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Essay Subject: Examines origins & evolution, compared to serious news, economic aspects, examples, advertising, role of govt., network vs. local issues.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines origins & evolution, compared to serious news, economic aspects, examples, advertising, role of govt., network vs. local issues. Paper Introduction: INTRODUCTION Americans today are awash in news from newspapers, publications of every variety, books, broadcast television stations, radio stations, and cable, including 24-hour cable new outlets such as CNN, C-Span, and CNN Headline News. Yet, the question is raised as to how trustworthy all this news is and especially as to how true a picture of society is presented in these many news broadcasts. The question is raised in part because of the growing apathy apparent in the electorate and because of opinion polls which indicate that "many citizens--perhaps the majority--live in a state of confusion and ignorance about government and political issues." Several reasons can be cited as to why this situation developed, but one reason has been the increasing trivialization of the news and the dedication of Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. A third type of tabloid television isthe afternoon talk show, a form that extends back many years and that seemsto have become more sensationalistic with the passage of time. Beebe, and W.G. in any part of America, or do the same at 1 o'clock or 11 o'clock, and you are likely to encounter one of the oddest, if not most pernicious, phenomenons on television: the local newscast. This type of show can be muchlike other television analyses of current events, but what has happened isthat the quest for ratings has led to shows with sensationalistic themes,often on the subject of sex and sometimes both peculiar and graphic. While most stationsstill have this schedule, the money spent on the broadcast itself has beenreduced, sometimes augmented by stories from other sources (such as the newall-news cable networks), and with less spent on bureaus covering state andlocal issues. Money has driven most of these changes, linked to ananalysis of how much has to be spent to garner ratings. Local and network newsbudgets have both been decreased. NBC decidedin 1949 that this was not the best approach, and John Cameron Swayze, thena newsman from Kansas City, was made the newscaster on the program.Television as a serious news medium found its voice in the nominatingconventions in 1948. DavidBianculli finds it significant that Downey came to prominence after themovie Network was released in 1976, with its similar character of HowardBeale, who told people to open their windows and scream, "I'm mad as hell,and I'm not gonna take this anymore!" Bianculli says that Downey also"played to people's anger and frustration, and encouraged them to get outof their seats and yell."[xxvii] for all its excesses, The Morton DowneyJr. ." U.S. Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books, 1974.Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In early television, news was asbrief as 15 minutes per day, extended later to 3 minutes. In about two-thirds of all markets, according to another study, the early-evening local news shows attracted better raw than the network newscasts that followed them-and the local news is on for a longer time.[xli] Stark cites a number of studies and reports showing how thetabloidization of the local news has been progressing: --The Rocky Mountain Media Watch group in 1995 studied local news in5 major markets and found that crime and disaster news make up about 53percent of the news on local newscasts. Jencks notes that the network at that time was"primarily in the business of selling airtime, and selling it in accordancewith the terms of published rate cards, just as a print publisher sellsspace."[xi] The networks purchased this airtime wholesale throughaffiliation contracts with stations and made a profit based on thedifference between what they paid affiliates for the time and what theadvertisers paid them. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.Comstock, George, Television in America. 16828 (December 21, 1966), 36.Kisseloff, Jeff. New York: Viking, 1995.Leerhsen, Charles, "Sex, Death, Drugs and Geraldo," Newsweek (November 14, 1988), 76.Magid Associates Inc., Frank N., Attitudes Toward and Perceptions Of Geraldo. In fact, there can be little doubt that the economic factors taken together constituted the single most important determinant of news and public affairs programming.[vii]Wolf states that everyone involved in producing, distributing, presenting,and showing television programming work within limits imposed by the questfor profit. Jencks, "How Network Television Program Decisions AreMade," in Network Television and the Public Interest, MichaelBotein and David M. This approachhas been used by shows like Current Affair or Hard Copy, shows identifiedby critics as tabloid television. All three of the major networks are guilty, though all deny it.[xxxviii]Many respected journalists have criticized the networks and the trend.Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite says that today "the networks now donews as entertainment." Robert MacNeil, former coanchor at PBS, states,"All the trends in television journalism are toward the sensational, thehype, the hyperactive, the tabloid values to drive out the serious."Newton Minnow, once chairman of the Federal Communications Commission andnow on the board of directors at CBS, admits, "It's pretty close totabloid."