letter ‘n’ and note number following the page number. Titles of publications are followed by the authors’ names. A. C. Nielsen Company (ACN), 351–354, 358 see also Nielsen Holdings Plc (ratings company) A&E Television Networks (AETN), 87 ABC network, 146, 352–353 Alpha Repertory Television (ARTS), 354 The Beulah Show, 309, 310, 312 and Latin American nations, 408 news, 222, 232, 250 Webster, 307, 308, 314, 315, 317, 319, 323 Wide World of Sports, 269, 270 Abercrombie, N., 207 abortion, 366–368 Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq, 392 Academy Archives, 45 Academy Foundation, Television Academy, 44–46 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), 84 Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Television Academy) see Television Academy (Academy of Arts and Sciences)

active mediation of television viewing, 331 Adler, D., 45 administrative research, 17 Adobe Flash, 146 Adorno, T.W., 18, 19, 20–21 “How to Look at Television,” 20 Adriaens, F., 371 advertising, 165–182 see also Association of American Advertising Agencies; Association of National Advertisers, Inc (ANA), US; commercials ad flows replacing original historical flows, 55 Arab television, 447–448 boycotts, 175–176 children and television, 338–339 Chinese television, 464 and conglomeration, 348–349 digital, 233, 235, 236, 456 effects on television content, 174–176 elevation of product beyond the material, 169 fetishization of commercials, 169–170 as funding system, 173–176 hypercommercialization, 175, 177, 178 internet, 133, 165, 166, 170, 178

A Companion to Television, Second Edition. Edited by Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Index

advertising (cont’d) Italian television, 132–133 magazine‐style spot advertisement system, 167 mobile revenue, 233 and news, 225, 232, 236, 240, 242 niche channels, 132–133 origins and early period, 167–168 political economy, 173–174 pre‐television era, 167 print, 169 purchase of audiences from TV organizations, 174 reliance of broadcasting on, 188–189 revenues, 7, 447–448 role in managing consumer demand, 30 significance, 10 United Kingdom, 109 United States, 165–166, 174, 178, 233, 350 aesthetics of television, 379–402 see also makeover shows aesthetic judgment criteria, 48–49 anthropology, 385 approaches, 385–389 authenticity, 385, 398 and the body, 380, 389, 398 codes, 390 definitions, 384–385 everyday definition of aesthetics, 384 as a given, 382 human visual behavior, 391–394 medium shots of people, 68 moving aesthetic, 11, 381–382, 386 quality television, 369 self, aesthetic of, 380 and survival, 389–397 symbolic interactionism, 392–393 television as an art form, 382 tetrad concept, 394–397 transition, aesthetics of, 387 Africa, streaming services, 161 African‐Americans, representation, 28 see also This is Us (NBC series) Diff ’rent Strokes (NBC sitcom), 307, 308, 313–317, 319, 322, 323 Magical African American Friends (MAAF), 320 Minstrelsy Era (1950–1953), 309 misrepresentation of identity, 309 press on, 310

search for the “right” strategy, 308–315 in sitcoms, 10, 299, 307–324 in sports television, 275 Webster (ABC sitcom), 307, 308, 314, 315, 317, 319, 323 African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Baptist Church, South Carolina, 318 Ageh, T., 194 Agger, G., 383 Ahlers, D., 231 AIR (Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión), 406 AJ+ (Al Jazeera digital spin‐off), 235 Akass, K., 370, 371 Al‐’Alam, 453 al‐Ekhbariya, Saudi Arabia, 450 al‐Hurra, 454–455 Al Ibrahim, Walid, 442 Al Jazeera, 442, 443, 449, 450, 453 Al Jazeera America, 455 Al Majid, 445 Ali, M., 275 All In with Chris Hayes (US news/opinion program), 253, 255, 256 Ally McBeal, 371 Alpha Repertory Television (ARTS), 354 Alphabet, 151 Altman, R., 69 amateur video, on YouTube, 153–154 Amazon Prime/Amazon Video, 55, 107, 120, 146, 150–151, 176, 177 see also Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD); Video on Demand (VOD) Arab television, 457 and Comcast, 163 female audiences, 369 as film streamer, 155 Instant Video, 151 Netflix compared, 151, 152, 155 online television, 145, 151, 155, 160, 163 Plugola effect, 177 productions, 152 tied to Amazon.com, 151, 159 Amazon.com, 150 American Broadcasting Company, 353 American Congress, 337, 338 American Experience (historical series), 81, 88, 96, 98 American Idol (talent show), 205, 206, 209, 212 American Life Project, 88

Index 479 Amos ‘n’ Andy (CBS ministrel‐inspired comedy), 310–311, 312 Ancient Aliens (pseudo historical series), 84 Andrejevic, M., 203 Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 41, 58 Ang, I., 25 Angelini, J.R., 275 Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, USC, 23, 307 anti‐flow technologies, 249 Antiques Roadshow, 89–90 Antola, L., 409 Apple, 151, 231 Apprentice, The (Anglo‐American reality show), 30, 204, 226 see also Trump, Donald Aptaker, I., 323 Arab Radio and Television (ART), 451 Arab region Arabic language, 450 armed conflicts, 440 demographics, 439 history of television, 440–441 Israeli–Arab conflict, 440, 441 media elite, 446 pan‐Arabism, 440, 441, 446, 447 population, 439, 442, 457 Arab Spring, 449 Arab television, 11, 439–458 advertising revenues, 447–448 Al Jazeera, 442, 443, 449, 450, 453 Amazon Prime/Amazon Video, 457 American model, 454–455 background, 440–444 channels, 443, 445, 451–452, 455–456 content, 448–452 distribution, 447 documentaries, 445, 449, 450, 455 entertainment, 450–452 Euro‐Russian model, 453–454 free‐to‐air (FTA) services, 445, 447, 449, 451 global channels, 455–456 history, 440–441 international broadcasters, 453–455 Iranian model, 453 Musalsalat (soap operas and telenovelas), 452 Netflix, 457 news/current affairs, 449–450 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming, 448, 456–457

ownership, 444–445 pay TV (cable or satellite service), 448, 455 post‐broadcast (from 2010), 443–444 production, 445–446 programming, 448–449 Ramadan, 452 religious channels, 451–452 research methods, 448 satellite, 440–443, 448, 449, 454 from 1990 to 2010, 442–443 direct‐to‐home broadcasts, 447 Ramadan, 452 social media, 444, 449 state‐owned, 443, 449, 451 from 1960 to 1990, 441–442 structure, 444–448 television industry, 443, 448 terrestrial broadcasting/channels, 440–442, 444, 445, 447, 448, 450–453 ArabSat, 441, 442 al‐Arabiya, 443 Archaeology of Knowledge, The (Foucault), 42 Archive Fever (Derrida), 56 archives, 41–61 absence, preserving, 56 Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 44–46 aesthetic judgment criteria, 48–49 American Television and Radio Archives, 43 Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 41 as art museums, 46–49 cloud, 56 corporate, 55 cultural bias, 42 democratic surround (multiscreen installations), 50, 59n13 digital, 55 do‐it‐yourself (DIY), 53 as filing systems, 42, 58 first, in the US, 43–51 and history, 42 Library of Congress (LOC), 42–43, 54 live anthology dramas, 43, 48 local content, lack of, 56 Los Angeles see Los Angeles and memory, 57 network TV, saving, 56 New York see New York nostalgia mode, 52, 55 online, 54–55, 59n18, 194

480

Index

archives (cont’d) Peabody Awards Archive, 54, 56 as public relations, 44–46 storage, 56–58 streaming, 55 syndication libraries, 55 television index, 50, 59n12 and television industry, 44 as tourist sites, 50–51 Twitter, 253 UCLA Film and Television Archive, 44, 52, 54 underfunding, 59n18 and vast wasteland, perception of TV as, 43, 44, 52 and vintage TV, 53, 55 and waste, TV’s status as, 43 and YouTube, 54 Argentina, 409, 413, 414, 416, 417 Arledge, R., 268–269, 270 Arnheim, R., 382 Arnold, M., 186, 187 art and the feminine, 70 popular and elite, 20 video art, 49 Asia, streaming in see also China streaming in, 160–161 Asian Games (1990), 465 assemblage technique, 49, 270–271 Association of American Advertising Agencies, 350 Association of National Advertisers, Inc. (ANA), US, 339, 350 AT&T, 87, 152, 191, 410 Time Warner merger, 146, 228–229, 355 audiences see also ratings; watching television age, 121 “audience commodity,” 289 broadcasting needs, 118–123 children, 328–332 desensitization to violent behavior/actions, 23 fragmentation process, 132–133 goodwill towards talent show participants, 214–215 History Channel, 80 inertia of, 142 online, measuring, 232 quality, 289 reality television, 203–204

size, 5 South Africa, 424–425 study of, 11 television audience measure survey (TAMS) database, South Africa, 425 traditional and connected TV time, 5, 6t audiovisual industry see also Italy fragmentation of content, 132 Italy, 129–144 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), 117, 277 Aupperle, A., 172 aurality, 68–69 Austen, J., 308–309 Australia Nine Network, 269 Warlpiri people, 392, 397 Yuendumu community, 392 authenticity aesthetics of television, 385, 398 African American, 309 critical television studies, 21, 29 historical programming, 86, 90 in performance/reality television, 207, 209–211, 213–215, 394 South African television, 429, 431, 435 women and television, 372 Authoritarian Personality, The (Adorno), 20 Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazione (Italy), 130 Avatar (film), 356 Avenatti, Michael, 259 Ax Men, 81 Azcárraga Vidaurreta, E., 407 Babbie, E., 400n7 Bacue, A., 6 Báez, J., 372 balancing strategies, violent content, 338 Baldwin, R., 113 banalization of everyday life, on TV, 249 Banks, M., 70–71 banning and zoning strategies, violent content, 338 Banta, M., 97 bardic television, 399n5 Barker, D., 67–68, 73 Barlow, W., 310 Barnes, C.C., 10

Index 481 Barnett, S., 265 Barnouw, E., 43, 113, 167 Barris, K., 156 Bates, S., 238–239 Baudrillard, J., 30 Bauman, Z., 57 BBC see British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Beard, M., 96 beauty pageants, 397 Becker, L., 272 Becoming Mrs. Jones (South African docu‐reality show), 432–433 Beijing Television (later China Central Television, CCTV), 460, 461, 469 beIN Media Group, 456 Beirut, 444–446 Bell, D., 24 Benhabib, S., 367 Benjamin, W., 22 Bennett, W.L., 393 Benny, J., 51 Berg, G., 64, 72–74, 76 see also Goldbergs, The (American period sitcom) Berg, N., 392 Bergman, I., 268 Berlusconi, S., 191 Berners‐Lee, T., 192, 193 Bertagnoli, L., 59n17 Best, S., 29–30 Betty la fea (telenovela), 414 Beulah Show, The (ABC sitcom), 309, 310 cancelation, 312 bias aesthetic, 385 archives, 45, 46, 48, 55, 56 challenging, 318 commercial, 225 cultural, 42, 272 eliminating, 351 Emmy Awards, 45 geographical, 48 historical programming, 91, 95, 97–98 network TV, towards, 56 social groups, 32 telesports, 271–275 bifurcation of social life, 281

Big Brother (reality show), 85, 202, 204, 208–211, 214, 216, 394 big data business model, 136–139 content analysis, 139–142 Netflix, 137–140, 142–143 selection and choice of catalog programs, 142 big shiny floor moment, 213–214 Big Sick, The (streaming film), 155 Billings, A., 273, 275 Bin Salman, Mohammad, 445 biographies, documentary, 87 Birmingham School/Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 24, 363, 364 Birth of a Nation, The (Griffith), 321 Bivens, R., 224, 225 black hole, television perceived as, 30 black representation, 27 see also African‐Americans, representation; color, people of; minorities, representation of; race, representation of black/brown power movements, 25–26 Black Power programming, 57 black‐themed comedies/dramas, 10, 308, 309, 312 blackface tradition, 308, 309, 311, 314 in commercials, 172 minstrel performances, 308–309 and Netflix, 156 South Africa, 425 Blacklist, The, 316 blacklisting, 114 #BlackLivesMatter movement, 275 Bloch, E., 22 blocking techniques, 68, 73, 75 blogs, 55 Blue Book (Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees), FCC, 46, 59n4, 113, 114 Bluem, W.B., 52 Blygo, Z., 139 Bogle, D., 309, 321 Bolin, G., 205 “born‐digital” video news outlets, 234–237 boycotts, advertising, 175–176 Boyle, S., 208, 213, 216 Branchik, B., 171 Branded Entertainment Network (BEN), 177

