tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/nbc-10343/articlesNBC – The Conversation2024-02-12T13:22:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224612024-02-12T13:22:05Z2024-02-12T13:22:05ZLorne Michaels, the man behind the curtain at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ has been minting comedy gold for nearly 50 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573576/original/file-20240205-29-bcz58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C7%2C4916%2C2303&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lorne Michaels holding one of his Emmy Awards in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/74thEmmyAwards-TrophyTable/6c56e4ccbc7647aca4d123b7de872dd6/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=492&currentItemNo=2">Danny Moloshok/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 24, 1976, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0584427/">Lorne Michaels</a>, the creator and producer of the late-night NBC comedy program “Saturday Night” – it had not yet changed its name to “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072562/">Saturday Night Live</a>” – appeared on camera in hopes of luring the Beatles to reunite on the program.</p>
<p>The Fab Four’s last concert had been eight years earlier in San Francisco, and the <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/abbey-road">band had stopped recording together in 1969</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL3Foo7ZokY">Michaels addressed</a> the band members by name – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – and then acknowledged rumors that the group might get back together. </p>
<p>“It’s also been said that no one has yet to come up with enough money to satisfy you,” Michaels said. “Well, if it’s money you want, there’s no problem here.”</p>
<p>Michaels then held up a check.</p>
<p>“Here it is right here. A check made out to you, the Beatles, for $3,000. All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs,” he said. “‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ That’s $1,000 right there. You know the words – it’ll be easy.”</p>
<p>Among the 22 million viewers was Lennon.</p>
<p>Lennon had watched the program from his home a few miles away from the NBC studio. A week later, he was watching the next episode with McCartney and told him about Michaels’ recent proposal.</p>
<p>“So John said, ‘<a href="https://www.theglassonionbeatlesjournal.com/2014/05/mccartney-talks-beatles-nirvana.html">It’s a hoot</a>, you know what would be great, we can go down there now.’” McCartney later recounted in an interview. </p>
<p>“For about five minutes, we were going, ‘We’ve got to do it.’ Then it was like, ‘Are you kidding, let’s stay in and watch the show,’” McCartney recalled. “It would be a great story, but we decided against it.”</p>
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<h2>‘It’s like he created Yale or NASA’</h2>
<p>No television program in history has chronicled American politics, culture, fads and tastes like “SNL,” which has mirrored and critiqued society over its half-century run by mocking it. “Caricatures,” <a href="https://www.humanitiesforwisdom.org/uploads/5/8/9/8/58987361/lampooning_injustice-__paul_conrad%E2%80%99s_perspective_on_civil_rights.pdf">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a> said, “are often the truest history of the times.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0275486">Tina Fey</a>, who appeared on the program from 1997 to 2006, <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1393319/lorne-michaels-reveals-who-may-succeed-him-at-saturday-night-live">reportedly might succeed Michaels</a> as its producer when he retires.</p>
<p>“Lorne created a show that’s impacted culture for decades,” Fey said of the man who has been the program’s producer, showrunner and mastermind for most of the program’s nearly half-century run. “No one has ever really successfully been able to replicate it.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aox7YP1Fr1I">Comedian Mike Myers</a>, who served as a cast member on “SNL” from 1989 to 1996, is another big fan. “It’s like he created Yale or NASA.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">SNL’s ‘needs more cowbell’ spoof of the band Blue Öyster Cult is among its most-watched sketches.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Unmatched track record</h2>
<p>Michaels <a href="https://horatioalger.ca/en/haa_members/lorne-michaels/">grew up in Toronto</a> before immigrating to the U.S., where he <a href="https://walkoffame.com/lorne-michaels/">first worked as a writer</a> for “Laugh-In” and “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.” He has received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement – Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. He also won the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/campaign/medal-of-freedom">Presidential Medal of Freedom</a>, the highest civilian honor in the U.S.</p>
<p>He’s also been nominated for <a href="https://www.emmys.com/bios/lorne-michaels">102 Emmy Awards</a>, <a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/credits/creator/lorne-michaels?lang=es">setting a show business record</a>, and he’s won more than 20 of them. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/list/ls083322620/">“SNL” has won more Emmys</a> than any other TV show.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/m/ma-mn/lorne-michaels/">Michaels’ long list of awards</a> includes the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, two Peabody Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors.</p>
<p><a href="https://screenrant.com/snl-best-skits-ranked/#olympia-caf-eacute">“SNL”‘s skits</a> and its humorous “<a href="https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/snl-weekend-update-hosts-in-order">Weekend Update</a>” news segments have tracked America’s politics, fads, foibles and scandals from the era of disco fever through the COVID-19 pandemic and today’s <a href="https://youtu.be/pGO1hC4iIb8">trepidation about artificial intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>Whether it was <a href="https://youtu.be/puJePACBoIo">John Belushi</a> gruffly taking orders at a dive that’s only serving cheeseburgers at breakfast time, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgZukeisGwU&ab_channel=MsMojo">Fey impersonating Sarah Palin</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwPQn7i-6JQ">James Austin Johnson</a> caricaturing Donald Trump, “SNL” has served as the nation’s laugh track through the last half-century.</p>
<p>That’s in large part because Michaels <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/how-snls-lorne-michaels-became-179894/">recruited some of the best comic minds and actors</a> of the last half-century to work for “SNL,” including, but hardly limited to, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Will Ferrell, Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig, Adam Sandler, Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson.</p>
<p>“There has never been anything in show business <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/feb/17/lorne-michaels-kingmaker-comedy-saturday-night-live">like his track record for discovering stars</a>,” said Doug Hill, the author of “Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gilda Radner as Emily Litella, a recurring character, and Chevy Chase, the original Weekend Update anchor.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>No reunion necessary</h2>
<p>Michaels’ enduring success is like that of a top college football coach who remains successful year after year even though his players frequently have to be replaced. But then again, how many <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/longest-tenured-college-football-coaches-023305426.html">college football coaches</a> have remained at the top of their game for a half-century?</p>
<p>At some point, Michaels, who <a href="https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/lorne-michaels.html">turns 80 on Nov. 17, 2024</a>, will retire.</p>
<p>When asked about retirement rumors in January 2024, he said he intended to remain with the program for at least another year.</p>
<p>“We’re doing the 50th anniversary show in February of '25,” <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1393319/lorne-michaels-reveals-who-may-succeed-him-at-saturday-night-live">he told “Entertainment Tonight</a>.” “I will definitely be there for that, and definitely be there until that, and sometime before that we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”</p>
<p>No matter when Michaels retires, his legacy is secure. So are his contributions to comedy, <a href="https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/first-saturday-night-live-cast-snl-season-1">beginning with the original cast</a>, known as the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players. The roster included Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris.</p>
<p>A movie about the behind-the-scenes mayhem before the show first went on the air, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27657135/">SNL 1975</a>,” is in the works.</p>
<p>It was near the end of the first season of “SNL” when Michaels offered the Beatles $3,000 to appear on the program. </p>
<p>Former Beatle <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694666/">Harrison</a> did make an appearance later that year. <a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-chris-farley-show-paul-mccartney/2868143">McCartney later made several appearances</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694472/">Starr</a> hosted an episode in 1984. But neither “Saturday Night Live” nor Michaels, as it turned out, needed a Beatles reunion to make their mark on popular culture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The show has served as the nation’s laugh track for decades. Who will take over when he retires?Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014972023-05-12T11:14:01Z2023-05-12T11:14:01ZSeinfeld: how a sitcom ‘about nothing’ changed television for good<p>A quarter of a century ago, on 14 May 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld was broadcast, ending one of the most significant sitcoms of all time after nine seasons and 180 episodes. In fact the self-styled “show about nothing” was so important we can talk about the pre-Seinfeld and post-Seinfeld eras. </p>
<p>Set in Manhattan, Seinfeld focused on the minutiae of daily life for four friends: Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), his best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbour Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). </p>
<p>Such a setup might sound familiar to fans of 90s American comedy shows. But Seinfeld abandoned the traditional sitcom structure of an A story and a B story and instead gave each character their own storyline, full of self-aware and metatextual jokes.</p>
<p>While co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wanted a single-camera, filmlike aesthetic, the network, NBC, forced them to adopt a multi-camera setup taped in front of a live studio audience to supply the laughter track. </p>
<p>Eventually, David and Seinfeld subverted that by shooting more scenes using single cameras and externally so that they could not be taped in front of a studio audience. They also employed a rapid-paced, quick-cutting, music-led style that was then unusual for sitcoms. </p>
<p>This created the opportunities for expanding the narrative and cinematographic possibilities we’ve seen since. Seinfeld was a forerunner of the cinematic television we watch today. </p>
<p>Consider the elaborate single-camera set pieces of the comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, or the epic, cinematic look of Netflix’s Better Call Saul.</p>
<p>Seinfeld tackled a host of then-taboo topics, which were part of everyday life, including antisemitism, same-gender relationships and masturbation. But because censorship and social mores at that time would not allow the characters to say the word “masturbation”, instead they referred to who can be the “master of their domain”. Such topics are commonplace these days.</p>
<p>All four characters are antiheroes. None of them is particularly likeable nor were they intended to be. They are morally ambiguous, malicious, selfish, self-involved and extremely petty. They refuse to improve themselves, evolve or even manifest the slightest desire for change. They learn no lessons and the arc of the entire series revisits those they have wronged. </p>
<p>Similar characters can be found in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367279/">Arrested Development</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/">It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</a>. Also, consider Walter White from <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70143836">Breaking Bad</a> and <a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos">Tony Soprano</a>.</p>
<p>If all four leads in Seinfeld are bad, then George is the worst. Modelled on co-creator, Larry David, he is the epitome of male privilege. Such characters populate the televisual landscape today, not least in David’s later show, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>, in which he stars as a version of himself. </p>
<p>Elaine Benes stands out as a strong female character for the time. In one episode, in the face of a shortage of contraception, she judges whether her sexual partners are “sponge-worthy” or not. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her with a tremendous physical comedy, as well as comic timing. She was unapologetic, and her sexuality and work life are foregrounded. Clearly, this set the template for her later series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/veep">Veep</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Festivus is celebrated on December 23 each year, thanks to Seinfeld.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The show generated billions of dollars in revenue, making NBC US$150 million (about £93 million) a year at its peak. By the ninth and final season, Jerry Seinfeld was earning US$1 million an episode. NBC executives tried to get him to return for a tenth season by offering him US$5 million an episode, but Seinfeld turned it down. </p>
<p>Among the show’s fans was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. “He was crazy about The Simpsons and Seinfeld,” his friend <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/kubrick-by-michael-herr/">Michael Herr recounted</a>. As a Kubrick expert, I even suspect that the set design influenced his final film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/">Eyes Wide Shut</a> (1999).</p>
<p>Watching Seinfeld again now – and I have re-watched every episode – some of it lands terribly today. Take the episodes with Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani immigrant who runs a restaurant across the street from Jerry’s apartment. He appears in three episodes of the show and is known for his catchphrase, “Very bad man!” which he uses to insult Jerry. </p>
<p>The problem is that Babu is played by actor Brian George, who was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish parents, and is clearly wearing makeup and affecting a south Asian accent. </p>
<p>At the same time, the lack of diversity in Seinfeld is striking. New York is represented by Manhattan alone, rather than any of the other four boroughs that make up the metropolis. Its image of the Big Apple is white and middle class. </p>
<p>As journalist and screenwriter Lindy West has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/politically-correct-jerry-seinfeld-comedy-marginalised-voices">observed</a>, the series featured only 19 black people, 18 of whom were one-off characters such as “the waiter” and “the guy who parks cars”. There was only one recurring black character – Kramer’s lawyer, Jackie Chiles – whose mimicry of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, makes him look like a real shyster. </p>
<p>So, while Seinfeld may feel like a dated product of the late 1990s, it was ahead of the curve aesthetically, structurally and in terms of narrative and characterisation. Today’s television would be unthinkable without it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams has received funding from research councils and charities including the AHRC and The British Academy among others. </span></em></p>The 90s sitcom featuring Jerry Seinfeld influenced the type of cinematic television we are so familiar with nowadays.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1930062022-10-27T12:27:53Z2022-10-27T12:27:53ZThe first televised World Series spurred America’s television boom, 75 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491965/original/file-20221026-21-k03uax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C59%2C3898%2C2780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An estimated 3.5 million Americans viewed the first televised World Series at bars, restaurants and storefronts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowd-watching-world-series-game-on-tv-set-in-window-of-news-photo/515248870?phrase=crowd gazing in window at television new york&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRi6iZAl-I">desperately waving at his home run to stay in play</a>. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZzGkoXlaTM">pumping his arms</a> as he hobbles around second base after muscling a home run off Dennis Eckersley, the Oakland A’s dominant closer. The ground ball hit by New York Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyJjecJnuI">skipping through the legs</a> of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner. </p>
<p>Some of the most dramatic images in World Series history are ingrained in the minds of baseball fans thanks to television coverage. This year’s World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros will surely bring another timeless highlight to the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/2021-world-series-ratings-braves-astros-game-6-draws-14point3-million.html">12 million or so viewers</a> expected to watch. </p>
<p>Yet the first 43 World Series weren’t televised at all. It wasn’t until the 1947 series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers – 75 years ago – that fans could watch their favorite players duke it out on screen. </p>
<p>As I detail in my book “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-original/9780803248250/">Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television</a>,” which I co-authored with Robert Bellamy, the telecasts became a sensation. They drew millions of Americans to a new medium at a time when there were no national networks, only a handful of stations and somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 TVs in the entire country.</p>
<h2>Negotiations go down to the wire</h2>
<p>In August 1947, the television industry anticipated a possible all-New York World Series: The Yankees had a huge lead in the American League, while the Dodgers also held a substantial one in the National League. </p>
<p>If the two teams met in October, New York’s three television stations – run by NBC ABC, and the now-extinct <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/DuMont-Television-Network">DuMont</a> – decided they wanted to cover the games.</p>
<p>But the rights to televise the games were held by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mutual-Broadcasting-System">Mutual Broadcasting System</a>, a radio network that had no television division. Thus, Mutual would need to farm out the coverage to one or more New York stations. </p>
<p>Although no national television network existed at the time, NBC, DuMont and CBS did have the means to link stations on the Eastern Seaboard through a combination of coaxial cable, microwave and over-the-air broadcast transmissions, expanding the potential audience for the World Series. The Series would air on eight stations in four markets: New York City, Philadelphia, Washington and Schenectady, New York.</p>
<p>While the Yankees-Dodgers series materialized, the televising of the Series almost didn’t. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boy hawking souvenir programs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491966/original/file-20221026-21-dnupqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Broadcasters got their wish when the New York Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1947 World Series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-ny-yankee-and-dodger-fans-are-jamming-the-yankee-news-photo/515585048?phrase=boy%20selling%20souvenir%20programs&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The predictable stumbling block was money. Baseball commissioner <a href="https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/chandler-happy">Albert B. “Happy” Chandler</a> wanted $100,000 for the television rights to the Series. Gillette, the sponsor of the radio coverage on the Mutual Broadcasting System, balked at the steep price given television’s limited penetration – only 50,000 to 60,000 U.S. households owned TVs at the time. The radio rights to reach the nation’s 29 million homes with radios had cost Mutual only $175,000. </p>
<p>Initial negotiations produced an offer of $60,000 from two sponsors: Gillette and the Ford Motor Company. New York’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liebmann">Liebmann Breweries</a> offered to meet Chandler’s $100,000 demand, but the commissioner refused because he did not want beer ads when youngsters would be prominent members of the audience.</p>
<p>Even before a coverage deal had been finalized, bars, restaurants, television dealers, department stores, automobile dealerships and movie theaters started advertising the event, urging customers to come by to watch the World Series on television. And in the days and weeks leading up to the Fall Classic, the demand for television sets spiked. </p>
<p>The excitement pressured Chandler and the sponsors to reach a compromise. </p>
<p>Finally, on Sept. 26, just four days before Game 1 at Yankee Stadium, Chandler, Gillette and Ford <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1947/1947-10-06-BC.pdf">agreed to $65,000 for the rights to televise the World Series</a>. Production costs added another $35,000 to the sponsors’ bill. Mutual, Gillette and Ford also agreed to allow all three New York TV stations and those connected to them to broadcast the game, providing the widest possible exposure.</p>
<h2>An unexpectedly strong response</h2>
<p>Initial industry estimates had the Series reaching between 600,000 and 700,000 viewers, many of them located in the bars and restaurants where a substantial number of the nation’s first television receivers were located. </p>
<p>But that forecast ended up being conservative. Although home viewing for the seven games was substantial – 450,000 in a <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-18.pdf">Hooper rating survey commissioned by Billboard</a> – the out-of-home viewing numbers were extraordinary: Another 3.5 million were estimated to have viewed the World Series in public locales. </p>
<p>Hooper’s survey found that an average of 82 customers showed up at each of these public locations to watch at least some of the World Series. Variety reported that bar owners saw a 500% increase in patrons during the Series, with some offering reservations to their regulars for a choice location near the TV set.</p>
<p>What viewers from those choice seats saw was primitive by today’s standards. The screen was usually small – 12 diagonal inches or less. The low-definition images were black and white and came from just a few cameras. No extreme close-ups were possible. There was no instant replay, so fans had to pay attention or the moment was lost. </p>
<p>But for the first time, they were seeing the World Series live, and for free.</p>
<h2>The TV industry’s World Series bump</h2>
<p>The audience liked what they saw. <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/40s/1947/BB-1947-10-11.pdf">Billboard</a>, quoting The Newark Evening News, reported that TV “audiences hung on every turn of the video cameras and the ‘oohs and aahs’ at a slide or strikeout were something radio broadcasters would give their eye teeth to hear.” </p>
<p>It didn’t hurt that <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1947_WS.shtml">the 1947 World Series</a> ended up being so dramatic. The Yankees prevailed in seven games, but Brooklyn owned the two greatest moments.</p>
<p>In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4, Dodgers pitch hitter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjpOAy5zCM">Cookie Lavagetto ended Yankee starter Bill Biven’s no-hit bid</a> with a two-out hit, driving in two runs and sending the Dodgers to a 3-2 win. Then, in Game 6, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SrtxVs8uMI">Al Gionfriddo’s stunning catch of Joe DiMaggio’s deep drive to left field</a> helped preserve an 8-6 Dodgers victory, leading legendary Dodgers broadcaster <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Red_Barber.html?id=lWhgEAAAQBAJ">Red Barber</a> to exclaim, “Oh, Doctor!”</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Cookie Lavagetto’s double won the game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 4.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Washington broadcasts even reached the White House, where President Harry S. Truman, his staff and the D.C. press corps watched some of the contests. The <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Televiser/Televiser-1947-09-10.pdf">industry magazine Televiser</a> reported an enthusiastic response from the White House viewers: “If TV can do as good a job as that on perhaps the most difficult of all subjects to televise, then it really has arrived.” </p>