[xxxix] TABLOIDIZATION The fact that television both network and local can do so much doesnot mean they are ready to do so, and budgetary concerns still decide whatgets covered and what does not and what gets on the air and what does not.In the 197 s, local news coverage expanded in terms of time allotted, andmany local stations had bureau coverage in state capitals and elsewherethat they do not have today because of cutbacks. DeLuca, Television's Transformation: The Next 25 Years(New York: A.S. Rivera had as guests agroup of white supremacists, including John Metzger of the White AryanResistance Movement, and a group of black civil rights leaders, includingRoy Innis. . Rice, Network Television and the Public Interest. --The Columbia Journalism Review in 199 published a study that foundthat 18 of the 32 stories analyzed on local newscasts were inaccurate ormisleading, and the station involved usually made no attempt to correct themistakes. . This has to be seen asanother appeal of these shows--the personality of the host or hostess hasthe power to draw an audience back day after day and week after week formaterial they otherwise might not watch. Geraldo has been involved in shows reflecting these specific programtypes. Show.One of Geraldo's documentaries generated considerable criticism and wasseen as the harbinger of things to come. Today, the situation is quite different. Television has always made celebrities of whomever appeared on it, somuch so that it produced an entire industry of people who are famous forbeing famous because they appear on television. CBS introduced a newscast in August 1948 with DouglasEdwards. Federal CommunicationsCommission, FCC 66-1186 and 92762, Docket No. An early example was The Joe Pyne Show, syndicated from1966 to 1969 and featuring Los Angeles host Joe Pyne, who called hisaudience "meatheads." There were other versions of the format prevalent atthe same time, hosted by personalities like former actor Tom Duggan andwriter Louis Lomax (noted for ghostwriting The Autobiography of Malcolm X). Videotape brought aboutmajor changes, but at first U.S. "In the Matter of Applications by American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. --Phyllis Kaniss in her book Making Local News in 1991 stated thatlocal television news reporters are more likely to accept their sources'viewpoints than are print reporters. . . Localstations purchased news telecopters and other technology, and now they wantto use it by rushing to the latest crime scene or accident site to bringpictures to the viewer immediately. An article written in 195 stated the case clearly, as Boddydescribes: The advantages to the network were control over their program schedules in the interests of block programming (where an evening of programs are designed to maximize adjacencies and audience 'flow') and counter-programming, but also to ensure long-term talent commitments to the network for a successful series.[xv]There was a tradeoff for the advertiser as well, for they received "thestability of an established program with a ratings history, the chance ofescaping unexpected production cost increases, and the possibility offavored network status in scheduling and promotion."[xvi] Television since the change has become more of a business geared tothe maximization of profits and less to public service or evenentertainment as goals that were promulgated as supreme by radio and earlytelevision. KTLA would continue to seek new ways to bring thenews to a local audience and in 1958 was the first station to purchase atelecopter.[xxiv] The technology currently available to television news programs is farbeyond what was available in the 196 s or even the 197 s. . Manning, Jr., TelevisionEconomics (Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books, 1974), 94.Martin Mayer, Making News (Boston, Massachusetts: HarvardBusiness School Press, 1993), 183.Ibid., 185-186.Ibid., 189.Jeff Kisseloff, The Box (New York: Viking, 1995), 171.Ibid., 171-172.Mayer, 2 2-2 3.David Bianculli, Dictionary of Teleliteracy (New York:Continuum, 1996), 213.Ibid., 214.Ibid., 214.Alan Richman, "He's Tough, Smart and Honest--Just Ask Him--butGeraldo Rivera Wants Something More: Respect," People Magazine(December 7, 1987), 138.Harry F. Some advertisers even had in-house production units whichproduced the program directly. A good program schedule is not a critic's schedule but a salesman's-- one that will sell rapidly at the prices asked.[xvii]The system dictates the type of programming that will be provided within avery narrow range, as Comstock notes: The dependence of profits on audience means that for any one competitor--station or network--it is always more desirable to attract as large a body of potential consumers as possible, thereby maximizing the price that advertisers will for access to them, than it is to expand the total audience in any given hour by offering something appealing to a smaller audience composed of individuals who would not ordinarily watch television.[xviii]The system thus perpetuates what has appealed in the past because it isalways the same audience being sought. What makes these programs so strange is that they are so eerily alike from Maine to Mississippi, no matter the network affiliation.