Quarterly Review of Film Studies

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The political economy of the television (super) text

Nick Browne

To cite this article: Nick Browne (1984) The political economy of the television (super) text,
Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 9:3, 174-182, DOI: 10.1080/10509208409361210

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 The Political Economy
of the
Television (Super) Text
Downloaded by [University of Alberta] at 13:56 17 August 2017
Nick Browne
Theorizing Television
"Theorizing television/' whatever that eventually
might come to mean for the field of film, requires a
radical reformulation of the questions and answers
that compose contemporary film theory. This re-
orientation of perspective and method is necessary
because of differences between the two media
themselves: in institutional form, program formats,
economics, audiences, indeed, in the form of the
discourse and in the practical and critical lan-
guages that have traditionally been associated with
research and analysis in these domains. In contrast
to the formalist definitions of "film" constructed
by traditional film theory (with accent on its onto-
iogical status and aesthetic forms) or by contem-
porary film theory (through the notion of its lan-
guage and codes), constituting American network
television as an object of theoretical and critical
study means characterizing the status and form of
the television discourse specifically in relation to
economic and social processes.
Culturally and historically, the replacement of
film by television in the 1950s as the dominant form
of American mass entertainment signified an im-
portant transformation of American life and cul-
ture. It altered the relation of the media, and of
entertainment, to "culture" by substituting a
system of continuous, "free" viewing for the theat-
rical system of discrete admissions on a pay-per-
view basis. At the same time it restructured the
contexts and modes of audience reception and
behavior and, indeed, its composition. Culturally,
film and television came by the mid-fifties to
define and occupy different social places and to
exercise different entertainment and ideological
functions for their audiences.
The fact that American broadcast television was
constituted in the image of commercial radio, to
be received "free," at home, by the general public
definitively shaped the public policy and critical
discourses on it. Seldom, however, did discussion
of television conducted within the traditional
effects paradigm take the form of systematic social
or economic analysis. Television, however, is an
institution that mediates the relation of the
programmingits "texts"to the social and eco-
 BROWNE/The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text
nomic world of the audience in a mode altogether
different from film, in ways that call for systematic
examination.
At present, two contemporary theoretical ap-
proaches to the relation of television and society
organize the emerging field of television study
what we might call the ritualistic and the ideologi-
cal. The application of mythical or ritual models
derived from the analysis of primitive religious sys-
tems to post-modern, Western consumer society
and media (whether applied to program structure
or to the audience's act of viewing) necessarily
misfigures the form and significance of the televi-
sion discourse. The Althusserian ideological ap-
proach to the analysis of the relation of film and
societyemphasizing the medium's role in the
reproduction of social relationsquickly reached
the limits of theoretical articulation of the problem
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of the "auc//ence."This formulation provided only
a general abstract conception of the figure of the
audience as "subject/' one common to all social
institutions and specific to none, one that sus-
tained a theory of totalizing ideological discourse.
Nowhere did Althusser provide a place for the
audience's differential positions and readings ac-
cording to different levels or instances of social
position or practicefor example, according to
gender, class, ethnicity, etc.
Under the aegis of "cultural studies," the ideo-
logical approach to television has been moved
decisively and systematically forward in the work
of Stuart Hall and his associates in Birmingham,
England.1 Yet, the account of the television dis-
course that the Birmingham School provides is
formulated on the basis of the non-commercial
British system. It is this "public television" expe-
rience that has shaped the theoretical articulation
of the relation of text and culture in Britain. The
premise of the American, advertiser-supported
system is grounded in a radically different relation
between the form of the television text and the
processes of economy and culture. Contemporary
critical theory, in the American context, then, is in
the position today of thinking the relation of media
and society by theorizing the television discourse,
175
the institution which supports it, the advertising
that drives it, and the audience which consumes it,
as elements in a general system.
With a view then to continuing, and to renewing
in a fresh context, discussion of the relation of the
American network television institution to its pub-
lic, I want to present a perspective on television
that provides a necessary framework for any at-
tempt to trace its social operations, meanings, and
effects. Eric Barnouw's The Sponsor provides a
crucial overview of the historical evolution of the
relation between advertising and the television
institution. I want to examine the textual and cultur-
al implications of the economic foundation of
American commercial television and to indicate
the importance of re-contextualizing the problem
of the figure of the television audience and the
function assigned to it within a tradition of critical
thought that has figured the medium's relation to
its publics. By accenting the direct role of economy
in shaping the form of American television texts, I
mean to differentiate this approach from the Brit-
ish model, and to underline the theoretical impor-
tance of linking economic and textual systems in a
single model, and to insist on the framework of
political economy as a powerful means of studying
the complexity of their interrelations.
