Search Results

Program Networks

Eli M. Noam

in Media Ownership and Concentration in America

Given the relative cheapness of electronic and physical distribution, it is usually more cost effective to produce a program centrally and distribute it widely rather than for each retail outlet to ... More

Given the relative cheapness of electronic and physical distribution, it is usually more cost effective to produce a program centrally and distribute it widely rather than for each retail outlet to produce its own content. Thus, networks and syndicators emerged from which retail outlets acquired programming, or they produced the program themselves. These networks and syndicators package the content and distribute it to retail outlets such as broadcast stations, cable network operators, and satellite distribution systems. This chapter analyzes the concentration of trends in radio program networks and television broadcast networks. Because radio is often used as an example for media concentration trends, it needs to be discussed at greater length. In about one decade, from 1992 to 2001, the market share of the top four firms increased from 9% to 38%. The national level of radio concentration was less dramatic than its rapid rate of change suggests, coupled with local concentration. In the case of television stations, the concentration trend in ownership has received high visibility. Cable television has become the major delivery platform for additional video channels.Less

Air Raids: Television and the War on Terror

Lisa Parks (ed.)

in America and the Misshaping of a New World Order

This chapter considers the intensifying relations between media and military institutions, the production of wartime atmospherics in everyday life, and the political contestations that emphasize the ... More

This chapter considers the intensifying relations between media and military institutions, the production of wartime atmospherics in everyday life, and the political contestations that emphasize the U.S. war on global terror. The term air raids have involved practices of militarization, vengeance, suppression, and annihilation. They have involved a different disposition toward dissent. On the one hand, it implies the militarization of media that is evident after the events of 9/11. U.S. cable television networks adopted the command and control logics of military institutions and exacerbated public fear and paranoia to rationalize U.S. military retaliation. Another aspect of the air raid is explored with the U.S. attacks on Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite television network, which represent a troubling mobilization of state-sanctioned violence, information management, and media capitalism. An active correspondence between television and democracy could only ever surface in the United States with further critical and public investment in the medium.Less

Electronic Mass Media: Retail Distribution

Eli M. Noam

in Media Ownership and Concentration in America

This chapter examines the electronic mass media of retail distribution—radio, television, cable, and direct broadcast satellites. These media consist of two major segments; there are local retail ... More

This chapter examines the electronic mass media of retail distribution—radio, television, cable, and direct broadcast satellites. These media consist of two major segments; there are local retail media and national wholesale networks. Retail media distribute content directly to audiences. Examples are local radio and television stations and cable distribution systems. In contrast, wholesale networks bundle programs created by content producers and distribute them to retailers. Examples are radio and television networks, cable channels, and program syndicators. Radio has become the poster boy for media concentration. Most public discussions of media trends refer to the developments in radio and its lessons for public policy. No media industry in the United States has changed more in ownership than local radio stations. The level of local television station concentration is the lowest among all of the eight local mass media analyzed.Less

Cultural Diversity, Trade, and Technology Transfer

Michael Keane, Anthony Fung, and Albert Moran

in New Television, Globalisation, and the East Asian Cultural Imagination

This chapter considers non-textual elements of television-format exchange. Although formats have been licensed for some decades, the turn toward formatting as a business model is a response to ... More

This chapter considers non-textual elements of television-format exchange. Although formats have been licensed for some decades, the turn toward formatting as a business model is a response to escalating cost structures. As multi-channelling creates a demand for more varieties of content, flexible and hybrid forms of programming attract the interest of television networks. The globalization of formats, along with interactive cross-media promotion and production techniques, illustrates “cultural technology transfer”: the television format is a package of technologies and services, delivering growth and profit opportunities for television networks, producers, and advertisers.Less

The Writer/Producer in American Television

Roberta Pearson

in The Contemporary Television Series

By 2001, producer and programme had become inseparable; writers, agents and United Paramount Network's target demographic of younger viewers were said to be attracted not just by Buffy but by Joss ... More

