I. INTRODUCTION
Broadcasting,
Radio and Television, primary means by which information and entertainment are
delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world. The term
broadcasting refers to the airborne transmission of electromagnetic audio
signals (radio) or audiovisual signals (television) that are readily accessible
to a wide population via standard receivers.
Broadcasting is
a crucial instrument of modern social and political organization. At its peak
of influence in the mid-20th century, national leaders often used radio and
television broadcasting to address entire countries. Because of its capacity to
reach large numbers of people, broadcasting has been regulated since it was
recognized as a significant means of communication.
Beginning in the
early 1980s, new technologies—such as cable television and videocassette
players—began eroding the dominance of broadcasting in mass communications,
splitting its audiences into smaller, culturally distinct segments. Previously
a synonym for radio and television, broadcasting has become one of several
delivery systems that feed content to newer media.
II. THE EMERGENCE OF BROADCAST COMMUNICATION
Throughout
history, long-distance communication had depended entirely upon conventional
means of transportation. A message could be moved aboard a ship, on horseback,
by pigeon, or in the memory of a human courier, but in all cases it had to be
conveyed as a mass through space like any other material commodity.
A. Radio
Broadcasting
The story of
radio begins in the development of an earlier medium, the telegraph, the first
instantaneous system of information movement. Patented simultaneously in 1837
in the United States by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse and in Great Britain by
scientists Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, the
electromagnetic telegraph realized the age-old human desire for a means of
communication free from the obstacles of long-distance transportation. The
first public telegraph line, completed in 1844, ran about 64 km (about 40 mi)
from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse's first message, “What
hath God wrought?”—transmitted as a coded series of long and short electronic
impulses (so-called dots and dashes)—conveyed his awareness of the momentous
proportions of the achievement.
The usefulness
of telegraphy was such that over the next half century wires were strung across
much of the world, including a transatlantic undersea cable (about 1866)
connecting Europe and North America. The instantaneous arrival of a message
from a place that required hours, days, or weeks to reach by ordinary transport
was such a radical departure from familiar experience that some telegraph
offices were able to collect admission fees from spectators wanting to witness
the feat for themselves.
Despite its
accomplishments, telegraphic communication was limited. It depended on the
building and maintenance of a complex system of receiving stations wired to
each other along a fixed route. The telephone, patented by American inventor
Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, required an even more complex system. The two
great long-distance communications breakthroughs of the 19th century—the
telegraph and the telephone—were of no use to ships at sea and of little use to
communities that could not support the building of lines. The printed word
remained the only medium by which large numbers of people could be addressed
simultaneously.
A1. Radio Experiments
Scientists in
many countries worked to devise a system that could overcome the limitations of
the telegraph wire. In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a
message in Morse code that was picked up about 3 km (about 2 mi) away by a
receiving device that had no wired connection to Marconi's transmitting device.
Marconi had demonstrated that an electronic signal could be cast broadly
through space so that receivers at random points could capture it. The closed
circuit of instant communication, bound by the necessity of wires, had at last
been opened by a so-called wireless telegraph. The invention was also called a
radiotelegraph (later shortened to radio), because its signal moved outward in
all directions, or radially, from the point of transmission. The age of
broadcasting had begun.
Unable to obtain
funding in Italy, Marconi found willing supporters for his research in Britain,
a country that depended on the quick and effective deployment of its worldwide
naval and commercial shipping fleets to support its empire. Marconi moved to
London in 1896 and founded the British Marconi Company to develop and market
his invention for military and industrial uses. Within five years a wireless
signal had been transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean from England to
Newfoundland, Canada. Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909.
Broadcasting
advanced on other fronts as well. In 1904 the United Fruit Company hired
American inventor Lee De Forest to help build a series of radio broadcasting
stations in the Caribbean basin for the purpose of facilitating greater
efficiency in shipping perishable goods from Central America to ports in the
United States. These linked stations, which shared current information on
weather and market conditions, constituted the first broadcasting network. The
work of Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden, later elaborated upon by De
Forest, allowed for the broadcast transmission of a wider range of sounds,
including the human voice.
Within a decade,
wireless telegraphy had developed into a basic tool of the world maritime
industry, with many countries requiring by law that flag vessels (vessels,
registered under national flags, that engage in international trade) have both
a radio transmitter and a certified operator aboard at all times. Despite all
this commercial activity, little attention had been given to general consumer
applications for the new technology. Instead, nonmaritime broadcasting was
dominated by experimenters and hobbyists. American entrepreneur Charles D.
Herrold established the College of Wireless and Engineering in San Jose,
California, and as early as 1909 he and his students were broadcasting news and
music. Backyard tinkerers all over North America built their own transmitters
and used them to make speeches, pass along information, recite poems, play live
or recorded music, or otherwise entertain their fellow amateurs, or hams. They
often prided themselves on the reach of their homemade equipment. Before 1917
the U.S. government, which had begun requiring licenses for radio operators in
1912, had issued more than 8000 licenses to hobbyist broadcasters.
