E.B. White. Essayist. Wrote about the potential of TV (1938)

"I think Television should be the visual counterpart of the literary essay, should arouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys, enable us to participate in events, present great drama and music, explore the sea and the sky and the woods and the hills....It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle.

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television, of that I am quite certain."

How well has TV lived up to White’s expectations?

1920. KDKA, Pittsburgh, went on the air November 1920. Explosion.

The start of broadcasting. By July 1922, 400 stations were licensed and more were on their way. 1929: 606. By 1935: most of the nation had radios.

Sitting in your home, you could hear voices from afar -- the world of politics, religion, music, drama, entertainment -- into your home.

At first, no advertising. People worried that advertising would detract from content. Many thought it entirely illogical to have advertising. Too mercenary. One publication decried: "Mercenary advertising purposes." Predicted a public rebellion would ensue.

Some characterized it as akin to have advertising in church-- a sermon interrupted by an advertisement; or at a concert -- having Beethoven’s 9th Symphony interrupted half way through by ads. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover: "It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service...to be drowned in advertising chatter."

Reflecting

• growing stability in radio industry [e.g., assigned frequencies after 1927]
• Rise of brand names
• Success by a few early advertisers in establishing brand name familiarity.
• By the late 1920s, early 1930s, radio was posed to grow as a vehicle for advertising. Advertisers flocked to the medium.

If a show had a sponsor -- and most did -- the sponsor was king.

• Shows developed by advertising agency staffs working with advertiser. Hired director, writer, etc., and gave script instructions.
• Sponsors had complete control over scripts.
• At Radio City Music Hall, completed in 1933, every studio had a sponsor’s booth -- where the sponsor could make last minute/second deletions as the show went out over the air.
• What did sponsors want? Shows that were popular with listeners around the nation. In the middle 1930s: comedians (such as Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy) were the surest guarantee of a large audience.

Sponsors also took out advertising or sponsored shows for particular reasons -- beyond just promoting their products. DuPont Co. sponsored CAVALCADE OF AMERICA as IMAGE REPAIR.

Company upset in the middle 1930s; a Senate Report was about to come out showing the enormous profits the company had made during WW1 as a supplier to the US Army. Wartime profit of $238million; its stock went from $125 a share to $593. Mid 1930s: criticism of war profiteering. MERCHANTS OF DEATH.

Opportunism.

So DuPont --through an ad agency -- bought a counter measure. CAVALCADE OF AMERICA. (agency: Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne). The show began in October 1935, shortly before the Senate report’s release. It sought to blur the merchants of death image by superimposing another image -- a company concerned with "better things for better living." Talented young writers (including Arthur Miller). Corporate strategy dictated topics, rules about scripts:

• War stories banned
• No criticism of DuPont
• Emphasis on individual achievement in scientific research, quest for better life.
• Each show to be a tribute to a hero or heroine.
• Some topics taboo: Labor history, blacks (first black: Booker T. Washington, 1948 show, who felt that blacks should keep their place until better educated), TVA (which DuPont opposed).

Note who has the power in production: Production is centered in advertising agencies. Writers and directors work for the ad agency. Scripts, shows shaped by advertisers and then taken to networks.

What attracts an audience AND serves as a good setting for advertising? Soap operas. Variety shows: music, comedy. Adventure and mystery. Generally: EPISODE shows. Short shows --15 minutes -- of some event in the life of the actors.

Popularity measured by ratings: How many people listening? Demographics of audience.

Post WW2. Fastest adoption of any major new technological change in US up to that time. Late 1940s, although major growth begins in 1952. By 1955: 88 per cent of all homes had one TV. 1955 study: teens spending up to 30 hours a week watching TV. In 1954: the TV dinner appeared. That same year, 1954: Toledo Water commissioner made a discovery -- baffled by why water consumption surged upward during certain 2 minute periods. COMMERCIALS on TV.

By 1960: More than 98 per cent of US households had TV. More homes had TV sets than had telephones, refrigerators, bathtubs or indoor toilets.

Era of the Cold War. Loyalty oaths; notion of guilty until proven innocent.

Loyalty oaths. State/federal investigations into citizens’ loyalty. Fear of Soviet Union’s expansion. Climate of fear, suspicion and accusation. Pressure groups, watchdog groups (Red Channels, American Legion; J. Edgar Hoover). Attacks directly on Hollywood -- accused of Communist subversion in late 1940s (although no real evidence of any kind). Bad guys all Capitalists; good guys Commies or sympathizers. This political environment influences corporate policy: who works, writes. Suspected writers, actors: out of work.

