Television

1. 8 Television

2. Television • A Short History of Television • Television and Its Audiences • Scope and Nature of the Television Industry • Trends and Convergence in Television • Developing Media Literacy Skills • Chapter Review

3. A Short History of Television • Mechanical and Electronic Scanning • 1884 - Paul Nipkow, a Russian scientist living in Berlin, developed the Nipkow disc, the first workable device for generating electrical signals suitable for the transmission of a scene that people could see. • 1923 - Vladimir Zworykin, an immigrant working for Westinghouse, demonstrated his iconoscope tube, the first practical television camera tube.

4. A Short History of Television • Mechanical . . . (continued) • 1929 - David Sarnoff lured Zworykin to RCA to head the electronics research lab, where he developed the kinescope, an improved picture tube. • 1927 - Philo Farnsworth made his first public demonstration of an electronic television system. • April, 1939 - at the Words Fair in New York, RCA made the first true public demonstration of television.

5. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • In 1952, 108 stations were broadcasting to 17 million television homes. • By the end of the decade, there were 559 stations and nearly 90% of U.S. households had television. • Two new formats appeared: feature films and talk shows. • Television news and documentaries remade broadcast journalism as a powerful force in its own right. • AT&T completed its national coaxial cable and microwave relay network for the distribution of television programming in the summer of 1951.

6. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • The Quiz Show Scandal and Changes in Sponsorship • In 1959, the quiz show scandal changed the way the network did business. • Spot commercial sales—selling individual 60-second spots on a given program to a wide variety of advertisers.

7. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • I Love Lucy and More Changes • Filmed reruns were now possible, and this, in turn, created the off-network syndication industry. • The television industry moved from New York, with its stage drama orientation, to Hollywood, with its entertainment film mindset. • Weekly series could now be produced relatively quickly and inexpensively.

8. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • McCarthyism: The Growing Power of Television • Joseph McCarthy, the Republican junior senator from Wisconsin, was seen by millions of viewers as his investigation of “Reds” in the U.S. Army was broadcast by all the networks for 36 days in 1954. • At the same time, Edward R. Murrow used his See It Now to expose the senator’s lies and hypocrisy.

9. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • The Nielsen Ratings • Overnights—instant ratings gathered from homes in several major urban centers. • Pocketpieces—ratings based on a national sample that are computed and reported every 2 weeks. • MNA report (Multinetwork Area Reports)—computations based on the 70 largest markets (Walker & Ferguson, 1998). • Audimeter—a device that recorded when the television set was turned on, the channel to which it was tuned, and the time of day.

10. A Short History of Television • The 1950s • The Nielsen Ratings (continued) • Peoplemeter—a device requiring each member of a television home to press buttons to record his or her individual viewing. • Nielsen and radio’s Arbitron are experimenting with portable peoplemeters, paperlike devices worn by audience members that “read” embedded audio signals in electronically delivered media content on radio, television, and the Web, no matter where a person may be. • Sweeps periods—February, May, July, and November.

11. A Short History of Television Computing Ratings and Shares.

12. Television and Its Audiences • Televison and Its Audiences • 1962 - Congress passed all-channel legislation, which required that all sets imported into or manufactured in the United States be equipped with both VHF and UHF receivers. • The 1960s also witnessed the immense social and political power of the new medium to force profound alterations in the country’s consciousness and behavior.

13. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry • The business of television is dominated by a few centralized production, distribution, and decision-making organizations. • These networks link affiliates for the purpose of delivering and selling viewers to advertisers. • Local affiliates carry network programs (they are said to clear time) for a number of reasons.

14. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry The business of television . . . (continued) 1. Networks make direct payments to affiliates for airing their programs, called compensation. 2. Networks allow affiliates to insert locally sold commercials in a certain number of specified spots in their programs. 3. Financial risk resides with the network, not the affiliate. 4. Affiliates enjoy the prestige of their networks and use this to their financial advantage. 5. Affiliates get network-quality programming.

15. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry • The Networks and Program Content • Non-network material not only tends to be network-type programming but most often is programming that originally aired on the networks themselves (called off-network programs).

16. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry • How a Program Gets on the Air • A producer has an idea; or a network has an idea and asks a proven producer to propose a show based on it • Put—a deal that guarantees the producer that the network will order at least a pilot or it has to pay a hefty penalty. • If the network is persuaded, it buys the option and asks for a written outline. If still interested, the network will order a full script. • If the network approves that script, it will order the production of a pilot.

17. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry • How a Program Gets on the Air (continued) • If the network is still interested, it orders a set number of episodes and schedules the show. • Untested program ideas or producers who are not fully established might get initial orders only for two or three episodes, a practice called short ordering. • At any point in this process, the network can decline interest.

18. Scope and Nature of the Television Industry Top 10 Most-Watched Nonsports Television Broadcasts. Source: Television Bureau of Advertising, www.tvb.org.

19. Trends and Convergence in Television • Cable • By 1950 there were 14 cable companies in the United States, all designed to improve reception though the importation of distant signals (delivering stations from distant locales.) • Today 69.4% of all U.S. television homes are wired. • With the increased [diffusion] of fiber optic cable, which uses signals carried by light beams over glass fibers, 500-channel cable systems are becoming technologically feasible.

20. Trends and Convergence in Television • Cable • Fox • As cable eradicated the distinction between VHF and UHF, media magnate Rupert Murdoch was quick to move, uniting his own chain of stations with independents to create the Fox Television Network. • In 1993, the FCC passed the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or Fin-Syn, that allowed the networks to produce and own the syndication rights for up to 50% of their prime-time entertainment fare.

21. Trends and Convergence in Television • VCR • Introduced commercially in 1976,videocassette recorders (VCRs) now sit in more than 91% of U.S. homes. • Time-shifting—taping a show for later viewing. • Zipping—fast-forwarding through taped commercials. • DVD

22. Trends and Convergence in Television • Remote Control • Remote control is currently in more than 90% of American homes. • Viewers increasing zap commercials, jumping to another channel with a mere flick of a finger. • The remote control also facilitates grazing (watching several programs simultaneously) and channel surfing or cruising (traveling through the channels focusing neither on specific programs nor on the commercials they house).

23. Trends and Convergence in Television • Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) • The technology for the direct delivery of television signals from satellites to homes has long existed. • Digital Video Recorders • The union of computers and television produced the digital video recorder (DVR,sometimes called a personal video recorder, or PVR). • Digital Video Recorders

24. Trends and Convergence in Television • Digital Television • The interoperability/compatibility issue • Progressive scanning—where the entire picture is built line by line in on scan of the television’s electronic beam, the format compatible with today’s personal computers. • Interlaced scanning—the electron beams sweep the picture tube twice, creating half the image’s lines on the first pass and then filling in the gaps in the second. • Over-the-air broadcasters have long lobbied the FCC to pass digital must-carry rules requiring cable operators to carry all digital, as well as analog, channels.

25. Trends and Convergence in Television • The Internet on Television • The most aggressive advocate for access the Net on the home screen is Microsoft’s WebTV. • Television and Video on the Internet • Bandwidth—the space on the wires that bring content into people’s homes. • Interactive Television • Fiber optic cable is making broadband (channels with broad information-carrying capacity) access more of a reality.

26. Trends and Convergence in Television • Interlaced vs. progressive scanning

27. Developing Media Literacy Skills • Recognizing Staged News • Television professionals, driven to get pictures, often walk the fine ethical line of news staging—re-creating some event that is believed to or could have happened. • The news producer must balance service to the public against ratings and profit, but viewers must balance their desire for interesting, stimulating visuals against confidence that the news is reported rather than manufactured.

28. Chapter Review • Mechanical methods of television transmission were developed as early as 1884 by Paul Nipkow, but it was the electronic scanning developed by Zworykin and Farnsworth that moved the medium into its modern age. • The quiz show scandal, Lucille Ball’s production innovations, McCarthyism, and the onset of the ratings served to define the new medium’s character.

29. Chapter Review • The business of television is dominated by the networks, although their power is in decline. • Convergence, particularly in the form of digital television and Internet-based video, is also reshaping the television landscape. • News staging raises several issues for media literate viewers.