482

Index

brands, 168, 169, 214 MSNBC (news channel), 257, 261 Bratslavsky, L., 10 Brazil, 408, 409, 414, 415 Breaking Bad, 316 Brenner, D., 222 Britain see United Kingdom Britain’s Got Talent (variety show), 208, 213, 216 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) see also United Kingdom BBC 1, 116, 120t, 133t BBC 2, 116, 120t, 133t BBC Arabic, 442, 454 BBC iPlayer, 108, 121 BBC World, 454 “British, Bold and Creative” policy document (2015), 194 central mission, 186 early years, 185 Freeview platform launched by, 118 House of Cards, purchase by Netflix, 140, 141, 155, 157 independence, 116 license fee, 109, 115, 116 main channels, 120 monopoly, 109, 188–190 ending of, 116, 189, 190 news reporting, 116 “The Octopus” report (1928), 187 Open Door and Video Diary series, 189 origins, 115 Reith, under, 186–187 resource issues, 115, 116 sports television/telesport, 278 trust rating, 116 website, 195 British Telecom, privatizing, 191 Broadcast Over Britain (Reith), 184 broadcasting advertising, reliance on, 188–189 Asian Games (1990), 465 audiences, needs of, 118–123 Canadian regulation, 118 censoring, 370, 392 challenges of internet to, 118 citizenship, 185 commercial, 23, 188, 276 commons/culture in common, 10, 183–197 communards, 185, 189, 192 consumerism, selling, 187–189 contemporary, 107–128

contested representations, 189–190 crisis, capitalizing on, 191–192 digital‐only, 117 early practitioners, 185 EU regulation, 118 and the everyday, 188 High Definition (HD), 445 history of public broadcasting, 10, 183–197 imagined community of nation, 185–187 internet see internet legislation, 112 license fees, 109, 115, 116, 131–132 live broadcasts, 65–66, 392 made‐for‐television histories see historical programming; made‐for‐television histories marketization, 190–191, 195 merger of broadcast and cable television industries, 354 regular transmissions, launching of, 188 social role, 108–111 Standard Definition (SD), 445 traditional, changes in, 9 United Kingdom, 115–118 United States, 23, 110, 113–115 universalizing of service, 184 World Wide Web, 192–193 Broadcasting Act (1981), UK, 117 Broadcasting Act (1990), UK, 117 Broadcasting Audience Research Board (Barb), UK, 132 Brown, J., 275 Brown, L., 272 Brown, M.E., 364 Brown, S.K., 323 Browne, M., 400n10 Brunsdon, C., 25, 364 Brzezinski, M., 258 BSkyB, 111, 118, 280 Burns & Allen (US comedy series), 74 Burns, K., 82, 84, 88, 90, 91 Burns, R., 82 Buscombe, E., 267 Bush, President George, 227, 316 Butler, J., 368 BuzzFeed Motion Picture Studios, 229, 234, 235 C. E. Hooper Company (CEH), 350, 351, 358 CAB see Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasts (CAB)

Index 483 Cable Music Channel, 354 cable news, 10, 229, 231, 260 see also cable television; pay TV (cable or satellite service); Trump, President Donald; Twitter 24‐hour news channel, 249 breaking news constant nature of, 251 Trump‐specific stories, 251 Trump’s twitter feed, 10, 247–263 channels, 261 flow, 247, 248 continuing relevance of, 249–251 MSNBC, 251–260 possible futures, tapping into, 257 Cable News Network (CNN) see CNN (Cable News Network) cable television see also news; pay TV (cable or satellite service); satellite television; Trump, President Donald challenges of internet to, 118 made‐for‐television histories, 87, 88, 93 merger of broadcast and cable television industries, 354 networks, 55, 80 news see cable news nostalgia, 55 sports television/telesport, 280 streaming, 55 subscription cable services, US, 111 Time Warner ownership, 229 in the US, 119, 123 Cagney and Lacey (US TV program), 28, 364 Cairo, 445, 456 Cairo Media City, 446 Calabrese, A., 10 Caldwell, J.T., 64, 66–67 Cameron, J., 356 Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, 178 Campaign for Quality Television (2003), 204 Canada broadcasting regulation, 118 journalists in, 224 television ownership, 5 Cannes Film Festival, 158, 161 capitalism advanced, structural crisis, 191 aesthetics of television, 386 consumer, 168, 249

corporate, 23, 154 critical television studies, 19, 26 industrial, 168 monopoly, 300 neoliberal, 222 patriarchal, 26 primitive, 184–185, 406 satire, 300–302 South Africa, 432 Cardwell, S., 369 Carlos, J., 274 Carpenter, E., 392 Carter, G., 208–209, 211, 212, 213 Carter, President Jimmy, 222, 313, 322 Cartoon Network, 335, 355 Cassyd, S., 44, 45 catastrophe, 96, 248, 249, 250, 261 catch‐up services, UK, 108, 121 Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, 398, 399f cathode ray tube, 118 CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) network, 85, 146, 175, 352, 354 All Access channel, 108, 357 Amos ‘n’ Andy, 310–311 CBS All Access, 108, 357 CBS‐C, 354 control by NAI, 356–357 franchises, 357 Harvest of Shame, 110 “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS” effect, 175 and Latin American nations, 406, 407, 408 news, 222, 230, 232, 393 sports television/telesport, 170, 278 Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials, 170 TV Guide, 349 voting stock, 356 CCTV see China Central Television (CCTV) celebrity industry, 205, 372–373 censorship/rulings, 43, 113, 240, 413, 446 broadcasting, 370, 392 limits of, 473 uncensored content, 255, 449 Center for Media Literacy, 179 central processing units (CPUs), 145 channels Arab television, 443, 445, 451–452, 455–456 cable news, 231, 261 channel hopping, 31, 66

484

Index

channels (cont’d) free‐to‐air (FTA) services see free‐to‐air (FTA) services global, 455–456 Italy, 130, 131, 132 merging the broadcast and cable industries, 354 niche, 132 South Africa, 423–425, 426t, 428, 435 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355 United Kingdom, 119–121, 132 BBC 1, 116, 120t, 133t BBC 2, 116, 120t, 133t Channel 4, 85, 109, 116, 119, 120t, 133t, 160, 277 Channel 5, 116, 117, 119, 120t, 133t Independent Television (ITV), 109, 116, 117, 120, 121, 160, 190 United States, 49, 115, 280 Biography Channel, 87 Cable Music, 354 Cartoon Network, 335, 355 CBS All Access, 108, 357 Channel 13 (WNDT), 49 Disney Channel, 335 Entertainment Channel, 354 History Channel, 5, 79–81, 87, 96 Nickelodeon, 171, 335, 356 Chappelle, D., 156 Chicago, Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC), 53, 54, 59n17 Chicago School, 222 children and television, 11, 327–344 adults, absence of, 333–334 advertising, 338–339 children as audience, 328–332 children on television, 332–334 co‐viewing mediation strategies, 330–331 digital outlets used, 327–328 dominance of Western/North American content, 336 effects of television on children, 8, 24, 328–330 and feminist studies, 331–332 gender portrayals, 332–333 international events, 335–336 male characters, 332–333 parental mediation of television viewing, 330–331 quality television for children, 340–342 representation studies, 332–334

social class, 333 stereotypes, 333 television for children, 334–340 television industry, 334–335, 336 in the US, 335, 337 US‐based media conglomerates, 335 violence, problem of, 337, 338 Children’s Television Act (CTA), 1990, 337, 339 Chile, 409–410, 413, 417 China, 11, 459–476 advertising, 464 anti‐corruption drama, 470–471 Beijing Television (later China Central Television, CCTV), 460, 461 CCTV see China Central Television (CCTV) Chongqing Satellite Television (CQTV), 468, 469 Communist Party of China (CPC), 460, 463, 466, 468–470 competition in television system, 464, 465 Cultural Revolution, 459, 460–461 culturally oriented content reaching beyond, 471 culture industry, 465 documentaries, 471 early reform era (1978–1989), 459, 461–463 18th National Congress (2012), 468 entertainment, 470 Great Leap Forward, 460 Harbin television, 460 Hunan Provincial Satellite TV, 470 Hunan Satellite Television, 466, 467, 471 Ji Shi (Chinese factual‐based storytelling programming), 466–467 Kewang (Aspirations), 465 Mao era (1958–1977), 459–461 post‐Mao reform program, 462 market reform era (1990–2012), 459, 463–468 mass media, 463, 467 Ministry of Radio and Television, 462 National Endowment for Democracy (NED), 473 nationalism, 469 new media in, 469, 471, 473 population, 460, 461, 470, 471, 474 Shanghai television, 460 state‐controlled commercialization, 463–468 television industry, 464–466, 468, 469 television sets, 460, 461 terrestrial broadcasting/channels, 464

Index 485 12th National Congress (1982), 461–462 Xi Jinping era (2013 to the present), 459, 468–473 China Central Radio and Television General Station, 469 China Central Television (CCTV), 461, 462 see also Beijing Television (later China Central Television, CCTV) CCTV‐4, 472 CCTV‐9, 472 merger with China National Radio and China Radio International, 469 News Commentary Department, 466 River Elegy, 462–463, 473 Spring Festival Gala, 467 Why Marx Was Right, 470 China National Radio, merger with CCTV, 469 China Radio International, merger with CCTV, 469 Chomsky, N., 23 Chongqing Satellite Television (CQTV), China, 468, 469 cinema see also films and broadcasting, 188 Cannes Film Festival, 158, 161 cinema‐going statistics, 108, 124n1 Cinematograph Films Act (1927), 112 cinematography, 98, 157 comparison with TV, 67, 69, 76 costs, 108 Egypt, 451 feminist analysis, 362 Hollywood, 362, 363 humanistic research tradition, 364 influence on television, 316, 317 Latin American nations, 412 Magical African American Friends (MAAF), 320 and Netflix, 122, 158 research, 8, 364 South Africa, 431 style, 76 Cinematograph Films Act (1927), UK, 112 citizenship active and passive, 241 cultural, 276 resources for, 188 social contract of, 185, 189, 193 transforming, 241 Western, 241

civic journalism, 239 civic reform, 237–241 Civil Rights Movement, US, 275, 312 Civil War, The (US mini historical series), 82, 84, 90, 93 Civilisations (UK historical series), 96 Clark, K., 96 Clarke, N., 204 class, representation of, 172, 189, 333 and female audiences, 363, 365, 366 in Latin American nations, 413 Clear Channel network, 115 Clements, K.C., 171 Clinton, H., 228, 233, 258 Clinton, President Bill, 114, 222, 233 cloud archives, 56 CMQ (Cuban station), 407 CNBC (cable service), 280, 436 Arabic franchise, 450 CNN (Cable News Network), 229, 231, 232, 248, 250, 261, 410 co‐viewing mediation strategies, 330–331 Cobb, L.J., 64 Cohen, M., 248, 256, 257, 258, 259 Cole, E.R., 366–367, 368 collective memory, 92–93, 94 Collins, E., 221 Colombia, 409–410, 414, 415 color, people of see also African‐Americans, representation; black representation; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) children, 333 colorblind ideology, 317–318 in commercials, 172 and Reaganism, 313 representation on TV, 25–28 in sitcoms, 308, 313, 316, 319 women, 372 colorblind ideology, 317–318 Columbia Broadcasting System see CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) network Comcast (US cable company), 121 amalgamation with streaming service providers, 163 Disney’s takeover battle against, for 21st Century Fox, 146, 152, 228, 229 and Hulu, 152 Kabletown (fictional Comcast), in 30 Rock, 298, 299–301, 302

486

Index

Comcast (US cable company) (cont’d) ownership, 297 satirical representation, 298, 299–301, 302 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355–356 comedy black‐themed comedies/dramas, 10, 308, 309, 312 domestic/family comedies, 70–75 ethnic, 72 Comey, J., release of memoir, 248, 257–259 commercial television, 7, 10, 11, 18, 43, 67, 143, 189, 292, 312, 333, 416, 445 see also advertising; commercialism/ commerciality; commercials and advertising, 166, 173, 174 flow, 249 hypercommercialization, 177 news, 222, 223, 241, 242 reality television, 204, 208 tracking, 347 watching television, 347, 354 commercialism/commerciality, 49, 67, 69, 74, 178, 346 see also commercial television; commercials Chinese television, 462, 468, 469 of internet, 194 commercials see also advertising; commercial television; commercialism/commerciality aims, 168, 171 brands, 168 class, representation of, 172 as commodity and commercial fetishism, 168–170 company branding and integrated campaigns, 166 compared with theatrical film and television programs, 167–168 fetishization of, 169–170 historical legacy, 165–166 images of others from different countries, 172 political economy, 173–176 power of, 166 presentation in, 74 race, representation of, 172 representation in, 170–172 role of digital media in the future of, 176–178 and soap narratives, 26 sound, use of, 168, 169 storytelling, 168

visual symbolism, 169 women in, 171 commodification commoditized flow, 65–67 commodity/commercial fetishism, 168–170 cultural commodities, 289–290 excessive, promotion by mainstream media, 24 operation, 294 portrayal in 30 Rock, 294–296 processes and consequences, 296–301 common culture see culture in common commons and corporatization, 195 data, 196 defining, 184 and industrialization/urbanization, 184–185 principles, 193 communards, 185, 189, 192 Communication Decency Act (1996), US, 192 Communications Act (1934), US, 112, 113, 123 Communications Act (2003), UK, 117 Communist Party of China (CPC), 460, 463, 466, 468–470 computer games, 24 concentration, portrayal in 30 Rock, 293–294 Concept (promotional film), 51, 59n12 conglomeration/conglomerates American television industry, political supports, 348 children and television, 335–336 cultural imperialism, 22, 33n3, 162 portrayal in 30 Rock, 291–292 transindustrial, 348, 349, 355–358 connected TV time, 5 Conspicuous Consumption effect, 177 consumer culture, 23, 70, 168, 169 consumerism see also advertising; commodification; consumption; fetishism, commodity culture of, 23, 70, 168, 169, 187–188 excessive, promotion by mainstream media, 24 ideology, 188 selling, 187–189 South African television, 431–432 women as consumers, 70 consumption see also advertising; commercials; commodification; consumerism; fetishism, commodity role of television in promoting, 7–8 South African television, 424–425

