k citizens-as-videomakers project instead

emand attention. In one sense it was the ultimate parasite

ideological position which saw broadcasting less as a business and far more as a centralising social force.

Dream

outside the possibilities for most people.

At their worst, the programmes can come to resemble trial by kangaroo court in which the studio audience’s catharsis is gained through the hostile prosecution and judgement of the confessing witness

s of therapy.

choice itself seemed to taken as a testament to freedom, democracy, and the American Way and were, therefore, unquestionable

Oprah’s intention to have one of her guests abused by her audience.

Jolene had explained that she had left her children sleeping at home, unminded for about 20 minutes on five separate occasions, while taking her husband to work because he had no other way getting there and she needed the car that day. What followed was an escalating barrage of accusation where a tidal wave of competing, smug outrage engulfed the audience and Jolene hersel

Dream a nightmare for so many, not only within the USA but throughout the world

one hand, reveal the underside, the betrayal, the failures to deliver of the conventional Dream, and yet, on the other hand, work precisely to recuperate it

What is clear is that cable in America represents one of the consciousness industry’s real triumphs as a majority of Americans now pay twice, through advertisements and subscriptions, primarily to watch television channels they used to pay for only once.

American cable’s most original idea is Court TV, a cheap variant on studio talk whose gavel-to-gavel coverage of the O.J.Simpson trial is credited, together with CNN’s nearly equally obsessive attention, with having increased basic cable’s total 1995 rating by 1.6, a 20 percent hike over the previous year.

This has left the public broadcaster, CBC, peculiarly vulnerable to political attack.

In 1995 HBO still had twice the number of subscribers.

Nevertheless, even before most of these legal decisions, the FCC, which had refused jurisdiction over cable in 1959, began to act to protect its primary clients in the broadcasting industry.

In one sense it was the ultimate parasite, reselling a product, television, that was not only expensive to produce but also protected in law by copyright.

he need for signal enhancement created a viable ancillary business to the business of broadcasting. It grew out of the technical shortcomings of the free-air system, shortcomings which were not just the result of the way the VHF band was deployed but also other problems.

The nemesis of the UK cable industry

I have suggested that bandwidth limitations placed upon the telephone circuit were economic in origin and not primarily the result of technological constraints.

Reagan Administration

the fourth network forged a savvy and cynical path toward a new age in television.

sexism‐laced male perspective,

FOX’s attention to underserved black (and Latino) audiences facilitated its transformation from netlet to network. In Shaded Lives: African‐American Women and Television, which analyzes and contextualizes the televisual representation of black women in historical, industrial and sociopolitical terms, television studies scholar, Beretta Smith‐Shomade frankly asserts, “On the backs of African‐Americans, Fox Broadcasting emerged as the fourth ‘major network’

FOX would be conceived and received. Under Ancier, FOX pitched their niched, narrowcasted, and low cost programming of the late eighties and early nineties to younger demographic than their counterparts at the Big Three.

The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–90), In Living Color (1990–94), and Married with Children (1987–97), a first taste of teen programming with 21 Jump Street (1987–91)

“Made For Television”

Murdoch’s commitment to building a massive global conglomerate was so strong he renounced his Australian citizenship to become an American in order to aggressively acquire US media companies, skirting antitrust policies and broadcast regulations. For example, Murdoch took steps to manipulate the legal provisions for minority ownership, which had increased mightily as a result of a tax credit instituted by President Richard Nixon in 1969; in what seemed like a move in support of minority ownership in 1994, Murdoch invested $20 million into the minority‐owned Black Star Communications. However, scholar and journalist Krystal Brent Zook finds a different motivation for Murdoch in her book, Color By FOX: the FOX Network and the Revolution in Black Television, which explores the relationship between the rise of the fourth network and the black‐cast programming boom of the 1990s: “No act of goodwill, this was a move designed to circumvent FCC ownership limits”

“the legislation rewrote the basic law that governs communications policy from top to bottom”

Reflecting the spread of global neoliberalism, opponents of government oversight argued that broadcast station licensees were not “public trustees” of the airwaves. They were, rather, as much a part of the free market as any other commercial business. In private boardrooms and Congressional hearings, deregulatory proponents claimed that consumers would be better served by a less regulated media industry where competition, they promised, would flourish. In his position as head of the FCC, Fowler believed firmly in the benefits of competition in the marketplace.

During the netlet years, the alchemy that created FOX’s brand identity included equal parts cynical pragmatism, creative audacity, and savvy foresight about what the new multi‐channel reality meant for the business of television.

televisual products of the time

Powerful forces are eroding the networks

This was a period in which an unprecedented emergence of new portrayals of female characters and women’s work appeared in prime‐time as the Big Three both responded to demographic transformations and increasingly sought “prime” rather than necessarily “mass” viewership.

But, ideally, the Big Three during the classic era provided a more “shared” arena because of the need to appeal to a broad and mass audience, and given that each network was “profoundly influenced by the racial and cultural politics of the period,” they could function as more of “a visible and polemical site of cultural debate” than any other media form (Gray 1995: 77).

“balanced diet” of programming on a day‐to‐day and week‐to‐week basis

ABC’s rebranding and subsequent economic gains in this period were due largely to its savvy expansion of sports programming from the late 1960s onward, which funded expansion of the net- work’s news division and underwrote the revamping of its prime‐time offerings (Johnson 2013). The cornerstone of ABC’s sporting success was the cultural phenomenon that was Monday Night Football (1970–2005 on

other approaches to mass media from the tradition of Frankfurt School scholars in exile warned of the standardization of culture and thought that might dull critical awareness and the diversity of voices essential for democratic functioning

understood, historicized, and theorized as a social institution.

In an era characterized by the Cold War, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, government and industry officials, scholars and critics, and the public alike repeatedly questioned the networks’ commitments to balancing mass‐audience entertainment appeals and “consensus” programming with more challenging, riskier “quality” and “enlightened” program address

Writers Guild of America.

Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly

This language is quite common now, as staff writers on television series often talk about the need for consistency of voice from episode to episode. Writers even talk about needing the skill of a mimic, as they learn to write like the head writer. As both a writer and a producer, Oppenheimer had the vision, the skill, and the authority to create regularity in the series from episode to episode, season to season.

he creator provides the original story, building a storyworld that an ensemble cast inhabits, and often has a continuing

. The job demands the skills of a visionary: someone who can hold the entire narrative of the series in their head; who is the gatekeeper of language, tone, and aesthetics on the set and be- hind the scenes; who knows where the series has been and a sense, if not a plan, for its future.

I Love Lucy was technically, culturally, industrially, and aesthetically ground-breaking; its significance as a single series within the history of the medium is virtually without rival.

(CBS, 1951–1957)

television airwaves into homes across the countr

In manyways the series highlighted how collaborative the new medium could be.

rnaz loved theattention pointed toward him as the series shot up in the ratings, and he gavehimself an executive producer credit even though his role—at least in the earlyyears of the series—was much more in line with actor and studio head.

he job demands the skillsof a visionary: someone who can hold the entire narrative of the series in theirhead; who is the gatekeeper of language, tone, and aesthetics on the set and be-hind the scenes; who knows where the series has been and a sense, if not a plan,for its future.

I Love Lucy was technically, culturally, industrially, and aesthetically ground-breaking; its significance as a single series within the history of the medium isvirtually without rival.

CBS, 1951–195

n 1953, Lucille Ball made history by giving birth to two boys in one night,3,000 miles apart. One, Desiderio Arnaz, arrived by Caesarean section in LosAngeles; the other, Little Ricky Ricardo, was the first child to arrive via tele-vision airwaves into homes across the country from a fictional New York. B