History of American Television, Essay Example

Abstract

The history of television in America as a medium is inextricably linked to the history of the American individual. Virtually all of us have grown up under its influence, and that this influence is within the home adds immeasurably to the impact is has on us. My personal history with television has been normal, in regard to viewing time and selections; this I can establish simply through comparing notes on preferences and opinions with everyone I know. This commonality factor, moreover, reinforces the power of the medium. The following explores the history of television itself, how the changes in the medium’s offerings creates different histories for different generations, and ultimately how television has both reflected and contributed to changes in American society in regard to the gay population.

Subtopic 1: Historical Development of the Medium

Like most  Americans, I grew up with television and evolved with it. The medium predates my familiarity with it by decades, of course; television has been an  American institution since the 1950’s, alternately praised and condemned, but always present. My viewing as a child followed ordinary paths; in a very real sense, we watched the programs available and were limited by that content. Educational television was on the rise when I was a child, so the shows sought to incorporate learning in child-friendly formats. Sesame Street, Barney and other popular programs were designed to instill both American core values and basic skills through presentations of play and a perceived ‘group’ dynamic.

As I aged, my tastes naturally changed and I was more drawn to the programs created to appeal to teenagers and young adults. These shows ran a wide gamut, from the more wholesome and intentionally moralistic After School Specials, to the gratuitous, if still relatively tame, violence and sexual elements of action and crime dramas. No matter my age or the particular season or phase of television programming, situation comedies were as well always available and usually watched.

I believe that television’s effect in educating me socially was on a par with developments occurring in most other households. A child’s sphere of social contact is typically limited to the home, school, and a few friendships; television presented a larger world and through it I began to learn behaviors older people seemed to practice. Situation comedies gave me a sense of conversation and its rhythms, and I took in what I believed were expectations in this regard. By high school age, I was in fact echoing these lessons, as were my peers. We did not mimic television conversation or behavior, but it was continually setting forth an example of what we were supposed to do. That television was omnipresent only served to emphasize how desirable this course was.

In retrospect, I believe that my relationship with television has been marked by a codependency common to most Americans; that is, it is difficult to ascertain how much of my behavior is directly fueled by it or is in fact in opposition to how it seeks to present life. I may say, for example, that the plots and characters of Seinfeld, an American fixture and social icon of the 1990’s, are clearly absurd and unrealistic. Nonetheless, I must confess that I am as prone to suddenly quote from an episode at an appropriate moment as the show’s greatest fans. Whether or not I endorse its quality, it has to some extent been infused into my consciousness.

Moreover, I came of age when the show Friends was enjoying great popularity, and I bring this up to illustrate attitudinal changes in American, and my own, social interaction occurring simultaneously. Sarcasm, usually gentle, became the normal foundation under friendly conversations, and this was a departure from the attitudes manifested through television before that time.

This, along with other observable styles of social behavior, has led me to believe that we as Americans both feed into the content of television through how we adapt to and take on the dynamics it presents. As a popular television show is, first and foremost, popular and enjoyed by millions, we are encouraged to emulate the people in it. On an obvious level, this translates to trends in dress and grooming. This influence, however, extends far deeper than appearance and impacts on American moral viewpoints as well.

Historically, we have seen evidence of this power for decades. In the 1950’s, the prevalent ambition of the typical American housewife was to be as efficient, charming, and appealing as Donna Reed, star of her own situation comedy. A national standard of sorts was in place, and this grew exponentially as real women vied to fulfill a role as presented, in every home, as perfect. So too in later years were ideals of attractive and desirable modes of living altered, and then adopted. 1970’s Maude championed the housewife as vocal and opinionated presence in domains far removed from the home and, to return to Seinfeld, a distinct endorsement of living single was embraced by America in the 1990’s. Again and again, television has directly set out to provide fresh templates for American living.

Subtopic 2: Television as a Storytelling Medium

In terms of classic storytelling, television has amplified the mechanics of the craft, if not necessarily improved upon them. Depending upon the genre of the program, television has customarily relied upon several formulas, and with little variation: the situation comedy, which presents a different scenario within the same environment, week after week; the mini-series, in which a lengthy tale is broken down much as in novel form; and the dramatic series which brought new meaning to the term, ‘cliffhanger’.

No stronger case for the power of the ‘cliffhanger’ in attracting loyal viewership can be made than the show, Dallas, running from 1978 to 1991. The success of the show was such that people congregated outside the home, meeting up in clubs and bars strictly for the occasion of watching a resolution to a plot twist from the season before. Not a fan myself, I nonetheless witnessed this phenomenon in action and gleaned from it a respect for the sheer unifying power of television, if not for its means of exercising that power. Social arenas aside, the program was discussed in places of business everywhere, and often prompting heated debate perhaps best reserved for better quality viewing. Content, however, was unimportant; the show had taken on a life of its own and completely captured America, and filling space in other media as well which reported on the extraordinary impact. Quite simply, in 1980’s America, Dallas was a national obsession on a par with the televised Watergate hearings of the 1970’s.

