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As a mass medium, television had become big business, and broadcast networks began jockeying for increased control over its content. As in radio during the 1930s and 1940s, early television programs were developed, produced, and supported by a single sponsor—often a company, such as Goodyear, Colgate, or Buick. This arrangement gave the companies that controlled brand-name products extensive power over what was shown on television. But then newly emerging broadcast networks wanted more control and, using several strategies, set out to diminish sponsor and ad agency control.

One strategy involved lengthening program showing times. Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, president of NBC, took the lead. A former advertising executive used to controlling radio content for his clients, Weaver increased TV program length from fifteen minutes (standard for radio programs) to thirty minutes and even longer. This substantially raised program costs for advertisers, discouraging some from sponsoring programs.

In addition, NBC introduced two TV program types to gain more control over content. The first type—the magazine format—featured multiple segments, including news, talk, comedy, and music. These early 1950s programs—Today and the Tonight Show—are still attracting morning and late evening audiences. By running daily rather than weekly, they made studio production costs much more prohibitive for a single sponsor. Instead of sponsoring, an advertiser paid the network for thirty- or sixty-second time slots during the show. The network, not the sponsor, now owned such programs or bought them from independent producers. In the second new program type—the "television spectacular"—networks bought programs on special topics from producers and sold ad spots to multiple advertisers. Early "spectaculars" (which came to be called "specials") included decades of Bob Hope Christmas shows and the 1955 TV version of Peter Pan, which drew over sixty-five million viewers—more than triple the audience for an episode of American Idol.