PBS Learning Media
Early Years
1968-1979
After the introduction of television to the public in the 1940s, a distinct dichotomy emerged between entertainment programming (which made up the bulk of the most popular shows) and news, documentary, and other less-common nonfiction shows. Throughout the 1950s, for example, stories concerning the Cold War and the emerging civil rights movement were reported on the news and in the occasional documentary, but they were for the most part ignored on popular prime-time programs. This dichotomy became even more apparent in the 1960s.
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During times of national crises, television galvanized the country by preempting regular programming to provide essential coverage of significant events. Memorable examples of this were seen during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 14 days in 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union squared off over the placement of Russian missiles in Cuba, and the four days’ reportage of the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy. The same was true with news coverage of the U.S. space program, especially the Moon landing in July 1969. Films of battlefield activity in Vietnam, as well as photographs, interviews, and casualty reports, were broadcast daily from the centrs of conflict into American living rooms. As both international and domestic upheaval escalated in the 1960s, network news departments, originally conceived of as fulfilling a public service, became profit centres. CBS and NBC expanded their daily evening news broadcasts from 15 to 30 minutes in the fall of 1963, and ABC followed in 1967.
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Although news coverage brought increasingly disturbing reports as the decade progressed, prime-time programming presented an entirely different picture. The escapist fictional fare of prime time made little reference to what was being reported on the news. That began to change in the late 1960s and early ’70s, but the transition was an awkward one; some shows began to reflect the new cultural landscape, but most continued to ignore it. That Girl (ABC, 1966–71), an old-fashioned show about a single woman living and working in the big city—with the help of her boyfriend and her “daddy”—aired on the same schedule as The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–77), a new-fashioned comedy about a single woman making it on her own. In the same week, one could watch The Lawrence Welk Show (ABC, 1955–71), a 15-year-old musical variety program that featured a legendary polka band, and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (NBC, 1968–73), an irreverent new comedy-variety show plugged into the 1960s counterculture. The 1970–71 season was the last season for a number of series that had defined the old television landscape, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Lawrence Welk Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Andy Williams Show, and Lassie, all of which had been on the air since the 1950s or earlier. Such traditional sitcoms as That Girl and Hogan’s Heroes also left the air at the end of that season, as did a number of lingering variety programs.
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Even before 1971, however, more-diverse programming had gradually been introduced to network TV, most notably on NBC. The Bill Cosby Show (1969–71), Julia (1968–71), and The Flip Wilson Show (1970–74) were among the first programs to feature African Americans in starring roles since the stereotyped presentations of Amos ’n’ Andy and Beulah (ABC, 1950–53). Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was proving, as had The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS, 1967–69) a few seasons earlier, that even the soon-to-be-moribund variety-show format could deliver new and contemporary messages. Dramatic series such as The Mod Squad (ABC, 1968–73), The Bold Ones (NBC, 1969–73), and The Young Lawyers (ABC, 1970–71) injected timely social issues into traditional genres featuring doctors, lawyers, and the police. In another development, 60 Minutes (CBS, begun 1968) fashioned the modern newsmagazine into a prime-time feature.
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Although 60 Minutes would rank in the Nielsen top 20 (including five seasons as number one) for more than 25 years after it settled into its Sunday night time slot in 1975, the other aforementioned innovative shows were off the air by 1974. They represented, nevertheless, the future of network entertainment television. In canceling many of its hit shows after the 1970–71 season, CBS had identified and reacted to an important new industrial trend. As the 1970s approached, advertisers had become increasingly sensitive to the demographic makeup of their audience, and the ratings services were developing new methods of obtaining more detailed demographic data. As television marketing grew in sophistication, advertisers began to target young audiences, who tended to be heavy consumers and who tended to be more susceptible to commercial messages. In 1970 these audiences also tended to be intensely interested in the cultural, social, and political upheaval of the times. CBS responded to advertisers with a new vision that—despite the high ratings of its older shows—aimed at a youthful audience.