[xl]While many other analysts have found similar sameness and have criticizedthe local news for its poor performance, they also have to admit as doesStark that the local news is influential; In recent years, the local newscast has replaced the network evening news and the newspaper alike as the average American's main source of news: A study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in 1996 found that 65 percent of all adults said they regularly watched the local TV news; only 42 percent reported that they did the same with a network newscast. Barnes & Company, 198 .Gitlin, Todd, Watching Television. The networks have thus turned more and more in recent yearsto "reality" programming, with an emphasis on entertainment on top of theillusion of newsworthiness. Finding himselfout on his own, Geraldo turned to rather dubious television specials about"news" events such as the opening of Al Capone's vault, a live televisionevent in which millions of people waited with bated breath to see what hadbeen hidden in this vault for the last fifty years. . The firstpopular news program was Camel News Caravan in 1948, a fifteen-minutebroadcast on NBC. The Box. A film series then became too expensive for a single advertiserto support, so sponsorship had to be shared with others, and then evencosponsorship became too expensive, as well as too cumbersome: "Moreover,advertisers found that they no longer wanted to spend all their money on asingle program series, as had commonly been the case in radio."[xii] Other forces as well were at work. Making News. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.Grenier, Cynthia. One way to achieve success in syndication has beenthe talk show, one type of which features the angry host railing aboutdifferent issues. In this way, a station can appear to be a goodpublic servant while using ratings to sell time. Dictionary of Teleliteracy. or 6 p.m. "O.J., Marv--Haven't We Had Enough?" The World & I (February 1, 1998), 1 .Jencks, Richard W., "How Network Television Program Decisions Are Made," in Michael Botein and David M. . Former NBC News presidentReuven Frank stated: "Geraldo should be arrested for exposing himself," aline that Geraldo liked enough to make it the title of hisautobiography.[xxxiv] Tabloid shows have been increasing over the last decade, but theywere given added impetus by several news stories that fit their format andso created an opportunity. News: The Politics of Illusion. Geraldo's negative images are all very high, says theresearch, and in order from highest to lowest they are as follows: dealstoo much with crime; too sensational; most likely to offend; leastbelievable; and deals with sex in the least sensitive manner.[vi] THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEVISION NEWS The shift to tabloid television news and the accompanying reductionin budgets for local news in particular is a relatively recent development,but it comes after a period during which television news at the local andnational levels was on the increase. The question is raised in part because of thegrowing apathy apparent in the electorate and because of opinion pollswhich indicate that "many citizens--perhaps the majority--live in a stateof confusion and ignorance about government and political issues."[i]Several reasons can be cited as to why this situation developed, but onereason has been the increasing trivialization of the news and thededication of more and more time to celebrity news, titillation, and whathas come to be called infotainment, entertainment masquerading as news.Infotainment permeates programming including talk shows, tabloid showsfeaturing celebrity news and crime stories, "reality" shows where cameracrews follow police and other law enforcement professionals on theirrounds, and similar programs. Show wasa more mean-spirited version of Night Beat or The Joe Pyne Show. CONCLUSION Television news has always been in a difficult situation, for thosedesirous of informing the public must also face the need to be cost-effective in doing so. . Rivera was with 2 /2 for seven years before beingfired in 1985 when the network refused to renew his contract after a publicfeud with Roone Arledge, the head of the news division. In the late 198 s, tabloid television wasbecoming noticed as a new phenomenon by television critics. In prime time,there have been a number of successful television shows using recreationsof crimes and other events, and these shows tend more toward entertainmentthan news in the usual sense. He sees in this trend the destruction ofdemocratic society, and he feels that television has always been part ofthis trend: "Television, as I have implied earlier, serves us most usefullywhen presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-optsserious modes of discourse--news, politics, science, education, commerce,religion--and turns them into entertainment packages."[ii] This isprecisely what tabloid television has done. It included a live audience and, in the case of Donahue at least,telephone calls from a national audience. DeLuca explains the developmentof the network system for television as a holdover from radio: Television was deliberately created by the radio networks, and so it is hardly surprising that our television system was conceived in terms of a network from the very beginning.[ix]Jencks extends this to the advertising system as well, a system with adifferent type of control than is exercised today: During the entire history of network radio entertainment, and during the first decade of network television, program decisions were largely made, not by the networks themselves, but by advertisers and their agencies.