Index 487 content advertising, effects on, 174–176 Arab television, 448–452 cultural, 369 historical see historical programming Italian television, 139–142 content delivery system (CDN), 146 cookery shows, 203 Cooky, C., 273 Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasts (CAB), 350, 351, 358 Copyright Act (1976), US, 43 cord‐cutting, 107, 115, 120, 163, 166, 265, 278 digital services and commercials, 176–178 Corner, J., 65, 70, 203, 208, 216, 249 “Performing the Real,” 209 Coronation Street (UK soap opera), 116 corporatization, 195, 386 hypercommercial, 266 sports television/telesport, 281–282 correlation studies, 329 Correll, C., 310, 311 Costa, R., 256 Cott, P., 45 Couldry, N., 328 Creedon, P., 272 crime drama, 27 crises capitalizing on, in public broadcasting, 191–192 and catastrophe, 248 Global Financial Crisis, 130–131 ontological, in media industry, 158–159 of representation, 189 structural, in advanced capitalism, 191 critical humor, sitcoms, 287–290, 292 laughter as a release valve, 289, 302 in 30 Rock, 289, 299–301 critical intertextuality, 288 critical television studies, 17–37 and administrative research, 17 authenticity, 21, 29 culture industries, 9, 18–21 Frankfurt School, 17, 21–25 mass media, 18, 20, 21, 27, 31 media culture, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 30 multiperspectival, need for, 32 oppositional social movements, 25–28, 32 politics of representation, 9, 25–28

postmodern turn in critical television studies, 17, 28–32 textual analysis, limitations of, 32 Crockett, D., 172 Crosby, B., 51 Crossroads (UK soap), 364 Crown, The (Netflix UK docudrama), 86, 88, 93, 155, 160 Cuban, M., 276 cultivation analysis, 23 Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, The (bell), 24 cultural imperialism, 22, 33n3, 162 and Latin American nations, 405, 408, 417 Cultural Revolution (1966), China, 460–461 cultural studies, British, 24–25, 26, 30–31 culture see also culture in common; culture industries American commercialized, 187 in common see culture in common consumer, 23, 70, 168, 169, 187–188 defining, 186 hedonistic, 24 high and low, 20 mass culture, 18–20 media culture, 22, 24 national, 187 popular see popular culture text‐based approach to, 22 Culture and Anarchy (Arnold), 186 Culture as History (Susman), 93 culture in common, 10, 183 on‐screen and online, 193–196 culture industries, 18–21, 22, 465 current affairs see also news Arab television, 449–450 Chinese television, 468 educative role of TV, 7 Cvetkovich, A., 57 cyborg, 396 D’Acci, J., 28, 364 Daley, S., 230 Dallas, 25 Dancing on Ice (UK talent show), 209 Daniels, S., 257, 259 Danto, A., 379, 382, 397–398 Davis, B., 51 Dawson, E., 66 Day, D., 51

488

Index

Day, J., 109 de Coubertin, P., 266 de Mol, J., 202 Dead Certainties (Schama), 96 Deery, J., 214 Deloitte, 107 Deming, C., 9 democracy, 5, 153, 225 digital, 236 democratic surround (multiscreen installations), 50, 59n13 Deng Xiaoping, 463 Department of Justice (DOJ), US, 229 Derrida, J., 56 desktop computers, 232 destructive nature of television, alleged, 8 Deutsche Welle (German broadcaster), 454 devices, TV‐connected, 5, 6t, 108 D’Harnoncourt, R., 47 Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno), 19 Diana, Princess of Wales, 230 Diff ’rent Strokes (NBC sitcom), 307, 308, 313–317, 319, 322, 323 digital media see also streaming; technology, television advertising, 233, 235, 236, 456 archives, 55, 58 “born‐digital” video news outlets, 234–237 cord‐cutting, 176–178 desktop computers, 232 devices, TV‐connected, 5, 6t digital‐only broadcasting, 117 industry restructuring and “digital disruption,” news, 222–227 laptops, 232 mobile technology, 232 role in commercials, 176–178 start‐ups, 229–230 technological shift, 145–146 Digital Space, 194 digital terrestrial television (DTT), 118 DirecTV, 172, 410 Discovery Communications, 455 Disney Corporation children and television, 335 merger and acquisition activity, 230 acquisition of 21st Century Fox, 146, 152, 228, 229, 355, 356 segments, 356 transindustrial media conglomeration, 356 dispositif (technical apparatus), 56

distribution, Arab television, 447 DiTommaso, T., 388–389 diversity on television, 82–94 Doane, M.A., 248, 249, 257, 362 Dobbs, M., 140 docudramas, historical, 85–86 see also Crown, The (Netflix UK docudrama) documentaries see also docudramas, historical animal, 141 Arab television, 445, 449, 450, 455 broadcasting, 116 China, 471 documentary biographies, 87 “fly‐on‐the‐wall” see docusoaps historical, 82–84, 87–90, 94, 96, 386, 468 investigative, 464 lifestyle, 87 multipart, 84 Netflix, 155, 158 observational, 202 scientific, 386 docusoaps, 201–202 Dole, B., 233 domestic/family comedies, 70–75 domestic themes, 69–70 Donovan, J., 213 Dori Media Group, 416 Downton Abbey (UK period drama), 160, 205 drama see also soap operas in the 1950s, 64 character‐driven, 202 cost of producing, 118–119 crime, 27 docudramas, 85–86 female‐centered, 362, 370 live anthology, 43, 48 local, 426–427 masculinization of traditionally feminized drama, 370 serial drama, 118–119 soapie‐dramas, South Africa, 427–429 South Africa, 426–427 format changes over past decade, 429–430 Dreams in the Red Chamber (Chinese drama), 471 Drinks, Crime and Prohibition (documentary), 89 Drudge, M., 400n11 DStv/MultiChoice, South Africa, 424, 425, 434 DTT see digital terrestrial television (DTT) Dubai, 441, 444–446, 450

Index 489 Dubai Media City (DMC), 446, 449 Dubai TV, 446, 449 Dubuc, N., 80–81 Duffy, B.E., 301 “dumbing down,” 204 DuMont, B., 53, 59n17 Dumont network, 72 DuVernay, A., 156 Dwyer, D., 229 Dyer, R., 157 Ebersol, D., 269 Edelman, E., 82, 83, 84 Edgerton, G.R., 9 educative role of TV, 7, 24 effects tradition, media studies, 328 Egypt, 441, 444, 451 Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC), 446 Egyptian Space Channel (ESC), 442 El Trece network, 416 election campaigns, TV coverage, 5, 30 11.22.63 (science fiction thriller), 85 Ellapen, J., 431 ellipticality, narrative transparency, 66, 82 Ellis, John, 66, 205 Ellis, Joseph, 91 Emmy Awards, 46, 52, 88 emotion and television, 29 advertising, 169, 174 children’s television, 328, 330, 332 drama/soaps, 322, 427 news, 224, 230, 235, 237 sensationalism, 228 quality television, 369 reality television, 201, 204, 208, 214 back story, 213 performance, 206, 211–213, 215–216 sports, 266, 270, 276 EMPC (Egyptian Media Production City), 446 Encyclopedia of Television, 386 Endemol (Italian‐owned production house), 190, 202, 212, 415 Enders Analysis, 121 Ene, L., 135 England and Wales Cricket Board, 277 entertainment, 6 see also drama; soap operas; talent shows Arab television, 450–452 archiving of programs, 43

Chinese television, 470 television content, 372–373 enuciative fallacy, 68, 74 Eros and Civilization (Marcuse), 21 ESPN network, 83, 84, 176, 272, 278, 410 SportsCenter, 273 ethnographic research, 224, 363, 364, 367, 432 Euro‐Russian television model, 453–454 Europe/EU law Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), 117, 277 broadcasting regulation, 118 commercialization, 190 film distribution industry, 122 streaming, 160 telecoms, liberalization, 191 television industry, 135, 143 Television Without Frontiers Directive (EU), 1989, 277 European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), 135 Everyday Television: Nationwide (Brunsdon and Morley), 25 experimental telefilm, 46 Eysenck, H.J., 23 F1 TV, 281 FAANG group, 151 Facebook, 151, 192–193 Instant Articles, 235 news, 223, 224, 231, 233, 235, 236, 237 and Russia, 257 Fairness Doctrine (FCC), 114 fake news, 226, 227, 228 family comedies, 70–75 family, decline of, 21 Family, The (reality show), 202 Farhadi, A., 155 Farnsworth, P., 4, 7 FCC see Federal Communications Commission Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 247, 248, 256 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Blue Book (Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees), FCC, 46, 59n4, 113, 114 broadcasting licenses granted by, 110 censorship/rulings, 43 children and television, 337 deregulation by, 222 Fairness Doctrine, 114 and Latin American nations, 408

490

Index

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (cont’d) Minow (Chair) “vast wasteland” speech, 7, 24, 43, 44, 110, 237 ownership rules, liberalizing, 115 Fellini, F., 268 female television audiences, 361–378 see also feminism/feminist TV criticism; gender; women and abortion, 366–368 and class, 363, 365, 366 in‐depth interviews, 365 ethnographic research, 363, 364, 367 feminized quality television and postfeminism, 370–371 film and literature studies, 361–363 identification with female characters, 364, 366 masculinization of traditionally feminized drama, 370 media convergence, 372–373 new cultural content, 369 new media context, 361, 368, 369, 371–373 postfeminism, 368–371 psychoanalytic theory, 362, 363, 364 soap operas, 26, 364 specialized “female” genres, 363 femininity see also masculinity black, 372 Latina, 372 postfeminism, 368 television constructed, 26 televisuality, 69–71 feminism/feminist TV criticism, 25, 26, 33n7 see also female television audiences; gender; women children and television, 331–332 daytime television, 249 female television audiences, 364 film and literature studies, 362, 363 production studies, 70–71 quality television, 371 television studies, 364, 365 Feminist, the Housewife and the Soap Opera, The (Brunsdon), 364 Ferrari, M., 81 fetishism, commodity, 168–170 Feuer, J., 66, 70, 250, 261 fiction and reality, 71 Fields, A.N., 57 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), 277 Women’s World Cup, 272, 273

filing technologies, 42, 58 films European film distribution industry, 122 experimental telefilm, 46 film and literature studies, 8 film and literature studies, female audiences, 361–363 film criticism, feminist, 26 image classification and archives, 42 telefilms, 65, 67–68 theoretical analysis, 362 US, sale of, 112 Fincher, D., 152, 157 First Look (US travel/lifestyle program), 258 Fiske, J., 25, 249, 399n5 flow, in television context, 188, 247 see also televisuality anti‐flow technologies, 249 archives, 55, 57 cable news, 247, 248 continuing relevance of flow, 249–251 MSNBC, 251–260 commoditized, 65–67 defining flow, 57 disruption of, 249, 250 information, 248 liquid medium of flows, 57–58 and liveness, 250 multiple flows, 66 programming, 248 regional exchanges, 410 segmented program flow, 66, 67 television traffic, 409 televisuality, 65–67, 69 temporal, 248, 250 Twitter, 248 focus groups, 367 Fogelman, D., 315 Foote, H., 47 Ford, H., 187 formats, historical programming, 68, 85, 89 Formula 1, 281 Foster, H., 380 Foucault, M., 42, 56 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Mander), 8 Four Laws of the Media (McLuhan), 394 Fowler, M. (FCC Chair), 222, 294 Fox News, 228, 231, 232, 261 Fox Sports, 269, 272, 273 FoxBox, 269

Index 491 fragmentation process, television audiences, 132–133 France, 23, 25 France24 news channel, 454 franchising, 85, 266, 293, 433, 467 Arab television, 450, 455 historical programming, 89–90 public broadcasting/culture in common, 185, 186, 189 Frankfurt School critical theory, 9, 17, 33n2, 70 see also critical television studies classical Frankfurt School model, 18, 19 critical perspectives from/after, 21–25 and culture industries, 18–21 hidden meanings in television texts, 20–21 high and low culture, 20 mass culture, 18–20 neo‐Frankfurt School approach, 22 Fraser, Nancy, 367 Frasier (domestic comedy), 73 Free Press, 178 free‐to‐air (FTA) services advertiser‐funded, challenging, 111 Arab television, 445, 447, 449, 451 Latin American nations, 411, 413 South Africa, 423, 434 United Kingdom, 117, 118 Freedman, L., 59n7 Freeview, 117, 118, 160 Freud Museum, London, 56 Friedman, J., 140 Fry, T., 63, 65, 77 FTA see free‐to‐air (FTA) services Fujiyoshi, S., 153 Fuller, S., 205 functions of television current role, understanding, 3–4, 5–9 educative/informative, 7, 24 liquid medium of flows, 57–58 mass communication, 4 and myth, 31 signifying, 30 Fung, A.Y.H., 465, 468 Game of Thrones (US fantasy drama), 372 Games and Sets (Barnett), 265 Gantz, W., 276 Gates, G., 212, 213 Gates, R., 252, 254 gay and lesbian culture, 26–27, 57 gaze, the, 362, 399n3

