Television programming began by borrowing genres from radio, such as variety shows, sitcoms, soap operas, and newscasts. Starting in 1955, the Big Three networks gradually moved their entertainment divisions to Los Angeles because of its proximity to Hollywood production studios. Network news operations, however, remained in New York. Ever since, Los Angeles and New York came to represent the two major branches of TV programming: entertainment and information. Although there is considerable blurring between these categories today, the two were once more distinct. In the sections that follow, we focus on these long-standing program developments and explore newer trends (see Figure 6.3).

TV Entertainment: Our Comic Culture

The networks began to move their entertainment divisions to Los Angeles partly because of the success of the pioneering comedy series I Love Lucy (1951–1957). Lucy’s owners and costars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, began filming the top-rated sitcom in California near their home. In 1951, Lucy became the first TV program to be filmed before a live Hollywood audience. Prior to the days of videotape (invented in 1956), the only way to preserve a live broadcast, other than filming it like a movie, was through a technique called kinescope. In this process, a film camera recorded a live TV show off a studio monitor. The quality of the kinescope was poor, and most series that were saved in this way have not survived. I Love Lucy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Dragnet are among a handful of series from the 1950s that have endured because they were originally shot and preserved on film, like movies. In capturing I Love Lucy on film for future generations, the program’s producers understood the enduring appeal of comedy, which is a central programming strategy both for broadcast networks and cable. TV comedy is usually delivered in two formats: sketch comedy and situation comedy (usually referred to as sitcoms).

Sketch comedy, or short comedy skits, was a key element in early TV variety shows, which also included singers, dancers, acrobats, animal acts, stand-up comics, and ventriloquists. According to one TV historian, variety shows “resurrected the essentials of stage variety entertainment” and played to noisy studio audiences.8 Vaudeville and stage performers were TV’s first stars of sketch comedy. They included Milton Berle, TV’s first major celebrity, in Texaco Star Theater (1948–1967), and Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Carl Reiner in Your Show of Shows (1950–1954), for which playwright Neil Simon, filmmakers Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, and writer Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H) all served for a time as writers. Today, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (1975–) carries on the sketch comedy tradition. Sketches on SNL have inspired several feature-length movies over the years, including The Blues Brothers (1980), Wayne’s World (1992), Stuart Saves His Family (1995, starring former SNL writer and current U.S. senator Al Franken), and MacGruber (2010).

However, the hour-long variety series in which these skits appeared were more expensive to produce than half-hour sitcoms. Also, these skits on the weekly variety shows used up new routines very quickly. The ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (father of actress Candice Bergen) once commented that “no comedian should be on TV once a week; he shouldn’t be on more than once a month.”9 With original skits and new sets being required each week, production costs mounted, and the vaudeville-influenced variety series faded. Since the early 1980s, network variety shows have appeared only as yearly specials.

The situation comedy, or sitcom, features a recurring cast; each episode establishes a narrative situation, complicates it, develops increasing confusion among its characters, and then usually resolves the complications.10 I Love Lucy, Seinfeld, New Girl, The Big Bang Theory, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are all examples of this genre.

In most sitcoms, character development is downplayed in favor of zany plots. Characters are usually static and predictable, and they generally do not develop much during the course of a series. Such characters “are never troubled in profound ways.” Stress, more often the result of external confusion rather than emotional anxiety, “is always funny.”11 Much like viewers of soap operas, sitcom fans feel just a little bit smarter than the characters, whose lives seem wacky and out of control. In some sitcoms (once referred to as “domestic comedies”), characters and settings are typically more important than complicated predicaments. Although an episode might offer a goofy situation as a subplot, the main narrative usually features a personal problem or family crisis that characters have to resolve. Greater emphasis is placed on character development than on reestablishing the order that has been disrupted by confusion. Such comedies take place primarily at home (Modern Family), at the workplace (Parks and Recreation), or at both (Curb Your Enthusiasm).