[x]Such control was thorough, extending to decisions on the format and natureof programs, the selection of stars and supporting players, supervision ofday-to-day production, and the monitoring of the programs for taste andpropriety. Such programs are much cheaper to produce than normalentertainment programs. Yet, the question is raised as to how trustworthy all thisnews is and especially as to how true a picture of society is presented inthese many news broadcasts. Geraldo seems to attract viewers who like to livedangerously because he sticks close to the subjects of sex, death, drugaddiction, and--as critics charge--himself. The real peoplewho are shown are not paid, and production costs are less in alldepartments. His greatest success has come with his afternoon syndicated talkshow mirroring Donahue and others such as Oprah Winfrey, Sally JessieRaphael, and many others. Endnotes BibliographyBauder, David. This program was a documentaryreport that was all the more annoying to television critics because "real"documentaries have virtually disappeared from television. Manning, Jr., Television Economics. In a way, this was only a continuation of the sort of"action" orientation that had been seen at WABC news in the early 197 s andthat had spread to other local television news outlets. This format involved thediscussion of issues, sometimes with one person and sometimes with a group. 16828 (December21, 1966), 36.Stuart M. The L.A. or the confrontational tactics of GeraldoRivera replace reasoned discourse and analysis. The competition inthe form of tabloid shows has been attracting an audience withsensationalism, and local news shows now do the same sort of story for thesame reason--higher audience numbers and higher profits. Pictures from the field hadto be fed back to the home office through coaxial cable from a studio.Nearly all television news coverage was on film and had to be physicallytransported and developed before it could be used. Jencks cites an economic rationale for the shift away from this sortof sponsorship in television, finding that by the mid-195 s, economics andtechnology began to force changes in the prevailing pattern of advertiserdominance. Show would set elements of the daytime talk-show form for others tofollow: Sneering and smoking, prodding and poking, Downey was a TV showman who knew just what he was doing, but his studio audience was much less controlled. No longer was it considered merely an entertainment tool. KTLA covered the story with its remote crew for 27 straighthours until the dead child was brought to the surface: Los Angeles television was never the same again. New York: A.S. The government indeed pressured the networksto do just this, with John Doerfer, head of the FCC, in the lead: Doerfer told them [the networks] that the administration was prepared to preserve the industry from some of the more rugged new regulatory restrictions being discussed in Congress. Talk show hosts such as Phil Donahue obviously have exceptional expressive abilities that can make them public 'personalities'. What he got was a chair thrown across the room and intohis nose when a brawl erupted on stage. This was a straight newsreel from Fox-Movietone and hadan unseen and anonymous voiceover. New York: Longman, 1988.Bianculli, David. Waters, Peter McKillop, Bill Powell, and Janet Huck,"Trash TV," Newsweek (November 14, 1988), 72.Ibid., 73.Ibid., 73.Waters, McKillop, Powell, Luck, 72.Charles Leerhsen, "Sex, Death, Drugs and Geraldo," Newsweek(November 14, 1988), 76.Cynthia Grenier, "O.J., Marv--Haven't We Had Enough?," The World& I (February 1, 1998), 1 .Ibid., 1 .David Bauder, "Hard Times Force 'Tabloid' Shows to RethinkFormat," Star Tribune (April 25, 1997), 2 E.James McCartney, "News Lite," American Journalism Review(October 27, 1998), http://ajr.newslink.org/ajr.Ibid., http://ajr.newslink.org/ajr.Steven D. What they have done, however, is to makecertain practices more acceptable to the public so that shows more easilyidentifiable as "news" are also using recreations of events, blurring thedistinction between news and entertainment and perhaps confusing viewerswho think they are seeing a real event when they are not. There was a hope that the public would tire of this fare,but unfortunately, there is always a new story to create excitement oncemore: Actually, there is some evidence that the public's appetite for this genre of live scandal sheet may be waning: The recent Nielsen Media Research ratings sweep found Inside Edition's ratings had slipped 16 percent over the previous year. Reader published a study that same year that examined aweek's worth of stories in that market and that found that stationsroutinely airing public relations footage provided by companies with noacknowledgment that this was where the stories were obtained. Local news shows extended to an hour ormore per day, with more than one broadcast per day, and with an eveningversion that extended to an hour or more by itself. And consider the attention that the stories involving the likes of Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, Joey Buttafuoco, and John Bobbitt received in the recent past.[xxxv]The public showed great interest in these stories, and the concern was thatas the tabloidization of the news spread to other outlets, stories ofgreater importance would be given short shrift in the quest forsensationalism. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York:Longman, 1988), 1.Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse inthe Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 159.Todd Gitlin, Watching Television (New York: Pantheon Books,1986), 6.Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of ElectronicMedia on Social Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press,1985), 83.Ibid., 1 8.Frank N. 1984), 128.Ibid., 128.Les Brown, Television: The Business Behind the Box (New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 61-62.George Comstock, Television in America (Beverly Hills: SDFE,198 ), 23.Brice M. Geraldo rated highest in the following categories: leastpredictable and most surprising, and tackles subjects that the others areafraid to touch. As both Gitlin and Postman find, thepublic is being ill-served by a medium that has always been regarded ashaving an obligation to serve the public and to do so through publicservice, specifically as carried through the news division. He developed the station around local talent for entertainmentshows, but he really wanted the news coverage to be special on this stationas well. Television improved a little when Downey's show was canceled.[xxviii] Many criticized Downey for lowering the level of television, but evenmore blame would be heaped on Geraldo Rivera, perhaps because he achieved amuch higher profile. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 1993.McCartney, James. He had worked at thefledgling DuMont network in New Jersey before Paramount hired him to runKTLA. Theywere suddenly in competition with several 24-hour news outlets and alsofaced a shift in public taste as so-called tabloid shows used fancygraphics, rapid-fire entertainment techniques, and similar approaches tofeed a public appetite for sensation. An analysis of news on television in the early 197 s, looking backover the previous 25 years or so, stated, Economic pressures materially affect the behavior of people in any profit-making or profit-seeking organization. Beebe, and W.G. One result was that local news triedto compete by also being as sensational as possible. Klaus Landsberg was then the station manager. Rivera reports feeling disgraced by the episode untilhe found out that it was the highest-rated nationally syndicated televisionbroadcast in history. Stark, "Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV,"Washington Monthly (June 1, 1997), 38.Ibid., 38-39.----------------------- 25 New York: Penguin Books, 1985.Richman, Alan, "He's Tough, Smart and Honest--Just Ask Him--but Geraldo Rivera Wants Something More: Respect," People Magazine (December 7, 1987), 136-14 .Stark, Steven D. The Alan Burke Show was a New York version broadcast in 1967. Joshua Meyrowitz makes some interesting observations on the audiencefor these programs and finds that many people who would be uncomfortablereading about transvestites, say, or going into a bookstore and asking fora book on the subject are quite comfortable sitting at home and watchingthem on a television show: "Talk show hosts such as Phil Donahue have builttheir careers on this dual response to the same content in differentmedia."[iv] The truth is that if there is anything you would beembarrassed about if you went into a bookstore and asked for a book on thesubject, it will probably show up sooner or later on one of the TV tabloidtalk shows. Jeff Kisseloff offers a historyof KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, a station that began operating experimentally asW6XYZ in 1941 and that went commercial in 1947 with its new call letters ofKTLA. The approach taken by Geraldo inthis and other shows has been dubbed "confrontainment," and critics havelittle doubt that Geraldo wanted to create a situation that would becontroversial and that might lead to some form of confrontation if notoutright violence.[xxxiii] This has not been the only instance when tabloid television hasgenerated controversy by not playing by the supposed rules of television orby bending those rules to suit the moment. Todd Gitlin is another television critic who sees dangers in thesetrends, noting that he and many other critics have noticed that the genresof television are blurring and even collapsing: The news turns to theme songs, coming attractions, rapid-fire cuts; children's shows become extended toy advertisements; one music video segues into what is apparently another--but turns out to be a car commercial.[iii]Gitlin is talking about the blurring of distinctions in all of television,but that blurring seems the most problematic when referring to the blurringbetween news and entertainment. Local news has taken ona tabloid patina with flashy crime stories, police chases, and scandalsreplacing reporting on local and state issues. This was a package supplied by anadvertising agency, and the network had no editorial control. For one thing, the "performers" are rarely beingpaid, with the exception of the news anchors and reporters. . The trend toward tabloid television has escalated within the lastseveral years, and it has taken place on three fronts. In addition, the quiz show scandals of the late195 s in which some contestants were given the answers by over-eagerproducers caused the networks to seek to comply and to show themselves tobe more public-spirited by increasing news budgets and giving moreattention to news broadcasts. However, the networks had to pledge to expand their coverage of public affairs, which had shrunk to virtually nothing beyond the fifteen-minute nightly news shows and the news component of the breakfast shows.[xxii] LOCAL NEWS While the forces operating on network television and network news aresimilar to those at the local level, there are differences, and local newsdeveloped separately from the network variety even as local stationsemulated national methods in some degree. The subject ofthis special, hosted by Geraldo, was devil worship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).Owen, Brice M., J.H. Tabloid is defined not just by the way storiesare presented but by the types of stories seen as being of greatestinterest: Night after night, for instance, during the yearlong O.J. "News Lite." American Journalism Review (October 27, 1998), http://ajr.newslink.org/ajr.Meyrowitz, Joshua, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. The broadcast industry was no exception. Owen, Beebe, and Manning find that the new system is competitive andthat no single network possesses sufficient power with advertisers to"corner the market."