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Even without the advertising imperative, the TV landscape must have seemed very strange to many young viewers involved in the contemporary social movements. In 1968, for example, both civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and liberal presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; riots and protests were common on campuses across the country, and major protests took place during the Democratic convention in Chicago; and the Tet Offensive was launched in Vietnam. That same year, the second highest rated TV show in the United States was Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., a series following the activities of a Marine Corps private that never mentioned the Vietnam War. Mayberry R.F.D. (in fourth place), which took place in a small North Carolina town, never mentioned the issue of race. Other CBS hits such as Here’s Lucy (1968–74) and Gunsmoke seemed products of a bygone era and were of little interest to younger viewers. CBS executives also noticed that the few youth-oriented shows that were on the air were doing very well at the end of the decade. In the 1968–69 season, NBC’s controversial and hip Laugh-In, for example, was the highest-rated show of the year. So, in a move uncharacteristically bold for an American television network, CBS scrapped an assortment of its hit series and launched what turned out to be an unprecedented updating of prime-time television programming. Within four years, entertainment TV would look nothing like it did in 1969. The “real world” of social, familial, and national dysfunction, which had been ignored by TV for so long, was about to break into prime time. With the spectacular success of three strikingly new programs—All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and M*A*S*H, CBS redefined the medium.
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The significant critical and commercial success of relevance programming opened television to entirely new areas of content. Whereas much of entertainment TV before 1970 had shied from the subjects covered on the evening news, from this point forward many programs would use timely topics as a principal source of story ideas. Although such programs thrived, yet another programming trend was becoming evident during the mid-1970s. A changing cultural climate, brought on in part by the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War and by the Watergate Scandal, led some network executives and television producers to believe that audiences might be ready for a return to escapism.
In the 1976–77 season, All in the Family gave up its five-year reign at the top of the ratings to Happy Days (ABC, 1974–84), a high school comedy starring a former member of The Andy Griffith Show (Ron Howard) and set in the 1950s, before the Watergate hotel was built and before most Americans had heard of Vietnam. Other nostalgic programming such as Laverne & Shirley (ABC, 1976–83), set in the early 1960s, The Waltons (CBS, 1972–81), the saga of a Depression-era mountain family, and Little House on the Prairie (NBC, 1974–83), set in the late 19th century, also reached large audiences during this period. As its title suggests, Happy Days returned to the old television philosophy of providing amusing entertainment divorced from the disturbing features of the real world.
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The escapist fare of the late 1970s, however, was not the same as that which had dominated in the days before All in the Family. The relevance programs had brought on a relaxation of industry and public attitudes regarding appropriate television content, and the new escapist shows inherited a television culture that was more open and tolerant than ever before. These programs took advantage of that openness not so much to portray controversial social issues as to present more sexually oriented material. Before 1970 human sexuality was a topic that was only hinted at on television, and television’s married couples slept in separate beds until the late 1960s. That was about to change.
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Whereas CBS had led the networks in the development of relevance programming in the early 1970s, ABC took the lead in the last half of the decade, led by its president of entertainment, Fred Silverman. The new trend was referred to as “jiggle TV” in the popular press (“T&A TV” in less-polite publications) because it tended to feature young, attractive, often scantily clad women (and later men as well). Shows in this genre included The Love Boat (ABC, 1977–86), a romantic comedy that took place on a Caribbean cruise ship; Charlie’s Angels (ABC, 1977–81), which presented three female detectives whose undercover investigations required them to disguise themselves in beachwear and other revealing attire; Three’s Company (ABC, 1977–84), which had the then-titillating premise of two young women and a man sharing an apartment; and Fantasy Island (ABC, 1978–84), which was set on a tropical island where people went to have their (often romantic) dreams fulfilled.
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By the 1978–79 season, M*A*S*H and All in the Family were still in the top 10, but The Mary Tyler Moore Show had left the air the previous season, and All in the Family was in its final season. In large part on the basis of its nostalgia and “jiggle” programming, ABC became the top-rated network for the first time in its history. Two producers—Garry Marshall (Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley) and Aaron Spelling (Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island)—were principally responsible for ABC’s success during this period. ABC’s most memorable success of the late ’70s, however, was not a “jiggle” series. Roots, an ambitious 12-hour adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel, aired on 8 consecutive nights in January 1977. It was based on Haley’s reconstructed family history from the capture of his ancestors in West Africa in the 18th century through slavery and emancipation in the United States. All eight installments made the list of the then 50 highest-rated programs of all time, including the top position. The response of the critics and the industry was just as strong, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gave the show an unprecedented 37 Emmy Award nominations. Roots could never have aired before the relevance movement, and even in 1977 it was attended by some controversy. Some viewers and organizations took issue with the show’s scenes of partial nudity (a first for fiction programming on network TV), its rape scene, and its frank presentation of the horrors of slavery. Others complained of historical inaccuracies.
