Television in The United States

9/4/2019 Television in the United States -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Television in the United States

Television in the United States, the body of
television programming created and broadcast in TABLE OF CONTENTS
the United States. American TV programs, like
Introduction
American popular culture in general in the 20th
and early 21st centuries, have spread far beyond Overview
the boundaries of the United States and have had The Golden Age: 1948–59
a pervasive in uence on global popular culture. The year of transition: 1959
The 1960s
Overview
The late 1960s and early ’70s: the
relevance movement
Although television was rst regarded by many as
“radio with pictures,” public reaction to the arrival The late 1970s: the new escapism
of TV was strikingly different from that afforded The 1980s: television redefined
the advent of radio. Radio in its early days was The 1990s: the loss of shared experience
perceived as a technological wonder rather than a
The 21st century
medium of cultural signi cance. The public
quickly adjusted to radio broadcasting and either
enjoyed its many programs or turned them off.
Television, however, prompted a tendency to criticize and evaluate rather than a simple on-
off response.
One aspect of early television that can never be recaptured is the combined sense of
astonishment and glamour that greeted the medium during its infancy. At the midpoint of
the 20th century, the public was properly agog about being able to see and hear actual
events that were happening across town or hundreds of miles away. Relatively few people
had sets in their homes, but popular fascination with TV was so pronounced that crowds
would gather on the sidewalks in front of stores that displayed a working television set or
two. The same thing happened in the typical tavern, where a set behind the bar virtually
guaranteed a full house. Sports events that might attract a crowd of 30,000 or 40,000
suddenly, with the addition of TV cameras, had audiences numbering in the millions. By the
end of television’s rst decade, it was widely believed to have greater in uence on American
culture than parents, schools, churches, and government—institutions that had been until
then the dominant in uences on popular conduct. All were superseded by this one cultural
juggernaut.
The 1950s was a time of remarkable achievement in television, but this was not the case for
the entire medium. American viewers old enough to remember TV in the ’50s may fondly
https://www.britannica.com/print/article/1513870 1/58
recall the shows of Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Lucille Ball, but such high-
quality programs were the exception; most of television during its formative years could be
aptly described, as it was by one Broadway playwright, as “amateurs playing at home
movies.” The underlying problem was not a shortage of talented writers, producers, and
performers; there were plenty, but they were already busily involved on the Broadway stage
and in vaudeville, radio, and motion pictures. Consequently, television drew chie y on a
talent pool of individuals who had not achieved success in the more popular media and on
the young and inexperienced who were years from reaching their potential. Nevertheless,
the new medium ultimately proved so fascinating a technical novelty that in the early stages
of its development the quality of its content seemed almost not to matter.
Fortunately, the dearth of talent was short-lived. Although it would take at least another
decade before areas such as news and sports coverage approached their potential, more
than enough excellence in the categories of comedy and drama emerged in the 1950s to
deserve the attention of discriminating viewers. They are the most fondly remembered of the
Golden Age genres for both emotional and intellectual reasons. Live TV drama was, in
essence, the legitimate theatre’s contribution to the new medium; such shows were
regarded as “prestige” events and were afforded respect accordingly. The comedies of the
era are remembered for the same reason that comedy itself endures: human suffering and
the ever-elusive pursuit of happiness render laughter a necessary palliative, and people
therefore have a particular fondness for those who amuse them.
Steve Allen
The Golden Age: 1948–59
Getting started
Until the fall of 1948, regularly scheduled programming on the four networks—the American
Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS; later CBS
Corporation), the National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), and the DuMont Television Network,
which folded in 1955—was scarce. On some evenings, a network might not offer any
programs at all, and it was rare for any network to broadcast a full complement of shows
during the entire period that became known as prime time (8–11 PM, Eastern Standard Time).
Sales of television sets were low, so, even if programs had been available, their potential
audience was limited. To encourage sales, daytime sports broadcasts were scheduled on
weekends in an effort to lure heads of households to purchase sets they saw demonstrated
in local appliance stores and taverns—the venues where most TV viewing in America took
place before 1948.
Although a television set cost about $400—a substantial sum at the time—TV was soon
“catching on like a case of high-toned scarlet fever,”
according to a March 1948 edition of Newsweek
magazine. By autumn of that year, most of the evening
schedules on all four networks had been lled, and sets
began appearing in more and more living rooms, a
phenomenon many credited to comedian Milton Berle.
Berle was the star of TV’s rst hit show, The Texaco Star
Theatre (NBC, 1948–53), a comedy-variety show that
quickly became the most popular program at that point
in television’s very short history. When the series
debuted, fewer than 2 percent of American households
had a television set; when Berle left the air in 1956 (after
starring in his subsequent NBC series The Buick-Berle
Show [1953–55] and The Milton Berle Show [1955–56]), TV
Berle, Milton
was in 70 percent of the country’s homes, and Berle had
Milton Berle.
acquired the nickname “Mr. Television.”
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Television was still in its experimental stage in 1948, and

radio remained the number one broadcast medium in terms of pro ts, audience size, and
respectability. Most of the big stars of radio—Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and the team of George
Burns and Gracie Allen, for example—were at rst reluctant to risk their substantial careers
on an upstart medium like television. Berle, on the other hand, had not had much success on
the radio and had little to lose by trying his luck with TV. The reluctant stars would, of course,
soon follow his lead.
Early genres
As more television sets began to be sold, a question arose: what sort of programming could
ll the networks’ airtime? Because television, like motion pictures, was characterized by
moving images and synchronized sound, one natural style to emulate was that of Hollywood
lms. But movies were expensive, time-consuming productions that required multiple sets
and locations. Not yet turning a pro t with their TV divisions, the broadcast networks (still
dominated by their radio components) could not afford to make little movies for nightly
broadcast. Furthermore, until the mid-1950s, Hollywood studios wanted little to do with this
threatening new medium. Radio provided another possible programming model. Many early
TV shows were in fact based on radio programs, some of which were even simulcast for years
on both media. In many cases, however, images that could be implied with sound on radio
were impossible to produce cheaply for cameras. Early television broadcasters, therefore,
searched for events that could be shot easily and

inexpensively. Because videotape did not come into
widespread use until the1960s, very early programmers
relied on live transmissions of musical performances,
sporting events, sermons, and even educational lectures to
ll their limited schedules.
Variety shows
After a period of experimentation, the immediacy of live

television led programmers to turn to the theatre, especially
vaudeville. Before the advent of radio and sound movies,
vaudeville had been the most popular of the performing
arts in the United States. Traveling shows circulated
through cities and towns, providing live entertainment
George Burns and Gracie Allen, 1958. consisting of an emcee and a variety of acts, including
CBS Television musicians, comics, dancers, jugglers, and animals. Many
former vaudevillians had become the stars of radio variety
shows, and the vaudeville format promised to be even more amenable to television.
Vaudeville-inspired variety shows could be shot live with a minimum of inexpensive sets, and
there was still a signi cant pool of vaudeville-trained performers eager to work again.
By the 1949–50 season, the three highest-rated television programs were variety shows: The
Texaco Star Theatre (NBC, 1948–53), Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town (CBS, 1948–71; renamed
The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955), and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (CBS, 1948–58). Within a
few years, entertainers such as Jackie Gleason, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Red Skelton, and
George Gobel would headline their own popular variety series. Common elements to most
such shows included an emcee, a live audience, a curtain, and a steady stream of guests
ranging from recording stars to comedians to classical musicians.
The variety format allowed for a wide range of styles. In contrast to the raucous pie-in-the-
face antics of shows such as The Texaco Star Theatre, for example, was Your Show of Shows
(NBC, 1950–54), an urbane comedy-variety program produced by Broadway legend Max
Liebman and starring an ensemble of versatile character actor-comics that included Sid
Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. A variety of acts punctuated this 90-
minute program, including excerpts from operas and ballets, but it is most remembered for
its superbly written and acted comedy sketches. Many of the cast members went on to star
in another variety show, Caesar’s Hour (NBC, 1954–57), which included among its writing staff
future lm directors Woody Allen and Mel Brooks as well as playwright Neil Simon.
Anthology series
In addition to vaudeville, the traditional stage play was also a natural genre for early television
adaptation. Most televised plays took the form of “anthology dramas,” which were weekly
series that presented original and adapted plays under a single umbrella title. Tending to be
more cerebral than the comedy-variety shows, these programs also had a very prominent
place in network schedules throughout the 1950s. The anthology dramas are remembered
fondly by critics and cognoscenti who value the live theatre over contemporary television
offerings; they are also the shows most often referred to in discussions of the “Golden Age” of
television. Indeed, it was during this period that prime-time network television offered series
with lofty-sounding titles such as The Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (ABC, 1950–52). Dramatic
adaptations of classic plays and literature were commonplace: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering
Heights, for example, was staged by network television many times during the period
between 1948 and 1960, as were the plays of William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and George
Bernard Shaw.
Some acclaimed original dramas were also written and produced for weekly anthology
series. Young writers such as Gore Vidal, Paddy Chayefsky, and Rod Serling provided several
highly regarded teleplays for the network series, many of which are best remembered,
however, through their motion-picture remakes. For example, Marty (1955), a movie that won
Academy Awards for best picture, best actor, best director, and best screenplay, was based
on a 1953 episode of The Goodyear TV Playhouse (NBC, 1951–60). This episode, written by
Chayefsky, is often cited as perhaps the nest single program of the Golden Age. Other well-
regarded anthology series of the time included Kraft Television Theatre (NBC/ABC, 1947–58),
Studio One (CBS, 1948–58), U.S. Steel Hour (ABC/CBS, 1953–63), and Playhouse 90 (CBS, 1956–
61).
Developing genres
Although there was a great deal of such ne programming during this period, it should be
remembered that it was not the norm: much of what was on television was of average
quality at best, and some of it was bad by nearly any standard. Furthermore, the Golden Age
was not all live theatrical variety shows and anthology dramas. The prototypes of successful
but less-acclaimed genres, most borrowed from radio, began showing up on the air almost
from the start. Early lmed westerns such as Hopalong Cassidy (NBC, 1949–51; syndicated,
1952–54) and The Lone Ranger (ABC, 1949–57), crime shows such as Martin Kane, Private Eye
(NBC, 1949–54) and Man Against Crime (CBS/DuMont/NBC, 1949–56), and game shows such
as Stop the Music (ABC, 1949–56) and Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life (NBC, 1950–61) were
all represented in the top 25 highest-rated shows of the 1950–51 season.
Sitcoms
Soon to emerge, however, was what would become the

staple genre of American television: the situation
comedy, or “sitcom.” The sitcom was a 30-minute format
featuring a continuing cast of characters that appeared
in the same setting week after week. Audience laughter
(either live or by way of an added “laugh track”) usually
featured prominently in these shows, most of which
were built around families. The situation comedy had
been an enormously popular program type on radio, but
it had a comparatively slow start on TV. Some of the most
popular early sitcoms included Mama (CBS, 1949–57),
The Aldrich Family (NBC, 1949–53), The Goldbergs
Jay Silverheels (left) and Clayton Moore as
(CBS/NBC/DuMont, 1949–56), Amos ’n’ Andy (CBS, 1951–
Tonto and the Lone Ranger, respectively,
1951.
53), and The Life of Riley (NBC, 1949–50 and 1953–58). (It is
AP noteworthy that these last three shows featured—if not
always respectfully—Jewish, African American, and
lower-income characters, respectively. These groups would see little representation in the
sitcom again until the 1970s.)
The variety show itself often showed evolutionary

tendencies toward the sitcom. Some of the recurring
sketches on Your Show of Shows, such as “The
Hickenloopers,” which featured Caesar and Coca as
bickering spouses, were really little domestic sitcoms
lodged into a variety show. The Honeymooners (CBS,
1955–56), one of the most beloved sitcoms in TV history,
began in 1951 as a sketch within Cavalcade of Stars
The Honeymooners (DuMont, 1949–52), and it then became a recurring
(From left to right) Jackie Gleason, Audrey segment of The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS, 1952–55;
Meadows, Art Carney, and Joyce Randolph 1957–59; and 1964–70). The George Burns and Gracie
in The Honeymooners.
Allen Show (CBS, 1950–58) had one foot planted rmly in
Everett Collection
both the variety and sitcom genres. Like a variety show, it
had a curtain, direct addresses to the audience, and
guest stars. Like a sitcom, the principal set was a living room, the plotlines were standard-
issue situation comedy, and it did not include jugglers, ballerinas, and other variety acts.
In October 1951 the debut of the sitcom I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–57), starring the husband-wife
team of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, was the beginning of a revolution in American television.
The show established new standards for TV programming: it was shot on lm rather than
broadcast live; it was produced in Hollywood rather than New York; and it followed the style
of the episodic series rather than that of the anthology drama or the variety show. The
extraordinary popularity of the show guaranteed that these new standards would be
imitated by others. I Love Lucy was the most-watched series on television for four of its six
seasons on the air, and it never fell below third place in the annual Nielsen ratings. If Milton
Berle’s The Texaco Star Theatre had been TV’s rst big hit, I Love Lucy was the rst bona de
blockbuster.
The freeze
Although most programming at the time came from the