<p>The public’s embrace of the World Series on television, along with the generous coverage of the telecasts by the press, provided an important boost to the nascent television industry. The Sporting News reported that the first televised World Series increased sales for new receivers in New York to levels not seen since the early days of radio. Similar reports came from dealers in Washington and Philadelphia.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff">David Sarnoff</a>, chairman of RCA – which owed NBC and was a leading manufacturer of receivers – regarded television’s coverage of baseball and its crowning event, the World Series, as one of the most important factors in triggering the growth of the new medium. </p>
<p>Television makers, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Center_Field_Shot.html?id=6kPQhpS-X8YC">he concluded</a>, “had to have baseball games and if [baseball owners] had demanded millions for the rights, we would have had to give it to them.” </p>
<p>The television industry eventually did pay millions and then billions for those rights. <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2018/11/15/Media/MLB-Fox.aspx">Fox’s latest seven-year contract</a>, including rights to the World Series, pays Major League Baseball $5.1 billion. </p>
<p>Happy Chandler’s 1947 demand for a $100,000 seems like quite a bargain today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just five days before the first pitch of the 1947 World Series, a deal was struck to air the Series on television.James Walker, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1658562021-08-10T12:25:45Z2021-08-10T12:25:45ZBeyond the ratings, NBC’s Olympics telecast showed video’s future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415295/original/file-20210809-25-fg45dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C33%2C7399%2C4892&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cameras at the Olympics supplied video to television broadcasts – and to online streams.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TokyoOlympicsAthletics/44c831ed99094c38bf062d64a23a20fa/photo">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>NBC’s Olympic Games programming from Tokyo has proved <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/nbc-sets-olympic-ad-sales-record-coronavirus-uncertainty-1282384/">a historic success</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps you’ve heard otherwise. Much reporting <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/business/media/nbc-olympics-tv-ratings.html">focused upon the decline</a> in traditional Olympic TV ratings. On Twitter, Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi went so far as to call the precipitous viewership decline <a href="https://twitter.com/farhip/status/1419867521486884869">a “catastrophic” development</a> for NBC.</p>
<p>Ratings still matter. But focusing narrowly on ratings mistakenly applies a 20th-century audience metric to a 21st-century event. The classic audience measurement can’t conclusively determine NBC’s success. In evaluating the Tokyo Games by traditional TV measures, critics miss NBC’s insight about how <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/olympics-ratings-slide-points-toward-new-tv-viewing-reality-152607228.html">media consumption is changing</a>.</p>
<p>No TV programming other than the Olympics assembles <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/business/media/nbc-olympics-tv-ratings.html">almost 17 million viewers</a>, every night, for two weeks, as the Tokyo Games did. Even if NBC ends up re-airing ads at no charge to make up for lower-than-expected on-air ratings, network officials <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-30/olympics-ratings-slump-forces-nbc-to-haggle-with-advertisers">remained confident</a> that the Olympics coverage would be profitable. That’s no surprise, as NBC signed up more “premium advertisers” than in 2016 and <a href="https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/nbcuniversal-surpasses-rios-1-2-billion-advertising-haul-for-tokyo-olympics/">set a record in advance advertising sales</a>, with US$1.25 billion booked before the torch was lit.</p>
<p>Yet broadcast television comprised only one component of NBC’s distribution mix. The Tokyo Games provided enormous amounts of video content divorced from a single channel. Americans watched on phones, on laptops, through cable partners such as NBC owner Comcast and via streaming apps – as well as on traditional broadcast TV. Viewers shared clips across social media, providing free promotion and clicks, and, though the data is not yet available, it’s likely that <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/peacock-hits-54m-subscribers-amid-tokyo-olympics-1234990045/">many purchased subscriptions</a> directly from NBC’s Peacock TV streaming service. Streaming on the Peacock app showed a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-30/olympics-ratings-slump-forces-nbc-to-haggle-with-advertisers">24% rise over 2016</a>, and at one point, the app <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/peacock-olympics-nbc-why-so-bad.html">reached its largest audience ever</a>.</p>
<p>With a few rare exceptions, the Olympics have historically been profitable for U.S. broadcasters while giving viewers a glimpse of the future of media. As <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/36dtk7pp9780252040702.html">my research on Olympic broadcasting</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YxTJsxoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">has</a> detailed, media innovations that eventually become commonplace are often first introduced at the Games.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white image of a cameraman on a crane above a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415299/original/file-20210809-23-43x7qv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1936, cameras transmitted live images of the Olympic Games to viewing rooms elsewhere in the host city of Berlin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/1936SummerOlympics/914693463ae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Olympics and video innovation</h2>
<p>Since 1936, the Olympic Games have demonstrated the future of video distribution. The Berlin Games that year were distributed on the world’s first regularly scheduled television service. Although the images beamed into theaters around Berlin turned out to be largely disappointing due to lighting and technical issues, viewers were amazed at being able to observe an event occurring miles away in real time.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most innovative Olympic broadcast occurred in 1968, when ABC employed several new technologies in Mexico City. Color TV cameras had, until then, been bulky and onerous to use outside a studio, but <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/Museum/Visit/TOM-Schools/Teaching-Resources/Broadcasting-the-Olympic-Games/FicheInfo_DiffusionJO_TV_ENG.pdf">ABC engineers introduced a new, smaller color camera at the Games</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps more important, the experimental stage of live intercontinental satellite video relay that had <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/june/our-world">begun in the early 1960s</a> concluded successfully when the Mexico City Olympics showed it was possible to provide live intercontinental satellite programming over two full weeks of events. The future of watching events, <a href="https://www.teamusa.org/News/2018/October/25/12-Ways-The-Mexico-City-1968-Olympic-Games-Influenced-The-Course-Of-History">in color</a> and beamed from around the planet as they occurred, had arrived.</p>
<p>The broadcasting of the Barcelona Games in 1992 was the <a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_254-romero.pdf">first global TV programming to provide two full signals for every event</a> – one in high definition and one standard. I worked for Radio Televisión Olímpica at the baseball venue that year, and I remember watching Japanese announcers installing specialized HD equipment because NHK, Japan’s Olympic broadcaster, was <a href="https://www.nhk.or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years_en/categories/p58/index.html">the only organization making full use of HDTV</a> in 1992. I recall being dazzled by the clarity of the NHK signal.</p>
<p>NBC first tried selling broadcast service directly to viewers from Barcelona. The package was called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5eEtjdSZn0">Olympics Triplecast</a>,” and it offered three channels of 24-hour coverage for $29.95 per day, or $125 for the whole two weeks. Olympics Triplecast was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-10-sp-4894-story.html">widely considered a failure</a>, as U.S. audiences – habituated by decades of free Olympic TV coverage – balked at payment.</p>
<p>With the arrival of subscription streaming, it appears <a href="https://thestreamable.com/news/remembering-the-1992-olympics-triplecast-an-idea-30-years-ahead-of-its-time">Triplecast wasn’t so much a failure as too early</a>. With the collapse of advertising-supported media and the rise of streaming services training audiences to pay for content, it appears the media market has arrived at the place NBC envisioned in 1992.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">NBC’s YouTube channel and Peacock app carried huge amounts of Olympics coverage not measured by traditional television ratings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The audience paradox: Fewer viewers, more profits</h2>
<p>Traditional commercial broadcasting was simple: Higher ratings generally created more advertiser demand, resulting in more expensive commercials and increased profitability. Yet even this basic model was slightly wrong – as scholars have shown, ad agencies and networks always <a href="https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823253715/a-word-from-our-sponsor/">measured audiences by demographic characteristics</a>. Not all viewers were equal, as some programs with smaller audiences commanded higher prices because they moved consumer products more effectively. In general, however, the larger the audience, the higher the price.</p>
<p>But when alternatives – first cable TV, then the web and now social media – began siphoning off viewers, the old model transformed. Ratings declined everywhere, as additional options made concentrating the traditional mass audience for even huge events, like the Academy Awards, more difficult. </p>
<p>[_<a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-important">Get The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>An ironic phenomenon then emerged: A few select video spectacles could defy the decline and make more money, even while losing viewers. The Olympics proved the most successful example, as NBC’s ratings from 2012 to 2016 <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nbcs-ratings-for-rio-olympics-fall-behind-london-1471185907">declined about 15%</a>, yet the 2016 Rio Games produced the network’s <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/24/media/nbc-olympics-ratings-12-billion-rights/index.html">record profit for an Olympics</a>, $250 million. </p>
<p>This seems a paradox: How could smaller audiences lead to more ad revenue? The answer lies in the concept of scarcity, and the evolution of media. With so many options to choose from, programs that are able to assemble mass audiences – even if those audiences are smaller and shrinking – became more valuable precisely because there are so few of them. </p>
<p>That’s how NBC keeps selling the Games so effectively. It knows its primary customers are ad agencies, not viewers. And ad agencies understand the scarcity of the Olympic opportunity.</p>
<p>The other way NBC is generating profitability involves selling Olympic programming directly to viewers. The Olympics now consist of video content, not a television show. Success, for NBC, can’t be accurately measured until the number of paid Peacock TV subscriptions is fully tabulated and the quadrennial bump in adjacent NBC non-Olympic programming is known. The Olympics traditionally lifts everything on the network, from <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/rio-games-generate-week-2-182259334.html">The Today Show to NBC Nightly News</a>. NBC monetizes the Games in ways that many critics don’t seem to consider.</p>
<p>If <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-08/where-to-stream-tokyo-olympics-nbc-s-peacock-hosts-summer-games?sref=W6GJF3MS">paid Peacock TV subscriptions</a> do well, then we’ll all likely remember the Tokyo Games as the evolutionary moment when many Americans first realized they would need to pay up to watch live sports. “<a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2010/03/george_allen_and_the_future_is.html">The future is now</a>” was Hall of Fame NFL coach George Allen’s favorite saying, and when it comes to the economics of live sports programming, the Tokyo Olympics show that we’ve arrived.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Olympics are usually profitable for broadcasters and show off the future possibilities of media technologies.Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1496672020-11-06T21:16:27Z2020-11-06T21:16:27ZHas Donald Trump had his Joe McCarthy moment?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368035/original/file-20201106-19-ivqtmq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C1440%2C885&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The moment Lester Holt of NBC News cut into a statement from President Donald Trump.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ-9R1ElhLo">NBC News via YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When CBS, NBC and ABC <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html">cut away</a> from President Donald Trump’s news conference at the White House on the evening of Nov. 5, they took pains to explain why they were shutting off the nation’s commander-in-chief.</p>
<p>It was a moment that for me, as a journalism historian, carried echoes of the 1954 takedown of another flamboyant populist demagogue, Sen. Joe McCarthy.</p>
<h2>Making false accusations</h2>
<p>The key reason, the networks explained, was that Trump had made false claims about the integrity of Tuesday’s presidential election. As ballot counting signaled the increasing likelihood that he would lose to former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election from him.</p>
<p>“They’re trying to rig an election, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html">we can’t let that happen</a>,” Trump said. </p>
<p>The networks’ anchors criticized the president for peddling false claims to support his vanishing hopes for retaining the presidency. So did some of Trump’s staunchest allies.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump addresses the press on Nov. 5, 2020.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An echo from history</h2>
<p>Others have earlier drawn parallels between Trump and McCarthy, including journalist Peter Beinart, who wrote in The Atlantic that “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/trumpism-will-be-new-mccarthyism/614254/">McCarthy built his political career on demagoguery, intimidation, and a cult of personality</a> – not tangible achievements or coherent ideas.”</p>
<p>McCarthy rose to fame and popularity by exploiting Americans’ fear of communism. He smeared his political opponents with accusations that they were communists.</p>
<p>As the news media <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37952249">later did with Trump</a>, they <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/28/donald-trump-keeps-taking-pages-joe-mccarthys-playbook/">helped create the spectacle</a> of “McCarthyism” by providing McCarthy the means to make baseless charges against political opponents.</p>
<p>McCarthy exploited a key weakness in the model of so-called “<a href="https://mediaengagement.org/research/objectivity-in-journalism/">objective</a>” journalism: the practice of journalists to report what politicians say, without questioning whether what they’re saying is factual. </p>
<p>McCarthy “<a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1982/1/11/the-press-and-joe-pbjboseph-mccarthy-americas/">lied with such boldness</a> that he distracted a nation and shot it full of distrust,” one writer said.</p>
<p>In 1954, the senator’s excesses were exposed. The U.S. Army accused McCarthy of seeking preferential treatment for one of his aides. During the televised Senate hearings, he charged that one of Army attorney <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm">Joseph Welch’s</a> associates had ties to a communist organization. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The famous exchange between communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Army lawyer Joseph Welch.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An emotional Welch then responded by saying, “<a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm">Until this moment</a>, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” </p>
<p>Welch went on to famously scold McCarthy: “<a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm">You have done enough</a>. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html">Have you left no sense of decency</a>?”</p>
<h2>The media turns</h2>
<p>It was that moment from 1954 that I thought of as the news broadcasts cut away from President Trump.</p>
<p>“We have to interrupt here, because the president made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” said Lester Holt, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” as his broadcast cut away from the president’s speech. He added, “There has been no evidence of that.” </p>
<p>David Muir, anchor of “ABC World News Tonight,” was even more direct: “We’re not witnessing <a href="https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/networks-pulled-away-from-president-trumps-shocking-press-conference/">anyone stealing anything tonight</a>.”</p>
<p>CNN and Fox News continued to broadcast the news conference but later reported that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html">Trump provided no evidence</a> for his claims of vote fraud.</p>
<h2>Longtime allies shift</h2>
<p>Some of Trump’s loyal defenders, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-11-06/trumps-boasting-of-victory-was-too-much-for-the-gop">criticized the president</a> for his baseless charges.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>After Welch’s rebuke of McCarthy’s baseless claims, millions of viewers watching the hearings finally had enough of the senator. His immense national popularity disappeared. He was censured by Senate colleagues, ostracized by the GOP and – finally – ignored by the press. <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm">He died three years</a> later, an alcoholic and a broken man, at age 48.</p>
<p>It is too soon, of course, to know whether Trump meets the same fate as McCarthy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When President Trump claimed in a press conference that the election was being stolen from him, three major TV networks cut off their coverage. A media scholar asks if this is a turning point.Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1255272019-11-08T12:24:36Z2019-11-08T12:24:36ZThe battle between NBC and CBS to be the first to film a Berlin Wall tunnel escape<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300755/original/file-20191107-10905-1i01ftt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=520%2C469%2C4613%2C3675&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">NBC Berlin correspondent Piers Anderton inside the tunnel during the network's 1962 escape project.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Special Collections & University Archives, University of Maryland</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Berlin Wall was completed in August 1961, East German residents immediately tried to figure out ways to circumvent the barrier and escape into West Berlin.</p>
<p>By the following summer, NBC and CBS were at work on two separate, secret documentaries on tunnels being dug under the Berlin Wall. </p>
<p>The tunnel CBS chose was a disaster that resulted in arrests and court trials. NBC’s tunnel ended up being in one of the most decorated documentaries in American television history. And yet, in the fall of 1962, NBC was under tremendous pressure from both sides of the Iron Curtain to scrap its documentary altogether.</p>
<p>You would think that the U.S. government would be thrilled to have a film broadcast to Americans showing the desperation and resolve to escape communist East Germany. After all, when the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago, images of East Berliners streaming across the border were broadcast around the world in what was cast as a triumph for Western democracies and capitalism.</p>
<p>But in my new book, “<a href="https://www.oldmediaenthusiast.com/contested-ground">Contested Ground: The Tunnel and the Struggle over Television News in Cold War America</a>,” I use declassified government documents to tell the story of how political pressure and naked journalistic competition nearly derailed the NBC documentary before more than a handful of people had seen a single frame of the film.</p>
<h2>Two separate, secret projects</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, Berlin was a flash point in Cold War politics. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.visitberlin.de/en/living-divided-city-west-berlin">West Berlin</a> was a landlocked capitalist political enclave surrounded by communist East Germany. </p>
<p>By the summer of 1961, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/10/27/die-mauer">up to 30,000 East Germans were escaping to the West each month</a>, mainly through the border in Berlin. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to let East Germany close the city’s border, first through stationing troops and installing barbed wire, and then through the construction of the Berlin Wall. </p>
<p>Even after the completion of the wall, some East Germans, desperate to be reunited with friends and family in the West, sought ways to get to the other side.</p>
<p>In May 1962, NBC producer Reuven Frank and reporter Piers Anderton struck a secret deal with a group of West Berlin college students who were building an elaborate escape tunnel under the wall to help their relatives and classmates who were stuck in East Berlin. NBC paid the diggers $7,500 for exclusive filming access. The students would receive another $5,000 if the tunnel escape plan was a success.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300757/original/file-20191107-10952-9y3vhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NBC producer Reuven Frank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tufts University Digital Collections & Archives, Medford, Mass.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In late July, CBS Berlin reporter Daniel Schorr found a separate, almost completed tunnel project and paid the organizers $1,250 to film the escape. Schorr wanted to run a documentary on the one-year anniversary of the wall’s completion: Aug. 13.</p>
<p>But unlike NBC’s project, CBS’ chosen tunnel wasn’t a secret. West German police and American intelligence members knew of it – and of CBS’ involvement. When Secretary of State <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/22/obituaries/dean-rusk-secretary-of-state-in-vietnam-war-is-dead-at-85.html">Dean Rusk</a> caught wind of the plan, he pressured CBS to get Schorr out of the city in case the East Germans also knew about the tunnel. </p>
<p>Under protest, Schorr left Berlin. Rusk’s instincts were correct. When the diggers broke through just beyond the wall in East Berlin, police were waiting to arrest several of those involved.</p>
<p>One month later, the NBC tunnel, dug underneath the Bernauer Strasse neighborhood, broke through in a basement in East Berlin. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009jkb">At least 29 people escaped</a> in the most successful tunnel project escape to date.</p>
<h2>No longer a secret</h2>
<p>While the escape was reported in American newspapers, NBC’s involvement stayed a secret until early October 1962, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829178,00.html">when Time magazine revealed</a> NBC’s payment to the diggers, calling the arrangement “chicanery.” Other print journalists piled on, insinuating that the payment had made NBC part of the story and that the network had relinquished its role as objective reporters. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, NBC announced it would run the 90-minute documentary, titled “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2221494/">The Tunnel</a>,” on Oct. 31, 1962. Frank argued that since the tunnel was already under way when the payment was made, NBC was merely covering the effort.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300741/original/file-20191107-10901-e01v2w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An aerial view of the wall in Bernauer Strasse, where the tunnel featured in NBC’s documentary was built.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Bernauer_strasse_luftbild.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not surprisingly, officials in East Germany urged NBC to cancel the documentary. But West German and West Berlin officials also objected to the project, partly because they were worried people identified in the documentary could be endangered.</p>
<p>Both CBS and the State Department released statements that implied CBS had followed government directives, painting NBC as reckless in its pursuit of its tunnel project. Neither CBS nor the government revealed that the network’s tunnel had been compromised or that it had also paid for access to a tunnel.</p>