The Form and Genealogy
of the Television "Super-Text"
Considered as a business, television works on a
basic exchange. For a fee, television delivers audi-
ences, measured in thousands, to advertisers. That
is, the business of television is showing ads to
audiences. To attract viewers for the ads, the net-
works contract with program suppliers for the rights
to distribute programs on their systems. Presently,
the networks do not own such programs outright,
but license rights to distribute them. The popular-
ity of a program, its rating as measured by the
Nielsen Television Index, determines the fee that
an advertiser can be charged. Here is the way
Nielsen advertises itself: "The Industry Standard
for Buying, Selling, Planning, and Programming
National Television."
 176 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES/Summer 1984
Scheduling is the practice of selecting, placing,
and coordinating programs with respect to each
other for overall maximum competitive business
advantage. In general, though there are changes
from year to year, program positions through the
day and across the week have been codified and
stabilized. Placement of a program with respect to
the time of day, the day of the week, in relation to
what precedes it on the same network, and what it
plays against on the others, is the framework not
only of popularity, but, I submit, determines for-
mat and reception as well. The schedule deter-
mines the form of a particular television program,
and conditions its relation to the audience.
just as important, the position of programs in the
television schedule reflects and is determined by
the work-structured order of the real social world.
The patterns of position and flow imply the ques-
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tion of who is at home, and through complicated
social relays and temporal mediations, link televi-
sion to the modes, processes, and scheduling of
production characteristic of the general popula-
tion. The temporality of television is organizedI
am tempted to say like lifealong several simul-
taneous registers: the order of the day, the week,
the season, the year. Television establishes its rela-
tion to the "real," not only through codes of realis-
tic representation, but through the schedule, to
the socially mediated order of the workday and the
workweek. In this way, television helps produce
and render "natural" the logic and rhythm of the
social order.
The "television text" as a concept and as a prac-
tice is a unique sort of discursive figure very differ-
ent from the discrete unity of film. Its phenome-
nology is one of flow, banality, distraction, and
transience; its semiotics complex, fragmentary and
heterogeneous. The limits of the text "proper" and
its formal unityapt to be broken at any moment
by an ad or a turn of the dialis suspect. Of course,
the application of received methods of textual
analysis to particular programs, provided that they
can be separated from the flow and can be
retrieved and held for inspection, will yield a cer-
tain kind of result. Allied with generic, narrative, or
even ideological analysis, the result of textual anal-
ysis of television programs can be generalized in
accord with the existing models provided by liter-
ary or film study. Yet, the application of these
methods or perspectives to the "television text"
can only incompletely grasp its specificity of form,
force, and signification.
The television text, let us say, is a "supertext" that
consists of the particular program and all the intro-
ductory and interstitial materialschiefly an-
nouncements and adsconsidered in its specific
position in the schedule. From the perspective of
the schedule, television study encounters, under a
new, perhaps unfamiliar but insistent aspect, the
long-standing difficulty in both literary and film
studies of ascertaining and conceptualizing the
relations of determination between the text and its
relevant context. The most relevant context for the
analysis of form and meaning of the "television
text" consists of its relation to the schedule, that is,
to the world of television, and secondly, of the
relation of the schedule to the structure and eco-
nomics of the workweek of the general population.
Advertising, and its attendant purpose and ide-
ology, must be given its proper place as the central
mediating discursive institution that links these
two levels of textual determination. Advertising
regulates the exchange between general processes
of production and consumptionindeed, it is a
discourse that works to articulate one with the
other. I n the early days of television, sponsors con-
trolled the program "environment" by literally
producing it through their advertising agencies.
Today the network licenses programming from
independent suppliers and sells time within and
between those programs to advertisers. Within this
system, the program must provide a suitable "en-
vironment" for the commercial message. Basically,
advertisers' demand for viewers is the fundamental
condition of a program occupying a particular slot
in the schedule. The time sold to advertisers on
U.S. television in 1982-83 was worth about $12
billionmore than three times the domestic theat-
rical box office.