[xix] Television has become more and more dependent onratings as a way of proving that there is an audience, and as the taking ofratings has become most sophisticated, demographics has been used to sellspecific age groups and types of consumers to advertisers in a way that wasnever possible before. Brown can thus describe television as follows: American television is a business before it is anything else, and within the broadcast companies the sales function is pre-eminent. --The Washington Post conducted an informal survey of local newscastsin 1993 and found that the percentage of stories involving crime, sex,disaster, accidents, or public fears stood at anywhere from 46 to 74percent, and the survey found the average local newscast obsessed withmurders, serial killers, snakebites, spider bites, tornadoes, mudslides,explosions, and satanic activity. Indeed, many of these showsseem to court that sort of issue and that sort of challenge, and viewersmay be tuning in to see if another fight will erupt or if good taste willonce more be breached. NETWORK NEWS Television news in the early days "was little more than radio newswith the announcer on screen and a map behind him."[xx] TV news at thetime lagged about a half day or more behind printed news. It was more like a horror-movie mob, minus the torches. Anothermanifestation was the so-called "happy talk" format of local televisionnews, an approach which found the news anchors and others on the news teambantering between stories--telling jokes, making personal references, andgenerally placing personality above the news as a way of attracting viewersthrough entertainment rather than good reporting. --A Chicago reporter examined the stories during a "sweeps week" onLos Angeles television, or a week in which ratings are taken, and foundheavily promoted news stories on lesbian nuns, Geraldo Rivera's love life,and sex after 6 (Stark 39-4 ). . Rice (eds.)(Lexington, Maryland: LexingtonBooks, 198 ), 37.Ibid., 37.Ibid., 39.Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate (NewYork: Oxford University Pres, 1978), 46.Jencks, 38.William Francis Boddy, From the "Golden Age" to the "VastWasteland": The Struggles Over Market Power and Dramatic Formatsin 195 s Television (New York University: Ph.D. By bringing these groups together, Geraldo might have beenseeking some accommodation between them, or he might have been trying togenerate sparks. Magid Associates Inc., Attitudes Toward and PerceptionsOf Geraldo (Tribune Entertainment, January 199 ).Frank Wolf, Television Programming for News and Public Affairs(New York: Praeger, 1972), 99.Nicholas Johnson, "In the Matter of Applications by AmericanBroadcasting Companies, Inc. For some, especially at thenetwork level, this duty was seen as part of the cost of doing business.As budgets tightened in the 198 s and 199 s, however, more and more stationmangers wanted their news division to pay for itself and even to make aprofit. ."[v]The popularity of the hosts of these shows cannot be denied. By contrast, Oprah Winfrey rated highest on the followingcategories: the most fun to watch; deals with touchy subjects best; dealswith sex in the most sensitive manner; the most believable; is the fairestand the least biased; and gives information that helps deal with ownpersonal concerns. Over the history of television, most ofthese forms have always existed, but more and more tabloid thinking hastaken over and replaced more solid news reporting. Thecreation of the synchronous satellite in the late 196 s offered newpossibilities, but news divisions strictly rationed its use for budgetaryreasons. Money is what is driving this change,and where news divisions once considered their calling higher than that ofthe entertainment division, the liens between the two have been blurred sothat audience size and profit drives news decisions to a greater degreethan in the past. The shift was not only a response tochanging economic conditions but also to concerns about advertiser control,including questions being raised in Congress about the ways advertisersshaped programs and appealed to viewers. Simpson trial,but there were many others. News had become a victimof the race for ratings, and anything that attracted a larger audience wasseen as a good thing. Frank Stanton at CBS believed the key to asuccessful network would be through control of programming. News or pseudo-news has distinct advantages for television stationsand networks, assuming that such programs can also attain the ratings thatare necessary. Just as local stationsachieved the ability to do much more, they also encountered new competitionwhich reduced the need for them to do as much as they did before. 'superstars,' people whose personal styles are pleasing to large sections of the population. "Hard Times Force 'Tabloid' Shows to Rethink Format." Star Tribune (April 25, 1997), 2 E.Barnouw, Erik, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate. Though ratings for the show were high, Riverawas much criticized for the circus nature of the show and for the hype thatpreceded the opening, made all the more foolish by the fact that there wasnothing to be found. . But the Paris auto crash death of Britain's Princess Diana and her lover Dodi El Fayed at the end of August definitely jump-started these programs anew.