From observing this ongoing social and media frenzy, and at a very young age, I was immediately dismayed by the disparity between content and impact. The show, even to my undeveloped eyes, was poor and sensationalistic. Characters were caricatures and the plots were ludicrously contrived, yet virtually every adult with whom I was in contact was addicted to it. Many took a self-deprecating approach and confessed that the program was a ‘guilty pleasure’; they acknowledged that it was bad but nonetheless enjoyed it thoroughly. This was not something I could relate to or understand.

In time I have come to see that, for better or worse, the Dallas phenomenon was not born of a 1980’s lessening of taste, or a general lack of discernment in the American public relatively new. It was not especially encouraging, but I had to confront the fact that media has always exhibited these tendencies, to be widely embraced for a product often irrespective of its quality. Serial novels of no real value were avidly consumed by the public long before television, and for all the hundreds waiting at the docks for the next installment of a Dickens’ book to arrive, just as many have waited by mailboxes for the latest chapters of a vulgar and poorly written romance.

Then, it is a documented fact that the airing of I Love Lucy in the early 1950’s caused a literal cessation of many businesses. Laundromats and other evening services closed down on Monday nights, unashamedly declaring that “they loved ‘Lucy’, too.” It is easy and tempting to claim that the extraordinary amount of media available to us in modern life has created a vacuum of quality, and that standards of excellence no longer exist. The reality, however, is that people will be gripped by what they choose to find fascinating, and I think as well that the fascination feeds on itself in an exponential manner. As I myself witnessed, even those initially dismissive of Dallas very often were, two weeks later, laughing about it at a party scheduled for the next episode. Yet they were watching it as well.

Subtopic 3: Characteristics of  Genre Within Television

Television in America exists as a font of a wide assortment of genres. More importantly, it has existed in this capacity long before its chief rival, personal Internet access, came on the scene. Like most other Americans, I have from an early age been exposed to the assortment offered by television. As stated, I watched the children’s programming which began to explode in the 1970’s. In later years, I found myself drawn to action shows and variety programs, usually combining comedy and music. Then there were both the older situation comedies, viewed for nostalgia appeal, and their modern, ostensibly more realistic, counterparts.

Actually, in practical terms, there is no genre whatsoever that can’t be seen on television. I have watched informative and technical documentaries on biology, as I have seen live telecasts of opera and ballet. I have watched endless sports broadcasts and seen a few daytime soap operas, engrossing in their surreal and outrageous writing and acting. ‘Reality TV’ has been on my set, along with brilliant, classic films. Moreover, the options lately available through cable and satellite television increase the offerings – and subsequently genres – to a nearly incalculable degree. It could be argued that American television is a genre unto itself, in that it is a complex and unvarying flow of our own cultural interests ceaselessly coming back to us.

From taking in so much of this, I have begun to perceive that television is, in terms of genre, an arms race of sorts. Jokes are always being made about how every hobby now has its own channel and this is in fact true to a large extent. Multiple channels are available which broadcast nothing but golf. Channels are exclusively devoted to cartoons, and even this genre is broken down into adult and child formats. The question then arises: why? How can any single corporation or network honestly believe that a demographic is crying out for just this one type of programming, and in numbers large enough to warrant devoting a channel to it?

The answer is that the market exists already, and yet it does not. This is the arms race factor in the equation, for the programming itself is only partially created to fill a need. It is made to create one as well. For example, a station may be considering running nothing but Westerns and cowboy films. Its management, unless unduly out of touch with modern America, will be divided because the genre has not enjoyed great popularity for a very long time, save for the occasional, big-budget Western film. It will wonder how it can achieve the necessary amount of viewers to justify the intent, and of course the expense. However, they try it. They succeed, and they succeed largely because of a public that was not in any way yearning for such a genre but that, now introduced to it, likes it enough to watch with some regularity.

Naturally, such a venture might just as easily meet with abject failure. Many do, all the time, and often with far less risky material at hand. The genre arms race of television comes down to a highly inexact science: the producers wish to make money through the advertising a hit show generates, and they must acknowledge that no show remains a hit forever. Popular programs, in fact, often resort to a kind of ‘cross-genre’ in desperate attempts to maintain ratings. Then, shows built on the same model of the big hit often fall flat. Trends observed in the country at large are noted and then infused into an existing genre, such as the crime show, because it is not unreasonably expected that such a combination will bring in high ratings. Then, the show fails. The producers are basically left with no reliable formula for guaranteed success.