Gaz’lam (South African drama), 430, 432 Geist, W., 257, 259 gender see also female television audiences; feminism/ feminist TV criticism; women characterization of television as feminine, 71 children and television, 332–333 femininity see femininity feminists’ use of term, 367–368 masculinity see masculinity representation on TV, 25–28 sports television, 272–274 General Electric (GE) political support for American television industry, 347 representation of in satire, 290, 291, 294, 295, 297, 300–302 see also satire; 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program) Generations (South African soapie‐drama), 426, 429, 432 genres see also cable news; cable television; documentaries; docusoaps; drama; reality television; soap operas; sports television/ telesport concept of genre, 10 docudramas, historical, 85–86 identifying, 10 made‐for‐television histories see made‐for‐ television histories and populism, 205 South African television, 425–426 telenovela, 407, 409, 414–417 “women’s,” 363 Geraghty, C., 362 Gerbner, G., 22, 23 Gerland, O., 400n8 Germany, teen killings in, 23 Gioia, P., 91 Gitlin, T., 29 “Sixteen Notes on Television and the Movement,” 22 Global Financial Crisis (2008), 130–131, 223–224 global media, Americanization, 22–23 Global Village, The (McLuhan and Powers), 395 globalization children and television, 336 and online television, 159–162 sports television/telesport, 281–282 Globo, Sky Brasil, 410, 411, 415

492

Index

Goffman, E., 207, 208, 210 Goldberg, V., 400n10 Goldbergs, The (American period sitcom), 9, 64, 72–76 character of Molly, 72–75 character of Pinky the dog, 75 movement patterns, 76 multiple planes, 75 shooting style, 75 theatricality, 75 window frame, 74, 75 “Golden Age” of television archives, 43, 46, 48 televisuality, 9, 64, 71–73 Golden Globe Awards, 88 Golding, P., 290 Goldman, R., 83 Gonlin, V., 372 Good Citizen, The (Schudson), 123 Good Times (African American comedy), 312 Goodman, J., 97 Goodman, W., 238 Google, 55, 192, 233, 236 Arts and Culture domain, 195 Gorbachev, M., 463 Gordon, M., 57 Gore, Al, 233 Gosden, F., 310, 311 gossip, 372–373 Graff, H., 240 Grammer, K., 73 Grandstand (UK sports program), 271 graphics advertising, 168 computer‐generated, 67, 233 editing out, 58 in the Goldbergs (American period sitcom), 68 news, 233 overlaid, 67 primitive, 75 on‐screen, 168 superimposed, 68 Grassley, C. (US Senator), 79, 80, 81 Gray, H., 27 Gray, J., 288, 314 Great Depression, 113, 188 Great Recession, 223 Grece, C., 135 Green Mile, The (film), 320 Griffith, R., 47, 48, 59n6

Griffith, D.W., 321 Gross, L., 26–27 Grossberg, L., 29 Grubin, D., 87, 98 Gruneau, R., 267, 270, 282 Grupo Clarín, Argentina, 416 Gulf War (1990–1991), 440, 442 Gunsmoke, 48 Guo, Z.Z., 11 Habermas, J., 21 Hall, E., 382 Hall, S., 24, 278 Hall, T., 116 Halttunen, K., 97 Handmaid’s Tale, The (adaption of Atwood novel), 151, 152–153 Hansen, M., 362, 363 Haraway, D.J., 396 Harbin television, 460 Hardball with Chris Matthews (US news/opinion program), 253, 255 Hardwicke, C., 64 Harriss, I., 271 Hartley, J., 399n5 Harvest of Shame (documentary), 110 Harvey, S., 9 Hastings, R., 122, 159 Hatch, K., 70 Hawes, W., 64, 65 Hayes, C., 253, 254, 256, 257, 260 HBO (Home Box Office) network, 86 challenging of advertiser‐funded free‐to‐air services, 111 historical programming, 80, 83, 88 in Latin American nations, 410 quality drama, 158, 369, 370 The Sopranos, 80, 316 hegemony masculinity, 171, 332–333, 368 theory, 365 whiteness, black threat to, 319, 321, 322 Heisenberg, W., 392, 400n7 Heitner, D., 57 Hepp, A., 328 Heritage, S., 215 Herman, E., 23 hermeneutics, 29–30 Hermes, J., 371 Herzog, H., 18, 364 “On Borrowed Experience,” 361

Index 493 Heshang (River Elegy), CCTV, 462–463, 473 Hessen, J., 231 Heyer, H., 318 Hezbollah, 453 Hicks, H.J., 320 Higa, R., 153 Hill, A., 10, 203–204, 394 Hill, D., 269 Hill, H., 207 Hill, J., 176 Hilmes, M., 70 historical programming, 9, 79–103 see also made‐for‐television histories A&E Television Networks (AETN), 80, 87 authenticity, 86, 90 collective memory, 92–93, 94 defining what constitutes history, expansion of, 84–85 diversity on television, 82–94 docudramas, 85–86 documentaries, 82–84, 87–90, 94, 96, 386, 468 educative role of TV, 7 examples of popular history, 95–96 forms, 80 franchising, 89–90 life history, 83, 85 live media events, 95 made‐for‐television histories, 9, 81–83, 85, 88, 96, 97 means of learning, 93–94 and myth, 93 narrative and biography, 86 9/11 terrorist attacks, 96 origins of professional history, 95 and pastism, 91 popular history, 79, 86, 90, 92–96 and presentism, 90, 91 professional history, 92, 93, 94–99 profits and branding, 88–89 quality, continuum of, 83 quasi‐documentary stylistics, 84 reality genre, 88–89 representations, influence of technical and stylistic features on, 86 studies, 8 subgenres, 81–82 History Channel, 5, 79–81, 87, 96 History of Britain, A (Schama), 96 Hitchcock, A., 268

Hitler, A., 266 HIV/AIDS, 430 Hobson, D., 364 Hogg, D., 175–176 Holcomb, J., 233 Holliday, G., 400n8 Hollywood Museum, Los Angeles, 50–51, 52, 58 Hollywood narrative, classical, 66 Hollywood studio system, impact of Netflix/ Amazon Prime on, 145 Holmes, S., 203 Home Box Office (HBO) see HBO (Home Box Office) network hooks, b., 172 “Eating the Other,” 27 Horkheimer, M., 18, 19, 21 Hoskins, A., 94 Hot Star TV, India, 160–161 House of Cards (UK political drama), 140, 141, 155, 157, 322 How to Get Away with Murder, 372 Howe, B.G., 381, 400n6 HTML5, 146 Hu Yaobang, 463 Huckabee Sanders, S., 176, 259 Hulu streaming service, 88, 355 advertising, 176, 177, 179 Amazon and Netflix compared, 152, 177 archives, 54, 55 and audiovisual industry, 137, 138 online television, 146, 151–153, 157, 159, 161, 163 as “third” network, 152 human visual behavior, 391–393 ecology of the visual, 393–394 Hunan Provincial Satellite TV, 470 Hunan Satellite Television, China, 466, 467, 471 Hunt, The (Nazi hunter drama), 152 Hunt, T., 92 Hussein, S., 442 Hutchins, B., 276, 281 Hutchins Commission, US (1947), 238, 239 Huxtable, S., 249 Huyssen, A., 70 hybridism, 71 hypercommercialization, 175, 177, 178, 266 “I Can’t Sing!” (musical), 206, 207 I Love Lucy (vintage US TV comedy), 55, 74 ICC (International Cricket Conference), 277

494

Index

Ice Road Truckers (action‐oriented reality show), 81 ideology critique, 20, 30, 33n9 image culture, postmodern, 28–29 immediacy of television, 87 imperialism, cultural, 22, 33n3, 162 in Latin American nations, 405, 408, 417 “picture‐tube,” 408 Imre, A., 370–371 In Its Own Image (Rader), 265 In the Name of the People (anti‐corruption drama), China, 470–471 Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), 424, 429 Independent Television Act (1954), UK, 189 Independent Television Authority (ITA), UK, 109 Independent Television (ITV), UK, 109, 116, 117, 120, 160 ITV Hub, 121 monopoly, 189, 190 industrial nature of TV, 9 industry restructuring, 222–227 information technology, 225 see also digital media; internet; online television; World Wide Web Ingraham, L., 175–176 interactivity, 68, 223, 225 Inter‐American Broadcasting Association (AIR), 406 International Olympic Committee (IOC), 278 internet, 4 access to, 121, 143, 146, 411 adblockers, 179 advantages over television, 133 advertising, 133, 165, 166, 170, 178 and aesthetics of television, 382, 391 alternative architectures, 196 Arab television, 452 archives, 54 audiovisual industry, 129, 133, 137, 143 broadband and cable, challenges to, 118 challenges of, 118 commercialization of, 194 connected devices, 5, 6t, 108 costs and benefits, 123 dependence on, 196 exploitation of users, 225 IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), 447, 469 Italian television, 129 Latin American nations, 411–413, 417 legislation, 192

and made‐for‐television histories, 88 nature of, 156 news programs, 222, 223, 225, 240 open, 192, 193 poor connections, 161 preconditions for a public interest web presence, 196 and public broadcasting, 192–193 reality television, 208 services, 192 streaming/online TV, 145, 156, 159, 162, 163, 353 televisuality, 63 TV firms, benefiting, 137 video‐on‐demand (VOD), 150 viewing, 120, 355 “walled gardens,” 192 YouTube, 153 intersectionality, 365 Intersextions (South African drama), 430 intertextuality, sitcoms, 288, 289, 302 in 30 Rock, 293 IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), 447, 469 Iranian television model, 453 Iraq/Iraq War, 442, 443, 450 iROKO TV, Africa, 161 Isibaya (South African soapie‐drama), 426 Israeli–Arab conflict, 440, 441 Italy Arab broadcasts, 454 audiovisual industry, 129–144 advertising, 132–133 production/development of new services, 134–136 Big Data and television business model, 136–139 channels, 130, 131, 132 critical observations, 142–143 dual broadcasting system, 190–191 Global Financial Crisis, impact on television market, 130–131 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 132 license fee, broadcasting, 131–132 nonlinear services, 129 pay TV subscriptions, 134 population, 132, 135, 143 questions, 143–144 resource issues, 131–134 Video on Demand (VOD), 129 It’s Been Beautiful (Wald), 57 ITV see Independent Television (ITV), UK

Index 495 J. Walter Thompson (advertising agency), 167, 173 Jackie (magazine for teenage girls), 363 Jackson, H., 252, 253, 254 Jackson, J., 392 Jackson, R., 212 Jameson, F., 28–29 Jaramillo, D.L., 10 Jeffersons, The (African American comedy), 312–313 Jenkins, H., 387 Jensen, J.F., 383 Jermyn, D., 203 Jewish humor, 72 Jhally, S., 267 Ji Shi (Chinese factual‐based storytelling programming), 466–467 Johnson, H., 313 Johnson, P., 53 Johnson, President Lyndon B., 113 Johnson, S.R., 11, 372 Jordan, 444 Jordan, M., 175 journalism, 224–225 see also news; newspapers American television, 237–238, 240 civic, 239 democratic aims, 225 local, 230 lowering of standards, 242 and PR, 224 public service ideals, 240 questionable quality, 226, 227 and Twitter, 261 Ka Ndlovu, D., 430 Kaepernick, C., 275 Kalogeropoulos, A., 223, 235 Kardashians, as television phenomena, 373 Katz, E., 25 Keeping Up with the Kardashians (reality show), 214, 373 Kellner, D., 9, 29–30 Kelly, F.J., 392 Kennedy, President John F., 109, 110 Kewang (Aspirations), Chinese drama series, 465–466 Khalil, J.F., 11 King, R., beating of, 234, 392 King, S., 85 KirchGroup, 277

Kluch, Y., 171 Knapp, M., 391 Kracauer, S., 22 Krasnow, E.G., 111 Kruger, L., 432 Kuhn, A., 373n1 Kunz, W.M., 10 Kuwait, 441, 442 Kyknet (South African soapie‐drama), 428 labeling, violent content, 338 Landgraf, J., 85, 154 language Arabic, 450 Latin American nations, 405, 414 South African, 423–424, 430, 435 Spanish, 159, 414, 418 stylized language of television, 82 laptops, 232 Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The, 260–261 Latin American nations, 11, 405–421 and ABC, 408 broadband development, 411–412 and CBS, 406, 407, 408 and CNN, 410 cultural imperialism, 405, 408 digital transition and diversification, 410–417 entrepreneurs, 407, 417 free‐to‐air service, 411 globalization of television, 417–418 and HBO, 410 interwar years, 406 language, 405 middle class, expansion of, 413 and NBC, 406, 407 pay TV (cable or satellite service), 411, 412, 417–418 and Portugal, 405 programming exports and imports, 409 radio networks, 406, 417 radionovela, 407 social media in, 411, 412 and Spain, 405 telenovela, 407, 409, 414–417 television development in, 406–410 television industry, 411–412 and Turkey, 416–417 US influence, 406–410, 415 Law and Justice As Seen on TV (Rapping), 27 Lawrence, N., 10