Result : People in the industry avoided controversy. Escapist entertainment, safe stories, characters, safe plots.

RADIO networks were the major developers of early TV. So they did business as they had on radio. RADIO was a commercial medium, under advertisers’ control, which in turn shaped content.

TELEVISION: little change. Commercial medium. Radio formats copied right into Television. Almost a direct transfer of radio content to TV: same stars, programs, formats. Except: this was radio with pictures. Benny, Burns and Allen, Berle, Bergen, Jackie Gleason had all started in radio.

What’s wrong with this script?

1. The couple look out their NYC apartment at the sun glistening off the Chrysler Building.

2. My family has lived in this part of the state since Lincoln’s time.

3. The American automobile industry is the strongest in the world.

4. The young soldier picked up a cigarette, tapped it once, twice, three times -- as he looked at the waitress behind the counter.

5. Scene at the family breakfast table: Mom, Dad and Junior (age 3). He’s cranky this morning and refuses to eat his cereal.

6. Adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling play, "The Light That Failed."

7. The Nazis slaughtered millions in the gas chamber.

8. We’ll take the train up on Thursday; Rex will come on Friday -- he’d rather fly up anyway.

Sponsor: Camel. Concerns about Portrayal of cigarettes.

• Don’t have heavy or any disreputable person smoking.
• Don’t associate smoking with undesirable scenes or situations.
• Cigarettes must be smoked gracefully, not puffed nervously. Cigarettes do NOT calm the nerves (narcotic).

• Hero must be menaced early and often.
• Murder in the plot. "It has been found that we retain audience interest best when our story is concerned with murder. Therefore, although other crimes may be introduced, somebody must be murdered, preferably early, with the threat of more violence to come.
• Arson cannot be in the plot --- reminds people of fire danger associated with smoking. Cannot mention fires at all.
• No one should have a nagging cough.
• Must have romance: "at least one attractive woman."
• Doctors should appear "in the most commendable light." Don’t antagonize doctors -- doing research on smoking.
• Before middle commercial: action must rise to a "cliffhanger"

Censorship unusally not needed; commercial culture understood.

Congressional testimony, 1956. Vice President C. Terence Clyne of the McCann Erickson Agency; at that time spending about $100 million a year on TV and radio for various clients. He was questioned about the extent of censorship by advertisers:

Answer: "Actually, there have been few cases where it has been necessary to exercise a veto, because the producers involved and the writers involved are normally pretty well aware of what might not be acceptable.

Question: "In other words, they know already before they start writing and producing what the limitations are, the subject matter limitations that you will accept and your client will accept -- is that correct?

Answer: "That is correct."

Format: Episodes

Comedy (I Love Lucy)

Westerns (Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke)

Variety Shows (Ed Sullivan)

Sports (boxing, wrestling)

Daytime Soaps

Programming for Children

1953-1955. Anthologies: high quality drama. One type of programming that really stood out. Essentially: tele-plays. Rehearsals 6 days; filmed on the 7th. A change from the EPISODE style of TV.

1953. 13 major shows a week, either 60 or 90 minutes. Shows included: Omnibus, Elgin Hour, Playhouse 90, Kraft TV Theater, Philco TV Playhouse, Studio One.

Fine writers, fine actors: Paul Newman, econ student from Kenyon College; had worked in a Cleveland sporting goods store; got into Yale Drama school -- then Broadway -- then TV. Sidney Poitier.

Paddy Chayevsky, a key director and writer, referred to the "Drama of the Mundane." It’s more compelling, he said, why someone gets married or not -- than why they kill someone. But: Problems arise.

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. STREET SCENE. No one will buy it. He takes it from ad agency to ad agency, trying to get someone to pick it up for TV. Gets no takers. Sends it to a friend in an ad agency and asks him: what’s wrong? Reply:

"We know of no advertiser or advertising agency of any importance in this country who would knowingly allow the products which he is trying to advertise to the public to become associated with the squalor and general ‘down’ character of Street Scene. On the contrary, it is the general policy of advertisers to glamorize their products and the people who buy them, and the whole American social and economic scene. The American consuming public as presented by the advertising industry today is middle class, not lower class; is happy in general, not miserable and frustrated.

b. Thunder on Sycamore Street

Reginald Rose. CBS TV. REAL STORY: Cicero, Illinois -- suburban Chicago. Black family moves into an all white neighborhood. Neighborhood organizes to force them out. REAL STORY. Rose’s drama is based on this -- CBS and the ad agency loved it. But doubted that it would do well -- given that the GOOD GUYS in all of this were African Americans. Fearful that some white viewers would be angered by this portrayal -- and no advertiser would want his or her product associated with such a show. So they talked to ROSE about changing the story some to keep the basic idea. He finally agreed.