From this I conclude, as have those very producers, that the wisest option is nothing but an application of the old saw about throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks. No single genre of any kind commands viewer loyalty beyond a point. Replications of successes do not make it, and even bold tries at presenting exceptionally written stories, crafted expensively and with precision, are equally unsure. Television production, network or cable, fundamentally depends on nothing at all save the knowledge that the show currently achieving great success must be maintained as long as possible, even as they know that this in itself is impossible to predictably do.

Television contains every conceivable genre because, ultimately, it must. So pressing is this need, in fact, that it must as well always be on the look-out for the new genre, the genre that is a hybrid of existing ones.

Subtopic 4: Corporate Impact on Television

Television is no stranger to corporate sway. More to the point, American awareness of the roles of big business in programming has been in effect from the earliest days, and in no uncertain terms. In the 1950’s, arguably classified as television’s ‘Golden Age’, corporations like Kraft and Texaco proudly placed their names on the weekly shows they funded. For such companies of the era, television was ‘golden’ in that it presented an unparalleled opportunity: it allowed the company to be taken in by the public as a benevolent source of great entertainment, an advantage no actual advertising could accomplish. When a Paddy Chayefsky screenplay was broadcast and the whole family sat down to a touching and carefully crafted story, they knew without doubt whom they had to thank for it.

As years passed, corporate ownership and influence became less apparent, and much of this is due, not to a specific agenda on the part of the corporations, but to the machinations occurring within and around them. Texaco, beloved sponsor of hours of variety in the 1950’s, is still here. Yet it now operates under the banner of Chevron, one cog in a wheel with many spokes and none of which may operate independently enough to represent so huge a corporation. Kraft belongs, since 1988, to Philip Morris, the irony here in that the latter was once chiefly known as a producer of cigarettes and, in the 1950’s, was empowered as such to be a proud television sponsor.

Today, the reality is that the vast majority of television stations are owned, not by industry moguls of other fields, but by massive media giants such as Time Warner. Interestingly, General Electric, an old player in the sponsorship game, is the largest single owner of individual networks.

The list of high-level mergers is both extensive and ongoing, and the result for the American television viewer is that he usually can’t know just who is funding what program. In an increasingly politically aware societal conflict, this has an unsettling effect on viewers, and Internet reports are continually exposing scenarios in which a corporation notoriously flagrant in environmental abuses is behind the latest documentary on protecting our planet. This creates odd levels of mistrust; the parent who switches Nickelodeon on for the kids, for example, may not be entirely pleased to know that Nickelodeon’s owner, Viacom, also owns the racy and often sexually graphic MTV.

All of this translates to a growing suspicion of the corporate entity as such, and irregardless of that corporation’s other activities or image. While he most likely will not be able to tell you which corporation owns his favorite network, the average American today will be able to say that it’s a big one, probably, and just as probably up for sale. In this way television is obliquely severing old, once dependable, sponsorship ties. Moreover, the mega-corporations are not in any hurry to be identified with specific television partnerships, for there is now no reliable means of anticipating a favorable reaction.

I refer to Pepsi-Cola now, for in two modern instances their overt corporate presence on TV has had disastrous results. In 1984, a very costly commercial featuring Michael Jackson brought the company nothing but ridicule and low regard when an accident on the set turned the public’s attention solely to the star. That, however, was trifling compared to the Madonna debacle of 1989, wherein the performer’s ‘Like a Prayer’ was deemed by the company too inflammatory to use, as had been agreed upon. Pepsi lost face completely in the ensuing payments contractually demanded by Madonna.

While these example are within the realm of advertising, they serve to illustrate a strong and recent trend: the corporations would rather be invisible to the public watching their shows. For one thing, they own too many to adhere to any set of identifiable values. For another, the days when public loyalty to a company could be counted upon are long gone, and not a little because, as with the media conglomerates, the company owns too many products to be seen as one, friendly, caring face.

Subtopic 5: Influence of Television on a Particular Culture

One of the most striking examples of how a particular culture has had impact on television is in how gay people have been portrayed on television and, just as tellingly, when it even began. For a good deal of American television’s history, ‘gay’ simply did not exist. There were characters identified as gay, to be sure, and long before most people believe such things were done on television. However, the cases of this were rare, and initially at least employed for purposes of sensationalism.

The daring inclusion of gays in network television officially first occurred in 1972’s The Corner Bar, a short-lived situation comedy. In the same decade, the only other gay characters to actually make an impression on viewers were Lance Loud, in 1973’s An American Family – ironically, the first ‘reality show’ as well – and Jodie in ABC’s renegade comedy, Soap, in 1977. There were, again, others, but they made little to no impact, and were not numerous. As the 1980’s and 1990’s progressed, more and more shows incorporated gay characters, and in virtually every genre. Soap operas in particular seemed to truly explore the element with gusto.