<h2>‘Adventurous laymen’ or journalists?</h2>
<p>On Oct. 22 of that year, New York Times television columnist Jack Gould <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1962/10/22/archives/tv-nbc-and-berlin-wall-tunnel-payment-for-films-of-digging-is.html">blasted NBC</a> as “adventurous laymen” stumbling into dangerous Cold War issues they weren’t equipped to handle. He called the payment “distasteful commercialism,” ignoring the reality that payment for images was not uncommon in journalism. Life magazine, for example, was paying NASA astronauts <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/astro-mad-men-nasas-1960s-campaign-to-win-americas-heart/278233/">about $25,000 apiece</a> for exclusive access to their personal lives. </p>
<p>That same night, President John F. Kennedy went on national television to announce the Soviet Union was building missile bases in Cuba. NBC quietly postponed “The Tunnel” while the nation nervously waited to see how the Cuban Missile Crisis would play out.</p>
<p>Behind the scenes, NBC President <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1980/12/23/robert-e-kintner-ex-head-of-abc-and-nbc-radio-and-tv-dies/dac9cafe-dcf4-4349-93ff-147d43eb9106/">Robert Kintner</a> got involved. He sent a company attorney to West Berlin to reassure government officials that the documentary would only show faces of people who had agreed to be filmed. NBC also convinced West German officials that the project would draw more attention to the Berlin Wall, which was still a sore point in West Berlin. </p>
<p>After the Soviet Union backed down and agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba, Kintner wrote a private letter to Secretary of State Rusk seeking his approval of – or at least to remove his objections to – the network’s documentary. Rusk replied to Kintner that he still opposed NBC’s involvement in the escape project, but that it was the company’s decision whether or not to run the program. </p>
<p>On Monday, Dec. 10, 1962, NBC broadcast “The Tunnel” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Out-Thin-Air-News-Beginning/dp/0671677586/">and 13.5 million people tuned in that night</a> – a rare feat for a documentary on American television. </p>
<h2>The real reasons behind NBC’s shaming</h2>
<p>The lingering question, though, is why NBC came under such intense criticism for a project that shows the risks people were willing to take to escape communism. </p>
<p>The declassified government documents reveal public and private versions of the controversy.</p>
<p>American newspapers mostly chastised NBC for the payment to the diggers. The State Department scolded NBC for getting involved in a delicate Cold War issue, especially since East Germans considered tunnels under the Berlin Wall as attacks on the border.</p>
<p>Private communications paint a much more complicated picture. First, the State Department didn’t know about the tunnel – or NBC’S involvement – until the media reported on it, leading to some embarrassing cables between Washington and Berlin. </p>
<p>CBS, instead of admitting that NBC had simply found a better tunnel project, complained to the State Department that NBC shouldn’t benefit after CBS backed out of its documentary at the government’s behest. Part of the State Department’s public shaming of NBC seemed to partly stem from a desire to appease CBS. </p>
<p>But the State Department’s behind-the-scenes pressure on both networks shows the extent to which the government expected journalists to cooperate with them on sensitive Cold War issues. Some of the cables cast the reporters as misbehaving employees instead of independent journalists.</p>
<p>Finally, the print press played up the payment ethics angle because it viewed television as a growing threat. Newspaper and magazine journalists were watching their power and influence being challenged by this newer medium, so they took the opportunity to question the professionalism of television journalists, an approach that <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Media_at_War.html?id=PkXTrh4eDlcC">was first used against radio news earlier in the century</a>.</p>
<p>It was a tide they couldn’t stop: The next year, a poll showed that television news had, for the first time, surpassed newspapers as the most popular and most trusted news format in the United States. “The Tunnel” <a href="https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000223/1963/1/">was honored with three Emmy Awards</a>, including Program of the Year.</p>
<p>In a final vindication for NBC, the United States Information Agency ended up buying 100 copies of “The Tunnel” to show around the world as an example of the benefits of democracy over communism.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Conway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A media historian uses declassified government documents to show how both sides of the Iron Curtain worked to have the projects canned.Mike Conway, Associate Professor of Journalism, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1253602019-11-08T12:14:20Z2019-11-08T12:14:20ZApple, Disney and Netflix’s streaming battle isn’t winner-take-all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300712/original/file-20191107-10915-18agxtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Apple TV Plus has focused on recruiting big names for its shows.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Tony Avelar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-tv-plus-cost-review-and-everything-you-need-to-know">recent launch of Apple TV Plus</a> and the imminent arrival of Disney Plus, the video landscape has never looked so competitive. </p>
<p>These services join a crowded marketplace of subscription streaming services that includes Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video – with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/20727317/nbc-universal-streaming-service-launch-date-2020-comcast">more to come</a> next year. For viewers, the proliferation of services means more choice in shows and services. For the companies, it means increased competition for talent and escalating budgets. </p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/afm-streaming-wars-loom-large-as-market-gets-underway-1252706">many</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/18/media/streaming-wars-scorecard/index.html">publications</a> <a href="https://www.theverge.com/streaming-wars">have</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/disney-rollout-shows-streaming-wars-are-over-viewers-lost-ncna1067276">described</a> the situation as “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-10-10/streaming-wars-winners-and-losers-disney-plus-netflix-hbo-max-peacock-quibi-apple-tv">streaming wars</a>,” these companies have different goals for each of their video services.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amandalotz.com">We have</a> <a href="http://opensquare.nyupress.org/books/9781479804948/">been studying</a> the recent <a href="https://global-internet-tv.com/">boom</a> in subscription video streaming to understand the implications for audiences and industry. Contrary to all this reporting, we find little evidence of a “streaming war.” </p>
<p>In fact, many of these services are playing different games.</p>
<h2>Diverse strategies</h2>
<p>The major streaming services – both old and new – all have different catalogs, pricing and strategies. While all services seek viewers’ time and attention, in other respects they are different beasts.</p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/disney-plus-streaming-service-launch-release-dates-prices-preorders-shows-movies-deals/">Disney Plus</a>. Disney’s strong suit is kids, family and its popular Marvel and “Star Wars” content. It has also invested in a few original series such as “The Mandalorian,” a “Star Wars” spin-off. </p>
<p>But unlike Netflix, Disney Plus doesn’t offer a full-service entertainment package. With its lowball pricing of US$7 per month compared with $13 for Netflix’s most popular plan, Disney Plus is pitched as a service to have alongside Netflix, rather than a direct replacement.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-tv-plus-launch-date-price-shows-movies-films-to-expect/">Apple TV Plus</a> – which debuted on Nov. 1 for $4.99 a month – has a tiny catalog of high-profile shows and stars, such as Oprah and Jennifer Aniston. Compared with Netflix’s library of <a href="http://unogs.com/countrydetail/">5,000 titles</a>, Apple TV Plus is a minnow. Its purpose is to add value and glamour to Apple device purchases not to replace another service.</p>
<p>In other words, neither Disney Plus nor Apple TV Plus is likely to be a “<a href="https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/can-apple-tv-plus-be-a-netflix-killer-14908038">Netflix killer</a>” anytime soon. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300759/original/file-20191107-10924-1j82kmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The growing number of streaming services can co-exist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Manuel Esteban/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Netflix is global</h2>
<p>Another key difference between Netflix and services such as Disney Plus, Hulu and Apple TV Plus is the amount of global content in the former’s library. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-subscriber-peak-us-pwc-report-1203234190/">six out of every seven</a> new Netflix subscribers live outside the U.S. The <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/04/11/the-unique-strategy-netflix-deployed-to-reach-90-million-worldwide-subscribers_partner/">global market</a> is essential for Netflix’s future growth. </p>
<p>To support this endeavor, it is spending considerably on producing shows outside the U.S., and this original content is available to subscribers worldwide. Of course not every viewer is interested in series produced elsewhere, but Netflix is making the bet that sci-fi fans will turn up for a good adventure whether it is produced in the U.S. or Brazil.</p>
<p>In contrast, Disney and Apple are following a more traditional U.S. export model of media globalization. </p>
<h2>Room for other players?</h2>
<p>Many questions remain about the future of <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/how-does-hulu-work/">Hulu</a> now that its owners – Disney and Comcast – are launching other services.</p>
<p>Hulu provides a distinct service as a source of current series produced for Disney and NBC. Viewers that are cutting cable and satellite service – a trend that has <a href="https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/cord-cuttings-growth-has-more-than-tripled-in-2019/">increased</a> in the last year – may find Hulu a good replacement.</p>
<p>And more change is coming. Comcast announced a service called Peacock for next year. Peacock will draw heavily from the library of shows Comcast owns as the corporate parent of NBC and Universal. It will be free to Comcast subscribers and <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/01/nbc-peacock-free-report/?guccounter=1">possibly to everyone</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, AT&T will launch <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/what-is-hbo-max/">HBO Max</a> – the new direct-to-consumer portal for HBO content, some original series and titles from the Warner Bros. library such as “Friends.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300758/original/file-20191107-10915-ptqa4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Disney can use data collected from its streaming service for other purposes, such as driving people to the theaters to watch ‘Frozen 2.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What winning means</h2>
<p>In other words, the question of who will “win” the streaming war is more complicated than it appears. </p>
<p>Rather than one service to rule them all, there may be many winners because most are playing different games. Netflix is the only “pure” subscription video-on-demand service – meaning its only business is streaming video. It wins when viewers subscribe or keep subscribing. Apple and Amazon are playing another game entirely. Apple wins if you buy a new iPhone, and Amazon wins if you start buying more from its online retail service. Similarly, Comcast and AT&T are likely angling to increase internet subscribers.</p>
<p>Disney also wants viewers to pay to subscribe, but it has other ambitions too. Launching its own streaming service allows Disney to collect valuable data about who is watching and what they like. This kind of data is useful for driving viewers to theaters as Elsa and Anna return in “Frozen 2” and enticing families to buy lots of stuffed toys and maybe even visit its theme parks. </p>
<p>In other words, this is not a single war so much as a collection of different media and technology businesses that are using video streaming to accomplish different goals. </p>
<p>[ <em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Lotz receives funding from the Australian Research Council Discovery programme (DP190100978).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramon Lobato receives funding from the Australian Research Council Discovery programme (DP190100978).</span></em></p>Although some have dubbed the flurry of new video services coming out as a ‘streaming war,’ the reality is very different.Amanda Lotz, Professor of Media Studies, Queensland University of TechnologyRamon Lobato, Senior research fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1234112019-09-20T12:47:28Z2019-09-20T12:47:28Z4 reasons why we’ll never see another show like ‘Friends’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293240/original/file-20190919-22429-22v0q6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pictured from left to right are 'Friends' cast members Matt LeBlanc, Courtney Cox, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-United-King-/121bbb2544e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP Photo/Lynne Sladky</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Sept. 22, 1994, six telegenic 20-somethings frolicked in a fountain in front of credits that announced the arrival of “Friends,” a new NBC sitcom that would forever change television.</p>
<p>As sitcom scribes scrambling to land on writing staffs during the mid-1990s, we witnessed – with awe and a bit of envy – how “Friends” instantly became a red-hot comedy commodity. <a href="https://newmusicandmore.tripod.com/friendsratings.html">According to Nielsen Ratings</a>, it was a top-five most watched program for nine of its 10 seasons. </p>
<p>The series was a ratings juggernaut during its network run, but its afterlife in syndication and streaming has been just as remarkable.</p>
<p>Now we’re TV and screenwriting professors in Emerson College’s Comedic Arts Program. And we couldn’t have ever predicted that our current crop of students <a href="https://www.shondaland.com/live/a26345588/friends-jennifer-aniston-netflix-popular-gen-z/">would be just as spellbound</a> by Ross and Rachel’s romance, Monica’s lovable neuroses and Joey’s passion for sandwiches. Netflix recently paid a whopping <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/netflix-friends-2019-streaming-deal.html">US$80 million</a> for the rights to run the show through 2019.</p>
<p>Networks would love to replicate the series’ success. But the realities of the television landscape today make it unlikely that we’ll ever see another series with as much of a cultural impact as “Friends.”</p>
<p>Here are four reasons why.</p>
<h2>1. Shorter seasons mean less screen time</h2>
<p>The television season was once as certain as death and taxes. </p>
<p>Shows started in September and ran until May. Most had an average order of <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/06/10-episodes-is-the-new-13-was-the-new-22.html">22 episodes per season</a>, with each episode airing once a week. This allowed viewers to make tuning into their favorite show a part of their weekly routine over the course of nine months. From 1994 to 2004, <a href="https://friends.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Friends_">NBC produced 236 episodes</a> of “Friends,” an average of 24 episodes per season. </p>
<p>Today, television seasons <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/06/10-episodes-is-the-new-13-was-the-new-22.html">are much shorter</a>. While the occasional sitcom still receives that coveted 22-episode order, others get considerably less, and this includes those with a proven track record.</p>
<p>For example, even though “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2467372/">Brooklyn Nine-Nine</a>” has won a Golden Globe for Best Comedy, NBC greenlit only <a href="https://screenrant.com/brooklyn-nine-nine-season-6-nbc-ratings/">13 episodes</a> for its upcoming season. </p>
<p>There are a host of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tv-networks-are-ordering-shorter-seasons-2015-6">reasons for this shift</a>, from star actors being less willing to commit to so many episodes to changes in the way syndication works. But shorter seasons mean viewers have less of an opportunity to become deeply invested in the show and its characters.</p>
<h2>2. Fragmented audiences</h2>
<p>Back in 1994, there were only four major broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. A limited number of networks meant only a limited number of programs would air – making it that much more likely that a popular show would attract a huge swath of Americans. </p>
<p>In 1994 and 1995, <a href="https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/hrts-must-see-tv-1201980583/">an average of 75 million people</a> tuned into NBC on Thursday nights. NBC rolled out the slogan “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2014/09/1994-friends-seinfeld-er-warren-littlefield-transcript.html">Must See TV</a>” to market its Thursday night blockbuster comedy lineup, which, in addition to “Friends,” included heavyweight series such as “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld.” To miss out on a hit show meant being out of the loop the next day when everyone was talking about what happened.</p>
<p>But over the past decade, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fresh-off-the-boat-and-the-rise-of-niche-tv-37451">cable and streaming have completely upended this model</a>.</p>
<p>Over the first six months of 2019, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/peak-tv-320-scripted-shows-have-aired-first-2019-1221792">more than 320 scripted shows</a> aired on television networks, cable and streaming platforms. </p>
<p>The massive viewing menu has fragmented audiences. No longer beholden to network schedules, viewers can watch what they want, where they want and when they want.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/">The Big Bang Theory</a>” illustrates this shift.</p>
<p>Like “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory” was a hugely popular sitcom on network TV about a group of friends. It ran for 12 years, from 2007 to 2019. Approximately <a href="https://deadline.com/2019/05/big-bang-theory-series-finale-ratings-jump-1202617069/">18 million people watched</a> the series finale, which also aired on a Thursday night. </p>
<p>But the “Friends” series finale blew it out of the water: On May 6, 2004, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/arts/friends-finale-s-audience-is-the-fourth-biggest-ever.html">more than 52 million people</a> tuned in to say goodbye. </p>
<p>In today’s marketplace, getting a show to that level of “Must See TV” status is an almost impossible feat for even the most seasoned producer.</p>
<h2>3. Single-cam snobbery</h2>
<p>Sitcoms are categorized as “single-cam” or “multi-cam,” <a href="https://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/how-do-single-cam-tv-shows-differ-from-multi-cam-ones/">which refers to the style of filming</a>. Multi-cam shows such as “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory” are typically shot on a sound stage in front of a live studio audience. They’re often enhanced by a laugh track, and the final product resembles a filmed play. </p>
<p>Single-cam shows such as “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723816/?ref_=nv_sr_7?ref_=nv_sr_7">Girls</a>” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” are produced more like films. They’re not limited to a small number of sets and locations. </p>
<p>While live studio audiences can infuse multi-cams with energy and immediacy, single-cam shows tend to have more storytelling flexibility, and they can possess a level of visual intimacy that’s difficult to attain in multi-cams. </p>
<p>In 1995, when “Friends” received <a href="https://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners/1995">its first Emmy nomination</a> for Best Comedy Series, three of the four other nominees – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098904/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Seinfeld</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103484/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mad About You</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106004/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Frasier</a>,” which took the prize – were multi-cam sitcoms on NBC. </p>
<p>In 2019, the list of Best Comedy Series contenders is bigger, <a href="https://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners/2019/outstanding-comedy-series">with seven nominees</a>. But each is a single-cam show; there’s not a multi-cam or laugh track in the bunch.</p>
<h2>4. The rise of the ‘dramedy’ and the anti-hero</h2>
<p>In a way, “Friends” creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, along with their original producing partner, Kevin Bright, <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/exclusive-the-creators-of-frie">revolutionized</a> the sitcom genre. </p>
<p>The new show they were pitching – originally titled “Insomnia Cafe” – was still a multi-cam, but it was a very different kind of multi-cam.</p>
<p>The team envisioned a multi-cam that was denser, packed with more storylines and scenes to accommodate a six-lead ensemble. While an episode of an older, more traditional multi-cam like CBS’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066626/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">All in the Family</a>” might make do with six to 10 scenes, two storylines and fewer sets, “Friends” would have at least three storylines and up to twice as many scenes.</p>
<p>“We don’t want it to feel like anything else on TV,” Crane and Kauffman wrote in their original pitch document. “We want a fast, quick cutting style. The whole show should have a fast, over-caffeinated feel.” </p>
<p>“Friends” took the genre in a new stylistic direction, and subsequent multi-cams like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460649/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">How I Met Your Mother</a>” <a href="http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/jbutler/clips/blending-multiple-camera-and-single-camera/view">continued the trend</a>.</p>
<p>But sitcoms were already undergoing an even more dramatic evolution. Whereas most traditional multi-cam sitcoms were expected mainly to deliver big laughs, an emerging spate of single-cam shows started infusing comedy with darker themes and edgier storylines. </p>
<p>Known as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/11/why-we-fell-in-love-with-dramedies">dramedies</a>,” they became even more popular with the proliferation of streaming platforms. Viewers who have embraced the stark realism of shows like HBO’s “Girls” and Amazon Studio’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502262/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Transparent</a>” often find traditional multi-cams hokey. </p>
<p>Then there’s been the rise of the sitcom anti-hero, a new kind of lead character who could be flawed and not always likable – think Larry David in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264235/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>” or Julia Louis Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1759761/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Veep</a>.”</p>
<p>Will modern, more jaded viewers who have crossed over to dramedies ever be willing to embrace the glossy, rom-com fluff of a show like “Friends”? </p>
<p>The current TV ecosystem might not be amenable to cultivating another “Friends,” but that shouldn’t detract from its impact on the genre. </p>
<p>It changed the game, raising the bar for all sitcoms to come.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since ‘Friends’ premiered 25 years ago, both the television industry and the sitcom genre have undergone huge transformations.Martie Cook, Professor of Film and Television Writing/Creator & Director of BFA in Comedic Arts/Founding Director, Center for Comedic Arts, Emerson CollegeManuel Basanese, Assistant Professor Visual Media Arts, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1192642019-09-10T12:40:24Z2019-09-10T12:40:24ZThe strange connection between Bobby Kennedy’s death and Scooby-Doo<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291750/original/file-20190910-190026-otnyex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=123%2C16%2C1317%2C943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!' was a funky, lighthearted alternative to the action cartoons that, for years, had dominated Saturday morning lineups.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i0.wp.com/geekdad.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/SCOOBY-DOO_9.38.26.jpg?resize=1748%2C1309&ssl=1">GeekDad</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scooby-Doo has appeared in a whopping 16 television series, two live-action films, 35 direct-to-DVD movies, 20 video games, 13 comic book series and five stage shows. Now, with “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3152592/">Scoob!</a>,” the Mystery Incorporated gang will appear in a CGI feature-length film, which, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is going to be released to video-on-demand on May 15.</p>