[xxxvi] The real problem for tabloid shows may be competition from imitators,leaving the viewing public with growing tabloidization of all newscasts: Syndicated shows also lost some of what made them unique when network news organizations, particularly through their own newsmagazines, began following many of the same stories.[xxxvii]Network news has not been immune and has been accused of capitulating tothe trend and to imitating the world of tabloid television: It's a world that CBS anchor Dan Rather has called "news lite" and CBS veteran Marvin Kalb, now director of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, has compared to the American tabloid newspapers of 15 years ago. Ratings became more important. By the end ofthe first full decade of television broadcasting, however, it was clearthat television was different from radio in a number of respects, and thesystem of advertising shifted from a sponsor-oriented system to one inwhich the networks and stations sold time to advertisers rather than havingadvertisers sponsor specific programs. "Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV." Washington Monthly (June 1, 1997), 38-43.Waters, Harry F., Peter McKillop, Bill Powell, and Janet Huck, "Trash TV," Newsweek (November 14, 1988), 72-78.Wolf, Frank. Many local and network news programs were drawn into this new systemby the O.J. Walter Cronkite started in television doing the local news onWTOP in Washington, then owned and operated by CBS.[xxi] One of the forces driving the development of television news at thenetwork level was the government, which licensed stations and which coulddemand of both networks and local news that a certain amount of attentionbe paid to public affairs. Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books, 198 .Johnson, Nicholas. Some of the shows thatexemplified trash TV have disappeared, such as The Morton Downey Jr. Lightweight cameras useavailable light; portable videotape recorders and trucks with dishes allowcoverage from virtually anywhere; and signals can be received by dishes assmall as three feet across.[xxv] TABLOID TELEVISION The term "tabloid television" has been used in recent years, but theformat is much older. Critics meant bythis that the distinction between news and entertainment was becomingblurred and that certain programs were more interested in sensationalismthan in real news. Steven Stark recently characterized the current situation as follows: Turn on the television set at 5 p.m. Pseudo-news shows replace realnews shows; pseudo-documentaries replace real documentaries; and theshouting of Morton Downey Jr. This was fornetwork news and local news alike, but the perception developed thataudiences wanted more news, advertisers would pay for more news, and the"news hole" each day grew larger. After noting the largenumber of trash TV programs on the air, with a variety of hosts, Newsweekstated: "But as crowded as the genre has become, none of its trashmastersis stirring quite as much furor as the inimitable Rivera."[xxxi] TheVillage Voice called the show on devil worship "an exercise in hysteria,"and The Washington Post called it "dirty-minded television." Newsweeknoted: Now for the genuinely grim news: the special turned out to be the highest-rated two-hour documentary ever presented on network television.[xxxii] An event that brought tabloid television to the notice of millions ofAmericans in a big way occurred on Geraldo's show. Another reason is economic in a different way. The success of the tabloid shows assuredthat they would be imitated first by other tabloid shows and eventually bynews organizations in general as competition has become more and morestiff. Talk showswere once largely entertainment shows (with the exception of interviewshows like Meet the Press), but this began to change with the success of adifferent format popularized by Phil Donahue. ." U.S. Barnes & Company, 198 ), 128.Richard W. Indeed, such shows not only had an audience--they had a largeaudience and continue to have to this day. Tribune Entertainment, January 199 .Mayer, Martin. New York: Continuum, 1996.Boddy, William Francis, From the "Golden Age" to the "Vast Wasteland": The Struggles Over Market Power and Dramatic Formats in 195 s Television. This change also involved a shiftin programming responsibility and control from advertisers to networks andindependent programmers and studios. It is a trend that has been underway for several years, but that has escalated sharply in the last 12 months. This follows the conventional view of all televisionprogramming--the programs are "manufactured" by the networks, independentproducers, individual stations, and station groups; advertiser pay for theprogramming so they can broadcast their messages to the audience; and theviewers consume the product--the programs--and experience the advertising.However, Nicholas Johnson of the FCC pointed out that this analysis wasincorrect and that in truth, the consumer is the product being delivered tothe advertisers, the programs being only a lure: "The program is but thevehicle for delivering viewers--potential purchases of the advertiser'swares."[viii] ADVERTISING Television as a medium was developed by companies that were active innetwork radio, and the television system was patterned after that of radio. More than anything, the Kathy Fiscus tragedy demonstrated television powerful ability to captivate and unite a community around a news story.