A2. World War I
and Early Regulation
With the
outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) in Europe, wireless transmission proved
itself an invaluable military tool on land, sea, and air. Impressed by its strategic
applications, and uncertain of its potential as an instrument of espionage and
mass propaganda, American President Woodrow Wilson banned non military
broadcasting upon the entry of the United States into the war in 1917. Civilian
equipment was confiscated under executive order, and regulatory power was
transferred from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the Department of the Navy.
A3.The “Golden Age” of Radio
Early evidence
of a systematic scheme for broadcasting to the general public can be found in a
1916 memorandum written by David Sarnoff, an employee of Marconi's U.S. branch,
American Marconi, which would eventually become the Radio Corporation of
America (RCA). Sarnoff proposed to his superiors “a plan of development which
would make radio a household ‘utility’ in the same sense as the piano or
phonograph.” Sarnoff's memo was not given serious consideration by American
Marconi management, and President Wilson's suspension of nonmilitary
broadcasting in 1917 made it impossible for the company to explore Sarnoff's
ideas. After World War I had ended in 1918, however, several manufacturing
companies began to explore ideas for the mass-marketing of home radio receivers
designed for casual use.
In an effort to
boost radio sales in peacetime, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, established what many historians consider the first
commercially owned radio station to offer a schedule of programming to the
general public. Known by the call letters KDKA, it received its license from
the Department of Commerce (which again held regulatory power following the end
of the war) in October of 1920 and operated from the roof of a Westinghouse
factory. Frank Conrad, a veteran engineer with experience in civilian and
military radio research, ran the project. Responsible for the station's
programming as well as its technical operation, he aired various forms of
entertainment, including recorded music, which was generated by a phonograph
placed in range of a microphone. KDKA charged no user fees to listeners and
carried no paid advertisements, but was financed by Westinghouse as an
enticement for the purchase of home radio receivers.
Other
manufacturers soon followed Westinghouse's example. General Electric Company
broadcast on station WGY, transmitting from its corporate headquarters in
Schenectady, New York. The president of RCA, Owen D. Young, gave Sarnoff
permission to develop company sales of radios for home entertainment. Sarnoff
soon opened stations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and in 1926 he
began organizing the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), an RCA subsidiary
created for the purpose of broadcasting programs via a cross-country network of
stations.
Another
important early broadcaster was the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
(AT&T). As early as 1922, AT&T began exploring the possibilities of
toll broadcasting, or charging fees in return for the airing of commercial
advertisements on its stations. Fearing legal action, however, the telephone
company was persuaded to sell its stations to RCA and leave the broadcasting
business. In return AT&T was granted the exclusive right to provide the
connections that would link local stations to the NBC network.
The sale of
radios more than justified the expense to manufacturers of operating
broadcasting services. According to estimates by the National Association of
Broadcasters, in 1922 there were 60,000 households in the United States with
radios; by 1929 the number had topped 10 million. But increases in sales of
radio receivers could not continue forever. Broadcasters needed a new incentive
to produce and transmit programs once the home radio market became saturated.
The sale of advertising time loomed as a promising growth area for American
broadcasting.
In Britain and in
the many countries that followed its lead, broadcasting was developing in a
different way. Radio owners paid yearly license fees, collected by the
government, which were turned over directly to an independent state enterprise,
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC, in turn, produced news and
entertainment programming for its network of stations. The editorial and
artistic integrity of the BBC was to be insured by its funding mechanism, which
was designed to isolate it from immediate political pressures.
In the United
States, on the other hand, it was widely accepted that broadcasting was a
commercial enterprise that should pay its own way without government aid or
interference. However, there was some opposition to the development of broadcasting
as a primarily commercial medium. Herbert Hoover, who as Secretary of Commerce
was in charge of broadcast regulation, expressed his disapproval of
commercialism at the 1922 Radio Conference in Washington, D.C., saying he found
it “inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service and
for news and for entertainment and education to be drowned in advertising
chatter.” By the late 1920s, nonetheless, the direction of broadcasting as an
industry, art, and technology in the United States had shifted decisively to
mass distribution of popular culture funded by commercial advertising.
Non commercial
broadcasting would play only a minor role in the rise of American broadcasting.
In the agricultural Midwest, state universities saw radio as a natural tool for
broadcasting educational programming to rural areas, and schools such as the
University of Iowa, Ohio State University, and the University of Wisconsin
established stations supported with funds set aside by state legislatures.
There would not be a coast-to-coast non commercial radio network in the United
States until the formation of National Public Radio (NPR) in 1970.