By 2001, producer and programme had become inseparable; writers, agents and United Paramount Network's target demographic of younger viewers were said to be attracted not just by Buffy but by Joss Whedon's high-profile public image. The thirty years between the publication of Muriel Cantor's 1971 book, The Hollywood TV Producer: His Work and His Audience and UPN's acquisition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer saw fundamental changes in the television industry in the United States. Cantor's book was published during the height of three network dominance, a period that Michele Hilmes has dubbed the classic network system. When UPN acquired Buffy, the number of television networks had doubled from three to six, all of which struggled for ratings in a multi-channel, fragmented audience environment. The transformation of the industry resulted in the television writer-producer playing a much more prominent role in the industry than ever before.Less

“Sophisticated Daring” and Political Cowardice: Television Satire and Nbc's That was the Week That was

in Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America

By the early 1960s, network television executives had begun to capitalize on the growing popularity of satiric entertainment among affluent middle-class Americans by offering programs such as The Bob ... More

By the early 1960s, network television executives had begun to capitalize on the growing popularity of satiric entertainment among affluent middle-class Americans by offering programs such as The Bob Newhart Show and Rocky and His Friends. This chapter examines the television comedy that attempted to harness the critical spirit of liberal satire—NBC's That Was the Week That Was. The show addressed pressing social and political issues, but was in the end compromised by the cowardice of network executives.Less

Introduction

Aniko Bodroghkozy

in Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

This book examines the role played by American network television in reconfiguring a new “common sense” about race relations during the civil rights revolution. Drawing on stories told both by ... More

This book examines the role played by American network television in reconfiguring a new “common sense” about race relations during the civil rights revolution. Drawing on stories told both by television news coverage and prime time entertainment, it explores the relationship among the civil rights movement, television, audiences, and partisans on either side of the black empowerment struggle. In particular, it considers the recurring theme that America's racial story was one of color-blind equality grounded on a vision of “black and white together.” The book concludes that television had an ambivalent place in the civil rights revolution. More specifically, it argues that network television sought to represent a rapidly shifting consensus on what “blackness” and “whiteness” meant and how they now fit together. Network television premised equality on a largely white definition whereby African Americans were ready for equal time to the extent that their representations conformed to whitened standards of middle-class and professional respectability.Less

Performing Live Surgery on Television and the Internet since 1945

David Serlin

in Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture

This chapter charts the broadcast history of live surgery in the United States, from its first appearance on network television in the late 1940s through its contemporary manifestations on the ... More

This chapter charts the broadcast history of live surgery in the United States, from its first appearance on network television in the late 1940s through its contemporary manifestations on the Internet. It distinguishes programs depicting documentaries that included live surgery from contemporary fictional dramas (called “stethoscope operas”) of the early 1960s such as Ben Casey, M.D. and Dr. Kildare, as well as live display from other types of medical diagnostics or imaging techniques. The chapter shows that, in promoting the often conflicting goals of public health, live surgery broadcast in the immediate postwar era was more like the Internet than we might expect, especially for the ways it sustained corporate sponsorship while promoting medical services to an increasingly prosperous clientele eager to purchase health services as consumer amenities.Less

Fighting for Equal Time: Segregationists vs. Integrationists

Aniko Bodroghkozy

in Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

This chapter examines the debate over the extent to which network television was giving Southern segregationists and Northern integrationists “equal time” by focusing on audience reception of two ... More

This chapter examines the debate over the extent to which network television was giving Southern segregationists and Northern integrationists “equal time” by focusing on audience reception of two controversial news documentaries about civil rights that aired in 1959 and 1961: NBC's report on “massive resistance” to school desegregation and CBS's report on violence against Freedom Riders. The NBC documentary report starred Chet Huntley and the CBS report, Howard K. Smith. This chapter first explores the discord and controversy sparked by the Fairness Doctrine before turning to Huntley and Smith's editorializing about desegregation and Southern race relations in their programs. In particular, it discusses Huntley's suggestion that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People should step out of the school desegregation battle because of its “militancy,” and Smith's commentary about the evils of segregationist violence and those who tolerate it. Drawing on evidence of audience response, the chapter argues that the sectional and political rifts around race were not being assuaged by television coverage.Less

Conclusion: From Wide World of Sports to the Worldwide Leader in Sports

Travis Vogan

in ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television

As ABC Sports’ metamorphosis continued into the 1990s, ESPN established itself as television’s most lucrative cable outlet and one of the most recognizable brands in media—sports or otherwise. ESPN’s ... More