[xxiii]The station also achieved a coup with a live broadcast of the 1952 atombomb test in Nevada. In a real sense, as Nicholas Johnson said so longago, television now does not sell programs to viewers but viewers toadvertisers, with the programs being only the means to gather those viewerstogether at a specific time. Federal Communications Commission, FCC 66- 1186 and 92762, Docket No. Only 2 yearsago, the light levels needed for a television camera were very high, almostuncomfortable to those in front of the camera. This was seenas a blatant quest for ratings at a time when broadcast television washaving more trouble attracting an audience because of the encroachments ofcable, among other media: Battered by dwindling audience shares and the encroachments of cable and home video, the television industry is fervently embracing a radical survival tactic: anything goes as long as it gets an audience.[xxx]Even the harshest critics of what came to be called "trash TV," however,admitted that it had an audience and that if it did not, it would not be onthe air. Lance. He wanted KTLA to be the station of choice when news broke in LosAngeles, and the opportunity for this to be true occurred in 1947 when afour-year-old child named Kathy Fiscus fell into a large pipe near her homein San Marino. INTRODUCTION Americans today are awash in news from newspapers, publications ofevery variety, books, broadcast television stations, radio stations, andcable, including 24-hour cable new outlets such as CNN, C-Span, and CNNHeadline News. In a city like Los Angeles, this helpsexplain the endless car chases on local freeways, with telecopters hoveringoverhead to capture every moment. Barnouw notes the huge success oftelevision and the power of television advertising as well as the waynetwork executives realized they had been wrong to view television asanother form of radio: Network leaders had long chafed over the degree of control they had yielded, early in broadcasting history, to advertising agencies and sponsors. Pat Weaver ofNBC in 1954 asserted that it was time to take programming control away fromthe agencies. Beverly Hills: SDFE, 198 .DeLuca, Stuart M., Television's Transformation: The Next 25 Years. The first of these was the O.J. New York University: Ph.D. It imitatedthe 195 s show with Mike Wallace, Night Beat, described as "just asconfrontational, but infinitely more intelligent."[xxvi] The persistence of the form is seen in the rise to prominence in 1988-1989 of Morton Downey Jr., whose syndicated The Morton Downey Jr. and european stations could notinterchange materials because their formats were incompatible. New York: Praeger, 1972.-----------------------W. One set ofresearch findings compares the popularity of Geraldo to that of severalother talk show personalities--Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and Sally JessyRaphael. Aside from philosophical questions, it had resulted in schedules that were haphazard and often senseless.[xiii]The federal government was also unhappy with the system for differentreasons: In its famous 1946 Report on Public Service Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees, which came to be known as the 'Blue Book,' the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vigorously asserted its view that advertiser influence was responsible for deficiencies in network program offerings.[xiv] The networks actually started trying to take control from advertisersand agencies as early as 195 . As Meyrowitz writes: There are. Simpson case, for the public seemed unable to get enough ofthat story and all its ramifications, even to the point that the entiretrial was televised. This included the system of sponsorship and advertising. Television Programming for News and Public Affairs. News was long given a special place in televisionand elevated as a necessary duty owed to the public, a view promoted by thegovernment as well as by many journalists. New York: Oxford University Pres, 1978.Bennett, W. Speculation about whatmight be inside was rampant in the days before the broadcast, and theentire thing proved to be something of a fiasco when nothing was found buta few dusty wine bottles. Simpson trial, viewers were exposed to snippets and replays of the day's events in court, lachrymose interviews with friends of Nicole Simpson, and endless appearances of Kato Kaelin of minimal news or any other kind of value. Local television news ratings usedto be largely a matter of bragging rights, but more and more they are seenas a way of attracting advertisers and making a profit. 1984.Brown, Les, Television: The Business Behind the Box. Deciding that he had found a new niche insyndication, Rivera hosted other news specials, the next being AmericanVice: The Doping of a Nation, which would become the fifth highest-ratedsyndicated show in history.[xxix] These news specials were seen as part of a growing trend ontelevision toward the tabloidization of television news. Advertisers also could take on the task ofscheduling as they decided to which network the program would be offered,and by negotiating with the network for the specific time periods in whichit would be heard or shown. Owen, J.H. The organization defined "fluff"as soft news, anchor chatter, teases, and celebrity items and found thatthis takes up about 31 percent of the whole newscast on average. Consider audience research showing the popularity of Geraldo Rivera,whose ratings already show him to be immensely popular. Neil Postman criticizes all of us for allowing ourselves to becomeenamored of entertainment and titillation to the point where we cannotstand to have a rational thought alone, without outside stimulation, formore than a minute or so. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.