networks, it had to be broadcast from a local af liate.
Overlapping signals among some nearby stations and a
peak period in the interference-creating sunspot cycle
caused near chaos in some areas of the country in the
earliest days of television. In September 1948 the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), under its chairman
Wayne Coy, elected to institute a freeze on the licensing
of new stations in order to regroup and investigate the
problem of station allocation and other regulatory issues.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The freeze was supposed to last a few months, but it was
Photofest not lifted until April 1952.
During the freeze large cities such as New York City and Los Angeles could accommodate
the growing interest in and appetite for television with no problem, since these locales
already had several stations in full operation. Many other cities around the country, however,
had only one station, and some cities, both large and small, had none at all. When the freeze
was nally lifted in 1952, the steadily building desire for television from those who had not yet
been able to receive it was satis ed by the swift construction of new stations. Sometime
during the 1953–54 season, the percentage of U.S. households with television sets passed the
50 percent mark for the rst time. Television was truly becoming a mass medium, and its
programming was starting to re ect it.
News and politics
The lifting of the freeze and the popularity of shows such as I Love Lucy helped establish
television as the dominant form of American entertainment. In addition, the presidential
election campaign of 1952 suggested that TV might also become the dominant format of
political discourse. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953 was the rst to be
carried by coast-to-coast live television, and the 1952 presidential campaign had been the
rst to be battled out via the idiom of the television commercial.
The political commercial
Some optimists in the early 1950s saw television as a potentially powerful force in achieving
the Jeffersonian ideal of an informed electorate. The medium held the possibility of
educating the entire voting population on the candidates’ stance on the issues of the day.
Citizens who might never have the chance to listen to a whistle-stop speech or have their
hands shaken by a presidential candidate now had the technology to see and hear those
candidates in the comfort of their own homes. But the fast-paced, entertainment-oriented,
commercially sponsored nature of broadcasting was already too entrenched to allow political
candidates to turn the medium into a forum for civics lessons every time an election rolled
around. Political-advertising consultants quickly decided that complex issues were going to
be dif cult to communicate on a medium already known as a source of entertainment.
Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign commercials set a tone and style that still prevails today. The
candidate was packaged and sold on television in the same style that other products were
being advertised. The most memorable commercial of that election season featured a group
of elephants and donkeys, animated by the Disney studios, singing and dancing to a tune
written by Irving Berlin, “I Like Ike.” The advertisement contained virtually no information, but
it created a mood that t perfectly with the style of television and, it seemed, with the mood
of the public. Eisenhower won the election handily against Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who
would signi cantly intensify his own TV campaign four years later when he ran against
Eisenhower for a second time.
Nixon’s “Checkers” speech
Television’s political power proved itself in other ways in 1952. After vice presidential
candidate Richard Nixon was accused of having a secret trust fund for his campaign, his
presence on the Republican ticket became a serious threat to Eisenhower’s chances of
victory. Nixon took his case to the American people in a nationally televised speech, for which
his party bought time in the slot following the popular The Texaco Star Theatre. The choice of
time slot and the speech itself exhibited a stunning level of acumen regarding the power
and workings of television. Nixon brought his wife onto the stage to remind the audience
that he was an upstanding family man and then neatly disposed of the campaign-fund issue.
As the speech was winding down, Nixon confessed to yet another “crime” (in effect
demonstrating his honesty and integrity) but announced that he was going to stand rm on
his decision to keep the questionable contribution he was about to disclose. It seemed the
Nixons had been given a gift that, as Nixon explained, had never been reported:
You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he had sent
all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the six-
year-old—named it Checkers. And you know the kids, like all kids, love that dog,
and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it,
we’re going to keep it.
The speech was a success, and it was clear that Nixon had learned the extraordinary ability of
television as an instrument of “spin control,” long before that term for manipulating public
opinion was in circulation. The intimacy of TV and its ability to reach such a huge audience
was clearly going to change the rhetoric of politics in the United States forever.
The red scare
One of the issues of the 1952 election was the fear of the spread of communism. Maoists had
taken over mainland China in 1949, the same year the Soviets detonated their rst atomic
bomb, and in 1950 former U.S. State Department of cial Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury
for having denied being a Russian agent when questioned by the House Committee on Un-
American Activities. This committee, rst established in 1938, was resurrected during this
period to investigate people suspected of posing a threat to national security, and
spectacular public hearings were held that added to the general state of paranoia. The
entertainment industry was especially vulnerable to investigative efforts because the
exposure of well-known persons was of great interest to the press and because many feared
that the large audiences commanded by entertainers might make the consequences of their
political intentions all the more insidious.
The paranoia fostered by the anticommunist movement became known as the “red scare.” It
affected television differently from the way it had affected the movie industry. Because TV
was nanced by advertising dollars, anticommunist groups could get quick results by
threatening to organize boycotts of the goods produced by the sponsor of a show that
employed a “blacklisted” individual, whether a performer or a member of the production
staff. Afraid of having their products associated with anything “un-American,” sponsors
would often respond by either ring the suspect from the show they were producing or, if
they were sponsoring a show produced by the network, asking the network to do so.
As early as 1947, three ex-FBI agents began publishing Counterattack: The Newsletter of
Facts on Communism, which gathered the names of employees in the broadcasting
industry who had appeared in publications, at rallies, or on petitions of a “leftist” nature. The
publishers sent Counterattack to television executives and sponsors and called for those
listed to be red immediately and treated as traitors. By the 1949–50 season, Ed Sullivan, host
of the very popular Toast of the Town, was using Counterattack to determine whether he
would clear a guest for an appearance on his show. In June 1950 the publishers of
Counterattack issued a compact user-friendly guide that listed 151 entertainment industry
employees whom they suspected of communist activities. The pamphlet, Red Channels: The
Report of Communist In uence in Radio and Television, included many well-known writers
(Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker, Arthur Miller), directors (Elia Kazan, Edward Dmytryk,
Orson Welles), actors (Edward G. Robinson, Burgess Meredith, Ruth Gordon), composers
(Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland), and singers (Lena Horne, Pete Seeger). Decision makers
at advertising agencies and networks read the report, which caused the casts and staff of
several shows to be changed and which destroyed several careers.
One owner of a chain of supermarkets threatened to condemn—by placing a sign on

product displays—any companies that supported programs with employees whose names
had appeared in the Counterattack publications. Networks, advertising agencies, and
sponsors all became concerned about the negative effect these and other tactics might have
on their businesses. The networks began to make efforts to stop the problem at its source,
hiring special employees to investigate and approve each potential writer, director, actor, or
anyone else who was an applicant for a position.
Responding to McCarthy
Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, made anticommunism his issue and
became the “star” of the anticommunist frenzy. He made spectacular accusations in public,
claiming at one point that a spy ring of “card-carrying communists” was operating in the
State Department with the full knowledge of the secretary of state. McCarthyism became a
watchword of the times, referring to the blacklisting, guilt-by-inference, and harassment
tactics that the senator used. Although McCarthy used the media to disseminate his beliefs,
it was also the media that accelerated his downfall.
Edward R. Murrow had established his reputation

broadcasting radio news reports from besieged London
during World War II. In 1951 he and his partner, Fred W.
Friendly, began coproducing a television news series, See
It Now (CBS, 1951–58). Murrow also hosted the show,
presenting in-depth reports of current news, and in 1953
he and Friendly turned their attentions to
anticommunism. On Oct. 20, 1953, they broadcast a story
McCarthy, Joseph; Red Scare on Lieut. Milo Radulovich, who had been dismissed from
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (covering the U.S. Air Force because his father and sister had been
microphones) during an investigation into
accused of being communist sympathizers. CBS refused
communist infiltration of the government.
Byron Rollins/AP to advertise the upcoming episode, which Murrow and
Friendly promoted by purchasing their own ad in The
New York Times. Later in the same season, the pair took on McCarthy himself in one of the
most notorious news broadcasts in television history. The entire March 9, 1954, episode of the
program addressed McCarthy’s recent activities, mostly as seen and heard through lm and
audio clips of his speeches. Stringing together McCarthy’s own words, the show exposed him
as a liar, a hypocrite, and a bully.
Although public opinion about McCarthy did not

completely change overnight, the broadcast was the
beginning of the end for the senator. The following
month, on April 22, hearings began regarding McCarthy’s
accusations of subversive activity in the army. McCarthy’s
charges, which were mostly fabricated, did not hold up to
close scrutiny, and the Senate voted to condemn his
actions. The ABC network, still without a daytime
schedule of programming, was the only network to carry
the “Army-McCarthy” hearings in full. The ratings were
surprisingly high, and McCarthy’s appearance and
mannerisms—seen in the intimate closeups made
possible by television—turned most viewers against the
Edward R. Murrow, 1954
senator.
UPI—Bettmann/Corbis
The late Golden Age
By the mid-1950s, television programming was in a transitional state. In the early part of the
decade, most television programming was broadcast live from New York City and tended to
be based in the theatrical traditions of that city. Within a few years, however, most of
entertainment TV’s signature genres—situation comedies, westerns, soap operas,
adventures, quiz shows, and police and medical dramas—had been introduced and were
spreading across the network schedules. Much of this change had to do with the fact that
the centre of the television production industry was moving to the Los Angeles area, and
programming was transforming accordingly: the live theatrical style was giving way to shows
recorded on lm in the traditions of Hollywood.
The major Hollywood studios, all of which had originally isolated themselves from the
competitive threat of television, were nally entering the TV production business. Walt
Disney’s lm studio began supplying programming to ABC in 1954, and Warner Bros.
followed the next year. Independent Los Angeles production companies such as Desilu,
which began producing I Love Lucy in 1951, had started supplying programs on lm even
earlier. Whereas 80 percent of network television was broadcast live in 1953, by 1960 that
number was down to 36 percent. (By the end of the 1960s, the only programs that continued
to be broadcast live on a regular basis were news and sports shows, along with a few of the
soap operas.) Many of the live programs were replaced by lmed westerns and adventures,
genres that the major studios were well equipped to produce. They had been making
western movies for decades and had an ample supply of costumes, sets, props, and cowboy
actors. Filmed TV shows proved at least as popular as their live counterparts, and, unlike live
programs, they could generate income inde nitely through the sale of rerun rights.
The changing nature of the TV audience also had an impact on programming throughout
the 1950s. The price of a TV set was the equivalent of several weeks’ salary for the average
worker in 1950, and most of the audience consisted of urban Northeasterners who lived
within reception range of the major stations. The programming of the time re ected this
demographic reality. This would change throughout the ’50s, however, as TV sets became
less expensive and the opening of hundreds of new stations across the country after the
removal of the freeze made television broadcasts available to the entire country. In 1950 only
9 percent of American households had televisions; by 1959 that gure had increased to 85.9
percent. The nature of programming would re ect the perceived tastes of this ever-growing
and diversifying audience.
The hugely popular western series Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–75) proved to be, for the remainder
of the century at least, the longest-running ctional series on American prime-time
television. One reason for its success was its ability to adapt throughout the years to the
country’s changing values and cultural styles by using its western setting as a springboard
for episodes on serious social issues such as rape, civil disobedience, and civil rights. This
attention to contemporary politics made the show singular among 1950s prime-time
programs. Indeed, with a few exceptions, entertainment television during this period tended
to present action-packed dramas or utopian comedies that made little or no reference to
contemporary issues. Among the more emblematic series of the mid- to late 1950s was the
suburban family sitcom, which presented traditional happy families in pristine suburban
environments. Father Knows Best (CBS/NBC, 1954–62) was the most popular at the time, but
Leave It to Beaver (CBS/ABC, 1957–63), because of its wide availability and popularity in
syndicated reruns, has since emerged as the quintessential 1950s suburban sitcom.
The network run of Leave It to Beaver coincided almost exactly with a distinct and
dangerous era of American history. The series debuted on Oct. 4, 1957, the same day the
Soviet Union announced that it had rocketed into space Sputnik I, the rst man-made object
to orbit the Earth. The show’s nal broadcast was on

Sept. 12, 1963, just two months before the assassination of
U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. During the run of Leave It to
Beaver, the world witnessed the space race, the threat of
nuclear war, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s promise
to “bury” the United States, increasing American
involvement in the Vietnam War, and the Bay of Pigs
invasion and Cuban missile crisis.
Ken Curtis (left) in the role of Festus Hagen

and James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon in
Leave It to Beaver did not acknowledge any of these
a scene from the television western series events. It was, of course, a family comedy and not a
Gunsmoke. political drama; however, the Cleavers—father Ward,
© Columbia Broadcasting System
mother June, and sons Beaver and Wally—seemed to
exist in a world that looked and sounded contemporary
but that was free of serious danger. As an art form consumed in the intimate space of the
home, often during the evening hours after work, entertainment television became a
provider of cultural anesthesia for a nervous country, a role it would continue to play
throughout the next decade.
The year of transition: 1959

As noted above, the period that ran roughly between
1948 and 1959 is referred to by many historians and
scholars of the medium as the “Golden Age” of television.
As TV became established as the country’s premier mass
medium, however, network executives began operating
under a philosophy known much later as “least-
objectionable programming.” This philosophy assumed
that, in a media environment with only three networks,
people would watch not necessarily what they liked but
what they found unobjectionable. Under these
(Clockwise from far left) Jerry Mathers, circumstances, live theatrical presentations gave way to
Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley, and other genres. The resulting decline in quality, coupled
Tony Dow in a scene from the television with a series of scandals, brought about an end to the
series Leave It to Beaver.
Golden Age.
© American Broadcasting Company
In 1959 two key events underlined the demise of

television’s Golden Age. The rst was the quiz show scandal, which reached its apex that year.
The quiz show, which awarded large cash prizes to contestants who answered questions
posed to them by a host, had become a dominant program type on prime-time TV by 1955. In
the fall of 1956 the networks aired 16 evening quiz shows, 6 of which were among the 30
highest-rated shows of the season. By 1958, however, widespread allegations were circulating
that many of these shows, in order to maintain dramatic tension, had been xed—that
contestants were told the answers before appearing on the air. Charles Van Doren, an
instructor at Columbia University and the scion of a family of notable writers and academics,
was the most beloved and well-known of the big money winners. He remained in the public
eye after his multiple appearances on the quiz show Twenty-One (NBC, 1956–58) by, among
other things, parlaying his newfound celebrity into a guest host job on the popular NBC
morning show Today (begun 1952). Van Doren consistently denied any involvement in the
scandal until Nov. 2, 1959, when, after being subpoenaed by a congressional committee
investigating the matter, he confessed that he too had been given answers to questions
before each appearance on Twenty-One. (His story was retold in the motion picture Quiz
Show [1994].) Shortly thereafter, the widespread practice of scripting the outcomes of quiz
shows became common public knowledge. The quiz show scandal had several important
consequences, not the least of which was the serious loss of faith in television that was
experienced by intellectuals, civic leaders, and opinion makers. If TV still had a lingering
reputation as a modern technology that could take the postwar United States into a utopian
new age, this reputation ended with the quiz show scandal.
The second event of 1959 was the appearance of The

