1. Chapter 9
Television: Reflecting and Affecting
Society
Chapter Outline
• History
• Industry
• Controversies

4. Television: The Numbers
Americans watch a LOT of TV

5. Mass Media in a Changing World
Second Edition

6. Mass Media in a Changing World
Second Edition

7. A Brief History of Television
Early Technology
• Pre-war RCA
• 32-line mechanical television
• Another mechanical television

8. Philo T. Farnsworth

9. A Brief History of Television
Early Technology
• 1927: Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant working
for Westinghouse Corporation, develops a circuit for
transforming a visual image into an electronic signal.
• Around the same time, Philo T. Farnsworth completes a
working model for a similar system, and applies for a
patent.
• Farnsworth had to endure years of suits and countersuits
before RCA paid him $1 million for the rights to his
patent.
• Inventors in several countries including England, Japan
and Russia, claim to have come up with the idea of
television around the same time.

10. A Brief History of Television
• 1932: David Sarnoff of RCA builds one of
the first commercial television
stations, with transmitting facilities in the
Empire State Building, spends $1 million
promoting the medium.
• 1939 World’s Fair: FDR becomes first
president to appear on television
• Problems affecting early sales: high
costs, limited and low-quality
programming, no technical standards.

11. A Brief History of Television
Development of Technical Standards
• Each manufacturer wanted to reap profits that would
follow if their patents became the broadcast standard.
• Some wanted black and white technology to be the
standard, while others were working on color and
wanted government to wait for it to be perfected.
• Other patents involved different lines of
resolution, those rows of lighted dots, or pixels, that
make up the picture image.
• 1941: government and industry agree that television
would present black and white pictures with 525 lines of
resolution moving at a speed of 30 frames per second.

12. A Brief History of Television
NTSC (National Television System Committee) is the analog
standard for televisions in most of the world except for
Europe, which utilizes the PAL (Phase Alternating Line)
standard

13. A Brief History of Television
World War II Stops TV’s Growth
• Most of the engineers in television joined the
military and developed radar, sonar, radio-guided
missiles and battlefield communications.
Post-War Development
• In the early 1940s programming was terrible. Some
people would watch test patterns.
• By 1948, set sales increased by 500 percent over the
previous year, and viewership grew by 4000
percent.

14. A Brief History of Television
Channel Allocation
• Channel allocation is the placement of a
station’s frequency on the electromagnetic
spectrum used for transmitting electronic
signals.
• FCC charged with ensuring that every
community in America has at least one
channel, with no overlapping or interfering
channels. Places a freeze on license
applications (1948 to 1952)
• During that period the number of sets
purchased rose from a 250,000 to more than 17
million.

15. A Brief History of Television
The Rise of Network Television
• Four early networks: NBC, CBS, ABC and Dumont
• The Dumont network lacked the radio relationships
of the others and could not line up enough affiliates
to be attractive to advertisers. Dumont folded in
1955. Its stations went on to become the nucleus of
Metromedia Television, which eventually became
the Fox network.

16. A Brief History of Television
The Rise of Network Television
• Stations not connected by cable had to run
kinescopes of network programming.

17. A Brief History of Television
Television’s Golden Age
• Many critics consider 1948 to 1958 a time of
unusually good dramatic programming
• Quality dramas were needed to attract
wealthy, educated viewers who could afford
television sets.
• Network programming originated in New York
City and producers had access to up-and-coming
Broadway writers, actors, and directors.
• Most television dramas were performed
live, essentially stage drama in front of a camera

18. A Brief History of Television

19. A Brief History of Television
• Not all programming was high quality, and many
lacked realistic portrayal of non-whites and women.
• “I Love Lucy,” “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and
Harriet” featured women who were either humorously
incompetent or subordinate to men who made all
important decisions.
• Virtually all the playwrights, producers, actors, and
directors of the live dramas were white. Minorities
were systematically excluded from production jobs.
• The 1980s success of the Cosby show opened the door
for more black oriented programming with black
production staffs.