<p>The very first television series, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063950/">Scooby-Doo, Where are You!</a>,” was created by Hanna-Barbera Productions for CBS Saturday morning and premiered on Sept. 13, 1969. The formula of four mystery-solving teenagers – Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy along with the titular talking Great Dane – remained mostly intact as the group stumbled their way into pop-culture history. </p>
<p>But as I explain in my forthcoming book on the franchise, Scooby-Doo’s invention was no happy accident; it was a strategic move in response to cultural shifts and political exigencies. The genesis of the series was inextricably bound up with the societal upheavals of 1968 – in particular, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.</p>
<h2>More horror, better ratings</h2>
<p>In the late 1960s, the television and film studio Hanna-Barbera was the largest producer of animated television programming. </p>
<p>For years, Hanna-Barbera had created slapstick comedy cartoons – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/list/ls029632227/">Tom and Jerry</a>” in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by television series like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0255768/">The Yogi Bear Show</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053502/">The Flintstones</a>.” But by the 1960s, the most popular cartoons were those that capitalized on <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9i0yDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA434&lpg=PA434&dq=secret+agent+craze&source=bl&ots=kMYc6JU0AX&sig=ACfU3U2XAYMoeA24PqOGENx4oWMSi0RsXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0sKPqssTkAhWNVN8KHSI_YYQ6AEwCHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=secret%20agent%20craze&f=false">the secret agent craze</a>, the space race and the popularity of superheroes. </p>
<p>In what would serve as a turning point in television animation, the three broadcast networks – CBS, ABC and NBC – launched nine new action-adventure cartoons on Saturday morning in the fall of 1966. In particular, Hanna-Barbera’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060026/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Space Ghost and Dino Boy</a>” and Filmation’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060012/">The New Adventures of Superman</a>” were hits with kids. These and other action-adventure series featured non-stop action and violence, with the heroes working to defeat, even kill, a menace or monster by any means necessary.</p>
<p>So for the 1967-1968 Saturday morning lineup, Hanna-Barbera supplied the networks with six new action-adventure cartoons, including “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061262/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Herculoids</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061237/">Birdman and the Galaxy Trio</a>.” Gone were the days of funny human and animal hijinks; in their place: terror, peril, jeopardy and child endangerment. </p>
<p>The networks, <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/12/08/91244471.html?pageNumber=401">wrote The New York Times’ Sam Blum</a>, “had instructed its cartoon suppliers to turn out more of the same – in fact, to go ‘stronger’ – on the theory, which proved correct, that the more horror, the higher the Saturday morning ratings.” </p>
<p>Such horror generally took the form of “fantasy violence” – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=owUIvAEACAAJ&dq=television+the+business+behind+the+box&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfzeagybzkAhXK1FkKHfPZBB4Q6AEwAHoECAAQAQ">what Joe Barbera called</a> “out-of-this-world hard action.” The studio churned out these grim series “not out of choice,” Barbera explained. “It’s the only thing we can sell to the networks, and we have to stay in business.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291575/original/file-20190909-109927-1xdg8r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hanna-Barbera co-founder Joe Barbera poses with three of his studio’s most popular animated characters, Scooby-Doo, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, in this 1996 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-CA-USA-OBIT-BARBERA/8d05636b91d64f668c5cf196d13a3eb1/5/0">AP Photo/Reed Saxon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Barbera’s remarks highlighted the immense authority then held by the broadcast networks in dictating the content of Saturday morning television. </p>
<p>In his book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ibxkAAAAMAAJ&q=entertainment+education+hard+sell&dq=entertainment+education+hard+sell&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwih2r62ybzkAhXBwVkKHah2AgEQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg">Entertainment, Education and the Hard Sell</a>,” communication scholar Joseph Turow studied the first three decades of network children’s programming. He notes the fading influence of government bodies and public pressure groups on children’s programming in the mid-1960s – a shift that enabled the networks to serve their own commercial needs and those of their advertisers. </p>
<p>The decline in regulation of children’s television spurred criticism over violence, commercialism and the lack of diversity in children’s programming. No doubt sparked by the oversaturation of action-adventure cartoons on Saturday morning, the nonprofit corporation National Association for Better Broadcasting declared that year’s children’s television programming in March 1968 to be the “worst in the history of TV.” </p>
<h2>Political upheaval spurs moral panic</h2>
<p>Cultural anxieties about the effects of media violence on children had increased significantly after March 1968, concurrent with television coverage of the Vietnam War, student protests and riots incited by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As historian Charles Kaiser wrote in his book about <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-heat-and-light-of-1968-still-influence-today-3-essential-reads-108569">that pivotal year</a>, the upheaval fueled moral crusades.</p>
<p>“For the first time since their invention, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/1968_in_America.html?id=Wt1LOgmnlFgC">he wrote</a>, "televised pictures made the possibility of anarchy in America feel real.”</p>
<p>But it was the assassination of Robert. F. Kennedy in June 1968 that would exile action-adventure cartoons from the Saturday morning lineup for nearly a decade. </p>
<p>Kennedy’s role as a father to 11 was intertwined with his political identity, and he had long championed causes that helped children. Alongside his commitment to ending child hunger and poverty, he had, as attorney general, worked with the Federal Communications Commission to improve the “<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-newt-minow-fcc-ae-0117-20170118-column.html">vast wasteland</a>” of children’s television programming.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291571/original/file-20190909-109927-1o9gd1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Kennedy and his wife and kids go for a walk near their home in McLean, Va.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-VA-USA-APHS406926-Ethel-Kennedy-and-/88ca23037ec14851b89ed2d960cd7b5e/6/0">AP Photo/Henry Griffin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just hours after Kennedy was shot, President Lyndon B. Johnson <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-11412-establishing-national-commission-the-causes-and-prevention-violence">announced the appointment</a> of a National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. While the commission’s formal findings wouldn’t be shared until late 1969, demands for greater social control and regulation of media violence surged directly following Johnson’s announcement, contributing to what sociologists call a “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Ashgate-Research-Companion-to-Moral-Panics-1st-Edition/Krinsky/p/book/9781409408116">moral panic</a>.”</p>
<p>Media studies scholar Heather Hendershot <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=b6Iqh5umo3sC&lpg=PP9&ots=-M78k0n01U&dq=Saturday%20Morning%20Censors%3A%20Television%20Regulation%20before%20the%20V-Chip&lr&pg=PP9#v=onepage&q&f=false">explained</a> that even those critical of Kennedy’s liberal causes supported these efforts; censoring television violence “in his name” for the good of children “was like a tribute.”</p>
<p>Civic groups like the National Parent Teacher Association, which had been condemning violent cartoons at its last three conventions, were emboldened. The editors of McCall’s, a popular women’s magazine, provided steps for readers to pressure the broadcast networks to discontinue violent programming. And a Christian Science Monitor report in July of that year – which found 162 acts of violence or threats of violence on one Saturday morning alone – was widely circulated.</p>
<p>The moral panic in the summer of 1968 caused a permanent change in the landscape of Saturday morning. The <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/07/20/77179505.html?pageNumber=42">networks announced</a> that they would be turning away from science-fiction adventure and pivoting toward comedy for its cartoon programming.</p>
<p>All of this paved the way for the creation of a softer, gentler animated hero: Scooby-Doo.</p>
<p>However, the premiere of the 1968-1969 Saturday morning season was just around the corner. Many episodes of new action-adventure series were still in various stages of production. Animation was a lengthy process, taking anywhere from four to six months to go from idea to airing. ABC, CBS and NBC stood to lose millions of dollars in licensing fees and advertising revenue by canceling a series before it even aired or before it finished its contracted run. </p>
<p>So in the fall of 1968 with many action-adventure cartoons still on the air, CBS and Hanna-Barbera began work on a series – one eventually titled “Scooby-Doo, Where are You!” – for the 1969-1970 Saturday morning season.</p>
<p>“Scooby-Doo, Where are You!” still supplies a dose of action and adventure. But the characters are never in real peril or face serious jeopardy. There are no superheroes saving the world from aliens and monsters. Instead, a gang of goofy kids and their dog in a groovy van solve mysteries. The monsters they encounter are just humans in disguise.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on September 10, 2019.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Sandler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Demands for regulation of media violence reached a fever pitch after RFK’s assassination, and networks scrambled to insert more kid-friendly fare into their lineups. Enter: the Mystery Machine.Kevin Sandler, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/920092018-07-26T10:36:26Z2018-07-26T10:36:26ZA conservative activist’s quest to preserve all network news broadcasts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229155/original/file-20180724-194143-1l0jvgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon smiles for the cameras during a 1968 news conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, in the middle of a typically hot and humid Nashville summer, a Metropolitan Life insurance manager named Paul Simpson sat with Frank Grisham, the director of the Vanderbilt University Library, in the rare books room of the main library building.</p>
<p>Using three <a href="https://www.ampex.com/ampex-history/">Ampex video recording machines</a>, three television sets and $4,000 of Simpson’s own money, they began what they thought would be a 90-day experiment: From then until election night in November, they would record the ABC, NBC and CBS evening news broadcasts, which usually aired at the same time.</p>
<p>The day Simpson and Grisham started taping, August 5, 1968, was an eventful one. The Republican Convention began, <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/campaign68/timeline.html">and Ronald Reagan officially announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination</a>, joining with liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller in an attempt to stop Richard Nixon’s hopes of a first ballot nomination.</p>
<p>The news broadcasts also included the era’s biggest stories: fighting in Vietnam, communist leaders meeting in Eastern Europe and the civil war in Nigeria. Other reports from that day sound hauntingly familiar: an Israeli strike into Jordan and a violent incident at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, in which an American and North Korean soldier were killed. </p>
<p>Such was the modest beginning of what Rutgers University historian David Greenberg <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7oQsWVsy6tkC&pg=PA185&dq=Do+Historians+Watch+Enough+TV?+Broadcast+News+as+a+Primary+Source&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLh6Dq-rXcAhVDGt8KHXjCDw8Q6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Do%20Historians%20Watch%20Enough%20TV%3F%20Broadcast%20News%20as%20a%20Primary%20Source&f=false">has called</a> the “preeminent video resource for scholars of TV news.” </p>
<p>Although legal and copyright issues continue to hinder access, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive – a repository of television news recordings from the past 50 years – is a national archival treasure.</p>
<p>But the archive’s beginnings are rooted in the political and cultural conflicts of the late 1960s. Simpson, the archive’s founder, first financial backer and chief fundraiser, was deeply conservative. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">And he was convinced</a> that the network news broadcasts, with their executive producers living in New York’s “liberal atmosphere,” were contributing to social turmoil and unrest throughout the country.</p>
<p>For this reason, he sought to save the recordings for posterity – to be able to show, years later, that CBS, NBC and ABC were as much a part of the problem as the anti-war movement, drug culture and free love.</p>
<h2>The most trusted men?</h2>
<p>Although he later downplayed political motivations in <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?152200-1/television-news-archives">a 1985 C-SPAN interview</a>, Simpson had long been passionate in his concern about television’s malign influence over “the American mind.” </p>
<p>In 1964, <a href="https://collections.library.vanderbilt.edu/repositories/2/resources/1605">he wrote to CBS</a> to complain about Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the Goldwater campaign. He wasn’t necessarily wrong: Cronkite, who enjoyed his reputation as the “most trusted man” in America, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XWv46Na-PIcC&lpg=PP1&dq=cronkite&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">did detest Goldwater</a> and was liberal in his politics.</p>
<p>Simpson also believed that television news unfairly blamed President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on the “conservative atmosphere” in Dallas, <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">and he recalled with particular disgust</a> a 1967 network interview with psychologist <a href="https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/timothy-leary">Timothy Leary</a>, who was encouraging young people to try LSD.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simpson was deeply suspicious of Walter Cronkite’s motives and beliefs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/charleskremenak/9399912564">Charles Kremenak</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a business trip to New York in March 1968, Simpson toured each of the three networks. At each stop, he asked to see a broadcast from the previous month. They all told him that they weren’t available – they only saved their broadcasts for about two weeks because it was too expensive to preserve them.</p>
<p>Simpson was shocked. He viewed nightly newscasts as the equivalent of America’s national newspaper. How could they be held accountable if no record existed of their stories, segments and analysis?</p>
<p>When he returned to Nashville, Simpson found an ally in Vanderbilt librarian Frank Grisham. </p>
<p>Grisham didn’t share Simpson’s politics but did believe that the broadcasts should be preserved. The two took the idea to Vanderbilt’s chancellor, <a href="https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2009/07/25/alexander-heard-vanderbilts-fifth-chancellor-dies-85205/">Alexander Heard</a>, a political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Gone_with_the_Ivy.html?id=G5hlQgAACAAJ">whom historian Paul Conkin described</a> as a true believer in “an open society, one in which divergent views could find expression” and compete for public acceptance. Heard got the board of trustees to approve a short-term experiment, hoping that the Library of Congress might eventually take it over.</p>
<h2>Preserving bias for posterity</h2>
<p>The expensive project may have ended after its three-month test run were it not for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, held a few weeks after the Republican gathering.</p>
<p>On August 28, 1968, the night Hubert Humphrey was nominated, the news networks aired footage of the swelling crowds of protesters, the outbreak of violence in the streets and the demonstrators shouting, “The whole world is watching” as the police attacked them. It was dramatic stuff – and Simpson and Grisham preserved it all.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7_9OJnRnZjU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The dramatic images that emerged from the 1968 Democratic National Convention horrified a huge swath of the electorate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the protesters believed media coverage would create sympathy for their cause, <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/the-whole-world-was-watching/">a substantial majority of Americans</a>
– including Paul Simpson – sided with the police. When editing the tapes, Simpson realized that NBC had shown the same arrest of one violent protester from three different angles without acknowledging that it was the same person. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">In Simpson’s view</a>, this exaggerated the scale of violence and discredited the police. </p>
<p>In the heated atmosphere of 1968, it was enough to fuel suspicions of media bias. Simpson now had his smoking gun – and a potent fundraising tool.</p>
<p>Over the next two years, the tape of the Chicago violence played a critical role in the survival of the archive. Simpson argued that the only way to be able to study the media’s impact was to ensure copies existed for critics, researchers and academics to review. Two conservative Nashville business executives, one of whom sat on the Vanderbilt board of trustees, made substantial donations to keep the archive functioning. </p>
<p>Nixon’s election made the White House receptive to the project. Simpson sent the tape to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/249080/nixons-white-house-wars-by-patrick-j-buchanan/9781101902868/">Patrick Buchanan</a>, a Nixon speechwriter who shared the president’s deep distaste for the media. Buchanan even included a reference to the protest footage in Vice President Spiro Agnew’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQpQyJQm2Mk">famous 1969 speech attacking television news as biased</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vice President Spiro Agnew laid into the press, citing the same footage from the 1968 DNC protests that infuriated Paul Simpson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-NM-USA-APHS437970-Agnew-Native-Americans/9778c5b3869c4c9f932504345e7ffd9f/58/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Another network,” Agnew announced, “showed virtually the same scene of violence from three separate angles without making clear it was the same scene.”</p>
<h2>The networks fight back</h2>
<p>The networks had never been singled out by elected officials in this way, and they weren’t happy about the scrutiny. Operating as they did with government licenses, they saw Agnew’s speech as intimidation.</p>
<p>With a hubris that, in retrospect, was certain to invite further scrutiny, the three networks pushed back, arguing that they were objective and impartial watchdogs looking out for the public interest. They saw themselves as above politics. As media historian Charles L. Ponce De Leon <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo12345529.html">wrote</a> in 2015, “It was news from Olympus, presented in a tone that suggested the voice of God.” </p>
<p>NBC’s Reuven Frank <a href="https://collections.library.vanderbilt.edu/repositories/2/resources/1605">sarcastically dismissed</a> Simpson’s claim that he was acting in the “spirit of free inquiry,” remarking that “I have never known a self-proclaimed objective student who sought to evaluate my performance because he thought I was doing great.” </p>
<p>The networks also worried that if Vanderbilt continued recording their broadcasts, they would lose the ability to repackage and resell their footage. People could just go to Vanderbilt for it.</p>
<p>CBS accused the Vanderbilt Television News Archive of violating its copyright and sued in December 1973. Amazingly, CBS stated it would destroy the Vanderbilt tapes if it won in court.</p>
<p>Thankfully, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker helped insert <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108">a clause in the revision of the copyright law</a> that protected the right of libraries to record the news. CBS dropped its lawsuit, but some of the restrictions it insisted upon were put in place.</p>
<p>While the entire collection was digitalized in the early 2000s, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is only allowed to stream NBC and CNN to researchers. Examining ABC, CBS or Fox segments requires a trip to Nashville. </p>
<p>The recording of the evening newscasts of the big three networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – continues to this day. In 1995, the archive began recording an one hour a day of CNN, and in 2004, an hour of FOX. Over the years it’s been used by researchers to study topics as diffuse as political bias, gender stereotyping and even the evolution of television advertising, since the commercials during the news broadcasts are also recorded.</p>
<p>In recent times, the archive was used in the 2015 documentary “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3518012/">Best of Enemies</a>” because it contained lost footage of the debate between conservative commentator William F. Buckley and liberal writer Gore Vidal. More poignantly, <a href="http://www.newsknowledge.today/episode-002/">it was used by the mother of an American soldier</a> who died in Vietnam; after someone told her that her wounded son had been photographed lying on the ground during a network news segment, she traveled to the archives to review footage and confirm the account.</p>
<p>Even if one thinks Simpson’s perception of deliberate political bias was misguided, his insistence on preserving the evening news in order to study and analyze its presentation was an extraordinarily important contribution.</p>
<p>The British writer Christopher Hitchens <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/">once remarked</a> that political partisanship makes us stupid. </p>
<p>But in the case of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, partisanship led to unintended, historically enriching results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Alan Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years ago, an insurance agent named Paul Simpson was convinced of rampant bias on the evening news. So he embarked on a project to record each broadcast and store them at Vanderbilt University.Thomas Alan Schwartz, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943922018-04-05T10:57:09Z2018-04-05T10:57:09ZAmerican broadcasting has always been closely intertwined with American politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213288/original/file-20180404-189804-u1ho88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Louisiana's populist politician Huey Long, giving an address on CBS Radio in 1934</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louisiana State University</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Local television viewers around the United States <a href="https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490">were recently alerted</a> to a <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/sinclair-forces-reporters-to-read-script-about-fake-news-63ae6fcea30e/">“troubling trend” that’s “extremely dangerous to democracy.”</a></p>
<p>Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of America’s <a href="http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/10/26/fcc-sinclair-tribune">dominant television station owners</a>, commanded its anchors to deliver a scripted commentary, warning audiences about “one sided news stories plaguing our country” and media outlets that publish “fake stories … that just aren’t true.”</p>
<p>This might sound like a media literacy lesson, offered in the public interest. But the invocation of “biased and false news” so closely echoes charges from the Trump administration that <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/2/17189302/sinclair-broadcast-fake-news-biased-trump-viral-video">many observers cried foul</a>. </p>