In 1927 RCA
initiated two transcontinental radio services through NBC, its subsidiary: the
Red Network (usually just called NBC) and the Blue Network. The Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS; see CBS Inc.) radio service was established in 1928.
Its chairman, William S. Paley, and David Sarnoff of NBC would become the two
dominant personalities in the American broadcasting industry for the next 50
years.
By 1934 almost
600 radio stations were broadcasting to more than 20 million homes in the
United States. The radio had emerged as a familiar household item, usually
built into a substantial piece of wooden furniture placed in the family living
room. It became the primary source for news and entertainment for much of the
nation. Despite the Great Depression that affected the economy of the United
States during the 1930s, American commercial radio broadcasting had grown to a
$100 million industry by the middle of that decade.
A4. Radio in World War II
Radio
broadcasting reached the height of its influence and prestige worldwide during
World War II (1939-1945), carrying war news directly from the battlefront into
the homes of millions of listeners. American commentator Edward R. Murrow
created a sensation with his descriptions of street scenes during German
bombing raids of London, which he delivered as a live eyewitness from the
rooftop of the CBS news bureau there. American president Franklin Delano
Roosevelt had often used the radio to bypass the press and directly address the
American people with his so-called fireside chats during the Great Depression,
and he continued these throughout the war. The radio speeches of German leader
Adolf Hitler helped set the conditions for war and genocide in that country,
and the radio appeal from Japanese emperor Hirohito to his nation for
unconditional surrender helped end World War II following the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Roosevelt at Work United States President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) first achieved national attention when he gave a
rousing speech at the Democratic Party’s 1924 national convention. Roosevelt is
heard here giving one of his “fireside chats,” informal speeches he regularly
delivered to the nation by radio.Courtesy Gordon Skene Sound Collection.
Truman on the Bombing of Hiroshima On August 6, 1945,
during World War II, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on
Hiroshima, a Japanese city and military center. An estimated 60,000 to 70,000
people were killed or reported missing, according to U.S. estimates, and
thousands more were made homeless. Sixteen hours after the attack, U.S.
President Harry S. Truman’s report of the event was broadcast to radio
listeners.
B The
Introduction of Television
Radio's success
spurred technology companies to make huge investments in the research and
development of a new form of broadcasting called television, or TV. Unlike
radio, television broadcasting did not go through a period of experimentation
by amateurs. It was obvious to commercial broadcasters that there were enormous
profits to be made from such an invention, and the dominant companies in
communications technology raced to perfect it.
B1.Origins
The invention of
television was a lengthy, collaborative process. An early milestone was the
successful transmission of an image in 1884 by German inventor Paul Nipkow. His
mechanical system, known as the rotating disk, was further developed by
Scottish scientist John Logie Baird, who broadcast a televised image in 1926 to
an audience at the Royal Academy of Science in London. Other inventors
elaborating on Nipkow's system included Americans Herbert Ives, who was an
engineer at AT&T, and Charles Francis Jenkins. However, the proven
capability of the electronic tube system that had been developed for radio
turned financial and scientific attention toward that technology and away from
research on the rotating disk.
The earliest
U.S. patent for an all-electronic television system was granted in 1927 to
Philo T. Farnsworth, who transmitted a picture of a U.S. dollar sign with his
so-called image dissector tube in the laboratories of the Philadelphia Storage
Battery Company (Philco). Meanwhile, the three communications technology
powerhouses—General Electric, Westinghouse, and RCA—were cooperating closely
with each other. General Electric and Westinghouse owned substantial shares of
stock in RCA, and the companies shared a collection of valuable radio patents.
In 1930 they consolidated their television research efforts at RCA's facility
in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, under the direction of Russian immigrant scientist
Vladimir Zworykin. Farnsworth, Zworykin, or both are usually credited by historians
as the inventors of television.
B2. Early Broadcasts
During the
1930s, several companies around the world were actively preparing to introduce
television to the public. As early as 1935, the BBC initiated experimental
television broadcasts in London for several hours each day. That same year CBS
hired American theater, film, and radio critic Gilbert Seldes as a consultant
to its television programming development project. RCA unveiled television to
the American public in grand style at the 1939 New York World's Fair, with live
coverage of the Fair's opening ceremonies featuring a speech by President
Roosevelt. Daily telecasts were made from the RCA pavilion at the Fair.
Visitors were invited to experience television viewing and were even given the
opportunity to walk in front of the television cameras and see themselves on
monitors.
American entry into World War II at the end of
1941 brought about a virtual suspension of television experimentation in the
United States, though radar research would contribute several advances to the
field. As a measure of the importance that broadcasting technology had
achieved, NBC's David Sarnoff received a commission from the U.S. Army to
supervise its field communications and was promoted to the rank of general.