Final TV plot: Change the new neighbor to an ex convict and his family; sympathetic view of him and his family. But neighborhood mobilizes against them just the same. To make it a bit more gripping: TV audience doesn’t find out until the very end of the show about the real identity of the new neighbor -- and the basis for the neighborhood’s objection and hostility. Go to commercial; then back for a last 30 second revelation. During that time people called their local CBS stations to tell them who they thought this was: Catholic, Polish, Jews, Italians, African Americans and so on. Invitation to bigotry.

Television play based on one of the most brutal murders of the 1950s.

Emmett Till: 15 year old African American from Chicago. Visiting relatives in central Mississippi. Talked a bit fresh to a white woman. Did not know the ways of the South.... Her husband and his brother come after Emmett; take him at night and beat him to death. Sink his body in a river with farm machinery tied to it. Body eventually recovered. Only way to identify it -- so badly beaten -- from a ring he was wearing.

Two white men on trial for murder. All the evidence pointed toward them.

But jury -- of all white men -- acquitted them. But basically shunned them after that. Four months later: the two white men sold their story to a freelance journalist. Admitted that they killed Emmett; couldn’t get over that he was not afraid of them. So unlike African Americans in the south. Did not "know his place."

Rod Serling play -- being adapted for television. Fascinated by the town’s reaction. Closed to outside pressure -- protect its own ways. But punished the murderers in its own limited way. NOON ON DOOMSDAY. But cannot have a black kid as a hero in a case like this. TILL CASE immense controversy in the middle 1950s. Open casket funeral in Chicago showed how he had been brutally beaten. Till case: a major event in the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. So script changed to avoid offending any viewers: Elderly pawnbroker attacked without any reason by juvenile delinquents.

During filming: Serling tells press that the Till case was the inspiration of the play. Protests ensues. White Citizen Councils go to the sponsor -- US Steel -- and complain. Opening reshot -- New England white church steeple.

In late 1955, there was a new show on TV. Some in the industry just groaned -- thinking it was just too circus like. It was a quiz show.

In 1955, Charles Revson, president of Revlon. Wanted a vehicle for his product . Hazel Bishop, a competitor, doing well at that time. Walter Craig, an ex vaudeville entertainer and writer -- turned TV producer -- had an advertising agency. He heard about an idea for a new show: $64,000 Question. Told Revson about it; Revson liked the idea.

Basic idea: A quiz series, holding contestants over for several weeks, to make possible an unprecedented cash award. Radio and early TV had had quiz shows, but prizes were less than $200. On $64,000 Question: could win up to that amount (and later, more). Losers would get a Cadillac. Contestants: in glass isolation booths, for security. Trust officer would certify that all was fair.

Absolutely sensational. Biggest jackpot program in Radio or TV history. Ratings fantastic. Casinos in Las Vegas put in Tvs

i. Costs Low. Just studio. No filming costs. Contestants go from week to week -- building suspense. Only major expense: those who win. Small cost compared to ratings, revenues.

ii. Promoted the Product well. Actress Wendy Barrie did stylish ads for a new product from Revlon-- LIVING LIPSTICK. But within two months, it was sold out and Revlon couldn’t make it fast enough. Stores flooded with pleas for Living Lipstick. Hal March, the master of ceremonies, pleased with the public to be patient. Substitute product: TOUCH AND GLOW LIQUID MAKE UP FOUNDATION. Sold out, too. RATINGS: 49.6 on the Hooper scales; 84 per cent of the audience.

iii.Created Cultural Icons. The winners on the $64,000 Question became heroes. One marine, Richard S. McCutcheon, became something of a national hero when he answered the $64,000 Question correctly. One convention of wholesale druggists in White Sulfur Springs (WVA) interrupted their conference to hear the news: The Marine has answered the $64,000 Question. Great cheers. People stopped him on the street -- asking for his autograph. All of this helped the product.

C. Success leads to "Spinoffs" such as Big Surprise, $64,000 Challenge, High Finance, Treasure Hunt, 21, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, Giant Step, Can Do, Nothing but the Truth.