Untouchables (ABC, 1959–63), a series about organized
crime activity in Prohibition-era Chicago. Although the
series had only a casual relationship to actual events, this
lm noir-in uenced historical drama is now considered a
minor classic. However, the frequent machine-gun re
and pre-Miranda warning speakeasy raids that
characterized the show contributed to the protests of the
Host Jack Barry standing at the podium depiction of violent acts that were becoming
while contestant Charles Van Doren (right)
increasingly common among parents’ groups, educators,
ponders a question during a broadcast of
the television quiz show Twenty-One.
and other cultural watchdogs. The Untouchables
NBC Television—Hulton Archive/Getty became the focal point for this protest. As with other
Images popular art forms, including vaudeville, jazz, and comic
books, TV was identi ed by many as a major cultural
toxin. Arguments against violence on TV that were used during the run of The Untouchables
continue to this day against contemporary targets.
In its early years, the startlingly modern new technology of television seemed to hold much
promise. Many believed that the democratic process could be greatly assisted by massive
“town meetings of the air,” in which political leaders and

candidates could talk directly to the entire nation; the
potential for educational children’s programming
seemed limitless; and even African Americans saw
themselves as the potential bene ciaries of this new
cultural phenomenon, as re ected in an article in Ebony
magazine in 1950, which predicted that television would
be “free of racial barriers” that had characterized earlier
mass media. By 1959, however, the utopian promises of
television, like those of so many 20th-century
technologies, remained for the most part unful lled.
Political candidates were sold in 30-second sound bites;
educational TV had been relegated mostly to
underfunded and weak UHF (ultrahigh frequency)
Robert Stack in the role of Eliot Ness in a
stations; and African Americans were initially
scene from the television series The
represented mainly by the un attering stereotypical
Untouchables.
© American Broadcasting Company characters of Amos ’n’ Andy (before they nearly
disappeared from TV for more than a decade).
Antitelevision sentiment emerged in earnest at the turn of the decade, and, in many ways, it
has never abated.
The 1960s
In spite of changing attitudes toward the medium, by 1960 there was no question that
television was the dominant mass medium in the United States. That year, average daily
household radio usage had dropped to less than two hours; TV viewing, on the other hand,
had climbed to more than ve hours per day and would continue to increase annually.
Between 1960 and 1965, the average number of daily viewing hours went up 23 minutes per
TV household, the biggest jump in any ve-year period since 1950. At the movie theatres,
weekly attendance plunged from 44 million in 1965 to 17.5 million by the end of the decade.
The Kennedy-Nixon debates
On Sept. 26, 1960, a debate between the two major candidates for the presidency of the
United States was presented on television for the rst time. CBS produced the debate, under
the direction of Don Hewitt, who would go on to be the executive producer of 60 Minutes
(begun 1968). A total of four debates between the Democratic candidate, Sen. John F.
Kennedy, and the Republican candidate, Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon, were simulcast on all
three networks, and production responsibilities were rotated among them. The rst debate,
though, was the most in uential and the most watched, reaching a then-record audience
estimated to be about 70 million. That important political issues could be discussed by the
candidates for the country’s highest of ce and made effortlessly accessible to the nearly 90
percent of American homes that had televisions by 1960 demonstrated television’s ability to
play an important civic role in American life. Broadcast without commercials, this long-form
debate suggested that television could assist the democratic process beyond the airing of
30-second commercials; it promised estimable uses for the new medium.
Broadcasting the Kennedy-Nixon debates was not the only attempt by networks to improve
their scandal-tarnished reputations. All three networks also introduced documentary series
in 1959 and 1960 that were designed to provide in-depth reporting on serious subjects
important to the nation. CBS Reports (begun 1959 and irregularly scheduled) was the most
celebrated. In 1960 Edward R. Murrow, the respected pioneer of broadcast journalism, was
the chief correspondent on Harvest of Shame, a CBS Reports documentary about the plight
of migrant farm labourers. Beautifully photographed, powerfully argued, and strongly
supporting federal legislation to protect migrant workers, Harvest of Shame illustrated how
effectively the journalistic essay could work on television.
For all of the prestige that TV garnered from the broadcasts of the Kennedy-Nixon debates,
however, controversy quickly surrounded them as well. Many argued that television was
changing the political process and that how one looked and presented oneself on TV was
more important than what one said. This seemed to be the case during the rst debate.
Younger, tanned, and dressed in a dark suit, Kennedy appeared to overshadow the more
haggard, gray-suited Nixon, whose hastily applied makeup job scarcely covered his late-in-
the-day stubble of facial hair. Informal surveys taken after the debate indicated that
audiences who listened on the radio tended to think Nixon had won, while those who
watched on TV claimed victory for Kennedy. Many also believed that Kennedy won the
election because he won the rst debate and that he won the rst debate because he looked
better on TV than his opponent. (It must be remembered, however, that the un-telegenic
Nixon would go on to win two presidential elections.) Arguments about the impact of
television on politics, of course, continue to be central to the political process to this day.
Programs such as CBS Reports would become progressively more rare on television, and
Harvest of Shame would be among the last of Murrow’s assignments for CBS. Disenchanted
by the increasingly commercial nature of television and the impact that trend was having on
the CBS news department, Murrow left the network in 1961 and accepted President
Kennedy’s appointment as director of the U.S. Information Agency.
Minow’s “vast wasteland”
Also joining the Kennedy administration in 1961 was Newton Minow, whom the president
appointed as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FFC), the regulatory
agency of the U.S. government that oversees broadcasting. Although the FCC can exercise
no prior restraint of television content, it is charged with ensuring that stations operate
within the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” All broadcast stations must be
licensed by the FCC, which has the power to rescind or to not renew the license of any station
it deems is not acting in the public interest. Before the deregulatory actions of the 1970s and
’80s, this power loomed even larger over stations and, because networks depend upon
af liates to air their programs, over network executives as well. As chairman, Minow
addressed the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.
In his speech, Minow articulated the thoughts of many intellectuals about television. He
praised the Golden Age anthology dramas (most of which had already left the air), the
documentary series, and the presidential debates (which helped put Kennedy, and therefore
Minow, in of ce). He went so far as to claim that “when television is good…nothing is better.”
He continued, however, to point out that when it is bad, “nothing is worse.” He then invited
the station owners and employees to watch their own stations from sign-on to sign-off, and
he assured them that what they would see would be a “a vast wasteland” of “game shows,
violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families,
blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good
men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons,” all punctuated by an endless
stream of commercials. Although the First Amendment precludes the FCC from directly
regulating the content of programming, Minow’s language in this speech was powerful and
aggressive with regard to the broadcasting industry. “I understand that many people feel
that in the past licenses were often renewed pro forma,” Minow said as his speech was
drawing to a close. “I say to you now: renewal will not be pro forma in the future. There is
nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license.”
Rural humour
Minow’s list illustrates how, by 1961, the basic

programming types still in evidence at the turn of the
21st century were already rmly in place. Minow was
responding—negatively—to a new style of program that
was emerging as television became the national mass
medium. Seven months before Minow’s speech, the rst
Kennedy-Nixon debate had preempted the debut of a
series that would be emblematic of that new style. The
following week, on Oct. 3, 1960, The Andy Grif th Show
(CBS, 1960–68) had its delayed premiere and was an
immediate ratings success. During its entire run of eight
(From left) Ron Howard as Opie, Frances seasons, the show ranked in the top 10 of the Nielsen
Bavier as Aunt Bee, and Andy Griffith as
ratings, leaving the air in 1968 as the highest-rated
Sheriff Andy Taylor in a scene from the
television series The Andy Griffith Show.
program on television. It also inspired two spin-offs,
© Columbia Broadcasting System Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (CBS, 1964–69) and Mayberry R.F.D.
(CBS, 1968–71), both of which were also top-10 hits. The
rural situation comedy had its foundation in a long American tradition of hayseed humour
that included Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip, vaudeville “rube” routines, and the Ma and Pa
Kettle movie series of the 1940s and ’50s. Although this tradition had already been
introduced on television three years earlier with The Real McCoys (ABC/CBS, 1957–63)—a
sitcom about a family who left the mountains of West Virginia to operate a ranch in California
—the success of The Andy Grif th Show rmly established the rural comedy as a dominant
genre of the 1960s.
Besides its own spin-offs, the show encouraged a string of similarly themed series that were
among the most popular of the decade, including The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 1962–71),
Petticoat Junction (CBS, 1963–70), Green Acres (CBS, 1965–71), and Hee-Haw (CBS, 1969–71).
The Andy Grif th Show, like other rural comedies, featured “just plain folks” who used words
of few syllables, did not work on Sundays, and did not go in much for the sophisticated ways
of the big city. As such, the characters were profoundly likable to most Americans who
subscribed to these same unpretentious cultural ideals. Airing when they did, however, these
rural comedies had another, more ironic dimension. They celebrated the Edenic way of life in
small Southern settings just as real Southern towns were beset by racial unrest. As was the
case with most entertainment programs in the rst decades of television, these shows
seemed to be providing a cultural anesthetic of sorts, presenting the contemporary world
without any of its complex problems.
The 1960s in general was a watershed decade in TV’s transition to the escapist, commercial
aesthetic that so many would come to discredit. During the 1960s the transition from the live,
theatrical-style programming of the Golden Age to the sitcoms and dramatic series that still
dominate prime-time television was for the most part complete. The critically respected
anthology drama, for example, which was a central genre in the Golden Age, disappeared
entirely during this period. When Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS/NBS, 1955–65) and Kraft
Suspense Theatre (NBC, 1963–65) failed to return to the schedule in the 1965–66 season, only
one anthology, Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater (NBC, 1963–67), remained on the air,
and it had only one remaining season.
Escapism
While the anthology series was disappearing, the rural sitcom and a whole collection of new
genres that would come to de ne the escapist style of television in the post-Golden Age era
were being introduced. An assortment of new shows from

the 1965–66 season re ects this transformation: Gidget
(ABC, 1965–66), a beach comedy about an energetic 15-
year-old playing in the California sun; F Troop (ABC, 1965–
67), which offered up an assortment of Native American
stereotypes in a comedy set at a military fort in the post-
Civil War West; I Dream of Jeannie (NBC, 1965–70), a
comedy about the relationship between an astronaut and
a beautiful, voluptuous 2,000-year-old genie; and My
Mother the Car (NBC, 1965–66), which delivered just what
its title promised. Of all the new shows of the 1965–66
season, perhaps Hogan’s Heroes (CBS, 1965–71) best
exempli ed the bizarre new direction TV entertainment
Alfred Hitchcock.
was taking. Debuting in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings,
The Bettmann Archive
Hogan’s Heroes was a situation comedy set in a Nazi
prison camp during World War II.
Some of the best-remembered series in TV history were rst aired in the 1960s. They
established the reputation of the medium in the eyes of many, and, because they were on
lm rather than live, they would continue to be seen by successive generations in perpetual
reruns. Unlike the dramatic anthologies of the 1950s, which are mostly unavailable to
contemporary viewers, the long string of “classic” programs featuring not only genies and
talking cars but millionaire hillbillies and talking dogs, island castaways and talking horses,
Stone Age families and suburban witches continued to be frequently rerun into the 21st
century. For many viewers these programs brought hours of escapist pleasure; to others they
came to identify American TV as a cultural wasteland catering to the lowest common
denominator of public taste.
Though Minow had called for more relevant programming in the public interest, the escapist
fare of the 1960s, in an ironic way, may have been the most enduring, if certainly accidental,
legacy of his “vast wasteland” speech. Initially Minow’s speech inspired network executives to
introduce a short-lived ood of what might be perceived as “quality programming.” A spate
of public affairs and non ction series were created, and even the anthology form, which
Minow had speci cally praised, was given a temporary place on the prime-time schedule.
Furthermore, themes of contemporary social relevance, which had been rare in
entertainment programs until then, were injected into new dramatic series featuring a high-
school teacher (Mr. Novak; NBC, 1963–65), a social worker (East Side/West Side; CBS, 1963–64),
a state legislator (Slattery’s People; CBS, 1964–65), psychiatrists (The Eleventh Hour; NBC,
1962–64; Breaking Point; ABC, 1963–64), and nurses (The Nurses; CBS, 1962–65). Similar
dramas that were being developed at the time of Minow’s speech—the medical dramas Ben
Casey (ABC, 1961–66) and Dr. Kildare (NBC, 1961–66) and the courtroom drama The Defenders
(CBS, 1961–65)—were given high priority at the networks after the speech.
Except for the last three, however, most of these shows were short-lived. Minow had
complained more frequently about television violence, and Sen. Thomas Dodd, the head of
the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, shortly thereafter had
suggested a link between TV violence and youth crime. The escapist comedies, network
executives probably reasoned, were at least nonviolent. The Andy Grif th Show’s Andy Taylor
(played by Andy Grif th), for example, was known on the show as “the sheriff without a gun,”
and he preferred to settle disputes with homespun good sense rather than brute force. Given
their commercial mandates, the networks were not prepared to give Minow everything he
called for, so they settled for reducing violence and hoped that would be enough. It was no
coincidence when, in 1964, Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of Gilligan’s Island (CBS, 1964–67),
a quintessential 1960s escapist comedy about seven people stranded on a deserted island,
named the boat upon which the castaways had been lost the S.S. Minnow. By that time,
however, Minow had resigned from his position at the FCC. What he had hoped for was a
return to the Golden Age and a owering of public-interest programming; what he got, in
the long run, were such series as Gilligan’s Island and Mister Ed (CBS, 1961–66), a sitcom
about a talking horse.
A potpourri of genres
Although most programs fell within this escapist framework, the prime-time network
schedules of the 1960s exhibited more genre diversity than would be seen again until the
cable era. Variety shows (The Red Skelton Show [NBC/CBS/NBC, 1951–71]; The Ed Sullivan
Show [CBS, 1948–71]; and others), westerns (Gunsmoke; Bonanza [NBC, 1959–73]; and others),
game shows (What’s My Line [CBS, 1950–67]; To Tell the Truth [CBS, 1956–68]; and others),
historical dramas (The Untouchables [ABC, 1959–63]; Combat! [ABC, 1962–67]; and others), an
animated series (The Flintstones [ABC, 1960–66]), a forerunner of 21st-century “reality” shows
(Candid Camera [ABC/NBC/CBS, 1948–67]), a cold war espionage parody (Get Smart
[NBC/CBS, 1965–70]), a prime-time soap opera (Peyton Place [ABC, 1964–69]), animal shows
(Lassie [CBS, 1954–71]; Flipper [NBC, 1964–68]), and a collection of sitcoms and dramas
featuring lawyers, cops, doctors, and detectives all made the Nielsen top-30 lists during this
decade.
The 1960s also saw the introduction of the made-for-TV movie. By mid-decade, lm
production was not keeping pace with network needs. In 1964 NBC began airing full-length
movies that had been made especially for television. CBS and ABC each followed with two
original features of their own in 1966. By 1970, 50 new made-for-television movies were
broadcast on the networks. Although they were