B3. Post-World War II Popularity
Technically,
network broadcasting takes place when local stations covering different regions
agree to simultaneously transmit the same signal. Four companies stood ready to
initiate network television broadcasting in the United States immediately
following World War II. Two of the companies, NBC and CBS, had made vast
fortunes from radio broadcasting and dominated the television industry. The
remaining two, the American Broadcasting Company (see ABC, Inc.) and the DuMont
Television Network, were competing without the advantage of such previous
commercial success. ABC had been created in 1943 when the administration of
President Roosevelt had won a lawsuit forcing RCA to divest one of its two
national radio networks. RCA's Blue Network had been sold to Edward J. Noble,
owner of the Lifesavers Candy Company, who had renamed it the American
Broadcasting Company. ABC managed to survive the early years of television
through a corporate merger and some imaginative programming innovations, but it
remained in a poor third place in programming ratings (estimates of the
percentage of television owners viewing a particular program or network) until
the 1970s. The DuMont Network, owned by American television manufacturer Allen
B. DuMont, was the only nonbroadcasting company to attempt a television
network. It went out of business in 1955.
Other companies
not in the business of broadcasting, including Paramount Pictures and the
Zenith Corporation, unveiled postwar plans to enter the field but were
effectively blocked by unfavorable governmental regulatory decisions that were
lobbied for by the broadcasting giants. In 1948, for example, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), a U.S. government agency that regulates
broadcasting, instituted a freeze on the issuance of new station licenses. In
addition, the FCC initially made only the 12 very high frequency (VHF) channels
available for broadcasting, prohibiting use of the 69 ultra high frequency
(UHF) channels, which created an artificial scarcity of station frequencies. By
the mid-1950s, the three leading broadcasting companies (NBC, CBS, and ABC,
which collectively became known as the Big Three), had successfully secured
American network television as their exclusive domain. It was not until the
mid-1980s that a fourth company, News Corporation, Ltd., owned by
Australian-born executive Rupert Murdoch, broke their monopoly with the
establishment of the Fox television network (see Fox Broadcasting Company). In
the 1990s, two other communications giants, Paramount Pictures (a division of
Viacom, Inc.) and Warner Bros. (a division of AOL-Time Warner), established
networks in the United States.
Before cable
television (television signals transmitted by cable to paying subscribers only)
decisively ended channel scarcity in the 1980s, viewing choices had been
limited in most parts of the United States to the programming that the three
networks had developed. The only viewing alternatives existed in the largest
cities, where noncommercial stations, which aired mostly educational programs,
and commercial independent stations could be found. The independent stations,
however, offered mostly reruns (shows that had been broadcast previously by a
network), along with dated Hollywood films and local sports events. The few
noncommercial stations in existence were poorly funded, airing mostly
educational programs and some documentary and talk shows. Their loose
association, known as National Educational Television (NET), would not begin to
offer a solid alternative to commercial viewing until some years after the
passing of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which brought a reliable
federal funding source to NET stations and resulted in their organization into
the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Due to lack of
competition, during the first 30 years of American television, the Big Three's
collective share of viewership during the prime time hours (8 pm to 11 pm, or 7
pm to 10 pm in various locations) was typically 95 percent or more. By the
early 1960s, more than 600 television stations, 541 of them commercial, were on
the air, broadcasting on a daily basis to about 90 percent of homes in the
United States. By the early 1990s, those numbers had increased to 1062
commercial and 338 public stations, and broadcasts were reaching more than 98
percent of homes in the United States.
III. MODERN
BROADCASTING
Broadcasting
dramatically changed life in the United States wherever it was introduced.
Radio brought news and information from around the world into homes. The
experiences of professionally crafted drama and music, historically a privilege
of the elite, became services expected by the general public. The networks
brought the performances of talented artists to large numbers of people who
were otherwise isolated from venues such as the concert hall and the theater.
The parallel growth of network radio and Hollywood sound cinema, both of which
were launched as commercial enterprises in 1927, created an unprecedented mass
culture for people of a wide range of social classes and educational
backgrounds. The influence of broadcasting was further intensified by
television during the 1950s but began to diminish in the 1980s as new
technologies—such as cable television—launched a gradual process of dividing
broadcasting's audience into a collection of segregated groups.
A .National Broadcasting
Currently, the
basic building blocks of the national broadcasting networks in the United
States are the approximately 10,000 local radio stations and 1500 local
television stations located throughout the country. All U.S. radio and
television stations fall into one of four generic categories: owned and
operated, which are properties held directly by the networks; affiliates, which
are owned by other companies that contract for exclusive rights to show the
programming of a particular network in a given market; independents, commercial
stations that do not contract for rights to carry network programming; and
public stations, which do not carry commercial network programming and operate
on contributions from viewers, corporate gifts, foundation grants, and
production support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Until the
mid-1950s the relationship between local radio stations and their national
networks was similar to the current situation of television stations. The
advent of television, however, changed radio radically, forcing it from its
primary position in mass communications to a secondary role. Today most radio
stations originate almost all of their own entertainment programming, much of
which is prerecorded music.