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Roots was not the first American miniseries, or even the longest; ABC had aired a 12-hour adaptation of Irwin Shaw’s novel Rich Man, Poor Man the previous season to a large and enthusiastic audience. Nonetheless, it was the phenomenal commercial success of Roots that guaranteed the immediate future of the historical miniseries as a viable new programming genre. During the next decade, many historical novels would be developed as limited series, including Shogun (NBC, 1980), The Thorn Birds (ABC, 1983), The Winds of War (ABC, 1983), and the 25-hour-long Centennial (NBC, 1978). Escalating production budgets and increasingly lower ratings threatened the miniseries by the end of the 1980s, however. War and Remembrance (ABC, 1988–89), at 30 hours the longest miniseries to date, signaled a significant waning of the genre when it failed to generate ratings to justify its expense.
Television Redefined
1980--1989
Up to the 1980s, the three original networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—enjoyed a virtual oligopoly in the American television industry. In the 1980s, however, cable television began to experience unprecedented growth. Whereas broadcast TV allowed a viewer to receive the signals of nearby stations over the air with the help of an antenna, cable technology brought a much wider array of channels directly into the home by way of a coaxial cable. For a monthly fee, cable TV subscribers could receive traditional local broadcast stations, broadcast “superstations” delivered to cable systems by satellite from distant cities, premium movie services, and a wide and growing array of specialized cable-only channels. Originally called “community antenna television,” cable TV had been around almost as long as television itself. In its early days, it had been available almost exclusively in communities in which geographic conditions made television reception difficult. In these cases, a company erected an antenna tower at a high point in the area and then delivered the quality signals of broadcast stations to individual households by wire for a fee. Developers had attempted to take cable to a wider public in the 1960s, but viewers were resistant to the notion of paying for something they could get for free. By the 1970s, however, cable was able to deliver new programming services that were unavailable from network TV. In 1972, for example, Home Box Office (HBO) began offering its subscribers recently released movies, uncut and commercial-free, months or years before the broadcast stations would air those same films edited for time and content restraints and interrupted by advertisements.
Only 8 percent of American households received basic cable in 1970; by 1980 that number had climbed to 23 percent, and it would double within the next four years. By the end of the decade, nearly 60 percent of American homes were wired for basic cable, and almost half of those were receiving some premium channels. In the late 1970s, more than 90 percent of the prime-time viewing audience was tuned to ABC, CBS, or NBC; by 1989 that number was down to 67 percent, and it fell steadily throughout the remaining years of the century. During this same period, independent stations—channels not affiliated with one of the networks—also became stronger competitors of the networks than they had ever been before. One result of the growth of cable was the fragmenting of the television audience. The proliferating number of channels allowed cable to offer special channels for children (Nickelodeon), sports fans (ESPN), movie enthusiasts (HBO and Showtime), women (Lifetime), news watchers (CNN), and a host of other targeted audiences. People in some cities went from 3 to 50 choices on the day their cable was installed. The installation of cable also provided an opportunity to add remote-control to old TV sets. With so many new choices, and the ability to move from channel to channel without leaving one’s chair, viewers began to watch TV in a more participatory fashion. Furthermore, videocassette recorder (VCR) ownership grew from 1 to 68 percent during the 1980s, allowing viewers to tape one or several shows while watching others. Households also had more TV sets. The old image of entire families gathered around a single set had given way to the more common practice of individual members of the family watching a personal TV.