496

Index

Lawrence, R.G., 251 Lazarsfeld, P., 17, 20 Lear, N., 312 Leave It to Beaver (US sitcom), 67–68 Lebanon, 441, 445 Hezbollah, 453 Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI), 456 Lebanese war (1975–1990), 440 Ledet, J., 212 Lee, S., 152 Lemish, D., 11 Leslie, M., 432 Levine, L., 249 Levy, S., 154 Lewis, C., 185 Lewis, N., 276 Libby, S., 258, 259 Library of Congress (LOC), 42–43, 54 Libya, 441 license fees, broadcasting Italy, 131–132 United Kingdom, 109, 115, 116 Licklider, J.R.C., 51 Liebes, T., 25, 427 Lippmann, W., 123 Listening Project, The, 193 live anthology dramas, 43, 48 live television, 65–66 streaming of, 162–163 Living the Life with Somizi (South African reality show), 433 Livingstone, S., 228, 427 LOC see Library of Congress (LOC) Loeb, P., 72 Longhurst, B.J., 207 Longley, L., 111 Looking Glass World of Nonfiction Television, The (Rapping), 27 Lopate, C., 26 Lorand, R., 382 Lord of the Rings, 152 Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, 50 Hollywood Museum, 50–51, 52, 58 Museum Commission, 50 and Television Academy, 45 Lost, 316 Lotz, A., 145 Lowenthal, L., 18 Lowthorpe, P., 116

Luce, H., 238 Lumet, S., 64 McAllister, M.P., 10, 172 McCabe, A., 259, 370, 371 McCarthy, A., 396 McGrath, J.E., 211–212, 216 McGuigan, L., 178 Macintosh computer, advertising, 170 McLuhan, E., 379, 394–395 McLuhan, M., 87, 379, 382, 394, 395 McRobbie, A., 363, 368 Maddow, R., 255, 256, 257, 258, 260 made‐for‐television histories, 9, 81–83 see also historical programming academic scholarship, 98 criticisms, 97–98 fictional and nonfictional, 88, 89 films, 27 format and generic influences, 85–86 global nature, 87 immediacy of television, 87 internet, capitalizing on, 88 needs of viewers, affirming, 89–90 pastism, 91 place for, alongside professional history, 94–99 popularity of, 90 self‐reflexivity, 97 television producers and scholars, relationship between, 98–99 magazines, popular, 363 Maier, P., 97 Make Room for TV (Spigel), 364 makeover shows, 71, 213, 215, 379–381 Man in the High Castle, The (alternate historical series), 85, 151 Manafort, Paul (former campaign manager to Trump), 248, 252, 253, 254 Manchester by the Sea (streaming film), 155 Manchester United football team, 276 Mander, J., 8 Mao Zedong Cultural Revolution, 460–461 death, 461 Mao era (1958–1977), 459–461 post‐Mao reform program, 462 Marc, D., 312 “Origins of the Genre,” 308 Marcuse, H., 21 marketization, in public broadcasting, 190–191, 195

Index 497 markets interlinked, 349–350 Italian, impact of Global Financial Crisis on, 130–131 ratings market, creating, 350–352 and television audiences, 11 Martin, T., 275 Marx, Karl/Marxism, 19, 70, 168, 184–185, 470 masculinity, 26, 169 see also femininity; gender black, 321 commercials, 172 conventionalized peer, 396 creative aspects, 395 hegemonic, 171, 332–333, 368 masculinization of drama, 70, 370 sports events, 172 mass communication studies, 4, 18 Mass Communications and American Empire (Schiller), 23 mass culture, 18–20, 70, 381 Mass Culture (Rosenberg and White), 22 mass‐interpersonal communication, 398 mass media, 5, 8, 50, 227 China, 463, 467 critical television studies, 18, 20, 21, 27, 31 digital transitions, 410 information provision, 388 regulation, 227 rise of, 21 and women, 367, 371 MasterChef (reality cookery show), 203 materialism, 168–169 Matthews, C., 255 meaning, layers of, 20–21, 29 Means Coleman, R.R., 312, 323 Mechanical Bride (McLuhan), 392 media corporations, 192, 276, 345 big, 146, 156, 334 traditional, 154 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355–358 media culture, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 30, 153 media industry, 53, 145 news, 221, 222, 233, 241 ontological crisis, 158–159 satire, 287, 290, 301, 302 self‐reflexive humor, 287, 301 status quo, macroeconomics and microeconomics, 287 media studies, 11, 19, 226, 328

Mediaset (Italian private channel), 130 mediation of television viewing, 330–331 medium shots, 68, 76 Meehan, E.R., 11 Meerkat (streaming service), 162 Meier, R., 53 Meisen, Z., 471 Melber, A., 252, 255, 257 Mellencamp, P., 70 memory studies, 92–93 mergers and acquisitions (M&As), 227, 229–230, 354, 469 AT&T and Time Warner, 146, 228–229, 355 China, 465 Comcast and NBCU merger storyline in 30 Rock, 290, 293, 296, 297–299 Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox, 146, 152, 228, 229, 355, 356 Merritt, D., 239 Messner, M., 274 Mestre, G., 407, 408 Metallinos, N., 383 Mexico, 409, 410, 411, 414–417 Meyrowitz, J., 210 Miami, Spanish‐language television production, 414 Miami Vice, 29 Michaels, E., 392 Microsoft, 236 Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), 442, 449 Middle East, contemporary, 440 Mihelj, S., 249 Mikos, L., 209 Milgram, S., 391 minorities, representation of see also African‐Americans, representation; black representation; color, people of; race, representation of on network television, 307, 312, 323 oppositional social movements, 25–28, 32 Minow, N.(FCC Chair), 110–111, 239 “vast wasteland” speech, 7, 24, 43, 44, 110, 237 minstrel performances, 308–309 misogynism, 70 Miss Universe Pageant, The (beauty contest), 397 Mitchell, A., 233 mobile technology, 232 Modern Marvels (quasi‐informational show), 81 modernism, 70

498 modernist experimentation, 48–49 Modleski, T., 26, 249 moments, in reality TV, 209–215 see also performance, in reality television; reality television big shiny floor moment, 213–214 big theatrical moment, 215 little moments, 215 mega moments, 209, 213, 214 moment’s moments, 212–215 of truth, 394 Mondo Video A‐Go‐Go (LA video store), 58 monitors, museum architecture, 50 monopolies AT&T, 191 administrative, 464 BBC, 109, 116, 188–190 CCTV, 464 and flow, 249 industrial monopoly capitalism, 300 ITV, 189, 190 markets/ratings, 349–353 public service, 191 radio, 347, 351 state, 191 traditional, 411 Monroe Doctrine (1823), 405 Moonves, L. (former CBS President), 175, 221, 356 morality of television, 69 Morgan, P., 86 Morley, D., 25 Morning Joe (US news/talk show), 252, 258 Morocco, 441, 451 Morris, B., 268 Morse, M., 68, 250 Movie of the Week, The (Rapping), 27 movies see films MSNBC (news channel), 231, 232 audiences, 262n1 brand, 257, 261 cable news, 247, 248 flow, 251–260 MSNBC Live with Katy Tur, 247 personalities, 252 primetime block, 260 sports television/telesport, 280 and Trump’s Twitter feed, 252–254 Mueller, Robert (Special Counsel) attempted firing of, 248, 253, 254–256, 257 filing of charges against Manafort, 252

Index interviews with White House staff, 254 Trump’s refusal to interview, 258 multiperspectival research, 9 multiscreen exhibition strategies, museums, 50, 59n13 Mulvey, L., 362–363 Murder at Harvard (made‐for‐TV history), 96, 97–98 Murdoch, R., 10, 117, 228, 269, 281–282 News Corporation (News Corp.), 190, 192–193, 229–230, 355 Murdock, G., 290 Murrow, E.R., 110, 237, 238 Murugan, L., 57 Museum Commission, Los Angeles, 50 Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC), Chicago, 53, 54, 59n17 Museum of Broadcasting, New York, 52–53 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 46–49 on commercialism/commercials, 49 Film Library, 46, 47 geographical bias in selections, 48 historical rationales, 51 Junior Council, 49 preservation of TV programs, 52 Television Library, 46, 47 Television Project, 46, 47 Television USA: 13 Seasons (retrospective), 48–50, 53 Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R), New York, 53 renamed as Paley Center for Media, 52 music, 69 Musto, M., 274 Muvhango (South African soapie‐drama), 426, 428, 431 MySpace (social networking site), 192 Mzanti Magic, South Africa, 424–425 Nadler, J., 260 Napoli, P., 229 narratives/narrative television see also storytelling classic Hollywood narrative, 66 complexity, in 30 Rock, 296 critical television studies, 26, 28 long and medium shot, 76 “novelistic approach” to, 157 primetime television narratives, shooting of, 67

Index 499 sports television/telesport, 270 televised sport, 269–271 transparency, 66, 67 Trump administration as, 253 Naspers (South African mega‐corporation), 424, 430 nation, imagining, 185–187 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), 45 National Amusements Incorporated (NAI), 356–357 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 310, 311, 312 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), US, Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech to, 7, 24, 43, 44, 52, 110, 237 National Basketball Association, US, 274 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), Women’s Basketball Tournament, 272, 274 National Educational Television (NET), 49 National Endowment for Democracy (NED), 473 National Football League (NFL), US, 269, 274–275, 278, 282 Super Bowl broadcast, 170 National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), Argentina, 416 NBC network, 146, 222, 229, 232 see also Goldbergs, The (American period sitcom); 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program); This is Us (NBC series) Blue Network, 352–353 Diff ’rent Strokes, 307, 308, 313–317, 319, 322, 323 Entertainment Channel, 354 historical programming, 83 and Latin American nations, 406, 407 Red Network, 352 rivalry and ratings, 353, 354 satirical representation of television industry, 302 commodification, 296 concentration, 293, 294 conglomeration, 292 sports coverage, 269, 275, 278 Through the Enchanted Gate (children’s program), 46–47 NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), 280 NBCUniversal (NBCU), 231, 280, 355, 414 Comcast and NBCU merger storyline in 30 Rock, 290, 293, 296, 297–299

NBCUniversal Media, 349 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355 negative force, television perceived as, 7–8, 33n5 children, effects on, 8, 24 postmodern critique, 30 violence, portrayal of, 23–24 Negra, D., 369 neoliberalism, 222, 348 Net Neutrality rules, 229 Netflix, 9, 54, 89, 119, 121–123 see also streaming Academy Award nominations, 158 algorithm used, 150 Amazon Video compared, 151, 152, 155 Arab television, 457 basic version, 107–108 big data relationship, 137–140, 142–143 budgets, 160 canceling of programs, 155–156, 158 and cinema, 122, 158 co‐production with leading networks, 160, 162 and Comcast, 163 competitive advantages, 137, 141, 143, 146, 150 The Crown, 86, 88, 93, 155, 160 “day‐and‐date” releases, 158 deals with production companies, 154 documentaries, 155, 158 female audiences, 369 financial issues, 122–123, 159, 160 founding of, 137 global presence, 159 growth in the UK, 120 House of Cards, purchase from the BBC, 140, 141, 155, 157 information gathered, 139 investments in programs, 138 labels identifying products, 141–142 and Latin American nations, 415 lease of Sunset Bronson Studios, 155 Netflix Original, 156–157 non‐US market, 138, 160–161 numbers watching, 107 Orange is the New Black (prison drama), 155, 157–158 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming, 135, 411 regulation issues, 118 significance of, 145 streaming networks, 146–147 “Strong Black Lead” initiative, 156 subscribers, 143

500

Index

Netflix (cont’d) success factors, 122, 134–138, 141, 143, 146, 159 as a TV series maker, 155 underrepresented groups, producing media by, 156 US market, 142, 143 Video on Demand (VOD), 137, 138, 142, 150 viewers, 146, 150 network TV see also specific networks advertising, 175 bias towards, 56 critical perspectives, 21, 22, 27 criticisms, 22 demise of, 63, 302 economic factors, 300 minorities, representation of, 307, 312, 323 preserving, 56 primetime, 296 sports television/telesport, 276 New Guineans, 392 new media, 11, 30, 54, 352, 387 see also digital media in China, 469, 471, 473 content, television reception in, 371–372 female television audiences, 361, 368, 369, 371–373 and old, 159 protocols, 55 television reception, 371–372 New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), UNESCO, 409 New York see also Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York archives, 45, 46 Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 398, 399f Channel 13 (WNDT), 49 Museum of Broadcasting, 52–53 Paley Center for Media, 52, 53 World Fair (1963–1964), 50 Newcomb, H., 9 Newman, M.Z., 249 Newman, N., 226, 236 news, 221–246 and advertising, 225, 232, 236, 240, 242 Arab television, 449–450 civic reform, search for, 237–241 commercial television, 242 educative role of TV, 7