As ABC Sports’ metamorphosis continued into the 1990s, ESPN established itself as television’s most lucrative cable outlet and one of the most recognizable brands in media—sports or otherwise. ESPN’s rising value prompted the Walt Disney Company to purchase Capital Cities in 1996. Immediately after the acquisition, Disney began to position ESPN as the company’s featured sports television brand, and it adjusted to the web-driven and convergent sports-media ecosystem that was replacing the network era that ABC Sports represented. These changes culminated in 2006 when Disney moved Monday Night Football to ESPN and rebranded all ABC Sports programming as “ESPN on ABC.” The book concludes by tracing Disney’s reinvention of ABC Sports in the image of ESPN and probing the network division’s scattered remnants in post-network media culture.Less

Frankly Boring and Agonizingly Slow: Television Moves to the Office: Immediacy

Kit Hughes

in Television at Work: Industrial Media and American Labor

Using AT&T as a case study, Chapter 3 (keyword: immediacy) follows a series of halting experiments surrounding live and near-live television that attended the medium’s move from the factory to the ... More

Using AT&T as a case study, Chapter 3 (keyword: immediacy) follows a series of halting experiments surrounding live and near-live television that attended the medium’s move from the factory to the office. First, it describes companies’ adoption of theater television for live, city-spanning business meetings. Often understood as a site of tension between film and commercial broadcasting interests, theater television reached its apogee as a site of business experimentation with efficient and affective management. Second, it details companies’ use of early videotape systems for self-observation. Borrowing legitimacy from psychology’s use of “encounter groups,” self-observation required workers to tape themselves in various situations for immediate playback and intensified self-regulation. Third, and following from these experiments, it traces AT&T’s installation of in-house closed-circuit television systems. In addition to distributing content, CCTV systems supported corporate imaginaries in which geographies were themselves subject to executive control and reorganization.Less

Bringing “Urgent Issues” to the Vast Wasteland: East Side/West Side

Aniko Bodroghkozy

in Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

This chapter examines how entertainment television addressed the theme of race relations and “black and white together” by focusing on CBS's East Side/West Side, one of the first prime-time shows to ... More

This chapter examines how entertainment television addressed the theme of race relations and “black and white together” by focusing on CBS's East Side/West Side, one of the first prime-time shows to feature an African American in a continuing role. Many cultural critics complained about the perceived decline in quality of television programming. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow even described network television as “a vast wasteland.” This chapter considers the television networks' inauguration of a new form of programming dubbed “New Frontier character dramas” as they tried to soothe their presumed white audiences about race relations. It explores how East Side/West Side presented to its viewers issues of racism, black rage, white guilt, the place of African Americans in American society, and the appropriate response by white liberals. It explains how East Side/West Side became a terrain of struggle for mostly Northern, mostly white Americans trying to negotiate positions around race and Kennedy-era liberalism. It also argues that the series was out of step with the story that television really wanted to tell.Less

Television and College Sports as Mass Entertainment

Howard P. Chudacoff

in Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports

This chapter discusses how television changed college sports. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the NCAA pursued deals worth millions of dollars with commercial, for-profit networks instead of with ... More

This chapter discusses how television changed college sports. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the NCAA pursued deals worth millions of dollars with commercial, for-profit networks instead of with nonprofit, public radio and television, where the link between athletics and higher education might have been maintained and the commercialism of intercollegiate athletics restrained. The college sports establishment chose an economic playbook that promised direct benefit to athletics and to the institutions in which they operated. Televised football increased the visibility of a few privileged schools, but the bulk of money an institution derived from TV appearances went to support athletics. The schools themselves willingly complied with television policy so they could use television revenues and booster contributions inspired by TV exposure to pay for sports rather than to fund them from the educational budget. Thus, the commercial route was the one taken. While the NCAA may have exerted control over who played football on television, the networks found ways to use dollar appeal and flex their muscle to stretch television policy in their favor.Less

The March on Washington and a Peek into Racial Utopia

Aniko Bodroghkozy

in Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

This chapter examines how television networks handled the coverage of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 to a national audience of millions. The March on Washington drew a quarter of a ... More