Currently, U.S.
radio stations are almost evenly divided between two broadcast spectrums:
amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM). AM broadcasting, which
allows a transmitter greater reach, consists mostly of talk programming,
including telephone call-up shows, all-news formats, religious evangelism, and
sports coverage. FM was developed in the 1930s by American inventor and
engineer Edwin Howard Armstrong. FM sound, which is nearly free from static and
can be broadcast in stereo (reproduction that uses technology to sound more
natural), was from its inception superior to AM sound, but it was successfully
suppressed for decades by companies heavily invested in AM technology and did
not reach a large audience until the 1960s. Most FM stations are dedicated to
the presentation of music. They tend to establish specific, easily identifiable
music formats, such as popular music, country-and-western, rock music, rap, New
Age music, or other genres that appeal to particular audiences.
B Broadcast
Programming
Despite the
obvious differences between radio and television, the development of
programming for both broadcast media is best understood as a single history
comprised of two stages. Early broadcasting was dominated by adaptations of
older media. Popular stage drama was redesigned for radio in the form of weekly
action serials, situation comedies, and soap operas. Vaudeville provided
material for the radio comedy-variety program. Broadcast stations set up
microphones in the ballrooms of major urban hotels where popular bands were
featured. Daily newspapers provided the model for news coverage, and in some
cases announcers would simply read articles from the local newspaper over the
air.
Today, television
stations in the United States produce very little of their own programming,
apart from daily local newscasts and a few public-affairs discussion shows.
Most stations broadcast series, feature films, documentaries, and world and
national news coverage originating via network connections from Los Angeles and
New York City.
Most of today's
television programming genres are derived from earlier media such as stage,
cinema, and radio. In the area of comedy, situation comedy, or sitcom, has
proven the most durable and popular of American broadcasting genres. The sitcom
depends on audience familiarity with recurring characters and conditions to
explore life in the home, the workplace, or some other common location. The
most highly rated sitcom in radio history was “Amos ‘n Andy,” in which actors
performed the roles of African American characters in outrageous caricature.
The series premiered on NBC in 1928, and ran for 20 years on radio before
moving to television, where it ran from 1951 to 1953. Similarly, “The
Goldbergs” (1929-1950), “Life with Luigi” (1948-1953), and other ethnically
based family sitcoms successfully exploited the aural character of radio with
thick immigrant accents and malapropisms (misuse of words). “I Love Lucy”
(1951-1957), which starred Lucille Ball and was adapted from her radio show “My
Favorite Husband” (1948-1951), was the first hit television sitcom, finishing
first in the national ratings for three seasons in a row (1951-1954) and
establishing dramatic elements—such as battles between the sexes, arguments
among neighbors, and other mundane conflicts—that became fundamental to the
genre. Other television sitcoms, such as “Father Knows Best” (1954-1960) and
“The Cosby Show” (1984-1992), leaned toward moralistic narratives, often focused
on child-rearing. Television sitcoms occasionally use fantasy characters as
vehicles for comic special effects, as in “Bewitched” (1964-1972) and “I Dream
of Jeannie” (1965-1969); or they offer social commentary, as in “All in the
Family” (1971-1979) and “M*A*S*H” (1972-1983).
Comedy-variety
is a hybrid of vaudeville and nightclub entertainment. Popular comedy-variety
radio stars included Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Edgar Bergen. In the formative
years of television, many of the medium's first great stars were comedy-variety
performers, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Martha Raye,
and Red Skelton. A comedy-variety hour typically consisted of short monologues
and skits featuring the host, which alternated with various show-business acts,
including singers, musicians, stand-up comedians, trained animal acts, and
other novelties. The variety show is a related form in which the host serves
only as master of ceremonies. “The Ed Sullivan Show” (1948-1971), for example,
hosted by newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan on CBS, presented entertainers as
diverse as the rock group the Beatles and the Bolshoi Ballet.
Broadcast drama
can be presented in either of two formats. An anthology showcases individual
plays, such as one would expect to see on stage or in motion pictures. Dramas
written for radio, including adaptations of stage and literary classics, were
presented on anthologies throughout the 1930s and 1940s. These included
“Mercury Theater on the Air” (1938-1941), created by American actor and
director Orson Welles, and “Theatre Guild of the Air” (1945-1954). Series,
using recurring characters, situations, and settings, were more popular,
however. Genres of series included urban police dramas, such as “Gangbusters”
(1935-1957); private eye mysteries, such as “The Shadow” (1930-1954); and
westerns, such as “The Lone Ranger” (1933-1955). Radio drama virtually
disappeared by the mid-1950s as its biggest stars and most popular programs
were transferred by the networks from radio to television.