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As their share of the audience was steadily encroached upon by cable in the 1980s, network television responded in several ways. At first, NBC followed the most effective strategy, introducing a diverse schedule of programs that attempted to retain their hold on the undifferentiated mass audience while also developing their own targeted audiences (“narrowcasting”) in the cable model. A handful of such old-fashioned action-adventure shows as The A-Team (1983–87), Riptide (1984–86), and Knight Rider (1982–86), the latter of which featured a talking car that fought crime, helped ease NBC out of third place in the first half of the decade. Then a pair of very traditional nuclear family sitcoms—The Cosby Show and Family Ties—achieved the top two positions in the ratings for the 1985–86 season. The Cosby Show, starring veteran TV actor Bill Cosby, remained the number one program for five straight seasons, tying with Roseanne in the 1989–90 season. Combined with Cheers (1982–93), a new ensemble comedy set in a Boston saloon; Night Court (1984–92), an ensemble comedy set in a courtroom; and the innovative police drama Hill Street Blues, NBC assembled a highly competitive Thursday evening schedule that was the foundation of the network’s ratings dominance for many years. Although mainstream dramas and comedies were an important part of the programming landscape in the 1980s, Hill Street Blues represented an important new philosophy for NBC. Rather than following its usual course of action, NBC began to develop some of its programs for a smaller but selective audience. Sensitivity to demographics was nothing new—CBS’s overhaul of its schedule in the early 1970s was evidence of this—but in 1981 NBC began to focus on an even more specific audience, one for which advertisers would pay the highest rates. In an attempt to lure young, educated, upscale viewers away from cable channels and the VCR (which allowed viewers to rent or purchase movies for viewing at their convenience) and back to network TV, NBC speculated that critically acclaimed programming might be the best bait. “Least objectionable programming” began to give way to target marketing on selected segments of the network’s schedule. The success of Hill Street Blues ushered in a renaissance of network dramatic programming that has continued into the 21st century. Such critically acclaimed series as St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law (NBC, 1986–94), Thirtysomething (ABC, 1987–91), Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–91), Homicide: Life on the Street (NBC, 1993–99), Law & Order (NBC, 1990–2010), and several others emulated the programming philosophy established by Hill Street Blues. By 1994 the “quality drama,” as this type of program had come to be known, had grown from a specialized form to a mainstream genre, with NYPD Blue and ER (NBC, 1994–2009) among the highest-rated shows. The quality drama had been designed in part to compete with the more serious fare that could be seen on cable movie channels; by the 1990s, those cable channels were developing quality dramas of their own after the network model. HBO’s Oz (1997–2003) and The Sopranos (1999–2007), gritty series set, respectively, in a prison and in the world of organized crime, were both created by veteran writers and producers of network quality series. The latter became one of television’s biggest success stories in the early 21st century, winning raves from the critics, a host of awards, and a wide, dedicated audience.
The daytime soap opera had been thriving in American broadcasting since the early days of radio It was aimed at what at the time was a substantial audience of women who stayed in their homes during the day. These series featured new episodes every weekday, with stories that usually unfolded at a glacial pace. On radio and in early television, most daytime soap operas played in 15-minute installments, but by the 1960s most had been expanded to a half-hour, and some would grow to a full hour in subsequent decades. What made the soap opera unique to television was that the stories were continuous, serialized from episode to episode. This would not become a standard feature of prime-time programming until the late 1970s, when Dallas proved to network executives that audiences could, in fact, remember episode details from week to week. Like its daytime counterparts, Dallas was filled with intrigue, betrayal, romance, family struggles, and dramatic narrative twists. The stage upon which all this played was Southfork Ranch, the home of several generations of a wealthy family of Texas oil tycoons. After two seasons of modest commercial success, the final cliffhanger episode of the 1979–80 season catapulted the program to the top of the ratings, where it remained in the top two for five years. In this episode, the show’s principal character, the ruthless Machiavellian J.R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman), was shot down by an unknown assailant. “Who shot J.R.?” became a ubiquitous question in American popular culture throughout the summer, and when the new season began the following fall, Dallas was a hit. The spate of Dallas imitations included Dynasty (ABC, 1981–89) and Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–90).
