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Experiments in the radio transmission of visual images had been conducted for several decades before manufacturers offered the first television receivers for sale in 1939. Consumer indifference and World War II, however, kept demand slight until 1948 when, soon after the beginning of regular network telecasts, TV sales took off. In 1949, 2.3 percent of homes had televisions; by 1962, 90 percent did. Despite the relatively high costs of the first sets, Americans purchased televisions regardless of income. And television quickly emerged as the most popular mass medium, with more Americans spending more time watching TV than consuming any other mass medium. Television's initial popularity owed much to its convenience. For the post–World War II family, television, compared to moviegoing, was cost-efficient entertainment; parents and children could be entertained at home, without traveling to a theater or buying tickets.
The 1950s: Rise of the Networks.
Most TV stations—over 90 percent in the 1950s and early 1960s—signed exclusive "affiliation" agreements with networks. In exchange for compensation, an affiliate agreed to carry network programming at specified hours (usually in the evening). As a result, the networks determined evening viewing, when most Americans watched television.
Two networks, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), initially dominated. Their large lead in radio gave them clear advantages, including show-business expertise and goodwill with their radio affiliates, many of which acquired TV licenses. Then, too, the number of TV channels was limited to twelve on the very high frequency (VHF) transmitting band. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) encouraged rival commercial and noncommercial networks by awarding channels 14 through 81 in the ultra high frequency (UHF) beginning in 1952. In most markets, however, UHF could not compete with VHF outlets. By early 1956, 60 of 159 UHF channels had left the air. UHF's stark disadvantages seriously undercut educational television as well as the third commercial network, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which disproportionately relied on UHF channels for affiliates.
Advertisers played a powerful role in early programming. With some advertisers holding back from entering television, the position of those who did was strengthened. Typically sponsoring entire programs, they often insisted on changes in individual productions. In one instance a tobacco company ordered that the Russian villains in a Cold War drama not be shown smoking cigarettes. Commercials were frequently integrated into shows. In the middle of a program, the leads would suddenly praise (or be shown using) the sponsor's product. Yet some of TV's earliest underwriters championed more diverse programming by sponsoring dramatic and news series targeting smaller, more educated audiences. As viewership increased and advertising rates rose in the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, advertisers abandoned sole sponsorships, preferring instead to spread their investment, and the networks asserted near total control over programming and scheduling.
The earliest programming appealed to a wide range of tastes. Because the first stations were established in the largest cities, popular shows tended to reflect a big-city sensibility. This included comedy variety hours, notably one starring Milton Berle, as well as original dramas. Nearly all were aired live. As television reached smaller communities in the South and West, however, the appeal of such shows faded. Viewers preferred filmed series with a regular cast of characters who were uniformly white, usually middle class, and living in smaller cities or towns. The dominant characters were almost always male.
The 1960s and 1970s: New Technologies and New Challenges.
By the late 1950s, network programming had been standardized. Most series were produced in Southern California in assembly-line fashion, by the old film studios or companies utilizing studio facilities and talent. Reruns of popular series, "syndicated" to TV stations across the countries for fees, and later to cable channels, proved popular and immensely profitable.
The development of videotape in the late 1950s profoundly affected the industry. Until then, the networks had to telecast programs live, across four continental time zones, meaning that a dramatic program aired at 9PM eastern time was telecast at 6 PM on the West Coast. (Affiliates could carry poor quality "kinescope" recordings, in which motion-picture cameras photographed the images on television picture tubes.) At first, the networks used videotaping largely for time-shifting, to telecast programs later in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Over time, however, most productions were taped to correct any flaws in a telecast and at the insistence of performers, most of whom preferred not to appear live. Videotape's greatest impact may have been on TV news. Film was expensive and could take hours to develop and edit. Videotape, by comparison, provided quick and cost-efficient TV reporting.
By the late 1960s, television technology changed in another important way. Since the 1950s, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and other TV manufacturers had been promoting color television. But consumers were put off by the comparatively high cost. As late as 1965, less than 6 percent of all homes had color receivers. As prices fell, however, more families purchased color TVs, and by 1972 just over half of all households owned them.
News programs appeared on TV from the beginning, but they had almost always lost money, and the networks offered them mainly to placate federal overseers. Resources normally went into fifteen-minute newscasts in the early and late evenings. Gradually, though, TV news gained respect and larger audiences. In 1963, CBS and NBC expanded their nightly newscasts to thirty minutes; ABC followed in 1967. In November 1963, the networks canceled all entertainment programming for four days to cover the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy. By then most critics agreed that TV news had demonstrated its potential and maturity, and surveys suggested that, for the first time, Americans ranked TV as their main source of information. More important to the networks, advertising on the evening newscasts had become a vital revenue source. Debates between the major party presidential candidates, introduced in 1960, became a quadrennial ritual beginning in 1976.
The Vietnam War constituted the networks' greatest journalistic challenge in the 1960s. Contrary to a common misperception, TV coverage up to 1968 was, with very few exceptions, supportive of America's intervention and dismissive of the budding antiwar movement. Fearful of upsetting viewers, the networks rarely showed actual combat or bloodshed. To cut costs, the networks did not use satellites to transmit signals to New York, electing instead to fly film, which could take several days. Although the respected CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite (1916– ), who declared the war a stalemate early in 1968, has been credited with helping to end U.S. escalation, most studies suggest that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers were already war weary. Nevertheless, the networks and some writers popularized myths that TV made Vietnam "the living-room war" and that Cronkite forced peace on the government. More likely, the more critical coverage beginning in 1968 prevented Johnson's successor, Richard M. Nixon, from seriously escalating the fighting.