Facebook, 223, 224, 231, 233, 235, 236, 237 fake, 226, 227, 228 formats, 68 genres, 10 graphics, 233 immediacy, 224 increased ownership concentration, 227–230 industry restructuring and “digital disruption,” 222–227 local, 231–233, 436, 450 monetization of online video content, 232–233 online consumption, 222, 224–225, 226, 231–233, 234 amateur footage, 234 audience measurement, 232 “born‐digital” video news outlets, 234–237 digital start‐ups, 229–230 mobile technology, 232, 234 short‐form videos with text, 224–225 personality, cult of, 240 primetime, 434–435 ratings/audiences, 230–234 reporting, 116, 233–234, 251 sensationalism, 226, 228, 239, 241 social media, 223, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 241 soft, 224 sound‐bites, 233 South African television, 434–435, 436 speed, 230–234 subscription, 436 traditional and connected TV time, 5, 6 United Kingdom, 116 United States, 221, 247–263 user‐generated content, 225, 226, 234 websites of organizations, 231 News Corporation (News Corp.), Murdoch, 190, 192–193, 229–230, 355 Newsflare (online news community and marketplace), 225 newspapers, 223–224 Newton, J.H., 11, 400n12 NFL see National Football League (NFL), US Nias, D.K.B., 23 niche channels, 132 Nichols, B., 203 Nickelodeon, 171, 335, 356 Nielsen Holdings Plc (ratings company), 5, 6t, 111, 119, 352, 354, 358 see also A. C. Nielsen Company (ACN) 9/11 terrorist attacks, 96, 442–443

Index 501 1900 House, The (Anglo‐American historical reality series), 85 Nine Network, Australia, 269 Noble, E.J., 352–353 noise, television perceived as, 30, 31 nonprofit companies, 178 Noonan, P., 257 nostalgia mode, archives, 52, 55 Novick, L., 91 Novick, P., 93 nuclear family image, 366 Nunberg, S., 247, 248 Nussbaum, M., 256 Nydahl, J., 268 Obama, M., 156 Obama, President Barack, 156, 233, 252, 257, 317–318, 322 Obitel, 415 observation and aesthetics of television, 392, 394 human visual behavior, 391–394 observational documentaries, 202, 203, 394 participant, 385 O’Connor, C., 73 O’Donnell, K., 255, 256, 258, 259 Ofcom (UK regulatory body), 107, 116, 118–121 Office of Coordinator of Inter‐American Affairs, 406 O.J.: Made in America (documentary), 83, 84, 93 O’Leary, B., 171 oligopolies, 348–349 Olson, S.R., 66, 67 Olusoga, D., 96 Olympic Games, 269, 272, 273–274, 275, 280 Olympic Movement, 278, 279 on‐demand programs, 121, 137, 160, 281 see also Amazon Prime/Amazon Video; Netflix; Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD); Video on Demand (VOD) One‐Dimensional Man (Marcuse), 21 O’Neil, T.P., 45, 89 online television, 107–128, 145–164 archives, 54–55, 59n18, 194 celebrity gossip, 373 China, 469 globalization, 159–162 news consumption, 222, 224–225, 226, 231–233, 234 amateur footage, 234 audience measurement, 232

“born‐digital” video news outlets, 234–237 digital start‐ups, 229–230 mobile technology, 232, 234 short‐form videos with text, 224–225 ontological crisis in media industry, 158–159 streaming, 146, 147–149t, 151–154 original production by streaming networks, 154–158 technological shift, 145–146 Only Way is Essex, The (UK reality show), 205, 214 ontological crisis, media industry, 158–159 “Open Circuits” conference (MoMA), 49 oppositional social movements, 25–28, 32 Orange is the New Black (prison drama), 155, 157–158 Orbit Showtime Network (OSN), 445, 456 Orlan, 380–381, 394 Osbourne, O., 80 Oscar Mayer food brand, 173 Oscars, 158 “Otherness,” representing, 27 Our Perfect Wedding (South African drama), 432 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming, 108, 120, 135, 146 Arab television, 448, 456–457 Latin American nations, 411 made‐for‐television histories, 87, 88, 93 Netflix, 135, 411 South Africa, 423, 424 ownership, television sets, 5, 188, 353 ownership, television Arab region, 444–445 increased concentration, 227–230 in United States and Canada, 5 Packer, K., 269 Pahle, Y., 430 Paley Center for Media, The, 52–53, 54 Paley, W.S., 49, 52, 53 pan‐Arabism, 440, 441, 446, 447 Papadopoulos, G., 253, 254 Papper, R., 88 parasocial relationships, 398 Parker, A., 253 Parkman, G., 97 parody, 257, 298–300 Parsons, C., 202 pastism, 91 Pawn Stars (reality series), 80, 81 pay TV (cable or satellite service), 111, 117–119

502

Index

pay TV (cable or satellite service) (cont’d) see also cable news; cable television; satellite television Arab television, 448, 455 Italy, 134 Latin American nations, 411, 412, 417–418 PBS network, 82, 83, 84, 88, 98 Peabody Awards Archive, 54, 56 Peak TV, 154 Peck, G., 51 Peele, J., 152 Pereira, W., 50 performance, in reality television acting by a performer versus production of a performance, 206–207 and authenticity, 209, 210, 215 branding, 214 emotional, 215 face‐to‐face encounters, 208 front‐stage and back‐stage self, 210 and impression management, 208 modes, 207 moments see moments, in reality TV multifaceted activity, 206, 208 props, 207–208 routine, 208 selves, performance of, 206–209, 213, 215 “selves producing selves,” 209, 211–212, 216 talent shows, 209–212 Periscope (streaming service), 162 Peru, 409–410, 417 Pew Internet, 88 Pew Research Center, 231, 232, 234, 235 Piccirillo, M.S., 385 Pickard, V., 114 Pickford, M., 51 Piñon, J., 415 Pis Diez, E., 416 Plugola effect, 177 Policing the Crisis (Hall), 24 political campaigns, TV coverage, 5 political economy research, television studies, 33n3 and advertising/commercials, 23, 173–176 critical humor, sitcoms, 288, 290 Marxian critique, 20 sport, televised, 278–280 watching television, 348 politics of representation, 9, 25–28, 33n6 polysemic postmodern reading, 29 Pop Idol (UK talent show), 203, 205, 208, 212, 214 popism, 49

popular culture, 6, 41, 157 commercial, 467 critical television studies, 20, 28 historical programming, 79, 82 in Latin American nations, 417 and quality television, 371 in the US, 187, 309 popular history, 79, 86, 90, 92–96 popular music, 18, 20 populations Arab region, 439, 442, 457 China, 460, 461, 470, 471, 474 and citizenship, 185 female, 363 Italy, 132, 135, 143 Latin American nations, 411, 413 marginalized, 322 smartphone use, 232 South Africa, 424, 425, 434–435 transgender/non‐binary, 171 United Kingdom, 121, 124n2 United States, 119, 124n2, 227, 231, 311 populism, 204 post‐TV period, 145 postfeminism, 368–369 female television audiences, 368 feminized quality television, 370–371 interaction of postfeminist audiences with the media, 369 postfeminist paradox in quality television, 370–371 and quality television, 369–370 Postman, N., 24 postmodern television studies black hole, television perceived as, 30 distinguishing modern from the postmodern, 71 fragmented collection of images, programs perceived as, 31 hermeneutics, 29–30 noise, television perceived as, 30, 31 one‐dimensional and flat, media culture perceived as, 28–30 postmodern turn, 17, 28–32 waning of affect, 29 poststructuralism, 25 Powers, B.R., 395 Premier League, UK, 280, 281, 282 presentism, 90, 91 preservation of TV programs, 9, 43–44 see also archives

Index 503 presidential election campaign of 2016, US, 30, 175, 221 see also cable news; Trump, President Donald FBI investigation into ties to Russia, 247 media coverage of Trump, 226–227 “must runs” (distribution of already‐produced stories favorable to right‐wing politics), 228 Press, A., 11, 365–367, 368, 370 primitive accumulation, 184–185 print media, 169, 223, 224 Proctor and Gamble, 167, 173 production Arab television, 445–446 Italian television, 134–136 media production in the US, 18 sports television/telesport, 278–280 streaming networks, 154–158 professional history, 95, 98 programming Arab television, 448–449 South African television, 425–426 Promofilm (Argentine company), 416 proscenium‐style shooting, 67 psychoanalytic theory, 362, 363, 364 Public Broadcasting Act (1967), US, 113 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 328 Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), 115 public journalism, 239 public relations (PR) archives as, 44–46, 50 and journalism, 224 public service channels (PSBs), UK, 116, 117, 119–121 Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees (FCC) see Blue Book (Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees), FCC quality television see also HBO (Home Box Office) network aesthetics, 369 alleged low quality and female‐centric content, 371 Campaign for Quality Television (2003), 204 for children, 340–342 educative role, 7, 24 feminized, 370–371 and local productions, 46

and popular culture, 371 and postfeminism, 369–371 recognizing, 369 Quang Duc (Buddhist monk), 392 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, 390–391, 395–396, 399n2 Rabinovitz, L., 362 race, representation of see also African‐Americans, representation; black representation black viewers, 425 children and television, 333 commercials, 172 critical television studies, 25, 27, 32, 33n8 diversification, 190 sports television, 272, 274–275 Rachel Maddow Show, The, 248 Rader, B., 265 radio and commercialism, 74 Latin American nations, 406 live broadcasts, 65 soap operas, 18, 361, 363 sponsorship‐funded, 167 television compared, 74 white characters, serials based on, 308 Radio and Television Directors Association (RTNDA), 237 Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 347, 352, 353, 441 Radio Sawa, 454 radionovela, 407 Radway, J., 363, 365 Rai (Italian public channel), 130, 131 Ramadan, 448, 452 rap music, 24 Rapping, E., 27 Rather, D., 237, 238, 242n1 ratings see also audiences and continuity, 352–353 creating of market, 350–352 monopolies, 349–353 news programs, 230–234 and rivalry, 353–354 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program), 289 Total Content Ratings (TCRs), 358 Reading the Romance (Radway), 363 Reagan, N., 314

504

Index

Reagan, President Ronald, 114, 222, 313, 316, 322, 393 Real, M.R., 10, 267 reality television, 201–219 see also talent shows artificial personalities, manufacturing, 214 audience research, 203–204 authenticity, glimmer of, 209, 210 banal content, 203 branding, 214 and celebrity industry, 205 cookery shows, 203 criticisms, 204 debating, 203–206 defining, 202–203 docusoaps, 201–202 economic factors, 201 excess, 203 formats, 68, 85 historical programming, 88–89 intergeneric space, representing, 10, 203, 215 makeover shows, 71, 213, 215, 379–381 moments see moments, in reality TV performance see performance, in reality television and political culture, 204 popularity of, 204 primetime television schedules, 201 ratio between reality and scripted shows, 85–86 real‐world locations, 203 social media, 204, 206, 208, 209, 212, 215 South Africa, 432–433 spectacle of excess, 203, 204 value of, 205 as world space, 203 Redmond, D., 65 Redstone, Shari, 356 Redstone, Sumner, 356 reglocalization, 415 regulation of television Canada, 118 deregulation, in the US, 222–223 European Union, 118 mass media, 227 Netflix, 118 United Kingdom, 9, 115–118 United States, 9, 113–115 Reith, Lord J., 184, 186–187 relevancy, sitcoms, 288, 289, 302

remediation, 66 remote control, surfing with, 66 reporting of news, 116, 233–234, 251 representation see also female television audiences; women African‐Americans see African‐Americans, representation children on television, 332–334 of class, 172, 189 in commercials, 170–172 contested representations, in public broadcasting, 189–190 crisis of, 189 critical research, 25–28 gay and lesbian culture, 26–27, 57 gender, 27 of history, 9 in the narrative, 74 politics of, 9, 25–28, 33n3 of race, 25, 27, 32, 33n8 satirical see satire resistance theory, 365 restrictive mediation of television viewing, 330 Rhimes, S., 156 RIA‐Novosti (Russian news agency), 454 Richeri, G., 9 Ricoeur, P., 29 Riefenstahl, L., 271 Riesenberg, P., 241 Robbins, A., 380 Robinson, E.G., 51 Robinson, J., 274 Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 46 Rockefeller family, 47 Rockefeller, N., 47, 59n6, 406 Rogers, E., 409 romances/romance novels, 363 Roncagliolo, R., 409 Roone (Arledge), 47, 269 Roscoe, J., 209–211, 213–215 Roseanne, 5 Rosen, J., 239 Rosenberg, B., 22 Rousseau, J.‐J., 241 Rowe, D., 271, 276, 281 RTNDA (Radio and Television News Directors Association), 237 Rucker, P., 258 Russell, B., 275 Ryan, P., 259

Index 505 SABC see South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Salesman, The (art house film), 155 Samuel, L.R., 169 Sanders, B., 233 Sanderson, J., 276 Satellite News Channel (SNC), 250, 251 satellite television see also cable television; pay TV (cable or satellite service) Arab region, 440–443, 448, 449, 454 from 1990 to 2010, 442–443 direct‐to‐home broadcasts, 447 Ramadan, 452 Chongqing Satellite Television (CQTV), China, 468, 469 Hunan Provincial Satellite TV, 470 Hunan Satellite Television, 466, 467, 471 made‐for‐television histories, 87, 88, 93 Sky, 111, 117 in the UK, 119 satire see also 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program) critical capacity, 302 goals, 289 parody, 298–300 satirical representation of television industry, 10, 287–305 sitcoms, critical humor in, 287–290, 292, 302 status quo, representation of, 287, 290, 291–296 commodification, 294–296 concentration, 293–294 conglomeration, 291–292, 296–301 see also 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program) Saturday Night Live (US variety show), 233, 293 Saudek, R., 52 Saudi Arabia, 441–445, 448, 451 Sawiris, N., 454 Sayeau, A., 371 Scandal (political drama), 315, 322, 372, 426 scapegoating of media, alleged, 24 Scarborough, J., 252, 258 Schama, S., 91, 96–98 Schechner, R., 207 Schell, C., 83 Schiller, H., 22, 23 Schirmacher, W., 397, 398 Schwartz, E.I., 4