In TV history, some sitcoms of the domestic variety have mixed dramatic and comedic elements. This blurring of serious and comic themes marks a contemporary hybrid, sometimes labeled dramedy, which has included such series as The Wonder Years (1988–1993), Ally McBeal (1997–2002), HBO’s Sex and the City (1999–2004), Showtime’s The Big C (2010–2013), and Fox’s musical-dramedy Glee (2009–).

TV Entertainment: Our Dramatic Culture

Because the production of TV entertainment was centered in New York City in its early days, many of its ideas, sets, technicians, actors, and directors came from New York theater. Young stage actors—including Anne Bancroft, Ossie Davis, James Dean, Grace Kelly, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, and Joanne Woodward—often worked in television if they could not find stage work. The TV dramas that grew from these early influences fit roughly into two categories: the anthology drama and the episodic series.

Anthology Drama and the Miniseries

In the early 1950s, television—like cable in the early 1980s—served a more elite and wealthier audience. Anthology dramas brought live dramatic theater to that audience. Influenced by stage plays, anthologies offered new, artistically significant teleplays (scripts written for television), casts, directors, writers, and sets from one week to the next. In the 1952–53 season alone, there were eighteen anthology dramas, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965), the Twilight Zone (1959–1964), and Kraft Television Theater (1947–1958), which was created to introduce Kraft’s Cheez Whiz.

The anthology’s brief run as a dramatic staple on television ended for both economic and political reasons. First, advertisers disliked anthologies because they often presented stories containing complex human problems that were not easily resolved. The commercials that interrupted the drama, however, told upbeat stories in which problems were easily solved by purchasing a product; by contrast, anthologies made the simplicity of the commercial pitch ring false. A second reason for the demise of anthology dramas was a change in audience. The people who could afford TV sets in the early 1950s could also afford tickets to a play. For these viewers, the anthology drama was a welcome addition given their cultural tastes. By 1956, however, working- and middle-class families were increasingly able to afford television, and the prices of sets dropped. Anthology dramas were not as popular in this newly expanded market. Third, anthology dramas were expensive to produce—double the cost of most other TV genres in the 1950s—because each week meant a new story line, along with new writers, casts, and sets. Sponsors and networks came to realize that it would be easier and less expensive to build audience allegiance with an ongoing program featuring the same cast and set.

Finally, anthologies that dealt seriously with the changing social landscape were sometimes labeled “politically controversial.” This was especially true during the attempts by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers to rid media industries and government agencies of left-leaning political influences. (See Chapter 16 for more on blacklisting.) By the early 1960s, this dramatic form had virtually disappeared from network television, although its legacy continues on public television with the imported British program Masterpiece Theatre (1971–)—now known as either Masterpiece Classic or Masterpiece Mystery!—the longest-running prime-time drama series on U.S. television.

In fact, these British shows resemble U.S. TV miniseries—serialized TV shows that run over a two-day to two-week period, usually on consecutive evenings. A cross between an extended anthology drama and a network serial, the most famous U.S. miniseries was probably Roots (1977), based on Alex Haley’s novelized version of his family’s slave history. The final episode of Roots, which ran on eight consecutive nights, drew an audience of more than 100 million viewers. Contemporary British series like Doc Martin (2005–), Downton Abbey (2010–), and Sherlock (2011–) last three to eight episodes over a few weeks, making them more like miniseries than traditional network dramas, even though they have multiple seasons. The miniseries has also experienced a recent resurgence in the United States, with high-quality and popular miniseries on cable like True Detective (HBO), American Horror Story (FX), and Hatfields and McCoys (History Channel).

Episodic Series

Abandoning anthologies, producers and writers increasingly developed episodic series, first used on radio in 1929. In this format, main characters continue from week to week, sets and locales remain the same, and technical crews stay with the program. The episodic series comes in two general types: chapter shows and serial programs.