produced on shorter schedules and with lower budgets
than feature lms made for theatrical distribution,
made-for-TV movies could present more complex
narratives than a typical episode of a series, and they
were not restricted, as series episodes were, by the
episodic formula. Because they had not been seen in
theatres, made-for-TV movies could be promoted as
special events—“world premieres,” as NBC called them in
1966—and they often outperformed regularly scheduled
programming. They could also serve double duty as pilot
programs for potential new series. (Shorter 30- or 60-
(From left) Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, minute pilots that were not picked up as series were
Dan Blocker, and Lorne Greene, the stars of
virtually worthless; a movie-length pilot could recoup its
the television series Bonanza.
production costs by being broadcast as a “world
© National Broadcasting Company
premiere.”) By the 1970s ABC was broadcasting as many
as three made-for-TV movies per week in regular time slots. These independent stories,
united under a single series title, signaled a return, in a different guise, to the dramatic
anthology format of the 1940s and ’50s. Many titles achieved a signi cant amount of critical
acclaim, including Duel (ABC, 1971), Brian’s Song (ABC, 1971), The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman (CBS, 1974), and The Execution of Private Slovik (NBC, 1974).
Technology and educational TV
Satellites
Although colour TV was introduced to consumers in 1954, less than 1 percent of homes had a
colour set by the end of that year. Ten years later, in fact, nearly 98 percent of American
homes still did not have one. It was not until 1964 that NBC was nally broadcasting over half
its programs in colour; CBS reached that threshold the following year. Besides the steady
introduction of colour television sets into American homes, the most signi cant
development of 1960s television technology was satellite communications. Before the
launching of communications satellites, pre-recorded programs were delivered physically to
the networks, which in turn sent them to their af liated stations by means of specially
dedicated phone lines. Stations would then deliver the signals over the air to be received via
antennae by households within each station’s range. Satellites made it possible to deliver
audiovisual signals from remote locations directly to the networks and, eventually, to local
stations and even to individual homes. Early satellites, such as Telstar, which was launched by
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1962, were capable of sending
pictures across great distances, but only during periods in which the satellite was in a
favourable position. Shortly thereafter, geostationary satellites were launched. They orbited at
a speed and altitude that made them appear stationary with respect to a location on the
ground and made satellite communication available at any time. Comsat, the
Communications Satellite Act of 1962, which became law shortly after the launch of Telstar,
created the Communications Satellite Corporation, a private company half of which was to be
offered in stock to the general public and half of which would be owned by such major
communications companies as AT&T and Western Union. Comsat also administered Intelsat
(the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization), which was set up to
coordinate a global system of satellite ground stations.
Educational TV
Educational television (ETV) also made important advances in the 1960s. While the FCC had
reserved nearly 250 channel frequencies for educational stations in 1953, there were only 44
such stations in operation seven years later. By 1969, however, that number had climbed to
175. Each week, the National Educational Television and Radio Center (after 1963, National
Educational Television [NET]) delivered a few hours of comparatively inexpensive
programming on lm and videotape to educational stations across the country. This material
was produced by a consortium of ETV stations, including WGBH in Boston, WTTW in
Chicago, and KQED in San Francisco. In 1965 the Carnegie Foundation established its
Commission on Education Television to conduct a study of ETV and make recommendations
for future action. The report from the commission was published about two years later, and it
became the catalyst and model for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The Public
Broadcasting Act called for the creation of a Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This
body was prohibited from owning stations or producing programs and was to function as a
mechanism through which federal funds were distributed to educational stations and
program producers. In 1969 the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was formed to facilitate
the interconnection of public TV stations and the ef cient distribution of programming.
Many of the most popular shows during the early years of PBS were British imports,
including The Forsyte Saga (PBS, 1969–70), a 26-part adaptation of the John Galsworthy
novels about a wealthy English family in the years 1879 through 1926, and Masterpiece
Theatre (PBS, from 1971), an anthology of British programming from the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) and other producers. Perhaps the most signi cant and in uential
contribution to come from educational television in the 1960s, however, was the children’s
program Sesame Street (PBS, from 1969). Created and funded by the Children’s Television
Workshop, an organization founded and supported by the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie
Corporation, and the U.S. Of ce of Education, Sesame Street used production techniques
pioneered in advertising—fast cutting, catchy music, amusing characters and situations—to
teach preschoolers the alphabet, counting, and basic reading, arithmetic, and social skills.
While most educators lauded the effectiveness of Sesame Street in teaching children basic
skills, some complained that the show shortened the attention spans of children and that
teachers could not compete with the show’s fast-paced entertainment.
The late 1960s and early ’70s: the

relevance movement
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 non ction 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
Big Bird reading a storybook during a taping in the 1960s.
of Sesame Street, 2008.
Mark Lennihan/AP Images
During times of national crises, television galvanized the
country by preempting regular programming to provide
essential coverage of signi cant 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 battle eld activity in
Vietnam, as well as photographs, interviews, and casualty reports, were broadcast daily from
the centres of con ict into American living rooms. As both international and domestic
upheaval escalated in the 1960s, network news departments, originally conceived of as
ful lling a public service, became pro t 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.
Although news coverage brought increasingly disturbing reports as the decade progressed,
prime-time programming presented an entirely different picture. The escapist ctional 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 re ect 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
de ned 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.
The new cultural landscape
CBS was the rst of the three networks to radically overhaul its program schedule,
eliminating several shows that were still delivering very high ratings. Such CBS hits as The
Jim Nabors Hour (CBS, 1969–71), Mayberry R.F.D., and Hee-Haw were all in the top 30 the year
they were canceled by the network. The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were also
eliminated at the end of the 1970–71 season, and not a single rural comedy was left on CBS,
the network that had based much of its competitive dominance in the 1960s on that genre.
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 rst 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.
Although 60 Minutes would rank in the Nielsen top 20 (including ve 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 identi ed 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.
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 rede ned the medium.
All in the Family
Created by Norman Lear and based loosely on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, All in
the Family was the clearest example of what would soon be known as “relevance TV.” It took
as its subject matter issues that were pertinent to American life in the 1970s, featuring stories
about agnosticism, rape, radical politics, racism, impotence, and a host of other previously
forbidden topics. Although the show featured a typical sitcom setting (a living room),
everything looked and sounded different. Shot on videotape, the show had a visual
immediacy unprecedented in television sitcoms. Its characters were loud and sometimes
brash, and the language used was often profane, racist, or otherwise offensive. For the rst
time in TV series history, an onscreen warning preceded the broadcast, preparing viewers for
the controversial nature of the program to follow.
Like so many television sitcoms, All in the Family focused

on the domestic life of an American family. Unlike the
idealized sitcom families of the 1950s and ’60s—those of
Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show (ABC, 1958–
66), and Father Knows Best, for example—the Bunkers
fought the cultural and generational battles typical of
the era in the living room of their Queens, N.Y., bungalow.
Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Connor), the middle-
aged blue-collar head of the household, is a bigot who
longs for the days of Herbert Hoover and resents the
changing attitudes of his country and the changing
racial pro le of his neighbourhood. He leads a reasonably
stable life working as a dock foreman, fending off the
counterculture, and supporting his daffy but principled
(Clockwise from top right) Carroll O'Connor,
Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, and Jean stay-at-home wife, Edith (played by Jean Stapleton), and
Stapleton, the cast of the television series his modern but docile daughter, Gloria (played by Sally
All in the Family. Struthers). After Gloria marries Michael Stivic (played by
Rob Reiner), a long-haired, liberal-minded graduate
student whose lack of income forces him to live under
Archie’s roof, the comic ghting between Archie and his son-in-law mirrors the complex
social, political, and cultural debates that were raging in the United States at the time.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Although All in the Family, introduced in January of the 1970–71 season, was the most
notorious and controversial of CBS’s new relevance programming, it was not the rst. Back in
September of that same season, The Mary Tyler Moore Show made a much quieter debut. It
presented an ensemble of believable characters behaving in ways that seemed fairly normal
to the average viewer. Whereas All in the Family often discussed the women’s movement,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show showed it as lived by one American woman, Mary Richards
(played by Mary Tyler Moore), a single woman in her 30s who works in the newsroom of a
Minneapolis, Minn., television station. Unlike the single career woman in That Girl, an old-
style comedy that ran contemporaneously with The Mary Tyler Moore Show for a season,
Mary Richards had no steady boyfriend and no omnipresent father, and she subtly revealed
in one episode that she took birth-control pills.
The creators of the show had to work within limitations. As originally conceived, Mary
Richards was a divorced woman, and, had she ultimately been presented as such, she would
have broken new ground as the principal character of a television series. Many television
historians cite an unnamed CBS executive who allegedly claimed that the American public
would never accept a series with a lead character who was divorced, was from New York, was
Jewish, or had a mustache. Whether this industry legend is true or not, CBS did insist that
Mary be reconceived as a single woman recovering from the breakup of a long-standing
relationship. Things changed rapidly after that, however. Four years later, CBS introduced
Rhoda (1974–78), a spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show that featured Valerie Harper as a
Jewish New Yorker who divorces her husband during the run of the series. Then, in 1975,
Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time (1975–84), the rst successful series about a divorced
woman, became a hit for CBS.
M*A*S*H
The third of the most celebrated of CBS’s “relevance” series was M*A*S*H (1972–83), a comedy
about American military doctors during the Korean War that was based on the movie and
book of the same title. Network TV would not get around to setting a series in Vietnam until
Tour of Duty (CBS, 1987–90), but the satire and dramatic commentary of M*A*S*H were clearly
aimed, at least in the beginning, to an audience that had grown ambivalent about the war in
Vietnam. Although set in the 1950s, M*A*S*H examined the nature of war from a 1970s
perspective. It was as different from such earlier military comedies as The Phil Silvers Show
(CBS, 1955–59) and McHale’s Navy (ABC, 1962–66) as All in the Family was from Father Knows
Best.
CBS enjoyed extraordinary success with these new

programs. There were, of course, some complaints about
the new direction the network was taking, but they were
overwhelmed by positive responses from critics and
viewers alike. All in the Family was at the top of the
Nielsen ratings for ve straight years, and both M*A*S*H
and Mary Tyler Moore left the air voluntarily while they
were still hits. The TV industry itself showed its support
with Emmy Awards: 29 for The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
(From left) Actors McLean Stevenson,
Wayne Rogers, Gary Burghoff, and Alan 23 for All in the Family, and 12 for M*A*S*H. The impact of
Alda in a scene from the television series these pioneering shows transformed American
M*A*S*H. television.
All in the Family inspired spin-offs (Maude [CBS, 1972–