Scott, J., 367–368 segmented program flow, 66, 67 Seitz, W.C., “Art of Assemblage,” 49 self‐reflexivity humor, sitcoms, 287–289, 293–296, 301 made‐for‐television histories, 97 selves, performance of in reality TV, 206–209, 213, 215 “selves producing selves,” 209, 211–212, 216 sensationalism, 175, 226, 228, 239, 241 7de Laan (South African soapie‐drama), 426, 428–429 Sex and the City (US romantic comedy‐drama series), 369–371 Shadow of a Nation, The (Clarke), 204 Shanghai television, 460 Shattuc, J., 9 Sherlock (UK drama), 205 Showtime, 369 Signorelli, N., 6 Silber, J., 7 Simmons, B., 83 Simpson, N. Brown, 83 Simpson, O.J., 83 Sinclair Broadcasting Group, 227, 228 Sinclair, J., 11 sitcoms see also satire; 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program); This is Us (NBC series) African‐Americans, representation in, 10, 299, 307–324 critical humor in, 287–290, 292, 302 30 Rock, 289, 299–301 formula, 287, 290, 296, 301, 302, 313 of the 1980s, 307, 315–322 intertextuality, 288, 289, 293, 302 plots, 287 rapid‐fire jokes, 287 relevancy, 288, 289, 302 self‐reflexivity, 287–289, 293–296, 301 status quo, representation of, 296 storylines, repetition, 301 Skeem Saam (South African soapie‐drama), 426 Skeggs, B., 215, 216 Sklar, R., 91 Sky (European satellite giant), 111, 117, 121, 124n3, 228, 282 NOW TV, 120 Sky News, 119 Sky Sports Main Event, 119, 124n3 subscription revenues, 120

506 smart television, 108, 118 smartphone use, 232, 234 Smit, A., 432 Smith, T., 274 Smithsonian Museum, 89 Internet Archive, 54 Smythe, D., 22, 173 Snapchat, 235, 236 soap docs (reality soaps), 201 soap operas docusoaps, 201–202 female television audiences, 26, 364 and local drama, 426–427 radio, 18, 361, 363 in South Africa, 426–427, 431, 432 UK structure, 428 United Kingdom, 116 uses and gratifications research, 361 value for women, 364 Sobchak, V., 65, 95 social class see class, representation of social ecology, 23 social media, 156, 165, 166, 178 see also Facebook; Google; Twitter; YouTube and aesthetics of television, 382 Arab television, 444, 449 companies, 236 costs and benefits, 123 in Latin American nations, 411, 412 message control, 250 news, 223, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 241 reality television, 204, 206, 208, 209, 212, 215 sites, 223, 230, 231, 234, 236 sources, 116 South Africa, 433 and sports, 276 and Twitter, 250, 252 social movements, oppositional, 25–28, 32 socialization, changes in, 21 Sontag, S., 400n9 Sopranos, The (pay TV series), 80, 316 Soul City (South African drama), 430 sound cues, 69 South Africa, 11 Afrikaans, 424 authenticity in television, 429, 431, 435 black viewers, 425 Broadcasting Act, 433 channels (SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and eTV), 423–425, 426t, 428, 435 consumerism, 431–432

Index consumption of television, 424–425 development of television in, 423 drama, 426–427 format changes over past decade, 429–430 DStv/MultiChoice, 424, 425, 434 family and community themes, soapie dramas, 427–429 franchising, 433 free‐to‐air (FTA) services, 423, 434 Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), 424, 429 language, 423–424, 430, 435 locality, 431 Mzanti Magic, 424–425 Naspers (mega‐corporation), 424, 430 news, 435 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming, 423, 424 popularity of soap operas and dramas, 427 post‐apartheid, 11, 423–438 primetime news, 434–435 profile of audiences, 424–425 programming and genre preferences, 425–426 reality programs, 432–433 soap operas, 426–429, 431, 432 social media, 433 sports coverage, 433–434 subscription television, news, 436 television audience measure survey (TAMS) database, 425 television in mediascape, 423–424 television industry, 432 terrestrial broadcasting/channels, 424 variety magazines, 432–433 South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), 423, 425, 434, 435 Educational wing, 429 South Korea, 161 Spanish language, 159, 414, 418 see also Latin American nations spatiality see also temporality denial of space, through graphics, 68 depthlessness of TV images, 67, 68 intergeneric space, reality TV representing, 10, 203, 215 televisual space, 67–68, 72, 73–76 and time, 67 Speaking of Abortion (Press and Cole), 366–367 spectacle architecture, 53 body/self‐modification, 379, 380, 389

Index 507 in China, 467 critical television studies, 28, 31 of excess, in reality TV, 203, 204 news, 225, 250 satire, 292 sports television/telesport, 268, 269–271 televisual, 67 spectators see also watching television critical television studies, 20, 30 desire, 465 film spectatorship, 362, 363 sports, 275–277 televisuality, 66, 68 Spielberg, S., 145 Spigel, L., 9, 70, 71, 74, 75, 364 sports television/telesport, 265–284 appeal of televised sports, 268–269 assemblage technique, 270–271 background/players, 265–267 “battering ram” for Murdoch’s global media empire, 281–282 commentaries, 267 commercialization, 10 corporatization, 281–282 costs and benefits of televised sport, 266–267 critical issues and trends, 281–282 dramatic stories/open‐endings, 270 fairness concerns, 271–275 gender, 272–274 globalization, 281–282 live sports, value of, 282 new technologies and delivery methods, 280–281 Olympic Games, 269, 272, 273–274, 275, 280 patriarchy, 271–272 Premier League, UK, 280, 281, 282 production and political economy, 278–280 race/racial discrimination, 272, 274–275 research, 266, 267 signaling of replay in football, 69 South Africa, 433–434 spectacle, 268, 269–271 spectators and viewers, 275–277 sports events, 111, 172, 265, 266, 268–271, 276–281, 396, 434, 451 women’s, 273–274 stadiums, 268, 275, 276, 396

television income, 278–279 “viewers’ rights,” 276–277 World Cup, 276, 277, 281 Women’s World Cup, 272, 273 Stacey, J., 373n1 Stahl, L., 393 Staiger, J., 362, 363 Stanford Children’s Health, 24 Star India, 161 Star Trek franchise, 357 Starz Play Arabia, 457 stereo sound, in broadcasting, 69 stereotyping in television, 20, 26, 333 Stewart, L., 46 Stigel, J., 383 Stokols, E., 255 Stoltzfus‐Brown, L., 10 Stone, R., 226 storage of images, 56–58 see also archives Story of Jews, The (historical program), 96 Story, R., 97 storytelling in China, 466–467 commercials, 168 postmodern turn, 28 and professional history, 96 TV as a storyteller, 6 Strange, E., 97 Stranger Things (supernatural program), 150, 151, 154 streaming, 9, 146, 147–149t, 151–154 see also digital media; internet; new media; technology, television and archives, 55, 57 in Asia, 160–161 commercial sites, 55 debts, 159 European market, 160 live television, 162–163 niche services, 146 original production by streaming networks, 154–158 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming, 87, 88, 93, 108, 120, 135, 146, 411 subscription rates, 161 US‐based services, 146, 147–149t, 161 streaming seriality, 69 Streeck, J., 391 Strictly Come Dancing (UK reality show), 116, 203, 215

508

Index

stylized language of television, 82 subordinate groups, representing, 27 Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD), 108, 115, 122, 143 see also Video on Demand (VOD) catalogs of services, 136 Italy, 134 over‐the‐top (OTT) streaming see over‐the‐ top (OTT) streaming United Kingdom, 117–121 Sudan, 441 Suidooster (South African soapie‐drama), 428, 429 Sullivan, E., 45 Sun, W.N., 465 Sunset Bronson Studios, 155 Super Bowl (American), 5, 267 National Football League Super Bowl broadcast, 170 Super Girl (Chinese talent show), 467–468, 470 surround sound, in broadcasting, 69 survival, 88, 221, 456 and aesthetics, 388, 389–397 economic, 470 of flow, 249 market, 238 Survivor (reality show), 202, 205, 394 Susman, W., 93 sustaining programs, 114 SVOD see Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) Swan, J., 255–256 Swan, The (make‐over show, video‐form), 379–381, 388, 398 Swasey, S., 140 Swift, E., 381 symbolic interactionism, 392–393 syndication libraries, 55 Syria, 444 tabloidization, 204 Tager, M., 432 Tagg, J., 42, 58n2 talent shows, 209–212 see also American Idol (talent show); Britain’s Got Talent (variety show); Dancing on Ice (UK talent show); Pop Idol (UK talent show); reality television; Voice, The (talent show); X Factor, The (talent show) audience goodwill, 214–215

auditions, judges’ reactions to, 213 decline in ratings, 215 emotions, 213 formats, 212, 213–214, 216–217 predictability, 215 YouTube, 208, 213, 216 talk shows, 211, 233, 260, 295, 365, 450, 466 Tapper, J., 248 Tardieu, C., 161 Tasker, Y., 369 Taylor, N., 116 Taylor, Y., 308–309 teaching tool, TV as, 7, 24 technology, television, 4 see also archives; digital media; internet; new media archives, 56 technological artifact, TV seen as, 50 technological mediation of television viewing, 330, 331 technological shift, 145–146 Teer‐Tomaselli, Ruth, 11 Telecommunications Act (1996), US, 113, 115, 191–192, 227 Telefe (Argentinian broadcaster), 413 telefilms, 65, 67–68 Telefónica (telecommunications company), 415 Telemundo, Miami‐based network, 414, 415 telenovela, 407, 409, 414–417 Televisa, Sky Mexico, 410, 411, 414–415 television advertising see advertising changes in, 118–119 criticisms see negative force, television perceived as defining, 3, 4 discursive character, 69 economic impact, 7 ephemeral nature, 58 function/roles see functions of television fundamental value, 6, 7 genres see genres news see news pervasiveness/ubiquitous nature of, 5 quality see quality television quotes, 12–13 radio compared, 74 reality see reality television

Index 509 sets see television sets social effects, 23–24 technology see technology, television traditional see traditional TV waste, status as, 43 Television Academy (Academy of Arts and Sciences), 59n3 Academy Foundation, 44–45, 46 geographical bias in selections, 48 “Golden Age” collection, 46 historical rationales, 51 Hollywood Chapter, 46 Los Angeles Chapter, 45 New York Chapter, 45, 46 preservation of TV programs, 52 renamed as National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 45 Television Act (1954), UK, 116 television commerce (t‐commerce), 178 television index, 50, 59n12 television industry Arab television, 443, 448 archives, 43–45 children, 334–335, 336 China, 464–466, 468, 469 Europe, 135, 143 global/international, 87, 448, 457 interlinked markets, 349–350 Latin American nations, 411–412 leaders, 237 media corporations constructing, 345 merging the broadcast and cable industries, 354 ratings promoted by, 350, 358 restructuring, 222 satirical representation of see satire South Africa, 432 systems, 346 technological changes, 9, 163, 353 30 Rock portrayal see 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program) United States, 109, 221 deregulation, 222–223 political supports for, 347–349 television sets, 21 antenna‐enabled, 166 in China, 460, 461 ownership, 5, 188, 353 social role of broadcasting, 108

streaming through, 280 and user blocking, 338 watching television, 345, 353, 358 television studies, 8, 9 critical see critical television studies feminist, 364, 365 origins, in the US, 43 Television USA: 13 Seasons (MoMA retrospective), 48, 50, 53 program catalog, 49 Television Without Frontiers Directive (EU), 1989, 277 Television Without Pity (website), 206 televisuality, 63–78 aurality, 68–69 close‐ups, 68, 76 concept, 9 constituent technologies, 64–71, 76 defining, 64 femininity, 69–71 in the “Golden Age,” 9, 64, 71–73 hybridism, 71 medium shots, 68, 76 primary and tertiary movement, 67–68 signal, continuity of, 65–66 spatiality, 67–68, 72, 73–76 televisual space, 73–76 temporality, 65–67 “windowing,” 67, 74 and women, 70 temporality flow and time, 248, 250 immediacy of television, 87 real time, delivery of events in, 65 segmentation of TV into temporal units, 67 televisuality, 65–67 time‐shifted programs, 121 time zones, creation in the US, 67, 71 traditional and connected TV time, 5 terrestrial broadcasting/channels Arab television, 440–442, 444, 445, 447, 448, 450–453 China, 464 commercial services, 191 digital terrestrial television (DTT), 118, 160 free‐to‐air (FTA) services, 276 South Africa, 424 in the UK, 277 tetrad concept, 394–397

