Television - Professor Jeff South. Online lecture notes. PDF

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Professor Jeff South. Online lecture notes....

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Chapter 9: Television TV Journalist Jorge Ramos: - Worked at Mexico City TV - Then for an L.A. TV station in 1970s - Now anchor for Univision - Compared with Walter Cronkite (and to Anderson Cooper) - Passionate on immigrant issues Invention of Television: - Philo T. Farnsworth - 1922: diagrams plans for television at age 16 - 1930: receives patent cathode ray tube and his “image dissector” - RCA attempted to promote its own Vladimir Zworykin as inventor of TV - 1947: Farnsworth’s television patent expires before TV starts to take off Beginning of Broadcast Television: - 1939: NBC starts broadcasting from World’s Fair in New York - Most were sets in bars in restaurants - 1942: TV manufacturing suspended for WWII; most stations go off air - Licensing of new TV stations suspended 1948-1952, while FCC develops rules - Many cities without television Lucy & Desi End Live TV: - 1951: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz create I Love Lucy - First sitcom to be filmed, rather than live - Produced in California, not NY - Show used 3 cameras (not just 1) - Lucy and Desi hold onto syndication rights to show; still being broadcast today Color Television: - 1950s: experiments in color TV - 1965: Big Three networks broadcasting regularly in color - NBC, ABC, CBS - NBC peacock logo designed to tell B&W viewers show was in color - Early color TVs cost equivalent of big-screen TVs today (up to $5,000) Beginning of Cable Television: - Community Antenna Television (CATV): early form of cable television used to distribute broadcast channels in communities with poor TV reception - Mostly in rural, mountainous areas - Relatively expensive - Was source of good TV signal, not additional programming

Rebirth of Cable: - By mid-1970s, FCC began loosening rules on cable companies - 1975: HBO starts providing programming nationwide, sending signal to local cable companies via satellite - Key Point: HBO could send programming to 1,000 cable companies as cheaply as one - Networks didn’t object because few homes got cable TV Ted Turner - Cable Pioneer: - 1963: inherits failing billboard company - 1970: buys Channel 17 in Atlanta - Buys Atlanta Braves and Hawks sports franchises to provide programming for channel - 1976: turns Channel 17 into superstation WTBS and takes local station national - 1980: CNN becomes first 24-hour cable news network - Developed idea of repackaging content across multiple channels (CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, etc.) - Creates TNT, Cartoon Network, Classic Movies - 1996: Turner Broadcasting faces financial trƒouble and is bought by Time Warner - Fulfilled McLuhan’s ideal of global village? What’s on Cable: - Affiliates of Big Four broadcast networks - American Broadcasting Company (ABC) - CBS (formerly Columbia Broadcasting System) - National Broadcasting Company (NBC) - Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX) - Independents and smaller network affiliates - Superstations - Local-access channels - Cable networks - Premium channels - Pay-per-view - Audio services Cable TV by the Numbers: - In U.S. about 50% of homes subscribe to cable TV - 29% of U.S. homes subscribe to satellite TV - In U.K. 15% of homes get cable and 41% get satellite service Home Recording: - Late 1970s: Videocasette Recorders (VCRs) arrived on the scene for home use

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Movie studios fight spread of VCRs, but 1984 Supreme Court decision says consumers can make recordings for own use Format war - VHS v. Beta By 1991: 7 out of 10 U.S. homes had VCRs 12st Century: DVRs, DVDs, on-demand streaming started replacing VCR technology

Why Industry Opposed VCRs: - Users could record programs without paying for them (then duplicate and resell, or “share” programs = piracy and copyright violations) - People could skip commercials, fast-forward through them - Time-Shifting: many ads are tied to when shows are broadcast, but people were watching them at other (less effective) times Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS): - Early systems required large/expensive dish - Smaller pizza-sized DBS cheaper, easier to use than old systems; competing with cable - 33 million American households have DBS - More popular in other countries Conversion to Digital Broadcasting: - Farnsworth’s television technology was analog; basic technology stayed the same for decades - B&W TVs could still receive new color signals - In 2009, all broadcast TV converted to digital - Old-style analog sets went dark without either conversion box or cable/satellite Two Digital TV Formats: - High-Definition Television (HDTV): high resolution, widescreen format with enhanced sound - ~81% U.S. homes have HDTV sets - Standard Digital Television: same quality as analog, but can broadcast up to six channels in airspace that carried one old-style channel Our Class Survey: - 61% of you have a widescreen HDTV - 22% have a standard TV - 48% have Xbox, PlayStation, or other gaming system (which can stream TV content) - A lot of students have Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, Roku, or Google Chromecast Networks and Affiliates: - Broadcast networks provide programming to local affiliate stations - Affiliates have licensed from FCC, equipment, and local staff