78]), which themselves inspired spin-offs (Good Times [CBS, 1974–79]), and by the mid-1970s,
prime-time TV was rife with programs made in the brash Lear style. The in uence of MTM
(the production company that made The Mary Tyler Moore Show) was even more enduring.
MTM would inspire a renaissance in TV drama with the introduction of Hill Street Blues (NBC,
1981–87) and St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–88) in the early 1980s. More important, MTM provided a
training ground for a new generation of television artists. Writers and producers trained at
MTM went on to create or produce such critically acclaimed shows as Taxi (ABC/NBC, 1978–
83), Family Ties (NBC, 1982–89), The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984–92), Miami Vice (NBC, 1984–89),
The Simpsons (Fox, begun 1989), Law & Order (NBC, 1990–2010), Homicide (NBC, 1993–99),
Frasier (NBC, 1993–2004), and NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993–2005).
The development of sports programming
Other genres, notably sports programming, also experienced substantial growth and
maturation in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Sports had been an integral part of TV
programming since the very beginning of broadcasting. Collegiate and professional games,
as well as such scripted fringe sports as roller derby and professional wrestling, were all on
the schedule in the 1940s. Retailers would tune their television display models in to weekend
sports broadcasts to lure male heads of household to purchase their rst set. Videotape
technology that in 1963 made the “instant replay” possible catalyzed an interest in football
that would continue to grow over the next decades. The close-up and the replay made
football a sport uniquely suited to television, and during the 1960s its popularity grew. New
Year’s Day college bowl games became an established holiday television tradition, and, in
1967, the Super Bowl began its reign as one of the most watched programs of the year. In
1970, ABC launched Monday Night Football as a regular series during the football season.
Elaborately packaged with ashy graphics and entertaining commentary, Monday Night
Football brought sports programming to a mainstream prime-time audience that included
more than just sports fans. ABC’s Wide World of Sports (begun 1961), called by one TV
historian an “athletic anthology,” used personal pro les of athletes and instructional
commentary to generate interest from diverse audiences in often obscure sporting events.
ABC’s coverage of the Olympic Games during the 1960s and ’70s was an extraordinary
achievement from a commercial and technical standpoint. Seamlessly broadcasting live
events from dozens of overseas locations, the network soon garnered enormous audiences
for the Olympics, including millions who seldom watched any other sports programming on
television. During the 1972 Olympic coverage from Munich, Israeli athletes were taken
hostage and eventually killed. ABC’s Olympic sportscasters suddenly became reporters on
the biggest story of the season, and they did what most critics believed to be an admirable
job.
Media versus the federal government
Coverage of the Vietnam War by the networks was extensive and helped to turn public
sentiment against U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. As news and documentary
programming took on a more visible (and pro table) role in American television, controversy
often followed. In a 1970 televised speech, Vice Pres. Spiro Agnew attacked network news for
what he saw as their biased interpretations of events. Calling news commentators “nattering
nabobs of negativism,” Agnew complained that a mere handful of journalists and producers
in three networks determined what the entire population of the country learned about
national and international events. He was especially critical of the practice the networks
made of providing “instant analyses” directly after presidential speeches.
Of the documentaries of the day, the most controversial was The Selling of the Pentagon
(CBS, 1971), which reported on pro-Vietnam War government propaganda and on the
relationship between the Pentagon and its corporate contractors. Controversy over the show
—especially accusations that interviews had been edited in a way that distorted the meaning
of what had actually been said—brought about a congressional investigation of the
production processes for documentaries. Ultimately, Congress failed to obtain, as they had
requested, CBS’s production materials beyond the nished program that aired, but the
investigation did result in the networks’ treading more carefully in the future. Although The
Selling of the Pentagon demonstrated television’s effectiveness as a medium for
investigative journalism, it was left to the newspapers to uncover the truths, lies, and secrets
of the Watergate scandal; however, both PBS and the networks covered the subsequent
congressional hearings in the summer of 1973. The Watergate hearings became a hit TV
series of sorts, often drawing larger audiences than regularly scheduled daytime programs,
and were a measurable factor in the plummeting of Pres. Richard Nixon’s public-approval
ratings.
The early 1970s also saw some major regulatory actions, the rst of which was a ban on
cigarette advertising. The controversy had begun with the surgeon general’s report in 1964
that associated certain health risks with cigarette smoking. By 1967 the FCC had ruled that,
on the basis of the Fairness Doctrine, antismoking messages should be allowed air time on
television to balance advertisements by tobacco companies. When a complete ban on
cigarette advertising was suggested by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), broadcasters
protested, in an attempt to protect the 10 percent of total advertising revenues that came
from the airing of cigarette commercials. Tobacco companies were more willing to go along
with the idea, reasoning that a voluntary withdrawal from television and radio advertising
would keep the FTC from banning them from all mass media venues and recognizing that
all cigarette companies would be subject to the restriction. Broadcasters could not come up
with a voluntary plan, however, and Congress created a law banning cigarette advertising
after Jan. 1, 1971. (A concession of an additional day was later added so that the New Year’s
Day football games could be sponsored by tobacco advertising.)
The Prime Time Access Rule and “ n-syn”
The Prime Time Access Rule, designed to encourage the production of local and
independent television programming, went into effect in September 1971. By the mid-1960s
the prime viewing hours had been almost completely locked up by newly expanded editions
of both local and network news and by a network prime-time schedule that ran from 7:30 to
11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. The access rule allowed networks to provide programming
for only three hours per evening in prime time (four on Sundays), with the intent that this
would open 30 minutes per evening to local productions and independently made
programming. All three networks relinquished the 7:30–8:00 PM slot, the prime-time
segment with the smallest audience, but most local stations elected to air nationally
syndicated programming during the time period rather than less-pro table local
productions.
The Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (popularly known as “ n-syn”) were created at
the same time as the Prime Time Access Rule. These forbade networks to retain any nancial
interest, including that derived from syndication rights, in any programs that they did not
own entirely, which at the time consisted mostly of news programs. Since the networks held
some nancial interest in 98 percent of the programming they aired in 1970, the concessions
demanded by the n-syn rules were substantial. Over the next several years, further
restrictions had been handed down, limiting the number of hours a network could ll with
programs they themselves produced and owned. The rule, which started with a designation
of two and one-half hours of entertainment programming per week in prime time (later
moving up to ve) and eight hours in the daytime, was designed to expire in 1990 and was in
effect repealed in 1995.
TV violence and self-regulation
Although the FCC is forbidden to regulate the content of television (except for content
unprotected by the First Amendment and that falling under the indecency rule), the agency
strongly urged networks to adopt a system of self-regulation in the mid-1970s. In 1975 the
chairman of the FCC, Richard Wiley, reportedly encouraged the networks to limit violent
programming to time slots after 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. Arthur Taylor, then
president of CBS, became the chief advocate of what became known as “family viewing
time” (8:00–9:00 PM, as far as the networks were concerned), and he enlisted the support of
the other networks as well. Many producers, on the other hand, were not eager to offer their
support. Among other things, they were concerned that the family viewing time agreement
would restrict the times in which stations could air their shows in syndication. All in the
Family’s producer, Norman Lear, who at the time had several adult-themed shows airing on
the networks between 8:00 and 9:00 PM, led the attack on the idea, claiming First
Amendment rights and declaring that the networks had broken antitrust regulations by
conspiring to bring family viewing time into being. A Los Angeles federal district court
disallowed the self-regulatory action in 1976.
The issue of television violence reemerged in the early 1970s with the publication of the
Surgeon General’s Scienti c Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior’s ve-
volume report in 1972. The surgeon general told a Senate committee that “the overwhelming
consensus and the unanimous Scienti c Advisory Committee’s report indicates that
televised violence, indeed, does have an adverse effect on certain members of our society.”
The report encouraged remedial action, but the FCC, limited by the First Amendment, took
no action until 1996, when it mandated a ratings system designed to inform parents of
programs that might be inappropriate for children. Over the next decade, however, several
important legal cases addressed the relationship between violence on TV and violent
behaviour among television viewers. In Zamora et al. v. Columbia Broadcasting System et al.
(1979), the parents of a 15-year-old boy who killed his neighbour sued a television network for
“intoxicating” their son with TV violence. In 1981 the complainants in Niemi v. National
Broadcasting Company argued that the mechanics of a brutal rape were learned on a
made-for-TV movie called Born Innocent (NBC, 1974). Other cases not directly related to
violence sought to hold television broadcasters responsible for behaviour learned from their
programs. A boy who was partially blinded while performing an experiment demonstrated
on The Mickey Mouse Club was the subject of Walt Disney Productions et al. v. Shannon et
al. (1981), and DeFilippo v. National Broadcasting Company et al. (1982) brought suit against
NBC after a youth hanged himself while imitating a stunt man’s demonstration he had seen
on The Tonight Show.
The late 1970s: the new escapism

The signi cant 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 ve-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
Grif th 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.
“Jiggle TV”
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.
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 ful lled.
The era of the miniseries

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 nal
season. In large part on the basis of its nostalgia and “jiggle” programming, ABC became the
top-rated network for the rst 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 rst for ction programming on network TV),
its rape scene, and its frank presentation of the horrors of slavery. Others complained of
historical inaccuracies.
Roots also helped establish the miniseries—a multipart series with a preplanned limited run
—as a new television form. Unlike the usual series, the miniseries has a traditional narrative
beginning, middle, and end rather than an extended middle. This form was and is common
in the United Kingdom, but the economics of commercially supported TV in the United
States had always favoured the ongoing series and its potential for mass production,
audience loyalty, and syndication potential. Roots was not the rst 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 signi cant waning of the genre when it failed
to generate ratings to justify its expense.
The 1980s: television rede ned

The growth of cable TV
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 dif cult. 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 Of ce (HBO)
began offering its subscribers recently released movies, uncut and commercial-free, months
or years before the broadcast stations would air those same lms 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 af liated 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 devices 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.
CNN
Among the new services that energized the cable industry in the 1980s were the Cable News
Network (CNN) and MTV (Music Television). CNN began operating in 1980 with the intention
of becoming the premier source of television news for the entire world. CNN was supported
by advertising, but, unlike the established network news operations that broadcast their
programs domestically via their af liated stations, CNN’s news coverage was delivered by
satellite to cable systems all over the planet. CNN was the only television news service that
provided live coverage of the January 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and
during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, CNN became an around-the-clock war channel,
numbering among its global audience the political leaders involved in the con ict. During
the 1980s, CNN became the recognized leader in the coverage of breaking news, although its
audiences were still not nearly as large as those for the news broadcasts on the three
networks. CNN ushered in the era of 24-hour news (MSNBC, CNBC, and the Fox News
Channel would follow), which changed not only the way in which television journalists
reported the news but how the news itself was made. In an increasingly competitive
journalistic market with a voracious appetite for stories, increased attention was paid to
scandals and other dramatic events. As a result, many scholars mark the 1980s as the
beginning of a signi cant slide in the quality of American journalism.
MTV
Starting as an endless stream of music videos, MTV debuted in August 1981 and probably
deserves more credit for jump-starting the cable revolution than it usually gets. With U.S.
cable penetration hovering at about 20 percent in 1980, people did not seem to be signing
up for cable as quickly as industry leaders had hoped and predicted. Not only did cable
operators ask subscribers to pay for television, which they had always received for free, but
the logistics of reliably scheduling a hookup appointment with a cable employee were
notoriously complex in many communities. Furthermore, many viewers did not believe that
cable offered them much that they could not get on the free broadcast channels. MTV
changed that for many families. Music videos were available only sporadically on free TV, and
millions of children and teenagers for whom music videos were an important cultural
phenomenon persuaded millions of parents to subscribe to cable in order to get MTV. It did
not take long for MTV to begin to diversify its programming, incorporating game shows as
well as genre-themed music programs and spawning an adult-oriented sister station, VH-1,
in 1985.
Quality dramas
As their share of the audience was steadily encroached upon by cable in the 1980s, network
television responded in several ways. At rst, 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 rst
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 ve
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
The cast of The Cosby Show: (standing, left schedule in the early 1970s was evidence of this—but in
to right) Bill Cosby, Phylicia Rashad, (seated 1981 NBC began to focus on an even more speci c
clockwise from left) Keshia Knight Pulliam, audience, one for which advertisers would pay the
Tempestt Bledsoe, and Malcolm-Jamal
highest rates. In an attempt to lure young, educated,
Warner.
© NBCUniversal 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.
Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues was the rst serious attempt
at this new strategy. Literate, visually dense, narratively complex, and using coarse language
that sounded more like the movies than television, Hill Street Blues was hailed as evidence
that network television could aspire to becoming a serious dramatic art form. Critics,
novelists, professors, and others who had generally ignored or disdained television celebrated
Hill Street Blues with enthusiasm. Although the ratings of the early episodes were very low,
the show slowly caught on after receiving a record-breaking number of Emmy Award
nominations. Not only did it bring NBC the desired audience and advertisers, but after a few
seasons it became a modest hit.
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
(From left) Michael Conrad, Veronica Hamel, created by veteran writers and producers of network
and Daniel J. Travanti, stars of the television quality series. The latter became one of television’s
series Hill Street Blues.
biggest success stories in the early 21st century, winning
© National Broadcasting Company
raves from the critics, a host of awards, and a wide,
dedicated audience.
Nighttime soaps
All of the quality dramas employed story lines that

continued from episode to episode. This feature was very
important to the development of complex stories and
characters. A signi cant aesthetic advantage that the
television series has over the movie is that it can tell
stories that develop in real time over weeks, years, and
Cast members of The Sopranos (from left to
sometimes even decades. Surprisingly, however, until the
right): Tony Sirico, Steve Van Zandt, James
Gandolfini, Michael Imperioli, and Vincent
late 1970s, American television seldom employed the
Pastore. continuing story line anywhere but in the soap opera.
© 1999 HBO Dallas (CBS, 1978–91), one of the most popular shows of
the 1980s, was the rst successful series to bring the soap
opera format to prime time since Peyton Place (ABC, 1964–69). Although not considered a
quality drama by most historians, Dallas employed the continuing story line and thus set the
stage for the quality dramas to follow.
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
(From left) Steve Kanaly, Patrick Duffy,
Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jim week.
Davis, Charlene Tilton, Larry Hagman, and
Linda Gray, the cast of the television series Like its daytime counterparts, Dallas was lled with
Dallas. 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 nal cliffhanger episode of the 1979–80 season catapulted the program to the
top of the ratings, where it remained in the top two for ve 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).
The late shows
The 1980s was also the decade in which network television extended its reach deeper into
the late-night hours, beyond the 11:30 PM Eastern Standard Time slot. NBC had always been
the leader in late-night TV, having introduced The Tonight Show, which was designed to
follow the local evening news, in 1954. Several comics had hosted The Tonight Show,
including Steve Allen and Jack Parr, but Johnny Carson’s 30-year reign, from 1962 to 1992,
established him as the uncontested “King of Late-Night.” In the 1960s the other networks
developed their own late-night shows—including The Joey Bishop Show (ABC, 1967–69), The
Dick Cavett Show (ABC, 1968–75), and The Merv Grif n Show (CBS, 1969–72)—but none could
compete with The Tonight Show. In 1973 NBC introduced The Midnight Special (1973–81), a
rock music variety show that ran from 1:00 AM to 2:30 AM on Fridays following The Tonight
Show, the latest regularly scheduled network program to date. The network continued this
trend a few months later, when Tomorrow (1973–82), a talk show hosted by Tom Snyder, was
placed in the hour following Tonight on Mondays through Thursdays. In 1975 the topical
sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live lled out the week’s late-night schedule. Late
Night with David Letterman (1982–93) replaced Tomorrow in 1982. By 1988 NBC had added
Later with Bob Costas (1988–94), extending weeknight network programming to 2:30 AM
Eastern Standard Time.
Other networks began to compete in late night as well