Chapter shows are self-contained stories with a recurring set of main characters who confront a problem, face a series of conflicts, and find a resolution. This structure can be used in a wide range of sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory (2007–) and dramatic genres, including adult westerns like Gunsmoke (1955–1975); police/detective shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–); and science fiction like Star Trek (1966–1969). Culturally, television dramas often function as a window into the hopes and fears of the American psyche. For example, in the 1970s, police/detective dramas became a staple, mirroring anxieties about the urban unrest of the time, precipitated by the decline of manufacturing and the loss of factory jobs. Americans’ popular entertainment reflected the idea of heroic police and tenacious detectives protecting a nation from menacing forces that were undermining the economy and the cities. Such shows as Hawaii Five-O (1968–1980), The Mod Squad (1968–1973), and The Rockford Files (1974–1980) all ranked among the nation’s top-rated programs during that time.

In contrast to chapter shows, serial programs are open-ended episodic shows; that is, most story lines continue from episode to episode. Cheaper to produce than chapter shows, employing just a few indoor sets, and running five days a week, daytime soap operas are among the longest-running serial programs in the history of television. Acquiring their name from soap product ads that sponsored these programs in the days of fifteen-minute radio dramas, soaps feature cliff-hanging story lines and intimate close-up shots that tend to create strong audience allegiance. Soaps also probably do the best job of any genre at imitating the actual open-ended rhythms of daily life. However, popular daytime network soaps have mostly disappeared in the digital age, with so many choices and small screens drawing away viewers, especially younger ones. But General Hospital (1963–), The Young and the Restless (1973–), and two other serials were still kicking in the 2013–14 TV season. Just ten years earlier, though, ten daytime soaps ran on the networks’ daytime schedules.

Another type of drama is the hybrid, which developed in the early 1980s with the appearance of Hill Street Blues (1981–1987). Often mixing comic situations and grim plots, this multiple-cast show looked like an open-ended soap opera. On occasion, as in real life, crimes were not solved and recurring characters died. As a hybrid form, Hill Street Blues combined elements of both chapter and serial television by featuring some self-contained plots that were resolved in a single episode as well as other plotlines that continued from week to week. This blend has been used by many successful dramatic hybrids, including The X-Files (1993–2002), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Lost (2004–2010), TNT’s The Closer (2005–2012), and AMC’s Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and The Walking Dead (2010–).

TV Information: Our Daily News Culture

For about forty years (from the 1960s to the 2000s), broadcast news, especially on local TV stations, consistently topped print journalism in national research polls that asked which news medium was most trustworthy. Most studies at the time suggested that this has to do with TV’s intimacy as a medium—its ability to create loyalty with viewers who connect personally with the news anchors we “invite” into our living rooms each evening. Print reporters and editors, by comparison, seemed anonymous and detached. But this distinction began breaking down as print reporters started discussing their work on cable TV news programs and became more accessible to their readers through e-mail, blogs, and newspaper Web sites. In this section, we focus on the traditional network evening news, its history, and the changes in TV news ushered in by twenty-four-hour cable news channels.

Network News

Originally featuring a panel of reporters interrogating political figures, NBC’s weekly Meet the Press (1947–) is the oldest show on television. Daily evening newscasts, though, began on NBC in February 1948 with the Camel Newsreel Theater, sponsored by the cigarette company. Originally a ten-minute Fox Movietone newsreel that was also shown in theaters, it became a live, fifteen-minute broadcast in 1949. In 1956, the Huntley Brinkley Report debuted with Chet Huntley in New York and David Brinkley in Washington, D.C. This coanchored NBC program became the most popular TV evening news show at the time and served as the dual-anchor model for hundreds of local news broadcasts. After Huntley retired in 1970, the program was renamed NBC Nightly News. Tom Brokaw eventually settled in as sole anchor in September 1983 and passed the chair to Brian Williams in 2004.

Over at CBS, the network’s flagship evening news program, The CBS-TV News with Douglas Edwards, premiered in May 1948. In 1956, the program became the first news show to be videotaped for rebroadcast on affiliate stations (stations that contract with a network to carry its programs) in Central and Western time zones. Walter Cronkite succeeded Edwards in 1962, starting a nineteen-year run as the influential anchor of the renamed CBS Evening News. Some critics believe Cronkite’s eventual on-air opposition to the Vietnam War helped convince mainstream Americans to oppose it. Cronkite retired and gave way to Dan Rather in 1981. In 2006, CBS hired Katie Couric to serve as the first woman solo anchor on a network evening news program. But with stagnant ratings, she was replaced in 2011 by Scott Pelley.