All told, the influence of network news ought not be overstated. The nightly newscasts never had audiences comparable to the entertainment shows that followed, and local newscasts normally had larger followings. Indeed, local stations in the 1960s had begun pouring resources into their newscasts, which proved their most profitable programming. In time, the drive for profits diluted most local stations' news agenda. Light features and sensational crimes were highlighted to boost ratings.
The 1960s similarly marked the marriage of sports and television. TV had carried certain sporting events, notably wrestling and boxing, from the beginning. But in the 1960s, more mobile cameras afforded viewers better angles, while instant replays of controversial calls by referees gave viewers twenty-twenty hindsight. Although every sports league coveted television, none matched the National Football League in making its game a television ritual. ABC's Wide World of Sports, meanwhile, introduced Americans to a broad array of sporting events year round. ABC also pioneered in turning the Olympic Games into television spectacles.
Although economics normally shaped television broadcast fare, the FCC in the 1960s took modest steps to change the industry, promoting increased competition by improving UHF reception and fostering noncommercial, educational television stations (ETV), many of which were on the upper frequency. Empowered by Congress to set standards for TV receivers, the commission ruled that all TVs sold after 1 April 1964 must be able to receive both UHF and VHF signals. Over time, this greatly expanded the total audience for the upper-frequency channels. In 1967, with the Public Broadcasting Act, Congress created the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), which displaced the old ETV network. Although chronically underfunded, PBS provided alternatives in cultural and news programming that the commercial networks had largely abandoned.
In the 1960s and 1970s, most Americans most of the time watched network programming, and network TV became more diverse. African Americans began appearing and even starring in some programs. In series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Charlie's Angels, women played prominent roles. The main character in the most popular sitcom of the 1970s, All in the Family, was a working-class bigot.
Ever eager to fill their schedules, the networks in the late 1960s began producing made-for-TV movies. This partly reflected the growing sexual explicitness of theatrical releases as well as Hollywood's over-attention to younger moviegoers. Although most made-for-TV movies were forgettable, some had enormous impact. ABC's Roots (1977), a panoramic history of an African American family, based on a book by Alex Haley, helped to move the network for the first time into first-place in ratings and revenues. More often, TV movies consciously appealed to women viewers, who had gained more control over viewing, particularly in homes having second TVs.
The 1970s also brought important shifts in television news. Despite pressure from the Nixon administration, CBS aggressively reported on the Watergate scandals; NBC and ABC belatedly did so as well. CBS News also scored a ratings coup in the late 1970s and 1980s with its top-rated 60 Minutes, an hour-long collection of features and interviews dubbed a TV news magazine. For the first time, a news program successfully competed for audiences in evening prime time. Only after many misfires did imitations by ABC and NBC enjoy comparable success with the news magazine, which was much less expensive to produce than the typical hour-long entertainment series. Meanwhile, early morning news programs—NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning, America —became immensely profitable.
The 1980s and Beyond: Fragmentation of Audience, Consolidation of Ownership.
Still, the three-network hold over television came undone in the 1980s. Non-network or independent channels, often airing reruns of network shows, became serious competitors in many larger markets. Between 1979 and 1987, the proportion of stations affiliated with a network dropped from 86 to 61 percent. The Fox network, founded in 1986, lured younger viewers and advertisers. Two more networks, WB and UPN, commenced operations in the early 1990s.
The spread of cable television further undermined the networks. First introduced in the 1950s to improve reception for viewers in mountainous areas, cable burgeoned in the late 1970s and 1980s as Americans started subscribing to increase their programming choices. In many areas, subscribing to cable meant access to as many as thirty-two channels. By the mid-1990s, just over 60 percent of all homes had cable. Channels specializing in sports, the arts, religion, and other special-interest areas added to cable's allure, as did the programming on "superstations" like Atlanta's WTBS and Chicago's WGN. With so many choices, the networks' viewership fell. Between the 1976–1977 and 1996–1997 TV seasons, the combined network share of evening prime time had dropped by a third, from 93 percent of the audience to 62 percent.
The proliferation of cable prompted a number of responses from the networks. To hold viewers, they tolerated increased sexual explicitness and violence. Spurred by Fox's appeal to younger viewers, they paid more attention to the demographic composition of audiences. Series popular with older viewers were frequently dumped in favor of sitcoms targeting younger adults.
Meanwhile, the networks and many stations underwent changes in ownership. Stations owned by individuals all but vanished in favor of group ownership. This trend was hurried along by the relaxation of long-time FCC rules on multiple ownership. In 1985–1986, new proprietors acquired all three networks. A station group, Capital Cities, purchased ABC; General Electric purchased NBC's parent company, RCA; and Laurence Tisch assumed controlling interest in CBS. Two of the networks were purchased again in 1995, when Westinghouse secured CBS and Disney bought ABC. Four years later, Viacom bought CBS.
Despite such concentration in ownership, the larger development at the end of the twentieth century was the fragmentation of the once gargantuan television audience. Although a few programs, notably the annual NFL Super Bowl and ABC's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? had high ratings, the audiences for most TV series dwindled drastically. The new world of choices, combined with greater internet use, was fragmenting society and, by distracting citizens from informational programming, weakening civic bonds.
James L. Baughman
Daniel Hallin, The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam, 1986.
Christopher H. Sterling and John Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, 2d ed., 1990.
James L. Baughman, Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 2d ed., 1997.
From The Oxford Companion to United States History
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