<p>Sinclair’s record of broadcasting news content favorable to the Trump administration, including mandated program segments such as the “<a href="http://www.newscaststudio.com/2015/11/19/sinclair-creates-terrorism-alert-desk/">Terrorism Alert Desk</a>,” and “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BottomLineWithBoris/">Bottom Line with Boris</a>,” with former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn, provides additional evidence of partisan bias. </p>
<p>So, is it time, as some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/trump-sinclair-tribune-america.html">commentators are suggesting</a>, to restore the Fairness Doctrine, which used to require broadcasters “to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was fair and balanced”? That policy, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, was repealed in 1987. It supposedly sustained responsible political debate on the nation’s airwaves until its disappearance during the Reagan administration.</p>
<p>I would argue that nostalgic calls for the restoration of a golden age of civil political discussion on America’s airwaves mistake what actually happened in those decades.</p>
<h2>Airtime for Nazis, socialists, communists</h2>
<p>Politics and broadcasting have been consistently intertwined in American history. As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YxTJsxoAAAAJ&hl=en">I have found</a> in my own <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884910379707">research</a>, the commercial broadcasting community (including advertisers) has consistently aligned news content and commentary in ways favorable to the White House. </p>
<p>But such episodes are often conveniently forgotten. </p>
<p>As Mitchell Stephens’ <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Voice_of_America.html?id=eP-fDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">new biography of journalist Lowell Thomas</a> recounts, and as numerous <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AspCnwEACAAJ&dq=Ed+Bliss+Now+The+News&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB8f345qDaAhUB64MKHd2RBwsQ6AEILDAB">earlier scholars</a> detailed, U.S. broadcast journalism originated more as subjective and biased commentary than as reportage. </p>
<p>The vast majority of 1930s radio “news” was politically slanted analysis by veteran journalists like Thomas, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=H.V.+Kaltenborn+union&btnG=">H.V. Kaltenborn</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7EVpYeCvg">Boake Carter</a>. Kaltenborn, for example, was notable for his anti-union commentaries. </p>
<p>The uncertain nature of early broadcast regulation, combined with pressure from organized interest groups and politicians, all made the exact parameters of political speech on American radio ambiguous in the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213290/original/file-20180404-189813-11ymb1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ninety million listeners tuned in and heard Father Charles Coughlin, known as the ‘Radio Priest’ of the Depression, defend fascists and attack Jews and communists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So the networks lent their microphones to a wide range of views from the quasi-fascists like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-E-Coughlin">Father Charles Coughlin</a> (the “Radio Priest”), to homespun socialists like <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Speeches_Long_EveryManKing.htm">Huey Long</a> and union leaders like the American Federation of Labor’s <a href="https://star1.loc.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/4065/sonic.txt">William Green</a>. As <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=haWh203m7aIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Douglas+Craig+Fireside+Politics&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpi8qv56DaAhVLyYMKHfYjB-cQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Douglas%20Craig%20Fireside%20Politics&f=false">Douglas Craig</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Uy6lWnBcjNYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=David+Goodman+Radio%27s+Civic+Ambition&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOoNO_56DaAhXE44MKHZr5AJkQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=David%20Goodman%20Radio's%20Civic%20Ambition&f=false">David Goodman</a> and numerous other scholars have pointed out, political broadcasting in the 1930s was vibrant, fertile and diverse to an extent unmatched to the present day. </p>
<p>For example: In 1936, both CBS and NBC aired <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Six_Minutes_in_Berlin.html?id=_xB7DQAAQBAJ">Nazi propaganda from the Berlin Olympic Games</a>. They also <a href="https://star1.loc.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/4065/sonic.txt">broadcast live from the Communist Party</a> of the United States of America nominating convention. Programs like “University of Chicago Roundtable,” and “America’s Town Meeting of the Air” aired provocative political discussion that engaged and educated American audiences by exposing them to diverse viewpoints.</p>
<h2>Airwaves rein themselves in</h2>
<p>But as war neared, U.S. political broadcasting narrowed its range. </p>
<p>The Roosevelt administration began to carefully police the airwaves. CBS’ highly rated news commentator, Boake Carter, had often criticized President Roosevelt’s policies. But when he <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lAdv3youHkYC&pg=PA89&dq=%22Now+the+News%22+%22Boake+Carter,+who+had+said+that+Anschluss+might+right%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwssuZwZ_aAhUmyoMKHVlIDboQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22Now%20the%20News%22%20%22Boake%20Carter%2C%20who%20had%20said%20that%20Anschluss%20might%20right%22&f=false">applauded the Anschluss,</a> Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and expressed admiration for Nazi policies, the White House acted. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439688200260131?journalCode=chjf20">media historian David Culbert revealed</a>, Roosevelt’s adviser Stephen T. Early secretly contacted CBS and Carter’s sponsor, General Foods, to silence Carter. Despite high ratings and a popular following, Carter’s CBS contract was not renewed. Within weeks he was gone.</p>
<p>Broadcasting’s self-censorship under government pressure expanded at the start of World War II. Circumscribing critical analysis and channeling commentary to the political center pleased advertisers and politicians.</p>
<p>With the assistance of such broadcasting pioneers as Edward R. Murrow, subjective radio news commentary morphed into the type of observational reporting now identified as broadcast journalism. </p>
<p>The most famous example of this shift occurred in 1943. That year Cecil Brown, CBS’s top-rated news analyst and author of the best-selling “Suez to Singapore,” <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/ba015a60e32458dbb27cd3f65757c767/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1821075">dared to criticize the war effort</a> he witnessed on the American homefront. Brown was fired, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cecil_Brown.html?id=_u02DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">his dismissal proved a warning</a> to every other broadcast commentator. </p>
<p>Not everyone was happy with the neutering of news and opinion on American airwaves. In response to the Brown firing, FCC Chair James Lawrence Fly criticized what he considered corporate censorship. </p>
<p>“It’s a little strange,” <a href="https://archive.org/stream/americanjournali14amer/americanjournali14amer_djvu.txt">Fly told the press</a>, “to reach the conclusion that all Americans are to enjoy free speech except radio commentators.”</p>
<p>But removing partisan politics from broadcast journalism <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Zb-j6Pwcvq8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Susan+Douglas%22+%22Listening+In%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwyvGakaHaAhUHxoMKHbg3CmYQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22By%201943%22&f=false">increased advertising revenue</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2007.10678081">proved remarkably lucrative</a> for U.S. broadcasters during World War II. </p>
<p>With the lesson learned, and with the support of the advertising community, America’s broadcasters aimed to address only the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_vital_center.html?id=7ttPAQAAIAAJ">vital center</a>” of American politics in the postwar years. </p>
<h2>Still, politics persisted</h2>
<p>It would, however, be a mistake to believe that the Fairness Doctrine silenced fractious political discourse on the American airwaves. </p>
<p>Throughout the decades that the Fairness Doctrine remained official policy, controversial political broadcasts aired regularly on American television and radio. There was <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/joe-pyne-first-shock-jock-180963237/">Joe Pyne</a>, whose show at its zenith in the 1960s attracted a reported 10 million viewers. Pyne insulted the hippies, Klansmen and civil rights activists he invited to his studio. Though the show is recalled today more for its outrageousness, it was a political show and Pyne propagated a conservative, law-and-order, patriotic message. </p>
<p>Then there’s Bob Grant, who broadcast a popular radio show in New York City throughout the 1970s. Grant’s “arch disdain for liberals, prominent black people, welfare recipients, feminists, gay people, and anyone who disagreed with him,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/nyregion/bob-grant-a-pioneer-of-right-wing-talk-radio-dies-at-84.html">wrote The New York Times</a>, “was familiar to his listeners.” </p>
<p>Nationally syndicated programs like “Donohue” offered liberal perspectives, and even the “CBS Evening News” brought back commentary, with veteran journalist <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/sevareideri.htm">Eric Sevareid</a> providing perspective on the daily news each weeknight.</p>
<p>I’m not equating the well-reasoned, often brilliant political commentary offered by Eric Sevareid to Sinclair Broadcast Group’s transparent political advocacy. Sevareid reached a much larger percentage of the American populace than all the Sinclair newscasts combined, and he was therefore far more influential. </p>
<p>But to express surprise that Sinclair now shapes news content and commentary to be more hospitable to political advertising, and more supportive of the current administration, ignores the fact that political commentary has always sold well in the American commercial system. </p>
<p>I believe Sinclair’s management has identified an underutilized segment of the local TV news advertising market – the pro-Trump segment – as the 2018 midterm elections approach. The broadcaster is now shaping its news products to more effectively appeal to the audience for the political advertisements it seeks to sell this fall. </p>
<p>This economic interest closely aligns with Sinclair’s current political and regulatory imperatives. It makes the propagating of biased news content even more effective from Sinclair’s perspective. </p>
<p>Sinclair clearly hopes that the political consultants who purchase campaign ads, and the federal regulators who must <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/sinclair-media-awaiting-massive-broadcast-merger-gets-trump-defense/">approve their planned purchase</a> of Tribune Broadcasting’s 42 stations, will appreciate their recent media literacy efforts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sinclair network anchors decrying ‘fake stories’ have been condemned for giving biased support to President Trump. But nostalgic calls to restore civil political discussion on the air ignore history.Michael J. Socolow, Associate professor, communication and journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719322017-01-27T02:03:58Z2017-01-27T02:03:58ZTrump isn’t lying, he’s bullshitting – and it’s far more dangerous<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154471/original/image-20170126-30410-7z3eqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lying means you're actually concerned about the truth.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/558353116?size=huge_jpg">'Trump' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’ve been paying attention to the news over the past week or so, you know that over the weekend America was introduced to the concept of “alternative facts.” After Trump administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/trump-inauguration-crowd-sean-spicers-claims-versus-the-evidence">rebuked the media for accurately reporting</a> the relatively small crowds at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/donald-trump-kellyanne-conway-inauguration-alternative-facts">told NBC’s “Meet the Press”</a> that Spicer wasn’t lying; he was simply using “alternative facts.”</p>
<p>News outlets are still working through the process of figuring out what to call these mischaracterizations of reality. (“Alternative facts” seems to have been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/opinions/alternative-facts-lies-obeidallah-opinion/index.html">swiftly rejected</a>.) Many outlets have upped their fact-checking game. The Washington Post, for instance, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/16/now-you-can-fact-check-trumps-tweets-in-the-tweets-themselves/">released a browser extension</a> that fact-checks tweets by the president in near real-time. </p>
<p>Other outlets have resisted labeling Trump’s misstatements as lies. Earlier this year, for instance, the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Gerard Baker <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-1-1-17-n702006">insisted</a> that the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t label Trump’s false statements “lies.” </p>
<p>Baker argued that lying requires a “deliberate intention to mislead,” which couldn’t be proven in the case of Trump. Baker’s critics <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/02/yes-donald-trump-lies-a-lot-and-news-organizations-should-say-so/">pushed back</a>, raising valid and important points about the duty of the press to report what is true. </p>
<p>As important as discussions about the role of the press as fact-checkers are, in this case Baker’s critics are missing the point. Baker is right. Trump isn’t lying. He’s bullshitting. And that’s an important distinction to make. </p>
<h2>Bullshitter-in-chief?</h2>
<p>Bullshitters, as philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote in his 1986 essay “<a href="http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf">On Bullshit</a>,” don’t care whether what they are saying is factually correct or not. Instead, bullshit is characterized by a “lack of connection to a concern with truth [and] indifference to how things really are.” Frankfurt explains that a bullshitter “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”</p>
<p>In addition to being unconcerned about the truth (which liars do care about, since they are trying to conceal it), Frankfurt suggests that bullshitters don’t really care whether their audience believes what they are saying. Indeed, getting the audience to believe something is false isn’t the goal of bullshitting. Rather, bullshitters say what they do in an effort to change how the audience sees them, “to convey a certain impression” of themselves. </p>
<p>In Trump’s case, much of his rhetoric and speech seems designed to inflate his own grand persona. Hence the tweets about improving the record sales of artists performing at his inauguration and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/trump-rnc-speech-alone-fix-it/492557/">his claims</a> that he “alone can fix” the problems in the country. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"816718880731234304"}"></div></p>
<p>Likewise, his inaugural address contained much rhetoric about the “decayed” state of the country and rampant unemployment (<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/24/news/economy/trump-administration-unemployment-bls/">a verifiably false statement</a>). Trump then proceeded to claim that he was going to rid the country of these ailments. The image of Trump as a larger-than-life figure who will repair a broken country <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-each-side-of-the-partisan-divide-thinks-the-other-is-living-in-an-alternate-reality-71458">resonates with his audience</a>, and it doesn’t work without first <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-inauguration-day.html">priming them</a> with notions of widespread “carnage.”</p>
<h2>A stinky, slippery slope</h2>
<p>There are several problems with Trump adopting the bullshit style of communication. </p>
<p>First, misinformation is notoriously hard to correct once it’s out there, and social media, in particular, has a reputation for spreading factually inaccurate statements and conspiracy theories. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-facebook-confirmation-bias-misinformation-paranoia-20160108-story.html">One study</a>, for instance, examined five years of Facebook posts about conspiracy theories. The authors found that people tend to latch onto stories that fit their preexisting narratives about the world and share those stories with their social circle. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.abstract">The result</a> is a “proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.” <a href="https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/47257">Another study</a> examined Twitter rumors following the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. These researchers explored how misinformation about the identity of a suspected terrorist abounded on the social media platform. They found that although corrections to the error eventually emerged, they didn’t have the same reach as the original misinformation.</p>
<p>Second, because Trump’s communication style relies heavily on anger, people who are predisposed to his message may become even less critical of potential bunk. Research suggests that when people are angry, they evaluate misinformation in a partisan way, typically accepting the misleading claims that favor their own political party. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12164/abstract">One study</a>, for instance, primed participants by having them write essays that made them feel angry about a political issue. The authors then presented them with misinformation about the issue that either came from their own party or the opposing party. Participants who felt angry were more likely to believe their party’s misinformation than people who were primed to feel anxious or neutral. </p>
<p>Finally, a communications strategy based on bullshit inherently makes enemies of anyone who would seek to reinstate the truth and expose his statements as bunk. <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/313777-trump-berates-cnn-reporter-for-fake-news">Journalists</a>, scientists, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/12/donald-trump-obama-keeping-down-interest-rates-fed/">experts</a> and even government officials who disagree with him are subject to charges of ineptitude, partisanship or <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/26/donald-trump/facts-dispute-donald-trumps-claim-donation-fbi-spo/">conspiracy</a>. They’re then threatened with restrictions on <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14388928/environmental-protection-agency-grant-freeze-temporary-donald-trump">funding</a>, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-01-18/trump-wont-remove-press-from-white-house-but-says-he-will-pick-who-gets-in">access</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-climatechange-idUSKBN15906G">speech</a>. We’ve already seen this happening with the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-epa-studies-20170125-story.html">suggestion that Environmental Protection Agency data may undergo review by political appointees</a> before being made public. </p>
<p>In fairness, Trump may very well believe the things that he’s saying. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lie-notable-quotes-trumps-pre-inauguration-interviews/story?id=44852845">He was recently quoted as saying</a> “I don’t like to lie.” And people can convince themselves of things that aren’t true. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/">There’s some evidence</a>, for instance, that he avoided information that Muslims in New Jersey didn’t actually celebrate the terrorist attacks on September 11th, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/">as he claimed</a>. Like all of us, Trump may be putting up psychological defenses to avoid accepting information that challenges his worldviews, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2010-25386-006">as research suggests all of us do</a>. So although he’s corrected frequently by journalists and on social media, it’s a very real possibility that he’s simply shut out anyone or any source of information that threatens his way of seeing things. </p>
<p>But this is of little comfort. Trump has an affinity for speaking mistruths with little consideration for their factual accuracy. Combine this with his relentless efforts to discredit anyone who challenges his declarations and his heavy use of social media – where posts and tweets can go viral with little context and no fact-checking – and it sets the stage for a dangerous turn in American political and civil discourse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Griffin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Inflating his own grand persona is Trump’s sole goal, and he doesn’t care whether or not you believe him.Lauren Griffin, Director of External Research for frank, College of Journalism and Communications, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/657312016-09-21T00:01:47Z2016-09-21T00:01:47ZHarvard study: Policy issues nearly absent in presidential campaign coverage<p>Years ago, when I first started teaching and was at Syracuse University, one of my students ran for student body president on the tongue-in-cheek platform “Issues are Tissues, without a T.” </p>
<p>He was dismissing out of hand anything that he, or his opponents, might propose to do in office, noting that student body presidents have so little power as to make their platforms disposable.</p>
<p>Sadly, the news media appears to have taken a similar outlook in their coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. The stakes in the election are high. Key decisions on foreign and domestic policy will be affected by the election’s outcome, as will a host of other issues, including the appointment of the newest Supreme Court justice. Yet, journalists have paid scant attention to the candidates’ platforms. </p>
<p>That conclusion is based on three reports on the news media’s coverage of the 2016 campaign that I have written for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where I hold a faculty position. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-national-conventions/">third report</a> was released today and it covers the month-long period from the week before the Republican National Convention to the week after the Democratic National Convention. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Pre-Primary-News-Coverage-Trump-Sanders-Clinton-2016.pdf">first report</a> analyzed coverage during the whole of the year 2015 – the so-called invisible primary period that precedes the first actual contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Election-2016-Primary-Media-Coverage.pdf">second report</a> spanned the period of the primaries and caucuses. </p>
<h2>10 major outlets studied</h2>
<p>Each report was based on a detailed content analysis of the presidential election coverage on five television networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) and in five leading newspapers (Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today). </p>
<p>The analysis indicates that substantive policy issues have received only a small amount of attention so far in the 2016 election coverage. To be sure, “the wall” has been in and out of the news since Donald Trump vowed to build it. Other issues like ISIS and free trade have popped up here or there as well. But in the overall context of election coverage, issues have played second fiddle. They were at the forefront in the halls of the national conventions but not in the forefront of convention-period news coverage. Not a single policy proposal accounted for even 1 percent of Hillary Clinton’s convention-period coverage and, collectively, her policy stands accounted for a mere 4 percent of it. </p>
<p>Trump’s policies got more attention, but not until after the Democratic convention, when he made headlines several days running for his testy exchange with the parents of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier.</p>
<p>That exchange sparked a “controversy,” which is sure to catch reporters’ attention. We’ve seen that time and again this election year. Past elections were not much different, featuring everything from Jimmy Carter’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/carter.htm">“lust in my heart”</a> Playboy interview in 1976 to Mitt Romney’s <a href="http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/did-the-47-percent-video-sink-romneys-campaign">“47 percent”</a> statement in 2012. None of these controversies was predictive of anything that happened in the presidency during the subsequent four years, but their coverage during the campaign overshadowed nearly every policy proposal put forth by the candidates.</p>