510

Index

That Noble Dream (Novick), 93 Thatcher, M., 190 The Queen (South African soapie‐drama), 426, 431 theatrical realism, 48 30 Rock (NBC sitcom program), 10, 287–305 see also satire; sitcoms capitalism, 301 Comcast and NBCU merger storyline, 290, 293, 296, 297–299 commentary, 290 early episodes, 296 Kabletown (fictional Comcast), 298, 299–301, 302 narrative complexity, 296 parody, 298–300 ratings, 289 satirical representation of television industry, 289–305 show‐within‐a‐show premise, 287, 290 status quo, representation in, 287, 290, 291–296 commodification, 294–296 concentration, 293–294 conglomeration, 291–292, 296–301 textual analysis, 287 vertical integration, 298 This is Us (NBC series), 10, 307, 315–322 black threat to hegemonic whiteness theme, 319, 321, 322 cinema’s influence on, 317 flashback technique, 316 and Magical African American Friends (MAAF), 320 post‐racial and colorblind discourse, 317–318, 321 storytelling, 317 “Three Sentences,” 318 Thomas Edison (historical documentary), 81 Thompson, R., 204, 312 Thorburn, D., 385, 386, 387 Three Girls (UK dramatization of real‐life events), 116 Through the Enchanted Gate (children’s program), 46–47 time see temporality Time‐Life, 408 Time Warner AT&T merger, 146, 228–229, 355 board of directors, 355 interlinked markets, 349

media conglomerate, 228–229, 335, 355 time zones, creation in the US, 67 see also temporality Toast of the Town, 45 Todd, C., 254, 259 Total Content Ratings (TCRs), 358 Tracey, M., 204 tracking television, 347 trade journals, 85, 107, 114, 122, 176, 258, 349 traditional TV audience choices, drivers of, 142 masculinization of traditionally feminized drama, 370 news sources, 5 political reporting, 250–251 time spent with, in US, 5, 6t Transfiguration of the Commonplace, The (Danto), 397–398 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355–358 franchising, 357–358 transparency, narrative, 66, 67 Tribune Media, 227 Trip to Bountiful, The (Film Library TV show), 47 Triumph of Will (Riefenstahl), 271 Trump, President Donald see also cable news; Twitter and 2016 presidential election campaign, 30, 175, 221 FBI investigation into ties to Russia, 247 media coverage of Trump, 226–227 “must runs” (distribution of already‐ produced stories favorable to right‐wing politics), 228 on The Apprentice, 30, 204, 226 CNN, feud with, 229 in Davos, Switzerland, 255 and journalism, 226 narrative, Trump administration as, 253 on racial minorities, 322 as a reality TV personality and political figure, 204 on Saturday Night Live, 233 Trans‐Pacific Partnership trade deal, joining, 258 Twitter feed, 10, 30, 248–263 attempted firing of Mueller, 248, 253, 254–256, 257 disconnect between position and unfiltered behavior, 251 FBI raids/Comey memoir, 256–260

Index 511 Manafort Monday (October 30th, 2017), 252–254 mocking of, 261 prolific use of Twitter, 251, 260 Syria, 257–260 tweets as evidence of Trump’s state of mind, 253–254 “white supremacist,” labeling on Twitter as, 176 Tudor, D.V., 9 Tunisia, 441, 443 Tunstall, J., 409 Turkey, 416–417, 452 Turner Broadcasting, 230 Turner, F., 50 Turner, J.S., 273 Turner, T., 354 Turner, V., 207 TV Guide, 349 21st Century Fox, acquisition by Disney, 146, 152, 228, 229, 355, 356 24 (fictional series), 65 Twitch (live streaming of video‐game playing), 162 Twitter, 80 archives, 253 black women, representation of, 372 “breaking news” (Trump’s Twitter feed) see Trump, President Donald compared with traditional media reporting, 251 digital advertising, 236 flashbacks, 253 flow, 248, 250–251, 252 History targeted on, 79 influence on politics/traditional political reporting, 250–251 and journalism, 261 live streaming, 162 “white supremacist,” labeling Trump as, 176 two‐dimensional space, on television, 67 UCLA Film and Television Archive, 44, 52, 54 UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), 277 Ugly Duckling (fairy tale), 379 uncertainty principle, 400n7 UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), 341 Unite the Right Rally, 318

United Kingdom see also Britain assemblage technique, televised sports, 270–271 audience needs, 119–121 audiovisual content, 132 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) see British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Broadcasting Act (1981), 117 Broadcasting Act (1990), 117 Broadcasting Audience Research Board (Barb), 132 broadcasting regulation, 9, 115–118 catch‐up services, 108, 121 channels, 119–121, 132 BBC 1, 116, 120t, 133t BBC 2, 116, 120t, 133t Channel 4, 85, 109, 116, 119, 120t, 133t, 160, 277 Channel 5, 116, 117, 119, 120t, 133t Independent Television (ITV), 109, 116, 117, 120, 121, 160, 190 cinema‐going statistics, 108, 124n1 Cinematograph Films Act (1927), 112 Communications Act (2003), 117 cultural studies, 24–25, 26, 30–31 digital‐only broadcasting, 117 docusoaps, 201–202 England and Wales Cricket Board, 277 film quota laws, 112 fragmentation process, television audiences, 132 free‐to‐air service, 117, 118 Freeview, 117, 118 Freud Museum, London, 56 Grandstand, 271 Independent Television Act (1954), 189 Independent Television Authority (ITA), 109 journalists in, 224 license fee, 109, 115, 116 mass consumer system, 188 Ofcom (regulatory body), 107, 116, 118–121 origins of broadcasting, 188 pay TV, 111, 117 population, 121, 124n2 Premier League, 280, 281, 282 public service channels (PSBs), 116, 117, 119–121 Royal charters, 115

512 United Kingdom (cont’d) satellite television see Sky (European satellite giant) teen killings in, 23 Television Act (1954), 116 terrestrial broadcasting/channels, 277 “unmatched viewing,” 121 World of Sport, 271 United States see also advertising; archives; cable television; Chicago; commercials; Latin American nations; Los Angeles; New York advertising, 165, 174, 178, 233, 350 American commercialized culture, 187 American Congress, 337, 338 American television model, 454–455 Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), 454 broadcasting regulation, 9, 113–115 deregulation, 222–223 cable television, 119, 123 channels, 49, 115, 280 Biography Channel, 87 Cable Music, 354 Cartoon Network, 335, 355 CBS All Access, 108, 357 Channel 13 (WNDT), 49 Disney Channel, 335 Entertainment Channel, 354 History Channel, 5, 79–81, 87, 96 Nickelodeon, 171, 335, 356 children and television, 335, 337 Children’s Television Act (CTA), 1990, 337, 339 Civil Rights Movement, 275, 312 commerciality, dominance of, 67, 221, 222 Communication Decency Act (1996), 192 Communications Act (1934), 112, 113, 123 Constitutional free speech guarantees, 114 consumerism, culture of, 187 Copyright Act (1976), 43 criminal justice system, 83 deregulation of television industry, 222–223 film industry, interwar years, 112 film sales, 112 “Golden Age” of television, 9, 64, 71–73 archives, 43, 46, 48 Great Depression, 113, 188 Latin American nations, influence on, 406–410, 415 Library of Congress (LOC), 42–43, 54

Index Miami, Spanish‐language television production, 414 Monroe Doctrine (1823), 405 National Football League Super Bowl broadcast, 170 neoliberal manifesto, 222 news, 221, 247–263 origins of broadcasting, 188 origins of television studies, 43 popular culture, 187, 309 population, 119, 124n2, 227, 231, 311 “Red Lion” ruling (1969), 114 streaming services, 146, 147–149t teen killings in, 23 Telecommunications Act (1996), 113, 115, 191–192, 227 television industry, 109, 221 deregulation, 222–223 political supports for, 347–349 television ownership, 5 time zones, creation in, 67 watching television, 346–360 Univisión, Spanish‐language network, 414 Unruly Media (video advertising platform), 230 Uribe‐Jongbloed, E., 416 Uruguay, 417 user blocking, 338 Uzalo (South African soapie‐drama), 426, 428, 431 Vaidhyanathan, Siva, 241 Valentino, R., 363 Van Bauwel, S., 371 variety magazines, South African television, 432–433 Variety (trade magazine), 85, 107, 114, 122, 349 Varis, T., 409, 410 Vasey, Ruth, 112 VCR, 58 Velshi, Ali, 259 Venardos, Lane, 230 Venevisión, Venezuela, 414 Venezuela, 409, 413, 414 Venice Film Festival, 158 Venza, J., 48 Viacom, 117, 356–357, 413, 415 video art, 49 video games, 24, 162 Video on Demand (VOD), 108, 129, 134, 135, 143, 151, 160 see also Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD)

Index 513 catalogs of services, 136 Netflix, 137, 138, 142, 150 videotaping, 392 Vietnam War, The (historical program), 91 viewing of television see also spectacle; spectators; sports television/ telesport; watching television active mediation, 331 co‐viewing mediation strategies, 330–331 excessive, effects on children, 24 Netflix see Netflix restrictive mediation, 330, 331 and spectatorship, in sport, 275–277 technological mediation, 330, 331 “unmatched viewing,” 121 view‐on‐demand basis, 121, 137, 150, 160, 281 “viewers’ rights,” 276–277 vintage television, 53, 55 see also archives violence, in the media, 23–24, 337, 338 Vismann, C., 58 visual behavior see human visual behavior Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Mulvey), 362 Vogel, S., 57 Voice, The (talent show), 215, 388, 398, 449 Vox Media, 229 Waisbord, S., 407, 408 Wald, G., 57 Waller, G., 249 Walt Disney Company see Disney Corporation, merger and acquisition activity Warhol, A., 41, 58 Warlpiri people, Australia, 392, 397 Warner, K.J., 372 Washington, G., 123 Farewell Address (1796), 109 wasteland (vast), TV seen as, 7, 24, 110, 237 archives, 43, 44, 52 watching television, 345–360 see also audiences; spectacle; spectators; viewing of television age of audience, 121 American industry, political supports for, 347–349 black viewers, 425 continuity and ratings, 352–353 devices used, 327 excessive viewing, effects on children, 8, 24, 328–330

historical programming, 89–90 hours watched, 5, 6t interlinked markets, 349–350 merger of broadcast and cable television industries, 354 news, 231 ratings market, creating, 350–352 rivalry and ratings, 353–354 sports television/telesport, 275–277 tracking, 347 transindustrial media conglomeration, 355–358 truisms vs industrial facts, 358 view‐on‐demand basis, 121, 137, 150, 160, 281 “viewers’ rights,” 276–277 versus watching a particular program, 247 Webster (ABC sitcom), 307, 308, 314, 315, 317, 319, 323 Welker, K., 255, 259 Westinghouse network, 250 Whannel, G., 270–271, 281 White, D.M., 22 White, H., 90 White, M., 364 White Webster, J., 97 Wibbitz (software tool), 224 Wide World of Sports (US sports program), 269, 270 Wife Swap (lifestyle makeover series), 215, 216 William Paley Foundation, 52 Williams, A., 372 Williams, B., 255, 256, 258, 297 Williams, L., 362, 370 Williams, M., 57 Williams, Raymond, 57, 65–66, 168–169, 183, 193, 247, 249, 250 Williams, Rick, 396, 397, 399n1 “windowing,” 67, 74 Winston, B., 400n9 Wire, The (quality TV show), 370 women see also female television audiences appearance, stereotypes, 381 and class, 363, 365, 366 of color, 372 in commercials, 171 concept of “woman,” 366 as consumers, 70 generational differences, 366 makeover shows, 71, 213, 215, 379–381 mass culture as woman, 70

514 women (cont’d) and mass media, 367, 371 misogynism, 70 stereotyping in roles, 26 in televised sports, 272–274 television culture, 361–378 televisual view of, 70 Title IX support for female athletes, 274 Women, Media and Sport (Creedon), 272 Women Watching Television (Press), 365–367 Wood, D., 212–213, 215 Wood, H., 215, 216 World Cup, 276, 277, 281 Women’s World Cup, 272, 273 World in Action (UK documentary), 116 World of Sport (UK sports program), 271 World Wide Web, 135 and public broadcasting, 192–193 Worth, S., 385 Wright Mills, C., 22 WTCG broadcast station, 354 X Factor, The (talent show), 206, 207 Xi Jinping, 459, 468–473 Xilai, B., 469 Xinwen Lianbo (Joint Newscast), 462

Index Yahoo, 236 Yaobang, H., 463 Yemen, 441, 444 Yoshimoto Kogyo (Japanese entertainment company), 177 Young, B.D., 273 Young, I.M., 367 Youssef, B., 444 youth violence, 23 YouTube, 54, 55, 108, 444 and Comcast, 163 Live TV, 162 talent shows, 208, 213, 216 tension between amateur and corporate, 153–154 Yuchun, L., 467, 468 Yuendumu community, Australia, 392 Zemon Davis, N., 97 Zettl, H., 67, 382, 383, 387 Zhao, Y.Z., 11 Zhao Ziyang, 463 Zhenzhi Guo, 11 Zimmerman, G., 275 Ziyang, Z., 463