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If affiliate carries programming from network, get limited ad revenue and (may) get carriage fee - Can also carry local and syndicated programming, keep all ad revenue

Newt Minow - “Vast Wasteland” - Chairman, Federal Communications Commission - Gave speech to broadcasters in 1961 - Criticized “senseless violence, mindless comedy, and offensive advertising” on TV Public Broadcasting: - 1967: Corporation for Public Broadcasting created - Public Broadcasting System (PBS) provides network-like programming to member stations - PBS initially known for children’s programming like Sesame Street - 1990s: PBS expands audience with programming like Ken Burns documentaries Big Three Becomes Big Four: - 1986: Rupert Murdoch launches Fox Network - Attracted independent stations by offering them free programming - Initially, targeted diverse/urban audience (with shows like In Living Color ) - Shows like NFL football, The Simpsons, American Idol, Melrose Place, and Family Guy have made Fox top-rated broadcaster Audience Ratings: - TV lives and dies by ratings (size of audience) - Rating determines ad rates and cable fees - Challenge of rating major and minor broadcast networks, major cable networks, and minor cable networks - Problem of counting audiences using DVRs and streaming services - Nielsen Media Research is major rating company Measuring Audiences; - Nielsen monitors 9,000 homes - People Meters in large markets; diaries in small ones - Sweeps periods used to measure audience size of individual stations (Nov, Feb, May, July) - Rating Point: percentage of potential audience actually watching the show; based on all TVs, whether they’re turned on or not - Share: percentage of television sets in use at a particular time that are tuned to a show Ratings by the Numbers: - 120 million U.S. homes have TVs - If 12 million (10%) watch a TV show, the show has a rating of 10 - Suppose 40 million U.S. homes have their TVs turned on at 3 in the afternoon - If 10 million (25%) are watching a show, the show has a share of 25

“Earthquake in Slow Motion” - 1976: average viewer had 7 channels; Big 3 networks got 90% of viewers - 1991: average viewer had 33 channels; Big 3 lost 1/3rd of viewers - Now, hundreds of cable channels, many owned by the networks - 2011: ESPN most profitable part of Disney - Cable/Satellite more profitable (they produce subscription fees and ad revenue) - Now, it’s shaking cable industry too - People cutting the cord and subscribing to streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) - Netflix has 47 million subscribers in the U.S. - Comcast, Disney, Verizon and other companies should be worried Diversity on Television: - Networks criticized for ignoring people of color - Traditionally, few non-whites in leading roles - Anglos played roles portraying minorities - ABC’s Scandal is first show in four decades to have an African American woman as the lead - Also Empire, Sleepy Hollow , Being Mary Jane, and How to Get Away With Murder - Food Network shows Spanish Language Broadcasting: - Univision is 5th largest broadcast network; often top rated in urban areas - Spanish-language telenovelas popular - Produced in Mexico and Brazil (Brazillian shows translated from Portuguese to Spanish) Black Entertainment Network: - 1980: Washington DC area local station - First black-owned cable network - Founded by Robert Johnson and his wife, Sheila Johnson (who saw it as “Ebony” of TV) - Worth $2 billion when it was sold to Viacom in 2000 - Now, sometimes criticized for racial stereotypes and lack of public affairs programming Television as a Social Force: - Television brings world into the home in an easy-to-consume format - Television becomes dominant source of shared experience - Television can dominate people’s leisure activity (average of 4 hours per day) - Video from non-TV sources is growing in popularity Why Kids Watch TV: - To be entertained - To learn

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For social reasons Different children watch for different reasons and get different outcomes from their viewing They aren’t that different from adults

Standards for Television: - 1950s: married couples had to sleep in separate beds; Capri pants immodest - 190s: mild nudity appears on broadcast TV - 1997: broadcasters implement content ratings Problems of Decency: - 2004: Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” = decency rules become stricter - 2012: U.S. Supreme Court throws out fines for Jackson exposure, but doesn’t clarify decency standards - No fines for Nancy Grade exposure during Dancing With The Stars - No clear standard, but many stations don’t want to risk a fine ($325,000) Future of Television: - Video-on demand - Interacting with programming - Convergence of TV and Internet - Redefining what “TV” is - Moving from broadcast/cable/satellite to “cord cutting” - More content creators - Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and the “Long Tail” NY Times - “TV Transformed” - Old days: scarce content and importance of ads - “Don’t offend viewers” (make TV bland) - Now, abundant programming thanks to technology; new revenue streams (subscription fees) - Attract a loyal audience (doesn’t have to be mass audience)...