This is, sadly, not surprising, for several disparate factors are involved with how gays have come to television screens, and not the least of these is the sensationalism so identified with the soap opera. The other predominant reason behind the gradual infusion of gay life in programming stemmed from, not unexpectedly, a gay culture unwilling to be ignored by the medium most expected to reflect modern American living. It is the first factor, however, that I must address in this topic.

However gays came to be an increasing presence in network and cable programming, the initial shock value for which it was begun has not, as I see it, dissipated so much as be devolved into a more pervasive sensationalism. Frequently right on track with societal movements and shifts such as civil rights and the ‘women’s liberation’ atmosphere of the 1970’s, television has always lagged behind in first acknowledging gay people, and lags still in terms of dimensional presentations meticulously applied elsewhere.

As gay people have long noted, it is a bitter irony that a medium as dependent upon gay creativity as television is should be so obtuse in its portrayals of them. In the 1980’s, Tony Randall’s character in Love, Sidney generated a great deal of publicity, yet the character was never once actually determined to be gay on the show. The network was hedging its bet, as well as catering to a more acceptable notion that gayness could be presented in a fashion, provided it was done so with no actual references to sexuality at all. Moreover, the Randall show played into antiquated stereotyping by painting the character as tragic and alone.

Other instances of gay portrayals throughout the 1990’s reveal similar limitations and obvious agendas, either in sensationalism or a sanitizing of the gay characters. Television was willing to portray gays; in a very real sense, they had no choice by that point in American society. Yet the skittishness remained. I believe producers were, and to some extent remain, fearful of alienating the bulk of their viewers. If the gay population lies at somewhere around ten percent, as studies tend to show, they saw no reason to create programs with gay characters as anything but amusing or sad props, as it were. Most gay portrayals on television, until very recently, are actually as facile and degrading to gay people as the stereotypes of the ‘happy slaves’ were to African Americans in films of the 1930’s.

Additionally, television, ever mindful of revenue, does seem to enjoy infusing gay life into its shows for the purposes of what I think they see as deviant appeal. Sex and sexuality has long been a hot-button issue with viewers who both resist seeing anything sexual occurring on their screens and who crave it. Television then has a wonderful subterfuge, in a sense, for the forbidden and inherently sexual aspect of gayness can be placed into shows, and the producer can innocently claim that they are merely presenting ‘real people’.

This is an influence from television that perniciously maintains stereotyped views of gay people under the guise of equal treatment. A program like Queer Eye, in which five gay designers seek to improve the lifestyle of a heterosexual man, blatantly reinforces misconceptions about gays while simultaneously pandering to the concept of a gay-versus-straight world. On most every level thus set forth, television’s influence on gay culture in this nation has been that of reinforcing in heterosexual minds automatic associations of silliness, sex obsession, and juvenile cravings with the gay population.

Subtopic 6: Influence of a Particular Culture on Television

Gay objections to televised representations of gay life are both fairly recent and not especially strident. While seemingly resolved to achieve equality and recognition in all other areas of American life, the gay population has been, all told, relatively unconcerned with how television has dealt with it. There have been recent and more vocal activity in this regard, however, and it has had an effect.

A large reason for the long gay ‘acceptance’, I believe, is that gays have more realistically expected less from that medium. Acknowledged as usually more urbane, generally speaking, the gay man or woman usually has a cynical and not very impressed opinion of television to begin with. As they do not give it much import, they are somewhat unconcerned with what it displays. Moreover, and in very basic terms, gay people have had larger issues to deal with. When your job is at stake, you tend to worry less about the offensive nature of that gay neighbor on the situation comedy.

Here, however, is where gays began to connect the dots and consequently assert more input into television’s presentation of them, for gay people began to see how those television gays were actually being taken seriously by their friends and neighbors who, unaccountably, did not seem to know any better. Gratuitous stereotypes ignored by the gay man were laughed at and enjoyed by the same co-worker he thought to be more enlightened than that. Suddenly, in the 1990’s, gays began to seriously address the unrealistic and insulting ways in which television had been presenting them. Shows like Queer as Folk were produced and were successful, and they contained within them the wide array of personalities and types found in the gay community, as in any community.

I believe that the ongoing evolution of how televisions addresses gay people is symptomatic of television’s basic, evolving processes. It may not be the most laudable, but it illustrates the intrinsic interplay between viewer and network. For decades, the American gay population was largely content to deal with other issues and let television do whatever it liked. Then, as a direct impact began to be perceptible from programming to societal viewpoints and attitudes, action was taken and gay voices were raised. Unacceptable and sanitized gay characters were decried, as were the shows attempting to draw viewers with ‘forbidden’ glimpses of gay sexuality. The result is that, today, we see as diverse a range of gay people as we do of any other culture. It took a while, but it appears that television learned this lesson.