• Charles Van Doren, bright young Columbia Univ. instructor. Won $129,000 on Twenty One.
• Teddy Nadler, on $64K Question: $152K.
• Robert Strom: $160K

January 1958. Show: Dotto. It was rigged. Three contestants. Edward Hilgemier. 28 year old part time actor, comedian, barman, valet and butler. Marie Winn. 21 year old Columbia College student. Returning champ. Yeffe Kimball. the other challenger.

Hilgemeir notes that Winn seems to be on a first name basis with producers, staff. Seems to have the answers at the tip of her tongue. Suspicious. On the show itself: she knows the answers but doesn’t do it easily; seems to stutter and stop and sweat --but still has the answers. Suspicious. Goes to her dressing room after everyone has left. Finds list of questions and answers in wastepaper basket. Hilgemeir and Kimball go to the producers. Paid off.

B. 21. Herbert Stempel/Charles Van Doren. One contestant, Herbert Stempel, an early winner on 21, charged that the program was fixed. Charles Van Doren -- the summer host on the TODAY show, said he knew of no irregularities. He and others denied repeated before a New York Grand jury that the show was fixed. Stempel was a 29 year old veteran, working his way through City College in NYC. Needed money; applied for the show. Told to get a short haircut and an ill fitting suit -- so that he would look needier than he was. .Penniless Veteran image. Shown how to stutter, bit lip and pat his brow.

Stempel did well -- at least in terms of answering questions. He didn’t do well in the ratings. Pushed aside when Charles Van Doren came on the show.

Van Doren: bright, young, good looking. Producers gave Van Doren the answers. Van Doren at first protested, but they told him it would help education. "Besides, by beating Stempel he would be doing a tremendous service to teachers and scholars everywhere." Undisguised altruism reared its haloed head. Van Doren agreed to the scheme . Van Doren: on for 18 weeks. Off the show, afterwards: got a $50K a year job with the TODAY SHOW. Stempel was bitter that he had to take a dive. Knew he would eventually have to lose, but he resented Van Doren. After spending his money: goes back to the producers, demands more or he’ll talk.

1. Single sponsorship virtually ended.

2. Replaced by scatter plan (or scatter shot) advertising. Series of spots, thorughout the day and evening. So: 5 or more advertisers for each show; no one would have ultimate power.

3. Prices vary throughout the day for ad spots. How to decide those prices?

(a) how many people are watching

(b) is it an audience you want to reach?

Nielsen ratings. Data in terms of sex, age, economic and educational status, urban or rural location, other actors. Age and sex information esp. valued by advertisers.

By the early 1960s, this DEMOGRAPHIC information began to dominate trade talk and the buying and selilng of 30 and 60 second slots.

CBS: They and their sponosrs and ad agencies created a promotion piece called WHERE THE GIRLS ARE. Empahasis: (a) age distribution of retail buyers; (b) for 91 different products bought parimarly by women; (c) what and what they watched on TV.

Advertisers started to specify audiences they wanted to advertise to. Sponsors no longer based decisions on person al reactions to shows. Rather: on demographcis.

Some shows dropped. Popular but wrong demographics. Gunsmoke, Red Skelton Show. (More recently: Murder She Wrote, Dr. Quinn). Erik Barnouw, leading TV historian notes that it was no catastrophe in the history of drama when these shows were dropped, but it signalled the rising power of demographic data.

Networks and other companies get involved in programming. Hiring writing teams.

No longer centered in the ad agencies. But: same culture. Direct control replaced by indirect control. Key client still advertiser.

E.B. White, on the potential of television (1938):

"I think Television should be the visual counterpart of the literary essay, should arouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys, enable us to participate in events, present great drama and music, explore the sea and the sky and the woods and the hills....It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle.

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television, of that I am quite certain."

What’s "wrong" with this script?

1. The couple look out their NYC apartment at the sun glistening off the Chrysler Building.

2. My family has lived in this part of the state since Lincoln’s time.

3. The American automobile industry is the strongest in the world.

4. The young soldier picked up a cigarette, slowly tapped it once then twice -- as he looked at the waitress behind the counter.

5. Scene at the family breakfast table: Mom, Dad and Junior (age 3). He’s cranky this morning and refuses to eat his cereal.

6. Adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling play, "The Light That Failed."

7. The Nazis slaughtered millions in the gas chamber.

8. We’ll take the train up on Thursday; Rex will come on Friday -- he’d rather fly up anyway.