After premiering an unsuccessful daily program in 1948, ABC launched a daily news show in 1953, anchored by John Daly—the head of ABC News and the host of CBS’s evening game show What’s My Line? After Daly left in 1960, John Cameron Swayze, Peter Jennings, Harry Reasoner, and Howard K. Smith all took a turn in the anchor’s chair. In 1978, ABC World News Tonight premiered, featuring four anchors: Frank Reynolds in Washington, D.C.; Jennings in London; Barbara Walters in New York; and Max Robinson in Chicago. Robinson was the first black reporter to coanchor a network news program, while Walters was the first woman. In 1983, Jennings became the sole anchor of the broadcast. After Jennings’s death in 2005, his spot was shared by coanchors Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff (who was severely injured covering the Iraq War in 2006) until Charles Gibson—from ABC’s Good Morning America—took over in 2006. Gibson retired in 2009 and was replaced by Diane Sawyer, formerly of CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s Good Morning America.

Cable News Changes the Game

The first 24/7 cable TV news channel, Cable News Network (CNN), premiered in 1980 and was the brainchild of Ted Turner, who had already revolutionized cable with his Atlanta-based superstation WTBS (Turner Broadcast Service). When Turner turned a profit with CNN in 1985 (along with its sister Headline News channel), the traditional networks began to take notice of cable news. The success of CNN revealed a need and a lucrative market for twenty-four-hour news. Spawning a host of competitors in the United States and worldwide, CNN now battles for viewers with other twenty-four-hour news providers, including the Fox News Channel; MSNBC; CNBC; Euronews; British Sky Broadcasting; and thousands of Web and blog sites, like Politico, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, and Salon.

Cable news has significantly changed the TV news game by offering viewers information and stories in a 24/7 loop. Rather than waiting until 5:30 or 6:30 P.M. to watch the national network news, viewers can access news updates and breaking stories at any time. Cable news also challenges the network program formulas. Daily opinion programs, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show, often celebrate argument, opinion, and speculation over traditional reporting based on verified facts. These programs emerged primarily because of their low cost compared with that of traditional network news. At the same time, satirical “fake news” programs like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report have challenged traditional news outlets by discussing the news in larger contexts, something the conventional thirty-minute daily broadcasts rarely do. (See Chapter 14 for more on fake news programs.)

Reality TV and Other Enduring Genres

Up to this point, we have focused on long-standing TV program trends, but many other genres have played major roles in TV’s history, both inside and outside prime time. Talk shows like the Tonight Show (1954–) have fed our curiosity about celebrities and politicians and have offered satire on politics and business. Game shows like Jeopardy! (which has been around in some version since 1964) have provided families with easy-to-digest current events and historical trivia. Variety programs like the Ed Sullivan Show (1948–1971) took center stage in Americans’ cultural lives by introducing new comics, opera divas, and popular musical phenomena like Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Newsmagazines like 60 Minutes (1968–) shed light on major events, from the Watergate scandal in the 1970s to the reelection of President Obama in 2012. And all kinds of sporting events—from boxing and wrestling to the Olympics and the Super Bowl—have allowed us to follow our favorite teams and athletes.

Reality-based programs are the newest significant trend; they include everything from The Voice and Deadliest Catch to Top Chef and Teen Mom. One reason for their popularity is that these shows introduce us to characters and people who seem more “like us” and less like celebrities. Additionally, these programs have helped the networks and cable providers deal with the high cost of programming. Featuring nonactors, cheap sets, and no extensive scripts, reality shows are much less expensive to produce than sitcoms and dramas. While reality-based programs have played a major role in network prime time since the late 1990s, the genre was actually inspired by cable’s The Real World (1992–), the longest-running program on MTV. Changing locations and casts from season to season, The Real World follows a group of strangers who live and work together for a few months and records their interpersonal entanglements and up-and-down relationships. The Real World has significantly influenced the structure of today’s reality TV programs, including Survivor, Project Runway, Teen Mom, and Dancing with the Stars. (See “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: TV and the State of Storytelling” on page 210.)