during the 1980s. CBS, which had been scheduling
reruns and movies against The Tonight Show for years,
introduced its own talk show, The Pat Sajak Show, in
1989, but it lasted only 15 months. In 1993, however, David
Letterman moved to CBS to host The Late Show when
Jay Leno accepted the position of host of The Tonight
Show upon Carson’s retirement. NBC lled Letterman’s
role on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (who served as
Bette Midler kissing Johnny Carson during
his penultimate appearance as the host of host of The Tonight Show in 2009–10) and later Jimmy
The Tonight Show, May 21, 1992. Fallon (2009– ), and CBS introduced its own 12:30 AM
Courtesy of Carson Entertainment show, starring Tom Snyder (and, after 1999, Craig Kilborn,
who was replaced by Craig Ferguson in 2005). At ABC
the news department had achieved surprisingly high ratings in 1979 with a special nightly
news show it developed for the 11:30–11:45 PM slot to give updates on the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Hosted primarily by Ted Koppel (until he stepped down at the end of 2005), the program was
converted into a general news and interview series, Nightline, in 1980 and since then has
provided a competitive alternative to the late-night comedies on the other networks. ABC
launched its own late-night comedy, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which began airing after Nightline
in 2003. The Fox network, which commenced operation in 1986, also tried a late-night talk
show, The Late Show (Fox, 1987), which brie y starred Joan Rivers and then introduced
Arsenio Hall, TV’s rst African American late-night talk show host, who went on to his own
successful late-night talk show, The Arsenio Hall Show, in syndication from 1989 to 1994.
As the century drew to a close, the cable channel Comedy Central also emerged as a major
force in late-night television comedy. The Daily Show, started in 1996 with host Craig Kilborn,
was a half-hour satirical news and interview program that aired at 11 PM Eastern Time. The
show really started to attract attention, however, after Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999.
His comic “coverage” of the controversial 2000 election and the presidential administration
that followed won him and the show an abundance of recognition, including multiple
Peabody and Emmy Awards. In 2005 Comedy Central added another half-hour show at 11:30,
The Colbert Report, which featured former Daily Show “correspondent” Stephen Colbert as
the host of a parody of cable series such as The O’Reilly Factor.
Tabloid TV
Daytime programming also underwent signi cant 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 noncelebrities), 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 con icts, 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 signi cant 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 erce 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
con icts. Many episodes featured st ghts, intervention by security employees, and an
audience reveling in blood lust. Although Donahue left the air in 1996 rather than try to
compete with such programs, Oprah Winfrey achieved great success after redesigning her
show as the classy, discrete example of the genre. Her show became a cultural phenomenon,
and she became one of the most popular and powerful gures in the entertainment
industry.
Reorganization and deregulation
All of the media industries experienced signi cant 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, lm production, syndication, and more. Synergy,
the ability of a company to package an idea in an assortment
Oprah Winfrey, 1989. of forms—from books to TV series to soundtrack recordings
AP
and beyond—became the buzzword of the day.
The threat of cable and the falling pro ts made the broadcast networks vulnerable to this
trend as well. For the rst 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.
In 1987 the A.C. Nielsen company, which had been purchased by Dun and Bradstreet in 1984,
introduced a new technique for measuring ratings in its national market sample. The “people
meter” not only measured when a TV set was turned on and the channel to which it was
tuned but also supplied information about who was watching by asking viewers to indicate
their presence with a keypad (replaced by a scanning device in 1989). The networks objected
to this method of gathering ratings, which consistently returned numbers that were lower
than the old method had delivered. The device allowed advertisers, however, to focus their
time purchases more speci cally on their demographic needs.
The years of the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan 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 ve
commissioners, and terms for television-station licenses were increased from three to ve
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 signi cant
deregulation in 1984.
The 1990s: the loss of shared experience

In the 60 years between 1929, when radio became the dominant conveyor of the prevailing
mass culture in the United States, and 1989, when cable television became a truly mature
industry, broadcasting provided something that was unique in human history. During that
period, nearly the entire country—young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated—
was feeding, at least occasionally, from the same cultural trough. Radio and television
provided a kind of cultural glue; their programs penetrated nearly every segment of the
national population to a degree that even the church in medieval Europe had not achieved.
The control of the television industry by only three companies had produced, among other
things, a uni ed mass culture, the products of which were experienced by nearly everyone.
That era ended, in effect, in the 1990s.
The number of cable services aimed at speci c audiences with specialized interests grew at
its greatest pace ever during this period, dividing the audience into smaller and smaller
segments. Inevitably, the share of that audience held by each of the major networks
continued to decline, although each network was still attracting many more viewers than
any of the cable channels. Besides the familiar cable services dedicated to news, sports,
movies, shopping, and music, entire cable channels were devoted to cooking (Food
Network), cartoons (Cartoon Network), old television (Nick at Nite, TV Land), old movies
(American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies), home improvement and gardening (Home
and Garden Television [HGTV]), comedy (Comedy Central), documentaries (Discovery
Channel), animals (Animal Planet), and a host of other interests. The Golf Channel and the
Game Show Network were perhaps the most emblematic of how far target programming
could go during this era. By the end of the decade, almost 80 percent of American
households had access to cable programming through cable hookups or direct delivery by
satellite.
Many had predicted that cable would reduce the

number of broadcast networks or put them out of
business entirely. On the contrary, broadcast networks
proliferated as well during this period, doubling in
number from three to six. The Fox network began
operation in 1985 with a limited evening schedule, and
the repeal of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules
in 1993 set the stage for other production companies to
Actor Alec Baldwin (left) and Turner Classic enter the market. Since their inception in 1971, the n-syn
Movies host Robert Osborne. rules had substantially limited the amount of
PRNewsFoto/Turner Classic Movies/AP
programming that networks could produce or own and
Images
therefore sell to local stations for syndicated reruns. As a
result, networks would license or “rent” programs from
studios and production companies, paying for the right to air the episode twice during the
season, after which all rights would revert to the production company, which would in turn
sell reruns of the series to individual stations. Once this regulation was eliminated, networks
began participating in the production and ownership of programs (as they had before 1971),
and, in turn, production companies began forming their own networks. In 1995 two networks
were formed that would remain in operation for a decade (ending in 2006, when they would
merge into a single network, the CW): the WB, premiered by Warner Bros., and UPN (the
United Paramount Network), premiered by Paramount.
Demographic divergence
The programming of the 1990s is not easily categorized. Many complained about the
increasing amount of violence, sex, and profane language on television during the decade.
Few would argue the point, but there were also more documentaries, instructional shows,
news, and religious programs on TV than ever before. In short, there was more of everything,
including reruns of old shows from all eras of network TV history. The family sitcom provides
a telling example. Traditional family comedies such as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and
Growing Pains (ABC, 1985–92) remained on the air into the 1990s, while at the same time
more “realistic” shows featuring lower-middle-class families such as Roseanne (ABC, 1988–
97), The Simpsons (Fox, begun 1989), Married…with Children (Fox, 1987–97), and Grace Under
Fire (ABC, 1993–98) introduced a completely different vision of the American family. The
cultural consensus that had united so much of television during the network era had been
obliterated. Audiences were no longer watching the same things at the same time, and the
choices they had were the greatest ever and continuing to multiply.
Urban humour
Of the programming on network TV that in the 1990s continued to attract the largest
audiences, the most popular new entries were Seinfeld (1990–98), Friends (1994–2004), and
ER (1994–2009), all part of NBC’s celebrated Thursday night lineup. Like so many of the
situation comedies from the 1980s and ’90s (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Home
Improvement), Seinfeld was based upon the act of a standup comic, in this case the
observational, “everyday life” humour of Jerry Seinfeld. Other shows had begun to explore
this dramatic territory a few years earlier, including The Wonder Years (ABC, 1988–93), a
comedy-drama that celebrated the minutiae of suburban life in the late 1960s and early ’70s,
and thirtysomething, a drama that analyzed the psychic details of the lives of a group of
young professionals. Seinfeld, however, was able to identify a new form for the traditional
sitcom. It featured entire episodes about waiting in line at a restaurant, losing a car in a
multilevel parking garage, and, in a notorious and surprisingly tasteful episode, the personal
and social dimensions of masturbation. Self-declared to be “a show about nothing,” Seinfeld
for ve years was rated among the top three programs and spent two of those years as
number one. The extent of the show’s cultural power became evident when Seinfeld
announced that he would end the show after the close of the 1997–98 season. The
countdown to the nal episode and the airing of the episode itself became the biggest story
of the season in American popular culture.
Seinfeld, which focused on four unmarried friends living

in New York City, inspired a virtual subgenre. The
generically named Friends, also on NBC’s Thursday
schedule, was the only one of the imitators to approach
the success of Seinfeld. Another of the imitations,
however, was historically signi cant. Ellen (ABC, 1994–98),
originally titled These Friends of Mine, also featured a
Scene from the television series Seinfeld, standup comic (Ellen DeGeneres) and an ensemble of
with actors (from far left) Jason Alexander,
unmarried friends in the big city (in this case Los
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and
Jerry Seinfeld. Angeles). The show was only a modest hit with both
© Castle Rock Entertainment; all rights critics and audiences until DeGeneres decided that her
reserved
character would openly acknowledge her lesbianism at
the end of the 1996–97 season. When she did, after half a
season of thinly disguised foreshadowing double-entendres, Ellen became the rst
broadcast television series to feature an openly gay leading character. While some saw such
series as Ellen as an important breakthrough, others saw it as another example of the

collapse of standards on television.
The 1990s did see the ful llment of many of the trends that had begun in the 1980s. NYPD
Blue, for example, introduced stronger language and more explicit nudity than any network
television series to date when it debuted in 1993. Several af liate stations refused to air the
show, but when it became a hit, most of them quietly reversed their decisions. Complaints by
parent, teacher, and religious groups that network television was no longer appropriate for
family viewing became a major ongoing refrain in the 1990s.
The newsmagazines
The 1990s also saw the steady growth of the newsmagazine. The prototype of the genre was
Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now (CBS, 1951–58), and 60 Minutes, which had been on since 1968,
set the standard. ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20 was introduced in 1978. With production costs
for traditional prime-time programming rising to nearly prohibitive heights at the same time
that ratings were plummeting because of cable competition, network executives in the 1990s
sought an inexpensive way to ll prime-time hours with popular programming. The long-
term success of 60 Minutes suggested that the newsmagazine might be the perfect solution.
Newsmagazines were inexpensive compared with sitcoms and dramas, and they had the
potential to draw very large audiences. All three networks introduced new newsmagazines
during the 1990s, and erce competition for both audiences and stories resulted, especially
since the 24-hour news channels on cable were competing in a similar arena. Some of the
series became very successful, including Dateline (NBC, begun 1992), which, by 1999, was
being aired ve nights per week. 20/20 was extended to two nights weekly in 1997 and again
to four in 1998 when it absorbed another ailing newsmagazine, Primetime Live (ABC, 1989–
98; it emerged again in 2000 as Primetime Thursday and returned to its original name in
2004). Even 60 Minutes added a second weekly edition, 60 Minutes II (1999–2005). Several
newsmagazines presented stories of a scandalous, sexual, or otherwise spectacular nature,
and media critics attacked such shows for their tabloidlike approach to presenting news
stories and accused them of playing a major role in the degrading of American journalism.
Teen dramas and adult cartoons
Many of the decade’s most innovative programs came from cable and the three new
networks. Early in its history, the Fox network had established a distinct identity by airing
programs that would probably not have found a place on the schedules of ABC, CBS, or NBC.
The Simpsons (begun 1989), the rst animated prime-time series since The Flintstones (ABC,
1960–66) to succeed in prime time, was Fox’s biggest and longest-running hit and became
the longest-running animated program in television history. With its densely packed social
satire and self-re exive references to American popular culture, The Simpsons set a new
standard for television comedy, and, by the end of the 1990s, many critics were calling it the
best TV comedy in history. The Fox network focused on young audiences, as ABC had done in
the late 1970s, with such teen-oriented series as 21 Jump Street (1987–91), the story of youthful
cops working undercover in Los Angeles high schools, which introduced Johnny Depp, and
Beverly Hills 90210 (1990–2000), a prime-time soap opera set in the ctional West Beverly
Hills High School. The latter inspired an entire new genre of “teensploitation” series, many of
which became the anchors of the WB network a few years later. Among these WB teen
series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), and Felicity (1998–
2002) met with surprising critical acclaim. Professional wrestling, which had been a staple
genre in the earliest days of television, made a major comeback in the 1990s in syndication
and was later picked up by UPN as the rst hit for that new network. All three of the newly
formed broadcast networks—Fox, the WB, and UPN—depended on these signature shows to
differentiate themselves for younger viewers from the old, established networks.
Throughout the 1990s, television content continued to