<p>“Medialities” is the label political scientist Michael Robinson has given to such controversies. Journalists find them irresistible, as political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jGHNDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=%22Lance+Bennett%22+birther+claims+Trump&source=bl&ots=ex-lGyb3gz&sig=JFqBmO6eUHbTL2MsxgG4Eg7B2y0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNxOrk_Z3PAhXL6YMKHRpHDeQQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22Lance%20Bennett%22%20birther%20claims%20Trump&f=false">W. Lance Bennett</a> noted when looking at Trump’s birther claims. When Trump in 2011 questioned whether President Obama was a native-born American, his statement was seized upon by cable outlets and stayed in the headlines and on newscasts for days. </p>
<p>Veteran CNN correspondent Candy Crowley interviewed Trump on this issue, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/us/17trump.html?_r=0">justifying it by saying</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There comes a point where you can’t ignore something, not because it’s entertaining.… The question was, ‘Is he driving the conversation?’ And he was.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In truth, the media were driving the conversation.</p>
<h2>What distracts us</h2>
<p>The leading “mediality” of the 2016 campaign has been Clinton’s emails. That and other news references to Clinton-related “scandals” accounted for 11 percent of her convention-period coverage, following the pattern of earlier stages of the campaign. What Clinton might do in the Middle East or with trade or with the challenge of income equality could reasonably be anyone’s guess, given how little attention her policy statements have received in the news.</p>
<p>At that, controversies rank second to the horse race as a staple of journalists’ diet. No aspect of the campaign meets journalists’ need for novelty more predictably than does the horse race. Each new poll or disruption gives journalists the opportunity to reassess the candidates’ tactics and positions in the race.</p>
<p>Policy issues, on the other hand, lack novelty. A new development may thrust a new issue into the campaign, but policy problems are typically longstanding. If they came and went overnight, they would not be problems. It is for this reason that when a candidate first announces a policy stand, it makes news. Later on, it normally doesn’t.</p>
<p>Granted, election news would be limp without attention to the horse race. The election’s bottom line – who will win in November? – is of undeniable interest. What’s open to debate is the relative importance of the horse race in the middle of the summer. During the convention period, even though questions of policy and leadership were on the agenda within the halls of the national conventions, they were not on journalists’ agenda. Polls, projections, strategy and the like constituted about a fifth of all coverage, whereas issues took up less than 1/12 and the candidates’ qualifications for the presidency accounted for less than 1/13.</p>
<p>As the campaign enters its final stage, one might hope that the press will provide America’s voters with information that can help them better understand the policy choices they face in November. No doubt, the presidential debates will help focus the public’s attention on the differences in the Trump and Clinton platforms. However, press coverage of past campaigns would suggest that news stories will take voters’ minds in a different direction. There’s a distinct possibility that voters will go to the polls in November with “the wall” and “emails” uppermost in their thoughts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas E. Patterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How is the Trump-Clinton contest being covered by the country’s major newspapers and broadcasters? We look at the data.Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647892016-09-07T02:43:33Z2016-09-07T02:43:33ZHow ‘Star Trek’ almost failed to launch<p>On Sept. 8, 1966, TV viewers were transfixed by the appearance on screen of a green-hued, pointy-eared alien called Spock. But beneath the makeup, actor Leonard Nimoy fretted that this would be the end of his promising career. </p>
<p>“How can I play a character without emotion?” he <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&dq=It's+the+ears+or+me+Nimoy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMlMOBkPTOAhWBQiYKHeQUDTAQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=How%20do%20I%20play%20a%20character%20with%20no%20emotion%3F&f=false">asked</a> his boss, Gene Roddenberry. “I’m going to be on one note throughout the entire series.” </p>
<p>Nimoy thought he looked silly wearing the prosthetics that turned him into a Vulcan, at one point issuing an <a href="http://startrekdom.blogspot.com/2007/05/leonard-nimoys-lovehate-relationship.html">ultimatum</a>: “It’s me or the ears.” </p>
<p>Nimoy’s misgivings were just one of many problems the writers, producers and cast faced during “Star Trek”‘s troubled journey to the screen. Culled from <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=X2cBAAAACAAJ&dq=Inside+Star+Trek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMzMm0kvTOAhVEOSYKHTpiA3sQ6AEIHjAA">their</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+fifty-year+mission&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD7Yy3zvXOAhXHQiYKHSLJDNsQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=The%20fifty-year%20mission&f=false">recollections</a>, this is the story of how “Star Trek”’s mission to explore strange new worlds was almost over before it began. </p>
<h2>Seeds of inspiration</h2>
<p>The ingredients of “Star Trek” had been slow-cooking in creator Gene Roddenberry’s brain for years. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&dq=It's+the+ears+or+me+Nimoy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMlMOBkPTOAhWBQiYKHeQUDTAQ6AEIMzAE#v=snippet&q=blimp&f=false">At first he wanted to write a show about a 19th-century blimp</a> that journeyed from place to place, making contact with distant peoples. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136808/original/image-20160906-25249-cejx16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Star Trek’ creator Gene Roddenberry in the early 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/MONY_Gene_Roddenberry.JPG">Mutual of New York (MONY)/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Deciding instead to set the show in the future, Roddenberry drew upon his youthful immersion in science fiction magazines like <a href="http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=astounding">Astounding Stories</a>. Also important was his experience as a World War II bomber pilot, which caused him to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jJlzRQQrIj4C&dq=Gene+Roddenberry+Yvonne+Fern&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=wasn%27t+just+an+aberration+of+man%27s+nature">ruminate</a> on human nature: Would we ever outgrow our obsession with violence? And from C.S. Forester’s <a href="https://www.loc.gov/nls/bibliographies/minibibs/horatio.html">Horatio Hornblower novels</a>, Roddenberry borrowed the idea of a courageous captain burdened by the duties of command.</p>
<p>With tiny Desilu Studios interested in making the show, Roddenberry pitched “Star Trek” to the networks. CBS passed after Roddenberry botched the pitch. But NBC bit and ordered a pilot episode, which was eventually titled “The Cage.”</p>
<h2>NBC responds to the pilot</h2>
<p>Watching “The Cage” now is a disorientating experience. In the captain’s chair is a sullen man called Pike, played by star Jeff Hunter. There is no sign of future series regulars McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, Checkov. Spock is there, but not quite the inscrutable Spock we would come to know. He shouts and, more than once, breaks into a wide grin. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SYPpgYwE7aY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The opening to ‘The Cage,’ ‘Star Trek’‘s first pilot episode.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The role of chilly logician and second in command is instead taken by “Number One,” a character played by actress Majel Barrett. </p>
<p>“Number One” wouldn’t make it past this trial run. In tests, some men and a surprisingly large number of women <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&dq=It's+the+ears+or+me+Nimoy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMlMOBkPTOAhWBQiYKHeQUDTAQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=the%20women%20hated%20her&f=false">objected to her stridency</a>, which was out of touch with the gender norms of the time. NBC doubted that Barrett could carry such a prominent role (and even thought Roddenberry had cast her because she was his mistress). </p>
<p>“The Cage” – a complicated story about alien mind-control – was an ambitious pilot. When Roddenberry presented it to NBC, the programming executives were blown away. But the sales and marketing department wasn’t convinced. Not enough action, <a href="https://www.quora.com/I-just-started-Star-Trek-Why-does-it-switch-between-Pike-in-the-first-episode-and-Kirk-in-the-subsequent-episodes">they thought</a>. It would be hard to promote. Pass. </p>
<p>“Star Trek,” it seemed, was dead. </p>
<h2>Striking gold with Shatner</h2>
<p>Roddenberry pleaded with NBC for another chance. He assured them he could make it action-driven, that it didn’t need to be high concept. A television miracle happened when NBC commissioned that rarest of things: a second pilot.</p>
<p>Roddenberry wanted Jeff Hunter to return as Captain Pike, and arranged to screen “The Cage” for him, reserving Desilu’s projection room for March 25, 1965. But Hunter was a no-show, sending his wife in his stead. “This is not the kind of show Jeff wants to do,” <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Christopher_Pike">she told Roddenberry</a>. “Jeff Hunter is a movie star.” Pike relinquished command. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136810/original/image-20160906-25279-17aqmn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Shatner as Captain Kirk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/William_Shatner_Star_Trek.JPG">NBC Television/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ebullient Canadian actor William Shatner was hired to play the ship’s captain, now named James R. (later James T.) Kirk. For Leonard Nimoy, the casting of Shatner, a stage actor accustomed to playing scenes big and loud, was the key to unlocking Spock.</p>
<p>“Jeff [Hunter] was playing Captain Pike as a very thoughtful, kind of worried, kind of angst-ridden nice guy,” Nimoy later <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iw0TAgAACAAJ&dq=Star+Trek+Memories,+Shatner&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2rLW8lPTOAhUM4yYKHTXXDFoQ6AEIJzAA">told</a> Shatner, in an interview for Shatner’s book “Star Trek Memories.” “Pike didn’t have the clarity or precision of character against which you could measure yourself.” </p>
<p>Shatner’s clear-cut performance carved out space for Nimoy to shape his saturnine Spock. “For lack of a better metaphor, on a bright sunny day, the shadows get very clear.”</p>
<p>The second pilot, bolstered by the Shatner/Nimoy tandem, was a winner. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was a rollicking story about crew members irradiated in deep space and acquiring godlike powers. NBC liked it and commissioned a full season of “Star Trek.”</p>
<h2>Righting the ship after a stormy start</h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=X2cBAAAACAAJ&dq=Inside+Star+Trek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMzMm0kvTOAhVEOSYKHTpiA3sQ6AEIHjAA">Triumph quickly turned to panic</a> for Roddenberry and for Desilu studios. Roddenberry needed scripts for the series – fast. He solicited stories from veteran TV writers, from sci-fi magazine and novel authors, and even from his office staff. His secretary Dorothy Fontana went on to become perhaps the most celebrated and prolific writer for the show. </p>
<p>But script problems would dog the young series. Veteran TV writers, unused to sci-fi, struggled to work within the universe Roddenberry had created. Sci-fi luminaries had boundless imaginations but little grasp of the practicalities of writing for television. Their scripts often called for casting and staging that would consume the budget for a feature film, let alone a fledgling TV series.</p>
<p>Roddenberry also wasn’t the best at managing the fragile egos of his writers. He took it upon himself to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&dq=It's+the+ears+or+me+Nimoy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMlMOBkPTOAhWBQiYKHeQUDTAQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=Roddenberry%20re-wrote&f=false">rewrite every script that made it on-screen</a>, and his pages were often slow to arrive on set. Scripting was a constant source of tension and delay. </p>
<p>For Desilu, the elation of getting “Star Trek” picked up <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=X2cBAAAACAAJ&dq=Inside+Star+Trek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMzMm0kvTOAhVEOSYKHTpiA3sQ6AEIHjAA">was dampened by the financial reality of producing the show</a>. Network policy was to pay a set amount for each episode, calculated at something like 80 percent of the cost of production. For a small outfit like Desilu, deficit-financing both “Star Trek” and their other new show, “Mission Impossible,” required some accounting wizardry. Both were budgeted at US$200,000 per episode, with NBC kicking in $160,000. Any over-budget costs were born by the studio alone.</p>
<p>Tiny Desilu kept its head above water into the second season of “Star Trek” before finally drowning in debt. Studio owner and “I Love Lucy” star Lucille Ball was forced to sell to Paramount. Had she been able to hold on a few months more, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&dq=It's+the+ears+or+me+Nimoy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMlMOBkPTOAhWBQiYKHeQUDTAQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=Desilu%20money&f=false">she would have seen “Star Trek” picked up in 60 countries</a>. Had she retained the rights long-term, Desilu would have benefited financially from endless reruns of the show’s 79 episodes. Network-friendly deals also ensured it would be many years before the cast would gain financial security from their iconic roles.</p>
<p>With the premiere date rapidly approaching, NBC chose an episode titled “The Man Trap” to be the first to air. It is, in truth, a run-of-the-mill “Star Trek” episode. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CCN3CgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+fifty+year+mission&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJsJ6Xs_vOAhVEFh4KHV9_AdsQ6AEILTAB#v=snippet&q=monster&f=false">The network liked that it featured a creature</a> – a shape-shifting, salt-guzzling monster – with which the show’s heroes could do battle. </p>
<p>Although NBC’s marketing team had not initially seen the potential of “Star Trek,” by the time “The Man Trap” aired, they were able to trumpet the show in a glossy, multipage <a href="https://theinvisibleagent.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/star-trek-nbc-sales-pilot-sell-sheet-1966/">promotional brochure</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“As the Apollo moon shot moves steadily from the drawing board to the launching pad, STAR TREK takes TV viewers beyond our time and solar system to the unexplored interstellar deeps … the STAR TREK storylines will stimulate the imagination without bypassing the intellect. While speculating in a fascinating way about the future, the series also will have much to say that is meaningful to us today.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A half-century later, we are on the cusp of a <a href="http://www.tor.com/2016/09/03/star-trek-discovery-secrets-revealed-at-missions-nyc/">new CBS series</a> set in the universe Roddenberry created. (CBS acquired the rights to “Star Trek” some years ago following a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lhmw637JRgUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA209#v=onepage&q&f=false">complicated series of corporate maneuverings</a>.) Titled “Star Trek: Discovery” and scheduled for release in January 2017, the new series has no doubt had to contend with its own casting controversies, script problems and budget constraints. </p>
<p>The writers of the new show certainly know enough about Trek’s turbulent beginnings to temper expectations: “If you go in with open minds and open hearts, you may be rewarded,” <a href="http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/star-trek-discovery-writer-lower-expectations">they told a crowd</a> eager for news at the Star Trek: Mission New York convention held over Labor Day weekend. “Whereas if you go with a set of impossible-to-realize expectations, which even you cannot specifically define, then we’re bound to fail.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64789/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Benedict Dyson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With a pilot that was deemed too complex and cerebral, ‘Star Trek’ looked dead in the water. Fifty years later, we look back at the show’s rocky beginnings.Stephen Benedict Dyson, Professor of Political Science, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630212016-08-04T01:27:57Z2016-08-04T01:27:57ZWill social media define the success of the Olympic Games?<p>Long before the opening ceremonies kicked off the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Games had already been playing out in the news for a while – and for all the wrong reasons. Brazil has been criticized for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/09/brazil-turmoil-rio-2016-olympics">political instability</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-poke-the-bear-what-could-russia-do-next-about-drugs-in-sport-62693">doping scandals</a>, <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14791849/trash-contamination-continue-pollute-olympic-training-competition-sites-rio-de-janeiro">environmental</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-rio-security-idUSKCN0YN50S">safety concerns</a> and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/health/what-is-zika-virus.html?_r=1">Zika virus</a>.</p>
<p>Although research has shown that <a href="http://olympicstudies.uab.es/lectures/web/pdf/rivenburgh.pdf">the media tend to be negatively biased</a> toward non-Western mega-event hosts, Rio has been left to contend with what is perhaps the most problematic mainstream media coverage of any Olympics so far. In turn, we’d expect the organizers and the International Olympic Committee to be battling to reclaim the Olympic Games’ image. But in an unprecedented move, they’ve done almost the opposite. </p>
<p>In their <a href="http://doc.rero.ch/record/255030">strategic communications plan</a>, drafted as early as 2012, Rio’s Olympic organizers relinquished a surprising amount of storytelling power not only to journalists but to the general public on social media, writing “citizens who publish content on the web are the ones who will ultimately define the success of the Games.” </p>
<p>While social media are a pervasive global force, it’s unclear how they’ll be used at the Rio Games. Which narratives will be told, by whom, and what impact will they have?</p>
<p>Indeed, if we think about <a href="http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203120415">sporting events as spaces for media consumption and evolution</a>, then the battles for Olympic “success” take place as much through various storytelling platforms as they do in the stadium. But what does success for such an event look like? </p>
<h2>Social so far</h2>
<p>According to one official IOC <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Summer-Games/Games-Rio-2016-Olympic-Games/Media-Guide-for-Rio-2016/IOC-Marketing-Media-Guide-Rio-2016.pdf">definition</a>, success is measured by media audience engagement. The more of it, the better. From that perspective, the IOC has done rather well in recent years, garnering substantial audiences on its official Olympic social media accounts.</p>
<p>London’s 2012 Summer Olympic Games had an official social media following of 4.7 million users across all platforms. Two years later, Sochi’s had gone up to over 5 million across two platforms alone: Facebook and <a href="http://vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/">VKontakte</a>, the most popular Russian social media site. But beyond these official channels, what’s social media’s potential impact on the hames?</p>
<p>We certainly need to be <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-01-19/innovation-revolution">skeptical</a> about statements that exaggerate the role of social media. We know that social media alone <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell">does not cause revolutions</a>. And while social media numbers have increased for the Olympic Games, they pale in comparison to its 3.6 billion, and growing, in global television audience. But there are some examples of <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2010-12-20/political-power-social-media">social media facilitating alternate</a> types of storytelling. </p>
<p>In terms of the Olympics, my own research suggests <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/2167479515576101">social media served as an important, albeit marginal, channel</a> in reframing NBC’s mainstream coverage of the 2014 Games in Sochi.</p>
<p>Through a mix of automated textual analyses and in-depth readings of hundreds of Tweets, I found that a new story emerges. An international group of Twitter users gathered around the #NBCFail hashtag to point out the network’s gaffes, to figure out how to watch the coverage live and for free and to piece together what was not shown. These Twitter users created their own highly politicized version of the Olympics, which often went against NBC’s <a href="http://www.totalsportek.com/money/olympics-2016-tv-rights-deals-worldwide-increased-52/">highly paid</a> broadcast rights to set the official storyline in the U.S.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"437630227162730498"}"></div></p>
<p>Twitter users publicized a series of important omissions from NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games. These included the removal of a Soviet era act from the opening ceremony, a missing performance by t.A.T.u (a supposedly gay Russian band), the disappearance of the <a href="http://gawker.com/the-russian-police-choir-sang-get-lucky-at-the-openin-1518475274">Russian police choir singing “Get Lucky”</a> and the editing of IOC President Thomas Bach’s speech, in which he referred to the IOC being committed to human rights. And that’s all just in the opening ceremony. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"434732896595611648"}"></div></p>
<p>To be sure, there were also plenty of tweets dedicated to discussing the cause of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/12/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-bob-costas-s-olympic-pink-eye.html">Bob Costas’ pinkeye</a>. Humor was certainly the social lubricant and common language behind much of the content. One tweeter posted a cartoon and in Russian playfully compared the cutting of a peacock’s wings to NBC’s editing of the Sochi 2014 opening ceremony.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"432813175482748928"}"></div></p>
<p>Still, what #NBCFail revealed was more or less a counternarrative to mainstream media, with its focus on medal counts and heartwarming athlete backstories. </p>
<p>While these are not the first instances of a hashtag being used to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/15/twitterers-protest-cnnfail-on-iran-coverage/">expose what was not shown</a>, they do speak to the role of the citizen social media user as alternate storyteller or <a href="https://danielkreiss.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/kreiss_politicalperformance.pdf">active spectator</a>. </p>
<h2>So what can we expect for Rio?</h2>
<p>In short, look for more content, more clutter and more contracts.</p>
<p>Research on #SochiProblems, which became more popular than the official Sochi handle, shows that the vast majority of those tweeting about the problems at the Winter Olympic Games <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5783/RIRP-8-2014-09-161-180">were not actually on the ground in Sochi</a> – or even in Russia at the time. And since the majority of the world participates in the Olympics remotely via media, we can expect this summer’s social media narratives will come from far beyond Brazil. Furthermore, despite being a country that’s very active on social media, it’s worth noting that the typical social media user is not the typical Brazilian. With just over <a href="http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2016">half of the population</a> having access to the internet, social media in Brazil remains a medium of privilege. </p>
<p>Similar to Sochi, we can also expect the real social media action in Rio to take place away from official media accounts and hashtags, which have grown in presence.</p>
<p><a href="http://vancouversun.com/opinion/opinion-ioc-sponsors-have-hijacked-social-media">According to Graeme Menzies</a>, communication director for the Vancouver Olympics, the 2010 Olympic Games were the first and last social media Olympics. In his view, social media at the 2010 games was “the people’s media,” with little to no organizational involvement. Not long after, the IOC moved to exert more power over this space, partnering with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to create official Olympic social media content. Furthermore, social media platforms like Twitter saw the games as an opportunity to attract new users. For instance, Rio 2016 will see <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/twitter-revamps-moments-for-the-olympics-with-weeks-long-tracking-of-sports-and-events/">extensive coordination</a> with Twitter – and the largest launch of emojis to date.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"760555933244203008"}"></div></p>