The early years
of television offered many highly regarded anthology dramas. Hour-long works by
Paddy Chayefsky, Rod Serling, and other television playwrights were presented
live from New York City on showcase series such as “Goodyear-Philco Playhouse”
(1951-1960) and “Studio One” (1948-1958). As with radio, however, serial
television dramas proved more popular and the anthologies gradually
disappeared. Television became increasingly lucrative by the mid-1950s, and
large sums of money became available to film prime-time programming, ending the
era of live features. Filmed series allowed for crowd scenes, car crashes, and
other cinematic elements which in turn made possible a variety of
action-adventure formats that remain popular in current programming. The genre
has included police dramas, such as “Dragnet” (1952-1959, 1967-1970), “The Mod
Squad” (1968-1973), and “Hawaii Five-O” (1968-1980), usually depictions of
straightforward battles between good and evil; private-eye series, such as “77
Sunset Strip” (1958-1964), “The Rockford Files” (1974-1980), and “Magnum, P.I.”
(1980-1988), in which the personality of the detective is as important as the
criminal investigation; and westerns, such as “Gunsmoke” (1955-1975), “Wagon
Train” (1957-1965), and “Bonanza” (1959-1973), which focus on the settling of
the Western United States. Other distinct types of action-adventure programming
include war series, such as “Rat Patrol” (1966-1967); spy series, such as “The
Man From U.N.C.L.E.” (1964-1968); and science-fiction series, such as “Star
Trek” (1966-1969). Dramatic series tend to follow the exploits of lawyers
(“Perry Mason,” 1957-1966; “L.A. Law,” 1986-1994), doctors (“Ben Casey,”
1961-1966; “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” 1969-1976), or families (“Dallas,” 1978-1991).
Soap opera, or
daily serial drama, was originally developed as a daytime genre aimed
specifically at a female audience. Soap operas explored romance, friendship,
and familial relations in slow-moving, emotionally involving narratives. The
invention of the soap opera is credited to Irna Phillips, who began developing
such programs for local radio broadcast in Chicago during the 1920s. Many of
her radio shows were adapted for television, with some running first on radio
and then on television for more than 25 years. Philips's productions include
“The Brighter Day” (1954-1962), “The Guiding Light” (1952- ), and “The Edge of
Night” (1956-1984).
Other television
program types include talk shows, sports coverage, children's programming, game
shows, and religious programs, all of which originated on radio. New program
types are rarely introduced in broadcasting, since audience familiarity plays a
key role in determining programming.
C. Broadcast Journalism
The
news—international, national, and local—constitutes a natural genre for
broadcasting, and in fact, one of broadcasting's first purposes was to spread
news of maritime weather conditions. Early experimenters and amateurs informed
each other of everything from election results to local gossip. Unlike
newspapers, radio could offer its audience live coverage of events. Television
added instant images that dated newspaper photographs before readers ever saw
them. The speed with which broadcasting could reach entire populations
redefined the role of the newspaper in American society. Print journalism
became a supplemental medium, focusing on in-depth coverage and editorial
opinion.
Radio
broadcasting pushed the newspaper from its central position as the herald of
public events, and as television proliferated, the importance of radio then
diminished. However, the automobile soon emerged as an important location that
isolated audiences from the television set. Accordingly, so-called drive time
(7-9 am and 4-7 pm; the most popular hours for commuters to travel to and from
work) became radio's prime time. Radio stations across the United States
reacted differently to this development; many limited their prime-time
programming innovations to traffic bulletins, weather reports, and time checks.
Some stations adopted news-only formats, reflecting the medium's need to
cultivate specialized audiences as television held the attention of the masses.
National Public Radio's “Morning Edition” (1979- ) and “All Things Considered”
(1971- ), for example, were developed to function as morning and evening on-air
newspapers for sophisticated audiences.
The early years
of television offered little news coverage. In 1956 NBC introduced “The
Huntley-Brinkley Report,” a half-hour national telecast presented in the early
evening and featuring filmed reports of the day's events. The other networks
soon followed. With the invention of videotape (see Video Recording), the cost
of such coverage dropped significantly, allowing individual stations to
initiate and expand local news coverage. Network and local news programming,
initially considered a nonprofit duty, soon became lucrative as broadcast news
became an integral part of viewers' everyday routines. Television broadcasting
became society's most popular source of information on current events.