move into areas that made many viewers and special
interest groups uncomfortable. Strong language and
explicit sexual topics became common both on cable
and on broadcast TV, even in the early evening hours.
Simpsons, The Two of the more controversial series of the decade were
The Simpsons—(from left) Lisa, Maggie, cable products: MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head (1993–97,
Marge, Homer, and Bart—fleeing Springfield 2011) and Comedy Central’s South Park (begun 1997).
in the dark of night; from The Simpsons Both animated series that challenged traditional notions
Movie (2007).
of taste, and both part of a new wave of adult cartoons
The Simpsons TM and © 2007 Twentieth
Century-Fox Film Corporation. All rights inspired by the success of The Simpsons, these programs
reserved. demonstrated that the bulk of the experimentation on
television was taking place off the major networks. This
was especially true of premium channels such as HBO, to which viewers could subscribe for
an additional fee. As a pay service, HBO had considerably more latitude with regard to
content than commercially supported cable channels and broadcast television. HBO and
other pay services do not use the public airwaves, nor do they come into the home
unbidden, and they need not worry about advertisers skittish about offending viewers.
Furthermore, pay channels are not concerned with ratings. As long as viewers like the service
well enough not to cancel their subscriptions, pay cable channels will thrive.
New boundaries: the growth of cable
Premiering in 1972, HBO, as its full name, Home Box Of ce, implied, originally presented
uncut and commercial-free movies as its exclusive offering. In the 1980s, however, HBO
began to experiment with the original series format. Some of these series, such as the
suspense anthology The Hitchhiker (1983–91) and the sports sitcom 1st & Ten (1984–90), were
of little note save for their adult language and some nudity. Others, such as Tanner ’88 (1988),
hinted at the high levels of quality that could be achieved on pay services. Created and
produced by comic-strip artist Garry Trudeau and lm director Robert Altman, Tanner ’88
satirically followed, documentary-style, a ctional candidate for president. Some of the show
was shot on the campaign trail itself, and several real political gures made cameo
appearances.
HBO moved even farther into its own TV productions in the 1990s. The Larry Sanders Show
(1992–98), starring comedian Garry Shandling, did to late-night talk shows what Tanner ’88
had done to political campaigns, to great critical acclaim. Throughout the decade and into
the next, HBO presented a range of such adult-oriented, conceptually groundbreaking, and
critically well-received series as Oz (1997–2003); The Sopranos (1999–2007); Sex and the City
(1998–2004), an adult romantic comedy focused on four women friends in New York City; Six
Feet Under (2001–05), the saga of a dysfunctional-family-run mortuary business; Deadwood
(2004–06), a hard-edged western; and Curb Your Enthusiasm (begun 2000), an
improvisation-based comedy inspired by the real life of its star, Larry David, cocreator of
Seinfeld. Ambitious miniseries and made-for-TV movies also became an important part of
HBO’s programming mix.
It is worth noting that HBO was not the only cable

service to begin with a very speci c product only to later
diversify its offerings. This practice, in fact, became the
norm for specialized cable channels. For example, as
mentioned earlier, MTV, which started out as a 24-hour-
a-day music video provider, would eventually introduce
specials, documentary series, comedies, game shows,
and a wide variety of other program types. Court TV,
which was designed as a venue for coverage of
signi cant trials, very early in its history added reruns of
crime-oriented movies and old TV series to its schedule.
By the end of the 1990s, very few cable channels were
still based on the original notion of providing a single
Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in type of programming around the clock.
the television series Sex and the City.
© Home Box Office Conglomerates and codes
Network ownership changed again in the 1990s. The Walt Disney Company announced its
plans to acquire Capital Cities/ABC in 1995 just one day before CBS accepted an offer to be
purchased by the Westinghouse Corporation. Both deals created enormous media
conglomerates that included production facilities, broadcast stations, cable channels, and an
assortment of other major media venues. In 2000 CBS and Viacom joined together, creating
a company that owned, among other things, two broadcast networks, CBS and UPN.
In the arena of regulation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed as the most
comprehensive communications policy since 1934. Described as “deregulatory and re-
regulatory,” it continued to encourage free-market competition by eliminating or weakening
the industry restraints that were still intact, but it also instituted new rules covering children’s
programming and programming with violent and sexually explicit material. The deregulatory
aspects of the act included yet another extension of the term of a broadcast license, this time
to eight years. Single owners, who had been restricted to 7 TV stations until 1980, 12 in 1985,
and 20 in 1994, were now allowed to own an unlimited number of stations as long as the total
coverage of those stations did not exceed 35 percent of the total U.S. population. The
“duopoly rule,” which forbade any company to own more than one station of its kind (TV, AM
radio, FM radio) per market until 1992, was eliminated and replaced by a formula based on
the population of the market. The act also allowed networks to own cable companies, and
telephone companies could own cable systems in their local service regions, neither of which
had been permitted before 1996. The Prime Time Access Rule, which had limited networks to
three hours of programming between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, was also
dropped.
Increased sensitivity toward program content, however, resulted in some new regulations.
One of these required that stations air at least three hours of children’s educational
programming per week. A heightened emphasis on “family values” and a widely held belief
that social violence was to some degree being generated by violent content on TV were
addressed by the new policy with the introduction of a program ratings code and a
requirement that all new television sets be equipped with a violent-program-blocking device
known as a V-chip. Ratings codes were required to appear on the screen for 15 seconds at the
beginning of each show: TV-Y designated appropriateness for all children; TV-Y7 meant that
the show was designed for children age 7 and older; TV-G indicated appropriateness for all
audiences; TV-PG suggested parental guidance—that the program contained material that
could be considered unsuitable for younger children; TV-14 suggested that many parents
might nd the program inappropriate for anyone under age 14; and TV-MA warned that the
program was designed for adults over age 17. Beyond the rst two categories, the ratings
measured violence, sexual content, and coarse language. The ratings system is awed at
best: the age designations—especially those at 14 and 17—seemed to many arbitrary and
insensitive to the variation in development between teenagers. Moreover, the application of

the system depended entirely upon the sensibilities of those doing the rating, as did the
singling out of language, sex, and violence as the categories for judgment. Some complained
that only entertainment programs were rated, when in fact many news shows were
becoming increasingly violent and sexually explicit. Some producers, of course, claimed that
the ratings system was a form of censorship.
A key factor in the operation of the ratings system was the V-chip, which enabled parents to
block out individual programs or entire ratings categories, making them accessible only by a
secret code. At the turn of the 21st century, the effectiveness of the V-chip remained in
question. Many older children have in fact used the adult ratings as an indicator of programs
they may be more interested in watching, and many children are more likely to have the
technical skills to engage and disengage the V-chip than their parents. It might also be
noted that the ratings system actually increased the number of programs with explicit sexual
content, violence, or strong language. In the movie industry, content was originally
voluntarily regulated by the Hays Production Code (see Will H. Hays), which limited the kind
of language and subject matter (especially that of a sexual or violent nature) allowed in a
lm. The Hays code was superseded by a ratings system in 1966, from which time “adult”
content in movies has been more and more common. One might expect that the television
ratings system could also produce the opposite of the desired effect. Once a rating is
available for adult programming, there is a sense in which that programming has
institutionalized permission to exist. As long as a program carries a TV-MA rating, one might
argue, then it is free to present content that may have been discouraged before a ratings
system was in place. Indeed, many language and sexual barriers have been broken on both
cable and broadcast TV since the introduction of the ratings system in 1996.
The 21st century

Breaking news
The biggest spectacle in television history began on the morning of September 11, 2001. For
days the networks and cable news channels suspended all regularly scheduled
programming and showed nothing but round-the-clock images, interviews, and reporting
about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Saturation coverage of a single
news story went back to the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy in November 1963, when
networks presented nearly continuous coverage over four days. Since the introduction of 24-
hour news channels, many other stories had received this intensive treatment as well. When
the Persian Gulf War began in September 1991, for example, CNN essentially emerged as a
24-hour war channel. To a lesser but still signi cant extent, the car chase and subsequent
murder trial involving former football star O.J. Simpson, the Columbine High School
shootings, and the 2000 presidential election were among the succession of stories to
receive what came to be known as “wall-to-wall coverage.”
Television’s role on September 11, however, was like nothing that had been seen before.
Hundreds of cameras were focused on one burning tower in Manhattan when a second
tower was hit by a jet aircraft. That crash, along with the subsequent collapse of both
buildings, was broadcast live to millions of stunned viewers, then replayed countless times
throughout the following hours and days.
Regular programming began to return in the following weeks, but with noticeable
tenuousness. Every one of the late-night comedians—Letterman, Leno, Kilborn, O’Brien, and
the ensemble of Saturday Night Live—felt obliged to spend several minutes of their rst
episode back discussing the dif culty of performing comedy under the circumstances of
such a profound national tragedy. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart fought back tears while
adding his thoughts to the discussion. After an awkward few weeks, however, the late-night
comedies, and American popular culture in general, had returned to business as usual.
Cable news as entertainment
During important breaking news stories, ratings for cable news channels always go up. The
problem is how to keep them up even when there are not big stories being reported. One
way is to present personalities that audiences would want to watch every day, regardless of
what is happening. This model, designed after the opinionated shows on talk radio, was
employed with great success by the Fox News Channel, which was launched in 1996 and
before long was outperforming both CNN and MSNBC in the ratings. Two conservative
personalities, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, emerged as stars of Fox in the late 1990s. MSNBC
tried to counter Fox’s prime-time strategy with a liberal personality, Phil Donahue, in 2002,
with considerably less success: O’Reilly was regularly outperforming Donahue by a factor of
six. In 2003 MSNBC introduced Countdown with Keith Olbermann and then, in 2008, The
Rachel Maddow Show. Although these prime-time opinion shows did not earn audience
numbers as high as their counterparts on Fox, MSNBC’s ratings did climb considerably.
Opinion shows became the norm during prime time. Even CNN, on its Headline News
Channel, abandoned its usual repetition of 30-minute headline reports during prime time in
favour of personality-driven shows featuring the likes of Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck (who
moved to Fox in 2009).
The return of the game show

The biggest prime-time story of the brand-new century was a surprising one. After a
decades-long absence from the network prime-time schedules, an evening game show was
introduced in August 1999 on ABC with astonishing results. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,
hosted by TV talk-show veteran Regis Philbin, began as a series of limited runs, functioning
as a game show miniseries of sorts. In August, November, and January the show aired on
consecutive nights—as many as 18 in a row. By January it was not uncommon to see the
seven daily installments of the show holding all seven of the top slots in the Nielsen ratings
for the week. The show’s ratings continued to climb, and by the time it was nally given a
regular place in the schedule—three times per week starting in February 2000—it had
become a cultural phenomenon, reaching an audience of more than 30 million per episode.
Based on a British series of the same title, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire had a simple
premise: contestants, selected by phone-in competitions open to the public, were asked 15
questions of increasing value if answered correctly, the last of which was worth a million
dollars. During the process, a contestant who was stumped for an answer was allowed three
assists: phoning a friend, polling the audience, or having the four multiple-choice answers
reduced by half.
The idea to bring game shows back to prime-time television was a natural one. The game
show had been a viable genre twice before: once on radio and again on television in the
1950s. In daytime programming and syndication the genre had never gone away, and shows
such as Wheel of Fortune (NBC, 1975–89; syndication, 1983– ) and Jeopardy! (NBC, 1964–75;
1978–79; syndication, 1984– ) were among the best syndicated performers throughout the
1980s and ’90s. Any negative associations left over from the quiz show scandals had
dissipated, and, more important, the shows were inexpensive—a crucial factor at the turn of
the 21st century, when budgets for other prime-time shows were spinning out of control.
Although audiences responded enthusiastically to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the other
three game shows introduced by Fox, NBC, and CBS on the heels of Millionaire’s success did
not even make it to the next season.
In the age of target marketing, demographically sensitive programming strategies, and