This chapter examines how television networks handled the coverage of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 to a national audience of millions. The March on Washington drew a quarter of a million civil rights activists who converged on the nation's capital to press for “jobs and freedom.” Television cameras and reporters focused on the demonstrators' placards and signs. All three networks broadcast the event live. With the exception of presidential inaugurations and nominating conventions, no single event had ever commanded such extensive television coverage. This chapter first considers how the CBS news team framed and packaged the March on Washington as a news story, and particularly Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, before discussing various responses to the television news reporting of the march in the African American press. It suggests that the March on Washington functioned as a paean of “black and white together,” as the networks invited viewers to share in a utopian taste of achieved equality.Less

Introduction: Christianity, Religion, and Hollywood Television Production Cultures

Charlotte E. Howell

in Divine Programming: Negotiating Christianity in American Dramatic Television Production 1996-2016

The introduction presents the broader context of both religion on television and the particular approach that this volume takes to its study: a production studies approach based in theories of ... More

The introduction presents the broader context of both religion on television and the particular approach that this volume takes to its study: a production studies approach based in theories of television studies. Throughout, it establishes the significance of studying the discourses—utterances, practices, and ideologies—that shape how Christianity is represented on television and the production culture that creates that representation. The introduction also lays out the four-part structure of the book that details the four different approaches to positioning Christianity’s use in serial dramas over a twenty-year span: establishing white Christianity’s middlebrow associations, distancing through place and race, displacement through genre, and ultimately acknowledging and using as edgy content.Less

Introduction: 1970

Bonnie J. Dow

in Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on the national television news narratives about the second wave of feminism that proliferated in 1970, a ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on the national television news narratives about the second wave of feminism that proliferated in 1970, a year in which the networks' eagerness to make sense of the movement for their viewers was accompanied by feminists' efforts to use national media for their own purposes. The interaction of these efforts produced coverage that was distinguished by its contradictions—it ranged from sympathetic to patronizing, from thoughtful to sensationalistic, and from evenhanded to overtly dismissive. The effects of the movement's heightened public profile proved to be equally unpredictable. Even negative coverage had positive outcomes for movement growth; at the same time, some feminist media activism that proved surprisingly successful had an adverse effect on movement cohesion.Less

Propaganda Tool for Racial Progress?

Aniko Bodroghkozy

in Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

This chapter examines early discourses on the relationship between television and the developing black freedom movement, with particular emphasis on optimistic hopes that television could be a ... More

This chapter examines early discourses on the relationship between television and the developing black freedom movement, with particular emphasis on optimistic hopes that television could be a progressive tool for African American advancement and racial justice. Unlike radio, early network television appeared to take seriously obligations to present African Americans in respectful ways. In the early 1950s, for example, NBC's politically progressive chief censor worked to eradicate offensive black stereotypes from programming by scrubbing references to “darkies,” images of Stepin Fetchit–style characters. This chapter first considers the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's protest against the Amos 'n' Andy and response to the Beulah radio shows before discussing the role of entertainment television in the pre-civil rights period. It looks at the ABC program The Beulah Show. While Beulah exemplifies early television's initial foray into the arena of race relations and black representation, this chapter argues that it did not give viewers a concept of black and white on equal terms.Less

The Movement Makes the News: Network News Feature Stories on Women’s Liberation in 1970

Bonnie J. Dow

in Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News

This chapter begins the story of 1970's “grand press blitz,” when a barrage of print stories on the movement set the stage for network news' first reports on women's liberation. It couples a ... More

This chapter begins the story of 1970's “grand press blitz,” when a barrage of print stories on the movement set the stage for network news' first reports on women's liberation. It couples a discussion of all three networks' first, brief, hard news reports on feminist protest in January—the disruption of the Senate birth control pill hearings by a women's liberation group—with an extensive analysis of two series of lengthy soft feature stories on women's liberation broadcast by CBS and NBC in March and April. On one level, both network series created a sort of moderate middle ground of acceptable feminism anchored by their legitimation of liberal feminist issues related to workplace discrimination, but they diverged sharply in other ways that indicated key differences in their purposes and their imagined audiences. The CBS and NBC series provide a sort of baseline for national television representations of the movement in 1970; between them, they display the wide range of rhetorical strategies contained in early network reports. The CBS stories offered a generally dismissive and visually sensationalized narrative about the movement, particularly its radical contingent, displaying the gender anxiety assumed to afflict its male target audience. In contrast, the NBC series presented a generally sympathetic narrative about the movement's issues that unified radical and liberal concerns rather than using the latter to marginalize the former.Less