<p>The IOC also developed <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Summer-Games/Games-Rio-2016-Olympic-Games/Social-Media-Blogging-Internet-Guidelines-and-News-Access-Rules/IOC-Social-and-Digital-Media-Guidelines-Rio-2016.pdf#_ga=1.43008870.2142566050.1468331164">explicit sets of guidelines</a> for how athletes and Olympic personnel should use social media. Notably, this comes partly in an effort to attract younger audiences – but it also comes at the expense of a loss of some social authenticity. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"720636463273152517"}"></div></p>
<p>In addition, the IOC <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-olympics-new-advertising-rules-will-impact-athletes-and-brands-rio-172372">relaxed its sponsorship rules</a> for the Rio Olympic Games, meaning that the social media space will only become more cluttered with commercial content. Preliminary findings from my upcoming study about the Rio games show that one of the most popular Olympics-related topics on Twitter leading up to the event has been the promotion of Airbnb rentals. While locals are posting to advertise their own apartments, the company does have <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/press/news/airbnb-takes-gold-with-the-rio-2016-olympic-games-providing-the-official-alternative-accommodations-service">an official partnership with the IOC.</a></p>
<p>Still, if we think of the Olympics purely as media content, then part of its communicative power lies in the ability to engage people and spotlight a range of issues beyond sport, whether short-term apartment rentals or failures of major media networks.</p>
<p>We can almost be sure that social media will succeed in attracting bigger audiences this year. Whether it can have a meaningful impact in shaping the Olympic narratives beyond echoing the mainstream media or corporate partnerships remains to be seen. After all, general news coverage of the lead-up to the games has itself been fairly harsh and hardly evocative of the party atmosphere the organizers would like us to feel.</p>
<p>Although increasingly cluttered, the power of the citizens’ social media space in relation to the Olympic Games and media corporations lies precisely in its ability to show something unexpected. As long as there is still a possibility for that to take place, and as long as we are willing to do some more digging for it, we should expect some interesting material from Rio – and probably some entertaining memes, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katerina Girginova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The mainstream media has knocked Brazil for the Zika virus, doping scandals and safety concerns. But citizen social media users, by revealing an alternate narrative, could even the score for Rio.Katerina Girginova, Doctoral Student in Communication, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/479702015-09-22T16:59:42Z2015-09-22T16:59:42ZBrian Williams returns to the air – and memory research says we should give him a break<p>After being suspended without pay from NBC in February, Brian Williams <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/09/21/brian-williams-msnbc-return/72577410/">returns to television</a> this week. He won’t be heading back to the Nightly News desk (now anchored by Lester Holt), but he will be reporting breaking news updates on MSNBC, beginning with the pope’s visit to the United States.</p>
<p>Williams’ fall from grace at NBC came after he misrepresented, during a newscast, events that occurred while he was in Iraq in 2003. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/business/media/email-to-nbc-news-staff-about-brian-williams-suspension.html?_r=0">In a memo to staff</a> announcing Williams’ suspension, president of NBC News Deborah Turness also expressed concerns about Williams’ misconstrued accounts of other events that had taken place while reporting in the field.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/business/media/frantic-efforts-at-nbc-to-curb-rising-damage-caused-by-brian-williams.html">News reports indicate</a> those concerns included Williams’ claim that he’d seen a body floating in the French Quarter in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and even that Williams may have exaggerated rescuing puppies when he was a volunteer firefighter as a teenager.</p>
<p>The staff memo from Turness quoted Stephen B Burke, chief executive of NBC Universal, who said Williams’ actions were “inexcusable” and “jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News.”</p>
<p>Of course, it would have been inexcusable if Williams had <em>intentionally</em> misled viewers about his reporting experiences to bolster his credibility.</p>
<p>But there’s also a body of research that suggests these recollections could be honest mistakes, made over time – that his memories of the events may have gradually melded together, becoming confused with other news reports he’d seen on TV. </p>
<p>After all, let’s not forget that Williams’ initial eyewitness accounts of his experiences in Iraq were accurate. A colleague and I <a href="http://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem5001_3">studied</a> embedded reporting during the Iraq War. We found that embedded reporters used more personal pronouns in their reporting than non-embeds did, but they did so in the context of factual eyewitness coverage, and rarely offered personal opinions. So Williams’ reporting style is precisely the type of reporting that ensures – rather than violates – reporter objectivity. </p>
<p>It was only years later that Williams <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/07/brian-williams-rpg_n_6637014.html">incorrectly recalled</a> being behind the plane that was shot by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), and not in another formation.</p>
<p>Even then, the gist of much of what Williams recalled was not fabricated: he was traveling with troops in Iraq in 2003 and there was a plane that took on enemy fire from an RPG. Undoubtedly, it was a terrifying and highly memorable event. </p>
<p>Though something that frightening should be recalled in vivid detail, sometimes those vivid details, despite their verisimilitude, <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/19/9/919.short">are wrong</a>. Numerous studies have shown that memory is fallible, that even <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.284">recollection of highly emotional events</a> can be distorted over time. </p>
<p>Studies of “flashbulb memories” – memories of highly emotional news events – show people’s recollections of how they learned of those events (such as what they were doing and with whom) <a href="https://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-why-do-we-remember-learning-about-dramatic-events-so-vividly-39842">are still quite detailed years later</a>. </p>
<p>But they’re not always accurate. </p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511664069.003">One study</a> looked at the flashbulb memories of how people learned of the Challenger explosion. The researchers found that those memories were often inaccurate years later. And when they were wrong, the original memory of how they found out about the explosion was often replaced by a memory of watching it on television.</p>
<p>The authors of that study did not explore this television link further, but as a media scholar I did in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Media-American-Crisis-Studies-September/dp/0761831843">a study</a> of flashbulb memories and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>Unlike the Challenger study, I looked at memories of the event months, rather than years, after the terrorist attacks. I found no false memories, but participants did report viewing television almost immediately after learning about the event. And they continued watching for hours. </p>
<p>So is it any surprise that, after watching TV so soon after hearing of a horrific news event, people might, years later, falsely remember that they first learned about it while watching television? And that journalists who were on the ground might conflate TV reports with memories of their own experiences? </p>
<p>How much video did Brian Williams watch of the Katrina aftermath? His recollection of the floating body happened in 2006, a year after covering the event. That’s less time than the three-year study period of the Challenger flashbulb memory research, which did find that television intrudes into memories, but more than the three-month time period of my study, which did not. </p>
<p>It’s certainly possible that Williams’ recollection a year later confused what he’d witnessed firsthand and what he later viewed – most likely repeatedly – in recorded coverage of this highly emotional event.</p>
<p>Williams is smart enough to know it would be foolish to intentionally exaggerate his experiences, especially when there’s a record of his initial accounts to contradict them – and that he had a lot to lose if he did. </p>
<p>While NBC executives may insist this doesn’t excuse making incorrect statements from the anchor desk, it may at least explain <em>why</em> it happened.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the years after a traumatic news event, we’re prone to confuse things we saw on TV with what we witnessed in person.Julia Fox, Associate Professor in the Media School , Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/378742015-02-25T10:56:49Z2015-02-25T10:56:49ZThe origins of the all-powerful news anchor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72938/original/image-20150224-25702-1mvg30e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">NBC newscaster John Cameron Swayze was television's first "anchor man" – though not for presenting the news. The term referred to his status as permanent panelist of the quiz show Who Said That?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/John_Cameron_Swayze_News_Caravan_1955.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amidst the media tumult over NBC anchor Brian Williams’ apparent journalistic crimes, a little history on the role of the news anchor can help with some big questions. How did we get here: a place where news organizations put so much power in one person, a place where that person is allowed – even encouraged – to frequent entertainment and “fake news” shows?</p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, the anchor has not always dominated American television news (a topic I’ve recently <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2015.967149#.VOSXh0Lxpq4">written about for American Journalism</a>). The title wasn’t even affixed to the nightly newscaster until the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>But over time, the position’s prominence has grown, influencing the economics and control structure within news organizations. And as we’ve seen, the rise of the star anchor can hamper the news gathering ability and journalistic integrity of major media networks. </p>
<h2>Anchoring the…quiz show?</h2>
<p>When television gained a large audience in the late 1940s, the main newscaster was hardly the most important element of the broadcast. As late as 1948, NBC’s main offering, The Camel Newsreel Theater, was controlled by the advertiser and a newsreel company. The narrator was never even seen by viewers. </p>
<p>CBS spent the 1940s creating the newscast format we know today, with a newscaster guiding the viewer through the news. But over the course of a few years, CBS used more than a dozen newscasters, considering the role less important than the visualized stories.</p>
<p>In 1948, CBS executives settled on Douglas Edwards for its nightly newscast, mainly because none of the famous <a href="http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/features/murrow/exhibit/boys.html">Murrow Boys</a> of CBS Radio wanted the job. The next year, NBC switched to the newscast format and the sponsor wanted John Cameron Swayze to be the face of the renamed Camel News Caravan.</p>
<p>Swayze was television’s first “anchor man,” but not for his newscasting. In addition to news, he was also a permanent panelist on the quiz show Who Said That? Since the other celebrity panelists came and went each week, Swayze was called the “anchor man” of the quiz show, because he was the one permanent personality. NBC and media writers clearly distinguished between his role as “anchor man” on the quiz show and his position as newscaster on the nightly news. The designation of “anchor man” then spread to other quiz shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s.</p>
<p>The term transitioned from quiz shows to formal news in 1952, when Walter Cronkite was chosen to lead the political convention coverage. In a CBS press release, his role was described as “anchor man.” Cronkite became a hit with viewers so CBS continued using the anchorman descriptor. From the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, the term became synonymous with political convention and election night coverage. </p>
<p>Even when Walter Cronkite replaced Douglas Edwards on the CBS Evening News in 1962, he was considered an anchor only during political conventions and a newscaster on the nightly news. Meanwhile, the anchorman designation faded from quiz show use after Swayze left <a href="http://youtu.be/2CYoMqSbh5I">Who Said That</a>?</p>
<h2>Prominence equates to power – and control</h2>
<p>While Cronkite is usually celebrated as television’s first and most iconic anchorman, another aspect of his 1962 promotion can be viewed as the start of the slippery slope that has led to today’s problem at NBC. Cronkite not only became the main newscaster for CBS, but he also insisted on the title of managing editor – which gave him overall control of the newscast. </p>
<p>As Cronkite became the most famous face at CBS, he also had final say over the network’s signature broadcast. With Cronkite’s long and celebrated journalism career, few questioned his credentials for the managing editor title. Staff members did learn Cronkite expected to be on camera for at least six minutes during the newscast. They started referring to his on-camera time as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Evening-Stars-Making-Network/dp/0395339685">“the magic.”</a> </p>
<p>“Anchor” started to replace the term “newscaster” in television news in the mid-to-late 1960s, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Viewers-Watch-Reappraisal-Televisions/dp/0803940777">after television news surpassed newspapers as the most popular news medium in the United States</a>. The rise of television news coincided with a period political scientist and media scholar Daniel Hallin calls the “high modernism” era of journalism – when journalists promoted the idea that they were objective and uniquely qualified to publish and present the news of the day. It was a time when Walter Cronkite could confidently look in the camera and finish each broadcast with “And that’s the way it is.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72936/original/image-20150224-25664-mlu4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">And that’s the way it is: Walter Cronkite’s rise to fame established the power and influence of the network news anchor – many of whom maintained editorial control of the newscast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walter_Cronkite_on_television_1976.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this period, more than 9 out of every 10 homes had at least one television set, but viewers had few channel choices (and had to watch programs live), leading to communal dinner hour news viewing. Local stations had also begun to invest more heavily in news, so the “anchor” term easily transitioned to newscasters across the country. In a 1967 New York City <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Deciding-Whats-News-Newsweek-American/dp/0810122375">survey</a>, sociologist Herbert Gans found that 40% of viewers said they chose their newscast because of the anchor, while only 10% watched because of the quality of the program.</p>
<p>The instances of newscasters doubling as hosts of entertainment shows, or making cross-promotion appearances (as Brian Williams was keen to do) are as old as the job itself. Like Swayze, ABC newscaster John Daly worked on a quiz show (What’s My Line?). Also in the 1950s, Edward R. Murrow often interviewed celebrities on his Person to Person program, while Walter Cronkite hosted You Are There, a weekly reenactment of an historical event. After he became a famous anchor, Cronkite made an appearance on his network’s Mary Tyler Moore Show, alongside the quintessential lampoon of the news anchor, Ted Baxter. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ViBf2Riqqo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A memorable 1970 debate on the Dick Cavett Show about the merits of television news, featuring Janis Joplin, Raquel Welch and NBC’s Chet Huntley. For decades, news anchors have been making appearances on entertainment shows.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Putting all their eggs in one anchor</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, ABC considered the anchor as the easiest path to higher ratings. First ABC raided NBC for Barbara Walters, paying her one million dollars to co-anchor the news. When that approach did not bring in enough viewers, ABC offered the anchor job to both CBS’s Dan Rather and NBC’s Tom Brokaw. Both men leveraged ABC’s offers into main anchor jobs at the their respective networks, forcing both Cronkite and NBC’s John Chancellor into premature abdications of their anchor chairs.</p>
<p>With each successive negotiation, the main anchor amassed both more money and more power over the network newscast. But those newscasts had reached their peak. In the 1980s, government broadcast deregulation meant less pressure to fund and broadcast news programs, as viewers accumulated more viewing options through cable and satellite programming. New corporate owners of the three major networks started <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=9780943875583">slashing</a> news budgets, especially as viewers started drifting away from the broadcast networks’ nightly newscast.</p>
<p>Even as bureaus were shut down and employees were fired, the salaries and power of the main anchors kept increasing, revealing the growing divide between the anchor and the rest of the news organization. An anchor’s perceived ability to bring viewers to the newscast trumped even the authority of the network news presidents, so the main anchor not only controlled the newscast, but also had heavy influence over the network news operation. As CBS News endured deep budget cuts in the mid-1980s, CBS’s Dan Rather briefly ended his newscast with the word, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Anchors-Brokaw-Jennings-Rather-Evening/dp/1559720190">“courage.”</a> Critics whispered he could show real courage by cutting his salary to save some jobs. Twenty years later, CBS tried to revive its news ratings by poaching Katie Couric from NBC, with disappointing <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/18/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20110518">results.</a> </p>
<p>The past thirty years have seen the network nightly news audiences getting smaller and older. Since younger people aren’t watching network news, one strategy has been to get the anchors to appear on programs that are more popular with these viewers. One of Brian Williams’ strengths was the ease at which he could change personas, from serious newscaster to genial talk show guest. Williams appeared on a number of entertainment programs – some more than once – including <a href="http://youtu.be/TGW_guW7KbI">30 Rock</a>,<a href="http://youtu.be/aHmf-rv9obw">Saturday Night Live</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/D25l1SWOF9M">The Tonight Show</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/PQ-qvI_10Qg">The Late Show</a> and <a href="http://youtu.be/f_aBkZPhdBI">The Daily Show</a>. His inflated Iraq war story didn’t raise too many eyebrows on entertainment programs, but when he presented that version onto the nightly news, the reaction was swift and harsh.</p>
<p>Even with diminished importance, impact and audiences for the nightly newscast, news executives have made few changes to the overall format and have continued to bestow great power to the face of the nightly news, mainly because it is less expensive – and more likely to positively impact ratings – to pay one person a lot of money, as opposed to gambling on a new approach, or investing in more news gathering capabilities. But as NBC is learning the hard way, the impact on ratings can work both ways.</p>
<p>While many see the Williams suspension as a veiled half-year tryout for Lester Holt, one wonders if NBC – along with the other networks – might use this experience to re-examine the risky tradition of bestowing so much power, and salary, to just one member of a vast, multi-million dollar, legacy news operation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Conway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the beginning, newscasters weren’t even visible to TV news viewers. With Walter Cronkite, everything changed.Mike Conway, Associate Professor of Journalism, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/377082015-02-18T14:11:16Z2015-02-18T14:11:16ZBrian Williams, the military and American culture<p>Credibility, generally, is seen as a dividend of honesty. Tell the truth and, over time, people will come to regard you as a trustworthy person, a reliable source of information. </p>
<p>Given this formula, the emerging consensus that Brian Williams has torpedoed his credibility by falsifying his experience in Iraq is perfectly logical. </p>
<p>But the American tendency to put military service on a pedestal, as a unique and unassailable experience, alters the way credibility can be earned. Williams’s actions are therefore more complex than they might first appear. </p>
<p>Both his questionable account and the reactions to it reveal a great deal about how military service is seen and valued in the American popular imagination.</p>
<h2>The military’s special place</h2>
<p>Take my own case. I don’t serve in the military, nor do I come from a military family or even know many service members personally. </p>
<p>All of these things are true, but when I confess them at the beginning of a piece about the military, I risk, despite my honesty, being perceived as less than credible. </p>
<p>I believe I am qualified to speak about the Williams scandal because I’ve spent the last 12 years researching and writing about culture, media and war. But in making that claim, I disqualify myself from having the unique rhetorical authority that is given military personnel.</p>
<p>When Brian Williams embellished his story into one more closely approximating actual combat, he became (temporarily) more credible by being less truthful. And by clumsily trying to be closer to military action he was, in fact, reinforcing the privileged place the military hold in American culture. </p>
<p>We may never know whether his wishful misremembering was deliberate or accidental. </p>
<p>Tara Parker-Pope controversially attributed it to <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams-a-victim-of-false-memory/">the malleability of human memory.</a> Jon Stewart attempted to broaden our view by reframing the incident in terms of the <a href="http://variety.com/2015/tv/asia/jon-stewart-skewers-media-hypocrisy-in-brian-williams-coverage-1201429509/">media’s wartime hypocrisy</a>. </p>
<p>Countless other commentators have opined about the increasing irrelevance of the television news. There are also some sharp questions to be asked about how embedded reporting with military units muddies journalistic objectivity. </p>
<p>Without attempting to resolve these important debates, I’d suggest instead that Williams inadvertently revealed something about the profoundly contradictory place military service occupies in American culture. </p>
<h2>Expressions of public gratitude</h2>
<p>There is in the US a widely held belief that military service is worthy of public recognition and gratitude (witness the <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/us/nbc-s-brian-williams-recants-iraq-story-after-soldiers-protest-1.327792">spectacle</a> of the New York Rangers game that began Williams’s undoing.) </p>
<p>Usually, this requires little more than participating in a round of applause at the urging of a flight attendant or a cheer at a sporting event. But the effortlessness of these acts masks the fact that they are learned behaviors. </p>
<p>Lauren Berlant, who has <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BgqAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=Lauren+Berlant,+%E2%80%9CUncle+Sam+Needs+a+Wife:+Citizenship+and+Denegation,%E2%80%9D+in+Visual+Worlds,+eds.+John+R.+Hall,+Blake+Stimson,+and+Lisa+Tamiris+Becker&source=bl&ots=Qu-hAyefqu&sig=il56wj9CPAahhXjxMTrHNIakVQ0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dYPjVN2lDYGjgwTp7ICYAw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Lauren%20Berlant%2C%20%E2%80%9CUncle%20Sam%20Needs%20a%20Wife%3A%20Citizenship%20and%20Denegation%2C%E2%80%9D%20in%20Visual%20Worlds%2C%20eds.%20John%20R.%20Hall%2C%20Blake%20Stimson%2C%20and%20Lisa%20Tamiris%20Becker&f=false">written</a> extensively about the political history of emotions in the United States, argues that such responses become so pervasive and automatic that we mistake their origins. We think they are the “expression of a true capacity for attachment … rather than … effects of pedagogy.”</p>