proliferating programming options, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire seemed to be able to
attract almost everyone. The rst questions asked of each contestant were extraordinarily
simple, aimed at the very young. From there, questions appealed to the cultural memories of
every generation. Just as the network era was coming to a close—just as the memory of
everyone watching the same thing at the same time was fading—Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire reminded viewers what the experience of network TV used to be like all the time.
The template of the show proved adaptable to local versions around the globe, one of which
was featured in the Oscar-winning lm Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The show evoked the
1950s, not only because it was a prime-time quiz show but because it attracted an audience
that was as wide and diverse as the TV audience had been in the past. Cable, direct satellite,
the VCR, and the Internet had shattered that audience into fragments during the 1980s and
’90s, but in 2000 this modest game show reminded viewers of what had been one of
television’s greatest appeals.
Reality TV
“Reality TV” was one of the most signi cant new program developments of the new century,
though the genre is in fact nearly as old as the medium itself. Live variety shows had taken
cameras into the streets in the 1950s, and Candid Camera, which surreptitiously lmed
people responding to elaborate practical jokes, debuted on ABC in 1948 (with stints on all
three networks until 1967, its longest tenure coming on CBS [1960–67], before it was revived in
1989–90 and again in 1998). With the appearance of Real People (NBC, 1979–84), however, the
genre began to thrive. Called “infotainment” by some critics and “schlockumentary” by
others, Real People presented several short documentaries per episode featuring “real
people” who did unusual things: one man ate dirt, for example, and another walked only
backward. The program’s imitators included That’s Incredible! (ABC, 1980–84) and Those
Amazing Animals (ABC, 1980–81). As home-video technology spread in the 1980s and ’90s,
entire shows were designed around content produced by amateurs. ABC introduced
America’s Funniest Home Videos (ABC, begun 1990), featuring tapes sent in by home viewers
hoping to win prize money. When that show immediately reached the Nielsen top 10, it was
followed by America’s Funniest People (ABC, 1990–94), a sort of updated version of Real
People that mixed professional and amateur video productions.
Reality shows began taking on other forms as well. America’s Most Wanted (Fox/Lifetime,
1988–2012) and Unsolved Mysteries (NBC/CBS, 1988–99; Lifetime, 2001–02) used actors to
dramatize stories about crimes for which the suspects were still at large. Traditional
journalists decried the use of these reenactments, but hundreds of criminals were
apprehended as a result of viewers’ calling the station in response to photographs of the
suspects that were shown at the end of each episode. In Cops (Fox, 1989–2013; Spike, begun
2013), a camera crew rode along with the police as they patrolled various urban settings.
Episodes of Cops had been taped in more than 100 cities by the end of the century. The
reality genre owed much to An American Family, a 12-part documentary series that aired on
PBS from January to March in 1973. In the making of this series, camera crews followed the
Louds, a Santa Barbara, Calif., family, for seven months, revealing, among other things, the
breakup of the parents’ marriage and the openly gay lifestyle of son Lance, a rst for a
television series.
At century’s end, however, the reality genre was tending more toward voyeurism and less
toward reality. In spite of its title, MTV’s The Real World (begun 1992) was much more
contrived than An American Family, and it set the style for future series of its kind. The Louds,
after all, were a real family, as were the of cers that were portrayed in Cops. For each new
season of The Real World, however, seven young adults who had never met before were
selected from thousands of applicants to live together for several months in a large MTV-
supplied apartment or house in a major city. Cameras recorded them both inside and
outside their home, and the footage was then edited into 13 half-hour episodes per year. It
was, in effect, a documentary about a totally contrived and arti cial situation. Eight years
after the debut of The Real World, CBS picked up on the idea, introducing two series, both
based on similar European shows, that brought the voyeuristic genre to a much larger
audience than ever before. For Survivor (CBS, begun 2000), 16 applicants were selected to
spend some 39 days on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea under the scrutiny of a
hundred cameras. Taped footage was edited into 13 episodes. Although the “survivors” were
forced to cooperate with each other for their daily needs and in competitive events that were
set up by the producers, con ict was injected by forcing the group to vote one of their fellow
castaways off the island at three-day intervals. The ultimate survivor at the end of the series
won a million dollars. A month later, CBS debuted a variant of the genre, Big Brother, which
featured 10 people locked in a house for the summer. Contestants on Big Brother were also
voted out until one winner remained. It aired on consecutive nights during the week and
included one episode per week that was broadcast live; there was also an Internet
component, which allowed online viewers to access four cameras in the house 24 hours per
day. In subsequent seasons the premium cable channel Showtime offered an “after-hours”
version of the show.
By the end of the summer of 2000, Survivor was the most popular show on television, with a
nale episode reaching more that 50 million viewers. After that, reality shows proliferated
across the schedules of both network and cable channels. Not only was there the promise of
high ratings, but these shows were signi cantly less expensive to produce than scripted
series.
Subgenres developed with extraordinary speed. The dating/courtship reality show evolved in
a matter of a few seasons with shows such as The Bachelor (ABC, begun 2002), Temptation
Island (Fox, 2001 and 2003), Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska (Fox, 2002), Joe
Millionaire (Fox, 2003), and Average Joe (NBC, 2003–05). Survivor-like challenge shows
included The Mole (ABC, 2001–04 and 2008), The Amazing Race (CBS, begun 2001), and I’m a
Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here (ABC, 2003; NBC, 2009). Makeovers, once the subject of
daytime talk-show segments, got the full prime-time treatment on series such as Extreme
Makeover (ABC, 2003–07), The Swan (Fox, 2004), and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo,
2003–07).
Although one of the appeals of reality TV was that it featured “regular people,” celebrities
could not resist the thriving genre. Among the many pseudo-documentary series that
presented celebrities in intimate situations were The Osbournes (MTV, 2002–05), focusing on
heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his family; The Anna Nicole Show (E!, 2002–04),
whose eponymous star was a former Playboy model; The Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica (MTV,
2003–05), chronicling the ultimately failed marriage of singers Nick Lachey (formerly of the
boy band 98 Degrees) and Jessica Simpson; and Surreal Life (WB/VH1, 2003–06), a sort of
Real World populated by where-are-they-now? personalities. Most of these shows were
created with a heavy sense of irony, inviting the viewer to watch with a sense of affectionate
mockery.
Competitions for “dream jobs” constituted the core of another subgenre of reality TV
programming. The Apprentice (NBC, begun 2003) offered the opportunity to be hired by
real-estate developer Donald Trump; the winner of Last Comic Standing (NBC, 2003–08,
2010) received a special on Comedy Central; and Dream Job (ESPN, 2004–05) promised an
on-air position at the premier cable sports channel. Other series of this genre included
America’s Next Top Model (UPN, 2003–06; CW, begun 2006), Hell’s Kitchen (Fox, begun 2005),
and Project Runway (Bravo, 2004–08; Lifetime, begun 2009).
Of all the competition shows introduced during this period, however, the most successful
was American Idol (Fox, begun 2002). Unlike some of the other shows in this category,
American Idol was an old-fashioned talent competition in the tradition of The Original
Amateur Hour, which had aired on the radio in the 1930s and ’40s and then on television
from 1948 through 1970, spending some time on each of the four networks. As was the case
with The Original Amateur Hour, American Idol was responsible for creating a number of
stars who went on to make hit recordings and win a variety of awards, including Grammys—
notably Kelly Clarkson—and, in the case of Jennifer Hudson, who did not win the
competition, an Oscar.
Prime time in the new century
In addition to competition and reality shows, network television found success in some tried-
and-true old genres in the new century. Procedural dramas thrived, especially on CBS. CSI:
Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, begun 2000) was the top-rated show for three consecutive
seasons, from 2002 through 2005, and engendered two spin-offs: CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–12)
and CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–13). NBC’s Law & Order, which debuted in 1990, broke into the top 10
for the rst time in 2000–01 and inspired four spin-offs: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
(NBC, begun 1999), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC/USA, 2001–11), Law & Order: Trial by
Jury (NBC, 2005–2006), and Law & Order: Los Angeles (NBC, 2010–11). The medical serial ER
(NBC, 1994–2009) remained a hit, but it was eventually displaced in the top 10 by a new
medical serial, Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, begun 2005). The legal drama, a standard genre since
the days of radio, was represented by The Practice (ABC, 1997–2004) and Boston Legal (ABC,
2004–08), both created and produced by David Kelley, who had written for L.A. Law (NBC,
1986–94) and had created the legal comedy-drama Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–2002).
Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004–12) rejuvenated the prime-time soap opera, one of the
most popular programming forms during the last quarter of the 20th century. After the
highly successful runs of shows such as Dallas (CBS, 1978–91), Dynasty (ABC, 1981–89), Falcon
Crest (CBS, 1981–90), and Melrose Place (Fox, 1992–99), the genre seemed to have played out
by 2000. Desperate Housewives, however, with its provocative title and mischievous and
intertwined story lines, consistently achieved high ratings.
The situation comedy was in bad decline in the early 2000s. The big hits of the 1990s were
departing one after another, and there were few new sitcoms to take their places. Roseanne
left the air in 1997, followed by Seinfeld in 1998. Both Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) and Frasier
(NBC, 1993–2004) completed their network runs in 2004, and Everybody Loves Raymond
(CBS, 1996–2005) concluded the following year. Although there were few traditional sitcoms
left, new half-hour comedies shot in a single-camera style without a live audience began to
nd success, if not the spectacular hit status of the earlier sitcoms. Scrubs (NBC/ABC, 2001–
10), The Of ce (NBC, 2005–13), My Name Is Earl (NBC, 2005–09), and 30 Rock (NBC, 2006–13)
were among this new generation of comedy series.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Fox introduced 24 (2001–10), an innovative espionage
drama. Like Murder One (ABC, 1995–97), a legal drama from the 1990s, each season of 24 was
like a miniseries, presenting a single story line (with many intertwining threads) that
concluded at the end of the season. In the case of 24, however, each 24-episode season
represented a single 24-hour day; each episode presented an hour in the life of intelligence
agent Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland). Another notable program was Lost (ABC,
2004–10), perhaps the most narratively complex series in American TV series history.
Borrowing elements of the paranormal from previous series such as Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–
91) and The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002), Lost followed 48 survivors of a plane crash on an island in
the Paci c, employing a dizzying number of tricks, from ash-forwards and ashbacks to
parallel times and spaces. It was a perfect show for the Internet age, engendering amateur
speculation and analysis from bloggers around the world.
Many argued, however, that the most interesting new programs of the 2000s were coming
from cable, not the networks. Not regulated by federal indecency rules that limit content on
over-the-air programs from 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM, cable channels could, and did, present more
“adult” content than their network counterparts. Basic cable channels began introducing
original programming in the early 2000s that garnered a signi cant amount of critical
acclaim and awards. FX aired The Shield (2002–08), Nip/Tuck (2003–10), Rescue Me (2004–11),
Over There (2005), and Damages (2007–10; Audience Network, 2011–12); TNT supplied The
Closer (2005–12), Saving Grace (2007–10), and Raising the Bar (2008–09); USA Network’s
Monk (2002–09) won seven Emmy Awards; and AMC’s Mad Men (begun 2007) won six in its
rst season, including that for Outstanding Drama Series.
The premium pay-cable channels HBO and Showtime continued to offer extraordinary
examples of literate and sophisticated television art in the new century. Although HBO’s
subsequent series did not reach the ratings heights of Sex and the City or The Sopranos, the
network did continue to bring out acclaimed dramas such as Six Feet Under (2001–05) and
The Wire (2002–08), comedies such as Curb Your Enthusiasm (begun 2000) and Entourage
(2004–11), miniseries such as Angels in America (2003) and John Adams (2008), and
experimental oddments such as K Street (2003) and Carnivale (2003–05). Showtime’s output
of original scripted series also picked up in the early 2000s, with such notable series as The L
Word (2004–09), Weeds (2005–12), Dexter (2006–13), and The Tudors (2007–10).
An indication of signi cant change for network prime-time television was announced by
NBC in late 2008: starting in the fall of 2009 Jay Leno, who had just completed a 17-year run
as host of The Tonight Show, would host a daily comedy show from 10:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern
Time, Monday through Friday. In deciding to ll these time slots with a show that would be
much cheaper to produce than scripted dramas, NBC ceded all the places on its schedule
that had featured and nurtured such in uential dramas as Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere,
L.A. Law, and ER. The scripted network drama was not going away, but it seemed like there
would be a lot less of it in the future.
The “new technologies”
When the videocassette recorder (VCR) began to penetrate the mass market in the late
1970s, for the rst time consumers were able to store television programming and view it at
their convenience. Around the same period, cable TV, with its increased array of stations and
abetted by remote-control capability, ushered in the practice of “channel sur ng.” Viewer
choice and control increased dramatically with these technologies and would increase even
more profoundly in the new century.
Digital video recorders (DVRs) appeared on the market in 1999 from ReplayTV and TiVo. These
digital set-top devices allowed users to record television programs without the use of
videotape. More versatile than the VCR, recording set-up and playback was also signi cantly
easier. By mid-decade, video delivered on the Internet had become commonplace. YouTube,
a Web site that made uploading and viewing video clips practically effortless, began
operation in 2005 and within a year had become a rmly established element of global
popular culture. Almost immediately, YouTube had provided access to a staggering number
of viewer-generated as well as professional short videos.
By the middle of the new century’s rst decade, the Internet had become an important new
way of distributing commercial television shows. A number of services emerged that offered
both new and old programming for free, with advertising. CBS launched Innertube in 2006,
the same year that AOL introduced In2TV. Both services offered shows over the Internet that
had originally played on network television (as well as a few direct-to-Internet original
programs). NBC Universal began testing Hulu in 2007 and of cially launched it in 2008. By
2009 Hulu was offering a wide menu of movies and TV series from NBC Universal, Fox, ABC-
Disney, and a variety of cable channels.
As the Internet was making it possible to watch TV anywhere, anytime, on small portable
devices, another contrary revolution was taking place: television screens in the home were
getting bigger and bigger. As high-de nition television (HDTV) nally got up and running
after a long period of gestation, the sales of bigger, atter HDTV sets became substantial. By
2008 about one-third of American homes had at least one high-de nition television set.
Many people purchased their rst HDTV set for use with DVD players and video-gaming
devices. As the decade progressed, however, more and more television programming was
being produced in high de nition, and more stations were upgrading their facilities to be
able to broadcast in HD. For all the advances in Internet technologies, Nielsen ratings data for
the last quarter of 2008 indicated that television viewing in the home was not suffering—it
was in fact increasing.
A symbolic moment in television history arrived in June 2009, by which time federal
regulations had mandated that all TV stations needed to have converted from analog to
digital signals. Anyone still using an antenna—that venerable symbol of the TV era—would no
longer be able to receive a television signal without adding a special translator device to their
set.
Robert J. Thompson
CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Television in the United States
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 01 July 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/television-in-the-United-States
ACCESS DATE: September 04, 2019

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Television was still in its experimental stage in 1948, and

searched for events that could be shot easily and

After a period of experimentation, the immediacy of live

Soon to emerge, however, was what would become the

The variety show itself often showed evolutionary

Although most programming at the time came from the

News and politics

The political commercial

Nixon’s “Checkers” speech

The red scare

One owner of a chain of supermarkets threatened to condemn—by placing a sign on

Edward R. Murrow had established his reputation

Although public opinion about McCarthy did not

The late Golden Age

to orbit the Earth. The show’s nal broadcast was on

Ken Curtis (left) in the role of Festus Hagen

The year of transition: 1959

In 1959 two key events underlined the demise of

The second event of 1959 was the appearance of The

“town meetings of the air,” in which political leaders and

The Kennedy-Nixon debates

Minow’s “vast wasteland”

Minow’s list illustrates how, by 1961, the basic

were being introduced. An assortment of new shows from

broadcast on the networks. Although they were

Technology and educational TV

The late 1960s and early ’70s: the

The new cultural landscape

All in the Family

Like so many television sitcoms, All in the Family focused

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

CBS enjoyed extraordinary success with these new

All in the Family inspired spin-offs (Maude [CBS, 1972–

The development of sports programming

Media versus the federal government

The Prime Time Access Rule and “ n-syn”

TV violence and self-regulation

The late 1970s: the new escapism

The era of the miniseries

The 1980s: television rede ned

Although mainstream dramas and comedies were an

the programming philosophy established by Hill Street

All of the quality dramas employed story lines that

operas played in 15-minute installments, but by the 1960s

The late shows

Other networks began to compete in late night as well

Reorganization and deregulation

All of the media industries experienced signi cant corporate

The 1990s: the loss of shared experience

Many had predicted that cable would reduce the

Seinfeld, which focused on four unmarried friends living

series as Ellen as an important breakthrough, others saw it as another example of the

Teen dramas and adult cartoons

Throughout the 1990s, television content continued to

New boundaries: the growth of cable

It is worth noting that HBO was not the only cable

insensitive to the variation in development between teenagers. Moreover, the application of

The 21st century

Cable news as entertainment

The return of the game show

In the age of target marketing, demographically sensitive programming strategies, and