20. A Brief History of Television
The Entrance of the Movie Studios
• 1954: Walt Disney becomes the first studio leader to
associate his name with a television program. In an
early example of horizontal integration, Disney saw
the possibilities of TV for promoting his
Disneyland theme park and his feature films, as
well as generating income from the program itself.
• 1955: Warner Brothers produces the western
“Cheyenne” for ABC; all the major film studios
follow this lead.

21. A Brief History of Television
Television Changes Family Life
• Like radio, television brings American family indoors to
experience programming together.
• Families didn’t talk during prime-time programs; they
talked among themselves and among outsiders about what
they’d seen on television the night before.

22. A Brief History of Television
Television Changes Family Life
• 1968: “60 Minutes” becomes first news magazine
• Classic children’s shows: “Bozo the Clown,”
“Romper Room,” and “Sesame Street.”
• “Wide World of Sports”
• Classic programs are regularly scheduled, long-
running prime-time entertainment programs that
changed what people talked about over coffee the
next day.

23. A Brief History of Television
Television Changes Family Life
• “Camel Cavalcade of News” (1948-1956) with John
Cameron Swayze is considered the father of
television news.

24. A Brief History of Television
Television’s Economic Golden Age
• By 1966, the networks were broadcasting all their
prime-time shows in color. People rush to replace black
& white sets.
• 1967: Public television established
• 1960-1980: Lack of competition for the big three
networks makes for an economic golden age for
television.
• Independent stations began to compete a little, but the
real challenger to network television will be cable TV.

25. A Brief History of Television
Enter Cable
• Cable television began in the 1950s as “Community
Antenna Television” (CATV). CATV was designed to
give hard-to-reach areas satisfactory reception from the
nearest broadcast television stations.
• The earliest CATV pioneers were appliance dealers who
hoped to sell TV sets. They would install a large antenna
on a nearby hilltop, amplify the local station signals that
were received, and distribute them to the community by
means of a cable.
• CATV became cable television in the 1970s when it began
to offer additional signals from distant stations, a service
called importation.

26. A Brief History of Television
• One of FCC rules for cable was that cable systems could
not duplicate network programs on the same day that the
network aired them.
• Another important regulation came to be known as must
carry rules, which said that cable systems had to carry all
local televisions stations within each system’s area of
coverage.
• Cable’s big growth period was between 1970 (10 percent of
homes wired) and 1990 (60 percent of homes wired).
• Time Inc.’s HBO was the first pay cable channel (1972).
• Today’s cable systems carry hundreds of channels.

27. Issues
• Should everyone be guaranteed access to television
signal?
• Should government regulate over-the air TV
programming?
• Should government regulate cable TV programming?

28. A Brief History of Television
Emerging Networks
• In 1985, Rupert Murdoch formed the Fox network by
purchasing 20th Century Fox studios and the
Metromedia chain of independent TV stations.
• Ten years later, with shows such as “The Simpsons,” “In
Living Color,” “Beverly Hills 90210,” and the broadcast
rights to National Football League games, Fox was
earning more money per program than CBS or
ABC, and, was quickly catching up to NBC.
• Warner Brothers (WB) and United Paramount Network
(UPN) started within a week of each other in January
1995, after deregulation permitted networks to produce
prime-time programs (In 2006, WB and UPN merged
into CW – CBS-Warner).

29. A Brief History of Television
Adapting to New Technologies
• Broadcast television networks compete with newer
technologies, including cable, satellite, on-demand
video, video games, and the Internet.
• The broadcast television industry has changed over to
digital, high-definition television (HDTV) which delivers
pictures as clear and crisp as a Cineplex feature.
Scanning lines are more than double the standard: 1125
lines instead of the 525 of conventional TV, and the wider
HDTV screen (16:9) features high-quality digital
sound, interactivity and various other advanced digital
services.