<p>The Williams story revealed how readily, and convincingly, such attachments can be fabricated. Indeed, he explained his wrongdoings in terms of bewildered appreciation. It all started, he said in his <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/brian-williams--in-an-effort-to-honor-and-thank-a-veteran--i-made-a-mistake-394007619827">apology</a>, “in an effort to honor and thank” the man who had protected him. This turned, he admitted, into a “bungled attempt … to thank one special veteran” of the many who have his “greatest respect.” </p>
<p>The public anger at Williams, in other words, may be rooted in something more than his deceitfulness. What may be upsetting us is his very visible failure to perform what many see as the purest expression of good citizenship – thanking the military.</p>
<h2>The ironies of our public indignation</h2>
<p>The widespread indignation at Williams is deeply ironic.</p>
<p>Irony number one: The obsessive focus on Williams’s actions (and not that of his helicopter pilot, for example, or anyone else) actually reinforces the invisibility of the military personnel on whose behalf we are, apparently, outraged. </p>
<p>Irony number two: We are anguished at the thought that Williams might have obscured (or fudged) a bit of the historical record from the war in Iraq. But we inhabit a media landscape flush with mythologized depictions of the military. These often romanticize it at the expense of stories that convey the messiness, complexity, and inscrutability of militarized violence. </p>
<p>Organizations like <a href="http://www.gotyour6.org/">Got Your 6</a> are beginning to partner with the entertainment industry to promote fuller, more accurate representations. In so doing, however, they have to override familiar, cliched, and eminently marketable images of either the soldier as fearless, infallible hero or the veteran as traumatized, incapacitated victim. </p>
<p>Irony number three: At the same time as the profusion of gratitude transforms tangled relationships of indebtedness into a vague obligation to thank uniformed strangers, military personnel and their families are laboring under the continual threat of cuts to jobs, benefits and income because of our federal budget problems. </p>
<p>Irony number four: This upwelling of gratitude for the troops comes at a time of profound and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/americans-and-their-military-drifting-apart.html">widening separation between the military and civilians.</a> Military service is voluntary: the vast majority (more than 99.5%) of Americans can, and do, simply opt out.</p>
<h2>Empty gestures</h2>
<p>The initial challenges to Williams’s story came from service members, a fact that Williams himself acknowledged. But NBC’s <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/10/media/nbc-brian-williams-suspended/">official statement</a> on his suspension did not mention them at all. Instead the emphasis was on the incident’s affront to the television network’s reputation and on the need to keep the trust of their millions of viewers. </p>
<p>This smooth excising of veterans’ voices illustrates how easily they can be disregarded and how irrelevant they become even as we seek to act, apparently, in their defense. </p>
<p>Ultimately, all of this reveals that our fantasy of, and professed gratitude for, the military is only minimally concerned with the people who actually fill its ranks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca A. Adelman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Credibility, generally, is seen as a dividend of honesty. Tell the truth and, over time, people will come to regard you as a trustworthy person, a reliable source of information. Given this formula, the…Rebecca A. Adelman, Assistant Professor - Department of Media Communication Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/375062015-02-12T01:01:01Z2015-02-12T01:01:01ZThe Daily Show was never ‘real’ news – but came (depressingly) close<p>Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid?” he jokingly asked, making Frankenstein-like gestures toward his eyes and heart. “What are these feelings?”</p>
<p>Stewart has clearly left a mark on comedy since he took over The Daily Show’s anchor desk from Craig Kilborn in 1999. By 2003 – the year Stewart won his first Emmy award – the satirical news show’s ratings had almost tripled, with an average viewership of nearly one million people. Since then, The Daily Show has spun off no fewer than three programs (The Colbert Report and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, along with HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver).</p>
<p>The Daily Show may never have been the legitimate news source it’s often touted to be, but above all Stewart deserves credit for repeatedly pointing out the considerable dearth of substantive content in network news broadcasts. His tenure may ultimately be remembered more for how he shook up the news media than for the laughs his show generated.</p>
<h2>The Daily Show vs network news</h2>
<p>The entire show, of course, is a send-up of so-called “real” TV newscasts, and one of Stewart’s trademarks is taking media networks and personalities to task for failing to do their jobs as professional journalists. Meanwhile, Stewart also includes truly meaningful political commentary and discussion. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=9b786907-1aef-4b34-bc09-4fdadd5b1623%40sessionmgr4004&vid=0&hid=4105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=aph&AN=27403841">a study I conducted</a> with two graduate students at Indiana University compared The Daily Show to broadcast network presidential election coverage. We found the programs to be equally substantive in their coverage – which is to say, not very substantive at all. </p>
<p>Stewart is clearly a comedian first and foremost (as he has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/11/jon-stewart-daily-show-comedian-newsman">often insisted</a>). Not surprisingly, we found that the content of his coverage skewed heavily toward humor rather than substance. Nonetheless, there wasn’t any more substance in the broadcast television networks’ coverage. </p>
<p>The study received a lot of interest from the media, and their primary takeaway was that Jon Stewart was a legitimate journalist. Stewart and Stephen Colbert were even touted as “America’s Anchors” in a <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/americas-anchors-20061116">Rolling Stone cover story</a>. It’s a rather lopsided portrayal of the study – the exact sort of media malfeasance Stewart repeatedly skewers.</p>
<p>In reporting on our study, most of the media missed the cautionary message in our conclusion: that the networks’ coverage was no better than a <em>comedy show’s</em>. </p>
<p>However, that message was not lost on Stewart: he regularly critiques the news media for falling down on the job. Furthermore, in covering politicians, The Daily Show points out flaws and hypocrisies in their policies and personal behavior that professional journalists often fail to report. Stewart’s crack team of comedy writers is able to dig up footage of politicians contradicting themselves that many trained journalists with access to network newsroom resources have failed to find. </p>
<h2>Who will hold the media accountable?</h2>
<p>Coincidentally (or perhaps not), <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx">public trust in the media has continued to wane</a> during Stewart’s tenure at The Daily Show (though public confidence in news media had <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2011/09/22/press-widely-criticized-but-trusted-more-than-other-institutions/">already begun to erode before then</a>).</p>
<p>For better or worse, Stewart is considered one of the most credible media personalities; many younger viewers rely on his show as their main source of political news and analysis. In the course I teach on comedic news, students are often surprised to hear The Daily Show referred to by scholars as “fake” news. It’s no small irony that Stewart’s announcement came on the same day that NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams – the highest-rated broadcast news anchor – was suspended for six months without pay for misrepresenting events that occurred while he covered the Iraq War 12 years ago. </p>
<p>In classic form, Stewart was <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/10/jon-stewart-takes-on-the-brian-williams-scandal.html">quick to point out</a> that competing news media outlets pounced on the Williams story, but failed to similarly probe their <em>own</em> misrepresentations about the need to engage in the Iraq War in the first place. </p>
<p>As Stewart quipped on his show Monday night, “Never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot at in a war we probably wouldn’t have ended up in if the media had applied this level of scrutiny to the actual f–ing war.” </p>
<p>Now with Stewart stepping down, who will apply this level of scrutiny to the “real” news?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid…Julia Fox, Associate Professor of Telecommunications, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/337052014-10-31T19:48:01Z2014-10-31T19:48:01ZLa Llorona: Hispanic folklore goes mainstream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63416/original/6x8wkk35-1414772413.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C29%2C3217%2C1594&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">La Llorona Durmiente, oil on canvas, 2012 </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hector Garza</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For more than 500 years, she has wandered, weeping and searching without rest. A ghostly woman in white who is said to have murdered her children, she is doomed to roam the earth, searching for their lost bodies. Though the ghost woman may never recover her own dead children, she will snatch other living ones to take their place, or so the story goes of La Llorona.</p>
<p>Each year around Halloween and Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), our thoughts turn to the undead and spirits walking among us. One day focuses on costumes and candy. The other is a Mexican tradition rooted in Indigenous practices that involve formally remembering the dead through offerings of food, drink, and celebration.</p>
<h2>Into the mainstream</h2>
<p>La Llorona, the weeping woman, is a figure familiar to many Latinos. Dressed in a tattered long gown with a wild mass of hair and razor-sharp fingernails, she is terrifying. Her story is told and retold to entertain, frighten, and even discipline.</p>
<p>Naughty children are told, “Behave or La Llorona will get you!”</p>
<p>A longstanding member of the Latino community, La Llorona has slowly - over the last 15 years - been making her way into the cultural mainstream.</p>
<p>NBC, for example, recently announced that <a href="http://deadline.com/2014/10/eva-longoria-supernatural-anthology-series-hispanic-folklore-nbc-849228#u=http://deadline.com/2014/10/eva-longoria-supernatural-anthology-series-hispanic-folklore-nbc-849228;k=pmc-adi-31bb2464aad8b905af7a81e1d57b77ae">a new anthology</a> series by Eva Longoria, “inspired by the rich world of Hispanic folklore and myth,” is in development. The series with its American Horror Story-like structure will focus on a different tale or figure each season, the first of which, you’ve guessed it, will be about La Llorona.</p>
<p>La Llorona’s image now appears on such products as <a href="http://www.coffeeshopofhorrors.com/mexican-altura-8-ounce-bag-la-llorona">coffee</a>, <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/dd/20764607">T-shirts</a>, <a href="http://society6.com/product/la-llorona--the-cry-g1c_pillow?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1027&gclid=CMihnI_oy8ECFcpcMgodVhQAoQ#25=193&18=126">throw pillows</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/208346559/mythical-la-llorona-pendant-sterling?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_promoted&utm_campaign=jewelry-pendant-resin-low&ione_adtype=pla&ione_creative=54864716435&ione_product_id=208346559&ione_product_parti">jewelry</a>, and infant <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/208346559/mythical-la-llorona-pendant-sterling?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_promoted&utm_campaign=jewelry-pendant-resin-low&ione_adtype=pla&ione_creative=54864716435&ione_product_id=208346559&ione_product_parti">onesies</a>, which ensures the continuation and further widens the reach of the story.</p>
<p>Two years ago, actor Diego Luna’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PARg0XkG-rA">La Llorona: Villa De Almas Perdidas</a> was an attraction at the Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights. Designed as a walkthrough maze, people wended their way through a village that featured key elements of the folklore, including small bodies floating in water, various figures weeping, and, of course, La Llorona herself. Last year Universal Studios Orlando included its own La Llorona-themed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ziOGDLS1vU">Halloween maze</a>.</p>
<p>La Llorona’s inclusion at such popular tourist attractions is perhaps representative of the growing influence and recognition of Mexican American culture within the mainstream.</p>
<p>Further evidence of this crossover can be found in the 2012 “La Llorona” episode of the NBC hit series <a href="http://grimm.wikia.com/wiki/La_Llorona">Grimm</a>. 6.1 million <a href="http://grimm.wikia.com/wiki/Grimm_Episode_Ratings#Season_2">viewers</a> tuned in to watch, making it the fourth highest-rated episode to date.</p>
<p>Another, more humorous, take on the story came in 2001 from Latino students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California who developed a La Llorona version of the then popular ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erhsuXTyDww">Got Milk</a>?’ ads. The commercial shows La Llorona crying because she has no milk to accompany her pan dulce, Mexican sweet bread.</p>
<h2>Ancient origins</h2>
<p>Various permutations of a wandering, wailing-woman-in-white story have existed for centuries in the New World, linking her to Aztec goddesses and dating back to a time before the arrival of Spaniards. Others contend her story is Old World in origin with roots in German folktales or Ancient Greek myth.</p>
<p>The infanticide, a key part of the story, is La Llorona’s revenge for being abandoned by her lover, according to some versions. So while she searches for her children, she also seeks out other men as potential prey.</p>
<p>La Llorona is said to appear as an alluring woman who entices and welcomes men’s advances, only later revealing her true murderous intentions. Those who narrowly escape La Llorona’s clutches often offer their stories as cautionary tales.</p>
<p>While stories about a predatory woman may exist in cultures around the world, Latinos, Mexicans and Mexican Americans in particular, have documented encounters, shared folktales, and created representations of La Llorona, including songs, plays, dances, poetry, novels, films, comics, and art.</p>
<p>One example is San Antonio based artist <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hector-Garza/141064689294813?sk=photos_stream">Hector Garza</a>. He combines popular Mexican themes and icons, including La Llorona, calaveras (representations of the human skull) and Frida Kahlo, with loteria (the Mexican game of chance) cards, comic book figures, and Star Wars, rendering them in a graphic playful style. Garza’s social realism paintings draw inspiration from Mexican social realist painters like Diego Rivera and J<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Alfaro_Siqueiros">osé David Siqueros</a>. Both styles of art represent a way of reconnecting with <a href="http://www.bluecanvas.com/hgarza06">his Mexican roots.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63419/original/wcj2cfgn-1414778070.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Star Wars’ Princesa Leya meets La Llorona.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Acrylic on canvas 2013</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hispanic culture’s relationship to death and dying may seem morbid to some, but these stories and celebrations are an affirmation of life. The grinning calaveras or laughing images of Death remind us to live each day fully, thoughtfully. Death is not to be feared. </p>
<p>Rather than fleeing from or avoiding La Llorona, we now can check local listings to invite her into our homes. Let’s hope she’s a hit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Domino Renee Perez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For more than 500 years, she has wandered, weeping and searching without rest. A ghostly woman in white who is said to have murdered her children, she is doomed to roam the earth, searching for their lost…Domino Renee Perez, Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies and Associate Professor, Department of English and Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/262642014-05-09T13:29:37Z2014-05-09T13:29:37ZUS late-night talk wars: CBS is brave to pitch a political satirist against the two Jimmys<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48168/original/dkhqzsk8-1399634871.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stephen Colbert slicing and dicing them on the Colbert Report</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ultravod/3347917352/in/photolist-8bVNVF-8PWLJQ-8BCb7e-8PWJ7y-EzmiG-8PWLYL-8PTDz6-8PWLDL-5ZYqPK-8PTEnZ-8PMJo8-8PQNzE-wn1ow-k3q1a-66QXbY-e8uV4K-8PTCAH-7HtGDc-7HxD8m-5YLot9-8HFeS7-8Sdqxf-8PTEvx-8PWHWW-8QgedV-8PTEQg-8PTDfV-8PWKYL-8PWKeU-8PWJe5-8PWKL1-8PTFmc-8PTDZe-8PTCTr-8PWMtE-8PWJML-8PWJ4q-8PWMhu-8PWKnC-8PTCQg-8PTDDt-8PTDmB-8PWKMC-8PTEFe-8PTERM-8PWJyf-8PTDLg-8PTCWZ-8PTDBz-8PWMsj">Dan Correla</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news that Jimmy Kimmel’s contract as host of ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is being extended for two years completes a period of upheaval in this great American genre. </p>
<p>Jimmy Fallon is still settling into his chair as the replacment to Jay Leno on the NBC Tonight Show. Stephen Colbert is taking over from David Letterman on Late Show on CBS at some point next year. Among others he defeated Scots-born Craig Ferguson, who duly announced he was stepping down from his acclaimed Late Late Show that follows Letterman in CBS’s 12.30am slot. </p>
<p>Now that Kimmel, another contender to take over from Letterman, is staying put until at least 2017, the battle lines can now be drawn for the next phase of late-night talk wars between the three networks, each broadcasting on all five weeknights. </p>
<p>Given his remarkable longevity, most eyes have inevitably been trained on Letterman and his succession. Implicit in the passing of one great television icon and the anointing of another is the promise of epochal change, a sense that nothing will ever be the same again. </p>
<p>Indeed, a misty-eyed backward glance through broadcasting history would seem to support that impression. We had the Sullivan era, the Carson era, and now, just coming to an end, the Letterman era. Yet the story of the late-night network talk show in America is as much one of continuity as it is of change. The king is dead. Long live the king.</p>
<h2>The young pretender</h2>
<p>David Letterman has been a constant presence on American television screens since 1982, when he began hosting Late Night With David Letterman for NBC in the equivalent slot to the one that Ferguson currently occupies on CBS. Tent-poled by Johnny Carson’s long-established Tonight Show, Late Night was riskier and less polished, but became essential viewing for younger audiences. Unlike the paternal Sullivan, or the avuncular Carson, Letterman was the smirking kid brother of American television. </p>
<p>Despite having followed Carson’s time-slot for a decade, like Ferguson, Letterman was passed over when his mentor retired. He then made the move to CBS, where The Late Show with David Letterman has run for more than two decades. It has made its once impish host into a broadcasting institution, even as broadcasting continued to change around him. </p>
<p>The continued existence of live network television talk shows is an anomaly at a time when the most urgent and relevant television is increasingly produced by cable or online services. Yet the sense remains that figures like Letterman belong to the nation as a whole. Certainly the announcement of his retirement live on air on April 3 triggered a national response.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show returns to New York after over 40 years.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was despite the fact that Letterman is far from dominating his slot. Indeed, <a href="http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/05/08/abc-is-the-most-watched-network-in-late-night-for-the-3rd-consecutive-week/261786/">lately he has trailed</a> both Fallon and Kimmel in the ratings. Fallon is an alumnus of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. He is an energetic performer and gifted musical mimic who seems to be taking late-night hosting in a showier direction.</p>
<h2>The market leader</h2>
<p>But the current leader is Kimmel, whose laddish persona is perhaps the closest of the current late-night hosts to Letterman at his peak. His show has been running for more than 11 years, having gradually been moved from a 12.30am starting slot to its current 11.35pm.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kimmel: The host to beat.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Contrary to the hopes of many, the hosts of the major network late-night talk shows will remain uniformly white, male and straight. (Even the presidency is more broadly representative of the American public than that… just.) </p>
<p>But aside from this awkward issue, CBS’s replacement for Letterman was always going to have to offer something bold and different to his two rivals. Colbert is a very different proposition. He is host of Comedy Central’s satirical news show, The Colbert Report, where he has made his name as a spoof right-wing republican. </p>
<p>Contrast this with Craig Ferguson, whose relaxed and sometimes confessional humour has made him the biggest Scottish cultural export that many people will never have heard of. His Late Late Show was produced by Letterman’s own production company, Worldwide Pants Inc, and was shielded from mediocre ratings by its famous patron. Now with Letterman gone, Ferguson has also lost his seat at the table, though it will be fascinating to see how he reinvents himself.</p>
<h2>Kneel before network television</h2>
<p>Yet if the landscape of late-night network television is still as cut-throat and unrepresentative as ever, in other ways it may be changing for the better. In contrast to the less politically aware comedy of Fallon and Kimmel, CBS’s selection of Colbert is a reminder that, first and foremost, broadcast television is and should be important –- not just in the Ed Sullivan sense of being a bellwether for American popular culture, but in the sense of living up to the responsibility of speaking for and to a nation. </p>
<p>While CBS certainly hopes that Colbert will bring with him some of the youthful audience he has amassed during his time at Comedy Central, they have also given the reins of a live prime-time show to an important comedian who came of age in a time of important comedy.</p>
<p>During the years of the Bush presidency, the decline in the legitimacy of television news, led by Fox News Channel, left a hole at the centre of popular and political culture where intelligent debate and discussion might have thrived. What grew there instead was comedy: the bleak acerbic gallows humour of Bill Maher; the barely-concealed righteous anger of John Stewart; and the so-stupid-it’s-smart satire of Stephen Colbert. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Stephen Colbert’s spoof persona offers Donald Trump $1m for a little lovin’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These comedians answered a keenly felt need on the part of the American public, albeit from niche outlets like Comedy Central and HBO, for a public conversation about the direction of the country. Along with Stewart, Colbert answered that need in more and more direct ways over time: roasting the president at the most uncomfortable White House Correspondents’ dinner to date; testifying in character before a Congressional Subcommittee on Immigration reform; and co-hosting the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) -– a public march on Washington which both politely requested (and satirically mocked) a return to reasoned political dialogue and responsible reporting.</p>
<p>Kimmel’s contract extension is a reminder that CBS has made a brave move with Colbert. Next to the youth-appeal of Fallon and the proven success of Kimmel, the potential extent of Colbert’s appeal is still untested. Yet if David Letterman’s years were the salad days of nihilistic irony, in which everything was fair game for a joke, Stephen Colbert’s time behind the desk may remind us that broadcast television has the power to create shared culture and to host the national conversation –- once again, to be important.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Zeller-Jacques does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The news that Jimmy Kimmel’s contract as host of ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is being extended for two years completes a period of upheaval in this great American genre. Jimmy Fallon…Martin Zeller-Jacques, Lecturer in Film and Media, Queen Margaret UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.