THE TUBE IS REALITY

1. THE TUBE IS REALITY The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

2. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies-Network: “you’re never gonna get any truth from us… we’ll tell you any shit you want to hear.”-There is no reality outside of television, and not much reality on it.-American television boasts that it brings us uncensored pictures of the world, but it cheats on its own promises.-”Censorship by substitution”– TV presents an entire magical universe that refers to everything in the real world, but explains nothing about it. It’s an extremely limited view of the world. Instead of representing the world, it simulates the world, presenting its own version of reality in exchange for yours. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

3. -RICHARD ALBARINO: VP of VIACOM comedy: What we see on television is a mixture of the real America with the producer/writer’s idea of the real America; they go for a texture… sort of faking it.I don’t think you could ever explain American life without considering television… it’s the other dimension… the fictive world of the American consciousness. Everyone participates in it, no matter how much they say they might curl up with a good book… The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

4. TODD GITLIN: TV guru, author: American television isn’t a version of American reality, but it’s a version of American values, including the complexity and contradiction of those values. It’s about three values:1) PROFUSION: the dream, the goal at the end of the rainbow, the sense of possibility;2) AMBITION: that which takes people, that draws them interminably toward that receding impossible rainbow; the endless search, the endless treadmill; yearning;3) SOLACE: because America disappoints, there needs to be compensation, even for you, the “little man/woman” The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

5. -American TV claims to celebrate the normal, the ordinary, the average.-Americans expect to be mirrored in television, to be entertained by TV’s version of themselves, to see celebrations of their way of life.JAY ROSEN: TV claims to entertain, but this is a disclaimer that allows TV people to escape responsibility for that which they really do… advertising.TODD GITLIN: The business of television is Business. Television is an advertising medium. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

6. JAY ROSEN: Advertisers have no investment in the program. They don’t really care what the program says. They care only if the program gains a big enough number.Viewers can sense this bad faith, and generally, also feel little investment in the programs they are watching. Thus, there is an atmosphere of cynicism and low investment pervading the entire TV phenomenon. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

7. -How does TV censor?TODD GITLIN: There’s nothing but censorship on American TV. Television is a system of censorship at every level. It’s not all censorship from above… Most of it is a system of self-censorship. People don’t get to become regulars here unless they submit to the rules.JAY ROSEN: Advertising is a system of censorship. 1) does the show reach the correct demographic?2) does it provide the right environment? {a friendly atmosphere where the images of the product either fit in well or don’t clash too much}{if, when you leave the program to show the product, it now seems strange to be talking about toilet paper, that’s probably a good program} The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

8. -Advertisers claim that the only censorship is one of numbers, yet clearly, the advertisers themselves make subjective judgments and ratings concerning possibly controversial programs.-Censorship also entails the exclusion of that which does not sell. ______________________________________________-In the 1950s, utopian pictures of America sold best.-The TV game show was a magical place where spectacular things happened to ordinary people. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

9. -The political advantages of television became obvious.-Eisenhower, then later, Nixon.-JAY ROSEN: Nixon was present at key moments in relationship between TV and politics.1) Checkers speech“If you were willing to debase yourself, it creates a powerful emotional response.”2) Kennedy – Nixon debate“TV emphasizes style over substance”[radio listeners felt Nixon won]3) Watergate: TV can benefit democracy; letting cameras roll… viewers can see truths… The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

10. U.S. TV moved to LA in the late 1950s. -ALBARINO: L.A. is the epitome of the American dream. It’s a completely made-up place, which is an ideal location for a place to make up a fictional world. It’s an engineered reality, a peculiar mixture of what people will buy and what they won’t buy: it’s selling a product, essentially.GITLIN: LA, having been built as a splicing of styles, would produce a kind of culture which is nothing but endless re-runs, endless versions of itself. There is nothing here. All that television is is the redistribution of its own moves, the recombination of its own devices. Its history is only itself. It doesn’t touch the ground. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies

11. GITLIN: LA is simply an endless recycling of what it has already done, a kind of tedious rehearsal of its own promises.The people who produce television are, literally, at any given moment, no more than about 200 people. They live in a very closed world. They go to the same places for vacations, they send their kids to the same schools, they live in the same neighbourhoods, they talk the same talk, they eat at the same restaurants. They have the same culture in common… this culture of culturelessness. Endlessly, they are flattering each other that they have arrived, that they are the triumphs, the representatives of the American dream. So, they’re endlessly marketing versions of themselves and their triumphs… it’s a tremendously interesting trick, and the way they do it is by constantly reminding themselves that they are little people, just like us… they’re just the ones who got lucky. The Tube is Reality: The Truth about Lies