30. A Brief History of Television
Adapting to New Technologies
• Today, television networks and program suppliers
are experimenting with ways to offer programming
downloadable from the Internet to home
computers, cell phones, and other digital media.

32. A Brief History of Television
Adapting to New Technologies
• The cultural effects of the VCR were many:
• Time shifting
• Zapping
• Digital video discs (DVDs) reached the market in
1996, and Digital video recorders
(DVRs), specialized computers with oversized
hard discs onto which video signals are
saved, were introduced in 1999.

33. A Brief History of Television
• How have the DVD and the VCR/DVR
changed the business model for television?

34. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
The Cable Industry
• Today’s cable operations are run almost exclusively by
multiple system operators (MSOs), which are companies
that own several local cable service providers, usually in
different areas of the country. MSOs are generally owned
by giant communications corporations like Time-Warner
or Comcast.
• An MSO must reach a franchise agreement with the local
government which generally receives a small percentage
of the gross revenues.
• Most municipalities require the MSO to provide access
channels which are open to the general public on a first
come, first served basis.

35. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Basic Cable
• Basic cable is made up of channels that are supplied
with the least expensive program package the provider
offers. These channels, like MTV and
CNN, supplement ad revenue by charging the system
operator for each subscriber that carries their signal--
usually 20 to 50 cents per subscriber, per month.
• Today specialized basic cable channels include earliest
basic cable channels include ESPN, CNN, MTV, C-
SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affair Network), the
Fishing Channel, the Home and Garden Network and
more.

36. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Basic Cable
• By 2007, the average cable subscriber received
96 channels but only actually watched 15 of
them.
• Cable companies generally charge for “tiers” or
packages of programming that include many
channels that individual subscribers don’t use.
• The cable industry has so far resisted
legislators’ calls for a “a la carte” pricing model
that would allow people to receive only the
channels they want.

37. Issues
Should Congress force cable TV providers to
make ala-carte programming available to
customers?

38. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Superstations
• The first superstation, a local station delivered to
cable systems via satellite, was created in 1976
when Ted Turner sent the signals of WTBS, his
Atlanta UHF station, for distribution throughout
the country.
• Turner raised advertising rates and turned what
had been the lowest-rated station in Atlanta into
a financial success.

39. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Premium Cable
• Premium cable channels such as Home Box Office
(HBO), Showtime, and Cinemax provide programming
to cable subscribers for an additional fee, over and above
what they pay for basic cable. A converter, or cable
box, unscrambles the signals for premium cable.
• Pay-per-view channels allow customers to order recent
feature films, sporting events, concerts, an other special
events on a set schedule.

40. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Premium Cable
• Public Access Channels are provided by
cable systems as part of their community
agreements.
• Across the U.S., 3000 public access channels
operate out of more than a 1000 stations set
up by cable companies.

41. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Satellite TV
• Satellites were an integral part of the success of cable
television, originally being used for point-to-point
communications since the 1960s.
• In the 1970s satellites were made geostationary, parked
22,300 miles above one section of the earth’s surface.
• Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) systems deliver
television programming to individual homes.
• By 2007, satellite companies claimed to have subscribers
in almost 25% of television homes making DBS a serious
competitor with cable.

42. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Satellites in Geostationary Orbit
A geostationary satellite orbits the earth at the same speed that the earth rotates on its
axis, making it essentially “parked” in space. In orbit at 22,300 miles, three satellites can
cover almost the entire earth.

43. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Broadcast Television
• Technically all broadcast television stations are
local because signals that emanate from a station’s
transmitter will only be seen up to fifty miles from
the transmission point unless picked up by
cable, or satellite.
• There are almost 1600 local TV stations across the
United States: 1200 are commercial and 400 are
public (PBS).
• Half of the 1600 stations are VHF, or Very High
Frequency, and operate on a channel from 2
through 13. The other half are UHF, or Ultra High
Frequency, channels 14 and up.

44. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
• VHF stations are historically more profitable than
UHF stations because they have stronger signals
and greater over-the-air reach, but cable has
made the VHF/UHF distinction less relevant.
• Stations are licensed to a city but their overall
market, which includes surrounding suburbs, is
what matters to advertisers that support them.
• There are 211 television markets nationwide.

45. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Digital transmission
• As of April 2009, all TV stations in the nation had to be
transmitting digitally
• Forced some small stations out of business because
they couldn’t afford the upgrade
• $40 coupons from government to purchase converter
boxes
• More flexibility in programming

46. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
U.S. Television Markets
There are 211 television markets nationwide.
Source: Nielsen

47. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Network Affiliation
• Most network owned and operated stations (O&Os) are in
major markets. They are usually the most profitable part of
the network.
• The majority of broadcast stations are affiliates with a
contractual relationship with a network. The network
provides programming with national advertising inserted.
Local advertising revenue belongs entirely to the affiliate.
• Independent stations were less profitable than network
affiliates until the 1980s when major market independents
started scheduling local professional sports and first-run
syndicated series.

48. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Station Groups
• Nearly all licensees today are group owners
with properties in two or more markets.
• There is no limit to the number of stations
one group can own, but one group cannot
combine stations to reach more than 35
percent of the U.S. population.

49. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Program Providers
• Networks provide programming to affiliates for a large part
of the day.
• Program syndication is selling programs directly to
stations, cable channels, and online venues, not to the
networks.
• Off-network programs were earlier on a network and
generally need a hundred episodes before being offered in
syndication because stations prefer strip programming, or
showing a program in the same time slot five times a week.
• “Jeopardy,” and “Oprah” are highly profitable in original
syndication, which is sale of new programs that were not
previously on a network.

50. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Public Television
• The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which, in
turn created the Public Broadcasting System
(PBS), an organization made up of public stations
that solicit donations from corporations and viewers.
• PBS acts like a network but differs greatly in that it
does not produce programming, rather, it helps
member stations share programs.
• Today’s PBS stations are owned by four groups.

51. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
PBS Ownership
Today’s public broadcasting stations are owned by four groups.

52. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
The Ratings
• Rating is the percentage of all homes equipped
with TVs that are tuned to a particular station
at a particular time.
• Share is the percentage of homes in which the
television is in use and tuned to a particular
station.
• A.C. Nielsen collects ratings for network and
local stations, syndicated programs, cable
channels, and World Wide Web sites.

53. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
The Ratings
• Overnight ratings are most important to networks
while local stations set advertising rates based on
ratings during sweep months:
November, February, May, and July.
• Arbitron, the other major ratings company, is currently
developing a wireless people meter that individuals
simply carry around with them during the day, while it
automatically records all of their media use.
• At night, the meter is simply inserted into a docking
station and the day’s data is downloaded to Arbitron as
the unit charges.

54. Understanding Today’s Television
Industry
Top-Rated Television Programs of All Time
The top-rated television programs were all presented by traditional networks, most of
them in the 1970s and 1980s before increased competition led to audience
fragmentation.

55. Controversies
• Some say lowest common denominator
programming damages viewers.
• TV entertainment is too violent, critics
say, particularly when the violence goes
unpunished or when a program ignores the real
life consequences of violent acts.
• TV producers counter that pleasing the critics
would severely impede storytelling.
• Stereotyping
• FCC requires three hours of educational
programming per week.

56. Controversies
• The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required
that new television sets contain V-chips.
• Compulsive TV viewers in college view 21 hours
per week compared to the 10 hour per week avg.
• Critics say too much time in front of the TV keeps
viewers from productively dealing with problems.
• Defenders of television insist that TV is no more
addicting than any other form of pleasurable
activity.

57. Controversies
• Why do conservatives decry TV?
• Why do liberals decry TV?

58. Chapter 9
Television: Reflecting and Affecting
Society
Chapter Outline
• History
• Industry
• Controversies