In addition to
daily news coverage, the networks also developed weekly prime-time newsmagazine
series, such as “60 Minutes” (1968- ) and “20/20” (1978- ). Newsmagazine shows
tend to consist of cultural reporting, investigative reporting, and
human-interest stories. They have proliferated in prime-time broadcasting,
while all-news cable channels have been quicker to supply immediate news of
noteworthy events. Although network news divisions regularly produced hour-long
documentary programs during the 1950s, such as “CBS Reports,” almost all
serious American documentary programs are now produced by public television
stations.
In the United
States, television has had a noticeable effect on electoral politics and public
opinion. For example, in 1960 presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John
F. Kennedy agreed to a series of debates, which were broadcast simultaneously
on television and radio. According to surveys, most radio listeners felt that
Nixon had won the debates, while television viewers picked Kennedy. Kennedy won
the general election that fall. Television coverage of the Vietnam War
(1959-1975) helped change the rules of American politics. By the mid-1960s the
Big Three networks were broadcasting daily images of the war into virtually
every home in the United States. For many viewers, the horrors they saw on
television were more significant than the optimistic reports of impending
victory issued by government officials to radio and print.
D. Commercialism in Broadcasting
In the United
States advertising agencies produced almost all network radio shows before the
development of network television and most early television programming as
well. Stations often sold agencies full sponsorship, which included placing the
product name in a show's title, as with “Palmolive Beauty Box Theater”
(1927-1937) on radio or “The Texaco Star Theatre” (1948-1953) on early
television.
The ratings
system now used in broadcasting arose from sponsors' desire to know how many
people they were reaching with their advertising. In 1929 Archibald Crossley
launched Crossley's Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, using telephone
surveys to project daily estimates of audience size for the national networks.
The A. C. Nielsen Company, which had been surveying audience size in radio since
the mid-1930s, eventually became the dominant television ratings service.
Nielsen became known for two techniques (both of which are still used): placing
boxes on television sets in the homes of samplings of viewers to record their
program choices, and asking sample groups of viewers to keep diaries of what
they watched. The size of any given program's audience is then estimated, based
on the reactions of these sample viewers. The resulting projections, or
ratings, determine the price of advertisements during the show and, ultimately,
whether the show will stay on the air or be cancelled.
E. Non-commercial Broadcasting
Most public
television stations produce no more than a weekly interview show or a
roundtable discussion of local affairs, and many do not produce any programs.
Stations affiliated with PBS (PBS has no owned and operated stations) need not
adhere to any network time frame and may schedule programs as they wish. A few
public stations in large cities create and distribute the bulk of programming
to all other PBS stations. The only daily programs offered directly by PBS are
a one-hour newscast, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (1976- ), and several
children's programs, including “Sesame Street” (1969- ).
A section at the
lower end of the FM band is reserved for non commercial radio. About one-third
of FM stations are public broadcasters, many of them licensed to educational
institutions. They are financed in much the same way as public television
stations: by individual donations, corporate grants, and funding from the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Public radio stations usually offer a
wider variety of programming than most commercial radio stations. Many are
affiliated with National Public Radio and carry some or all of NPR's extensive
news and information programming, such as “All Things Considered,” a daily
90-minute newscast produced in Washington, D.C.
F. The Regulation of Broadcasting
Broadcasting has
been subject to regulation almost since its inception. Government involvement
in the United States, as in most other countries, has always been at the
national level, primarily because the broadcasting signal moves through the air
without regard to political borders. Federal regulatory legislation for
broadcasting originated with the Wireless Act of 1910, in which the U.S.
Congress required all American ships to carry a broadcasting transmitter and a
qualified radio operator while at sea. Formal regulation of entertainment
broadcasting began with the Washington Radio Conference of 1922, where rules
concerning transmission power, use of frequencies, station identification, and
advertising were established as law. The growing importance of broadcasting
became evident in the Radio Act of 1927, which transferred regulation from the
Department of Commerce to a new government agency set up especially for that
purpose, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). The Communications Act of 1934
reorganized the FRC into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which has
retained oversight of broadcasting.
An independent
government agency, the FCC has five members (known as commissioners), including
a chairperson, who are appointed for five-year terms by the U.S. president with
the advice and consent of the Senate. FCC responsibilities include the licensing
and regulation of radio and television broadcasters and the oversight of other
communications technologies, including telephone, cable television and
satellite transmission. All radio and television station licenses are subject
to periodic renewal by the FCC, as is the transfer of any of these licenses
from one owner to another by sale or merger. As of the mid-1990s, these tasks
occupied about 2000 federal employees, while the commissioners concerned
themselves with broad policy issues, such as mature subject matter in program
content and the quality of children's television. Commissioners also have
oversight of technical standards for the introduction of industry advances,
such as the FM band in the 1940s, color television in the 1950s and, currently,
high-definition television (HDTV).