Daytime programming also underwent significant changes in the 1980s. Until mid-decade, daytime television schedules had remained relatively stable for almost 30 years. Morning news and information shows such as Today (NBC, begun 1952) and Good Morning America (ABC, begun 1975) were followed by a mix of soap operas, game shows, domestic variety programs, and children’s shows. A new genre, the audience-participation talk show (also called the “tabloid talk show” by many of its detractors), changed the face of daytime TV. As stations made room in their schedules for these programs, the game show virtually disappeared from daytime schedules during this period, with the exception of The Price Is Right (NBC/ABC, 1956–65; CBS, begun 1972), which was still running at the dawn of the 21st century after more than 40 years. Audience-participation talk shows were inexpensive to produce, and they were very popular among a daytime audience that had grown more diverse since the early days of television. In most of these programs, an informal host would conversationally present a topic, introduce guests (often non-celebrities), and then invite audience members to voice their opinions. The subject matter might include many of the themes that were already available in other types of daytime programming, including household tips, beauty advice, family counseling, soap-opera-like family conflicts, and tear-jerking reunions. The more relaxed content standards of the day, however, also made possible the presentation of some absolutely scandalous subjects.
The genre really got started in 1970 with The Phil Donahue Show (syndicated, 1970–96), a gentle hour-long program in which Donahue would explore a single topic with a collection of guests and then moderate comments and questions from the audience. Not until 1985 did Donahue have any significant competition in the genre. That year, Sally Jessy Raphael (syndicated, 1985–2002) debuted, using the Donahue format but specializing in more titillating subjects. The Oprah Winfrey Show (later Oprah; syndicated, 1986–2011) did the same a year later. It quickly became a hit. Imitations began appearing, and the competition grew so fierce that many programs began to feature increasingly outrageous subject matter. Geraldo (syndicated, 1987–98), hosted by sensationalist journalist Geraldo Rivera, featured prostitutes, transsexuals, white supremacists, and other groups seldom given voice on TV before this time. His guests often became combative and sometimes actually fought onstage. Jenny Jones (syndicated, 1991–2003) specialized in guests with salacious and unconventional stories, usually of a sexual nature, and Ricki Lake (syndicated, 1993–2004) was designed especially for younger female audiences. Jerry Springer (syndicated, begun 1991) was the most extreme and notorious of the shows, presenting shocking guests, stories, and conflicts. Many episodes featured fistfights, intervention by security employees, and an audience reveling in blood lust.
All of the media industries experienced significant corporate reorganization during the 1980s as they became concentrated under the ownership of fewer and fewer companies. The creation of Time Warner, Inc., in 1989 was a striking example of the new era of media conglomerates. It, as well as other U.S. conglomerates that were formed shortly thereafter, controlled holdings in book publishing and distribution, magazines, cable channels, cable systems, TV production, music recording companies, television stations, home video, film production, syndication, and more. Synergy, the ability of a company to package an idea in an assortment of forms—from books to TV series to soundtrack recordings and beyond—became the buzzword of the day. The threat of cable and the falling profits made the broadcast networks vulnerable to this trend as well. For the first time in more than 30 years, a major network—all three of them, in fact—would change owners in the 1980s. In 1985 the General Electric Company purchased RCA, the parent company of NBC. The next year, Capital Cities Communications acquired ABC, and shortly thereafter Lawrence Tisch, the chair of the investment conglomerate Loew’s, Inc., purchased a quarter of CBS’s stock and took over as head of the company.
The years of the administration of Ronald Reagan Administration were a time of intense deregulation of the broadcast industry. Mark Fowler and Dennis Patrick, both FCC chairmen appointed by Reagan, advocated free-market philosophies in the television industry. Fowler frankly described modern television as a business rather than a service. In 1981 he stated that “television is just another appliance. It’s a toaster with pictures.” Fowler’s position was a far cry from the approach of Newton Minow, who argued that government needed to play an intimate role in serving the public interest as charged in the Communications Act of 1934. Deregulation supporters advocated a “healthy, unfettered competition” between TV broadcasters. Deregulation had begun in the late 1970s, but it accelerated in earnest under the leadership of Fowler, who led the FCC from 1981 to 1987. By 1989 several major changes had been made in the 1934 act. The FCC itself was reduced from seven to five commissioners, and terms for television-station licenses were increased from three to five years. Single corporate owners once limited to owning 7 stations nationally (only 5 in the VHF range) were then allowed to own 12 stations. Furthermore, the 1949 Fairness Doctrine, which charged stations with scheduling time for opposing views on important controversial issues, was eliminated. The growth of the cable industry was also spurred by significant deregulation in 1984..
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