Another growing trend is Spanish-language television, like Univision and Telemundo. For the 2013–14 TV season, the popular network Univision reached about 3 million viewers in prime time each day (compared with 1.9 million for the CW or 10.6 million for CBS, the top-rated network). That was down from 3.7 million in 2012–13. But in June 2014, Univision’s ratings soared during soccer’s World Cup. Sometimes beating ESPN throughout the World Cup, Univision had nearly 7 million viewers for the Brazil–Mexico match. The first foreign-language U.S. network began in 1961, when the owners of the nation’s first Spanish-language TV station in San Antonio acquired a TV station in Los Angeles, setting up what was then called the Spanish International Network. It officially became Univision in 1986 and has built audiences in major urban areas with large Hispanic populations through its popular talk-variety programs and telenovelas (Spanish-language soap operas, mostly produced in Mexico), which air each weekday evening. Today, Univision Communications owns and operates more than sixty TV stations in the United States. Its Univision Network, carried by seventeen hundred cable affiliates, reaches almost all U.S. Hispanic households.

Public Television Struggles to Find Its Place

Another key programmer in TV history has been public television. Under President Lyndon Johnson, and in response to a report from the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and later, in 1969, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In part, Congress intended public television to target viewers who were “less attractive” to commercial networks and advertisers. Besides providing programs for viewers over age fifty, public television has figured prominently in programming for audiences under age twelve, with children’s series like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001), Sesame Street (1969–), and Barney & Friends (1991–). The major networks have largely abdicated the responsibility of developing educational series aimed at children under age twelve. When Congress passed a law in 1996 ordering the networks to offer three hours of children’s educational programming per week, the networks sidestepped this mandate by taking advantage of the law’s vagueness on what constituted “educational” to claim that many of their routine sitcoms, cartoons, and dramatic shows satisfied the legislation’s requirements.

The original Carnegie Commission report also recommended that Congress create a financial plan to provide long-term support for public television, in part to protect it from political interference. However, Congress did not do this, nor did it require wealthy commercial broadcasters to subsidize public television (as many other countries do). As federal funding levels dropped in the 1980s, PBS depended more and more on corporate underwriting. By the early 2000s, corporate sponsors funded more than 25 percent of all public television, although corporate sponsorship declined in 2009 as the economy suffered. In 2010, Congress gave an extra $25 million to PBS to help during the economic downturn.12 However, only about 15 percent of funding for public broadcasting (which includes both television and radio) has come from the federal government, with the bulk of support being provided by viewers, listeners, and corporations.

Despite support from the Obama administration, in 2011 the Republican-controlled House voted to ax all funding of the CPB in 2013. The Senate killed this effort, and the CPB did receive $430 million in federal funding for 2012. Anticipating decreased government support, public broadcasting began inserting promotional messages from sponsors every fifteen minutes in some programs beginning in fall 2011.13 Some critics and public TV executives worried that such corporate messages would offend loyal viewers accustomed to uninterrupted programming and would compromise public television’s mission to air programs that might be considered controversial or commercially less viable.

Also troubling to public television (in contrast to public radio, which increased its audience from two million listeners per week in 1980 to more than thirty million per week in 2010) is that the audience for PBS has declined. PBS content chief John Boland attributed the loss to the same market fragmentation and third-screen technology that has plagued the broadcast networks: “We are spread thin in trying to maintain our TV service and meet the needs of consumers on other platforms.”14 One viewer segment that PBS is watching closely is the children’s audience—which declined 22 percent between 2010 and 2014. Initially PBS’s toughest competitors were cable services like Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Disney, Disney Junior, Sprout, and the Cartoon Network. But those channels saw similar ratings declines in that same time period. One report suggests that more and more parents are using on-demand services like Netflix to control what their children watch, while other reports indicate that educational video games and tablets are commanding more attention from younger viewers.15