United States
broadcasters are less closely regulated than their counterparts in most other
countries, but the FCC has occasionally involved itself in significant issues
concerning the role of broadcasting in politics. The Equal Time Rule is one
example. Under Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, broadcasters who
permit their facilities to be used by a candidate for public office must
provide equivalent opportunity to any opposing candidates who might request it.
In the case of a paid political advertisement, the broadcaster is only required
to sell time to an opponent at an equal rate. In the case of an unpaid
broadcast appearance, free broadcast time must be given to opponents. The rule
is regularly suspended during political elections to allow major-party
candidates to engage in broadcast debates without having to include minor-party
candidates. Candidate interviews with broadcast journalists are also exempted
from the Equal Time Rule so as not to interfere with freedom of the press.
The Fairness
Doctrine, on the other hand, is an example of the FCC actively seeking a role
in broadcasting. In 1949, with radio stations at their peak of popularity and
television on the horizon, the FCC issued a policy explicitly encouraging
stations to broadcast editorial opinions while also requiring them to actively
seek responsible opposing viewpoints for rebuttal. The policy was legally
challenged but was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 as consistent with
the free speech requirements of the First Amendment (see Constitution of the
United States: Amendment 1). Despite its apparent intent of bringing more
political diversity and debate to broadcasting, the Fairness Doctrine seemed to
have the opposite effect. Many station owners simply avoided taking
controversial positions on the air, thus relieving themselves of any obligation
to seek out political opponents for the purpose of giving them free air time.
Modifications to the policy were attempted, but it was discontinued in 1987.
The FCC has been
significantly altered since the early 1980s, in accordance with federal
government policy favoring deregulation of industries (removal of governmental
restrictions). The number of FCC commissioners was reduced from seven to five.
License terms were increased several times. The Telecommunications Act of 1996
set a period of up to eight years between renewal reviews for both radio- and
television-station licenses, though a significant complaint or violation can
bring quicker action. A long-standing policy of reviewing a station's
application for license renewal based on the station's public service
accomplishments was abandoned, allowing programmers much greater discretion in
minimizing time given to low-rated news and public-affairs programming. Some
musically-formatted radio stations dropped news coverage completely. For
purposes of assigning newly available frequencies, a lottery system was
instituted to replace the previous policy of reviewing licensee credentials or
statements of purpose. Restrictions on the number of advertising minutes
allowable per hour were dropped.
The 1996
Telecommunications Act cancelled limits on the number of AM, FM, and TV
stations a single company or individual could own, with a few exceptions on
radio station ownership. The Act introduced a requirement for television
manufacturers to install in sets a computer chip, popularly known as the
v-chip, to allow television owners to filter out violent programming. The Act
also introduced a requirement for a ratings system, similar to that used in the
motion-picture industry, to be developed by the FCC. With the exception of the
v-chip requirement, regulation of broadcasting has lessened in the 1990s,
reflecting its relative decline in importance as new, nonbroadcasting
technologies, such as the Internet and cable television, reach ever-wider
audiences in the United States.
IV. CURRENT TRENDS
From the early
1920s through the early 1980s, broadcasting was the only effective means of
delivering television and radio programming to the general public. Functions
once exclusive to broadcasting are now shared in industrially advanced
societies by two other means of mass communication: 1) closed-circuit delivery
systems, such as commercial cable television, pay-per-view, and
modem-accessible databases, which transmit sounds and images to paid
subscribers rather than to the general public; and 2) self-programmable
systems, such as the videocassette recorder (VCR), the video game, and the
CD-ROM, which allow the user more control over content and scheduling. As of
the mid-1990s, however, broadcasting remained the most important component of
mass communications, even in countries where the newer systems are available
and growing.
It is estimated
that there are about 1.6 billion radios and 800 million television sets in use
worldwide, with more than half concentrated in North America, the European
Union countries, and Japan. In developing societies, such as China, India,
Brazil, and Egypt, nearly all citizens own or have access to a radio;
television, on the other hand, remains an exclusive privilege of a small but
expanding class of people.
New broadcast
delivery systems continue to be developed. One of them, Direct Broadcast
Satellite (DBS), provides the viewer with a personal antenna capable of
bypassing closed-circuit systems to capture satellite signals. However, most of
the channels available from satellites require subscription fees and licenses,
making DBS a form of narrowcasting (transmission to a specific group rather
than to the general public). Regardless of the meaning that broadcasting may
acquire in the future, the years in which broadcasting dominated mass
communications will be remembered as a period when vast national populations
shared political and cultural events, such as the address of a leader, a
singer's performance, a comedian's monologue, a tear-jerking drama, or a sports
event. Although still possible, assembling so large an audience for any single
event is becoming increasingly rare as the number of listening and viewing
alternatives available to society continues to increase.
Contributed By:
David Marc
Source: Encarta Encyclopaedia- 2003
