Beyond the Boob Tube CMAT 102: Prof. Cox

1. Beyond the Boob TubeCMAT 102: Prof. Cox

2. Today’s schedule • History of television • Watch some clips illustrating TV history • Instructions for second 1,500-word essay that’s due April 25 • Review the rubric

3. What shaped TV as we know it • Advancements in technology (bigger screens, debut of color, cable TV, VCRs, TiVo, Internet) • Politics • Money/advertising • Viewer’s tastes (Nielsen ratings)

4. Beginnings of TV • Paul Nipkow, a Russian scientist living in Berlin, invents the first workable device generating electrical signals suitable for transmission of a scene people could see in 1884. • He calls it the Nipkow disk.

5. How it worked

6. Zworykin vs. Farnsworth • Vladimir Zworykin, an immigrant who went on to work for RCA, develops the first practical television camera tube, the iconoscope, in 1923. • Philo Farnsworth, a farmboy out West (yes, born in a log cabin), also worked to develop an electronic television system, making his first public demonstration at 20 in 1927.

7. Let’s let TV tell the story • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGzFz2Nrq6s

8. 1950s • Although TV is all but ready to go by 1939, WWII delays its proliferation. • The 1950s bring 4 developments: • Popularization, as # of sets rockets from 172,000 in 1948 to 42 million in 1958 and # of stations from 108 in 1952 to 559 by end of decade. • Technical problems were fixed. • Changes life. Theaters and nightclubs struggle. • The content and character of the medium were set.

9. Content evolves, solidifies • Carryovers from radio abound, including variety shows, sit-coms, dramas (cop shows, Westerns), soap operas, quiz shows • They also use the same sponsorship model as radio, having companies sponsor the whole program. Giving us names like the Philco Television Playhouse, the U.S. Steel Hour, Kraft Television Theater

10. “Time brokers” • Except for news and sports, the networks didn’t produce their own shows • Instead, they acted like “time brokers,” selling time to sponsors who hired production companies to churn out content • The Quiz Show scandals changed all that. Realizing that their reputations were at stake, the networks take over. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbKgXI_dAco

11. Changes • Two new formats appear: feature films and talk shows • Broadcast journalism becomes a force, thanks to the likes of Edward R. Murrow and David Brinkley/Chet Huntley • Domination by the Big Three: NBC, CBS and ABC (in 1986, it expands to four with FOX) • Yet, the largest network remains ... PBS.

12. Biggest visionary of the era?

13. “I Love Lucy” innovations • Before moving her popular radio show “My Favorite Husband” to TV in 1951, Ball had a few demands. • That her real-life husband co-star (CBS refused, some contend, because Desi Arnaz was Cuban; CBS denies) • That instead of being shot live, it be filmed and edited before airing. This made reruns possible and lowered production costs, as shows could be produced faster and take advantage of stock footage. • That it be filmed in Hollywood instead of NYC. Gave TV more movie-style pizzazz. Today, many shows set in NY (“Seinfeld”) are actually shot in L.A.

14. TV downs a despot • Joseph McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin, leads the Red Scare, a congressional witch hunt for Communists and sympathizers in film, television, the Army and other sectors.

15. Edward R. Murrow At first, Murrow, the hero journalist of WWII London, backed down in the face of McCarthy’s intimidation. His report would take the man down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQaX2h1plo

16. The audience matters • A show’s fate is driven by whether people watch it. • And we know who watches because of Nielsen ratings. • Nielsen starts out in 1923 as a product-testing company but soon branches out into market research. • Radio ratings begin in 1936; TV in 1950.

17. How Nielsen ratings work • Nielsen selects 37,000 households thought to be representative of the entire viewing public. Those viewers record their viewing habits on a “peoplemeter.” • Also use diaries, but fading. • It shows who was watching, what they were watching and for how long.

18. Nielsen reporting • Reported as “ratings point/share.” 115.9 million TV households, so 1 share = 1.16 million households • If a show receives a 8.2/15 rating, it means that on average 8.2 percent of TV-equipped households were tuned in to that show at any given moment, while 15 percent of households watching TV were tuned into that program during this time slot. • More recently, the company has offered “total audience measurement index,” looking at viewing across all platforms – TV, DVR, Internet, mobile devices

19. Top 10 shows (week of 3/12/12) • 10) Bachelor: After the Final Rose(s), 6.7 rating • 9) Missing, 6.8 • 8) 60 Minutes, 6.9 • 6) NCIS: Los Angeles, 7.3 • 6) Criminal Minds, 7.3 • 5) CSI, 7.5 • 4) NCIS, 8.2 • 3) The Voice, 8.4 • 2) American Idol Thursday, 9.4 • 1) American Idol Wednesday, 10.7 (No. 1 annually since 2005-06 season)

20. Nielsen criticisms • Since the viewers in their sample know they’re being watched, it can lead to response bias, the phenomenon in science in which the act of doing the study skews the results. • Especially in the diary, which historically under-reports daytime and late-night viewing and over-reports news and popular primetime shows.

21. Nielsen criticisms • The sample of households is far from random (only those who agree to participate are included) and the total sample is only about 2 hundredths of a percent (0.02%) of the total TV household population • With so many channels, thanks to cable, the sample set is watered down further • As a result, the difference in audience between one show and another may not be statistically significant but lead to the lower of the two being cancelled.

22. Nielsen criticisms • Just simple human error Screw-ups by the household reporters could throw off a show’s ratings by about 8%, according to an in-house Nielsen study. • Barran (pps. 212-13) talks about declines in young male and minority viewing. TV execs argue Nielsen is under-representing them in its sample; Nielsen says YMs are moving to other viewing platforms, and Latinos are driving the decrease in minority viewership as they switch to more-ubiquitous Spanish-language TV options.

23. Sweeps • Nielsen traditionally conducted diary survey four times a year: in February, May, July and November. • This gave rise to “sweeps weeks,” times when network would role out their top programming and affiliates would do their most salacious news stories (“Are teens texting themselves to death? Find out at 6!”) in an effort to boost ratings.

24. Cable’s impact on content

25. Beginnings of cable • Appliance salesman John Walson couldn’t get people to buy TV sets in his home turf of Mahanoy City, Pa. Seems the Pocono Mountains blocked the signals from Philly’s three stations. • So, he ran a wire from a tower a nearby mountain to his store, word spread and he soon had 700+ subscribers to his “community antenna television” system.

26. Cable growth • Offered greater variety of programming; 7-10 channels instead of three or four. • By 1962, 900 systems were providing cable TV to more than 850,000 homes. • Today, more than 7,000 cable systems serving 62.6 million homes (54% of all TV households)

27. Cable pricing debate • To bundle or not to bundle? • For years, cable systems have offered a few flat-rate packages. You buy all the channels in that package regardless if you watch them (Tennis Channel? Really?) • A push for a la carte pricing, paying by the channel.

28. Bundling by the numbers • Would it be cheaper? James Surowiecki says no. • “[The prices for individual channels would soar, and the providers, who wouldn’t be facing any more competition than before, would tweak prices, perhaps on a customer-by-customer basis, to maintain their revenue. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Bravo would suddenly cost fifteen dollars a month, but there’s little evidence to suggest that à-la-carte packages would be generally cheaper than the current bundles. One recent paper on the subject, in fact, estimated the best-case gain to consumers at thirty-five cents a month. But even if it wasn’t a boon to consumers an à-la-carte system would inject huge uncertainty into the cable business, and many cable networks wouldn’t get enough subscribers to survive. That’s a future that the industry would like to avoid.” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/01/25/100125ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz1rlqHLhCA