Looked at broadly, we might say that the text of
 BROWNE/The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text
television, the megatext, as distinguished from the
supertext, consists of everything that has appeared
on television. No doubt this notion is unwieldy
from a practical standpoint. However, linked to the
concept of the schedule, it enables an enormously
illuminating representative reduction of the scope
and history of this comprehensive text. The history
of the text of television can be made significantly
available by a study of the logic and organization of
the slots and formats that compose the framework
of the television schedule. The schedule organizes
the terms of television's disparate programming in
the overall economy of the television world
achieving a profitable balance of news and enter-
tainment, comedy and drama, talk and action, va-
riety and monotony, games and indictments,
movies and serial forms. The selection and arrange-
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ment of these program types, night by night, week
by week, year by year, through the competitive
strategies of the networks, compose the more or
less orderly megatext of television. The schedule,
we might say, represents the comprehensive text
of television. The discursive unities, such as they
are, of the single program, the genre, the series,
are at the same time significantly dispersed and
constrained by the strategies and determinations
of the weekly schedule. An analysis of the schedule
would allow us to identify the main lines of televi-
sion programmingthe rise and fall of genre, for-
mats, personalities, the migrations and initiations
of formand to begin the process of charting the
terms and contours of an institutional, as well as
social, history of television. I mean then to put the
analysis of the history, logic, and form of the
schedule on the new agenda of contemporary tele-
vision theory.
One of the central axes around which the form
of the television schedule turns, from beginning to
present, is the balance between freestanding, indi-
vidual programs and the various forms of sequenc-
ing that we might call television seriality. Seriality in
its various versions orders and regulates television
programmingfrom daily news and talk shows
through the typical weekly sequencing of prime-
time entertainment programs. Indeed, serial form
177
is the paradigmatic form of television program-
ming and requires an analysis of its historical
determinations and discursive functions.
Serial formats, sitcoms, variety and game shows
mostly borrowed from radiowere important to
the television schedule in the early fifties. The
development, and then elimination, of a new tele-
vision formthe anthology dramacan serve asa
way into the complicated problem of interpreting
the dramatic form of television texts and the trans-
formations of discursive authority by which they
were sustained. Live dramas, sponsored by a
number of major American corporations and orig-
inating from New York, were an important part of
television up through the 1955-56 season. The cir-
cumstances which led to their replacement, and to
the inauguration of serialized drama, indicate
something of the function of seriality in the world
of television.
Aesthetically, as Barnouw points out, the shift
from anthology to serial form signaled a shift from
dialogue to action, from intimate psychology to
standardization of story and formularization of
character type. Institutionally, serialization meant
predictability and efficiency. The anthology ap-
proach, Barnouw argues, so dependent on New
York writers with their codes of theatrical natural-
ism, resulted in a variable form often at odds in
terms of topic and treatment with the interests of
the sponsors. The displacement of an author-
based dramatic form to a producer-based mode,
organized around the conventions of formula,
coincided with the industry's need for standardiza-
tion and increased production capacity and offered
the occasion for a realignment of network and
sponsor interests. Moreover, film serials, as com-
pared to live television, had specific advantages:
flexibility of scheduling across time zones, and the
existence of texts which could generate an after-
market through syndication. The stage was set in
1955 for a new relationship between network tele-
vision and Hollywood film studios.
Early telefilm series were produced by small
independents. However, by 1955, as Robert Via-
nello shows in "The Rise of the Telefilm and the
 178 QOARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES/Summer 1984
Network Hegemony Over the Motion Picture
Industry/' television penetration was about 60
percent of U.S. households, advertising revenues
were over $300 million, and costs of telefilm pro-
duction had risen to $80 million annually. Network
television moved to consolidate its position with
respect to program suppliers and sponsors. In the
competitive market for telefilm production, the
networks instituted a policy of deficit financing
advancing only a percentage of the total cost of
production, with the effect of giving a business
advantage to large, well capitalized enterprises
that could afford to wait for profit from syndica-
tion. The major film companiesHollywood
needed television in order to amortize studio costs
in the post-Paramount period, and in the mid-
fifties in fact entered the field in an intensive way.
The networks sought in the same period to replace
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the sponsor-financed mode of program produc-
tion with a system of selling spots, a system that
tended to give television a distinctive, new and
more profitable institutional autonomy. The result
was the introduction in 1955-56 of studio-produced
serial dramaslike Warner's television westerns
beginning the Majors' Song-term investment in the
serial form. By the mid-fifties, the film and televi-
sion industries consolidated production arrange-
ments which installed and secured the institutional
place of serial form in television programming.
This industrial transformation led to a specific
form of textual order sustained by a complex mode
of discursive authority. Conventions of series for-
mulae initiated and governed television form, but
not in the same ways that film genres generated
and governed film form. Television conventions
arose from a specific and complex intra-institu-
tional negotiation among four parties: the net-
work, the movie studio as the producer perse, the
advertisers, and the audience. In the end, the form
of the television serial is determined by the net-
works' interest in reaching the mass audience in a
way and through a medium determined by the
purposes of advertisers.
In a sense, the network is basically a relay in a
process of textualizing the interaction of audience
and advertiser. The audience is active in the textual
negotiation not directly by what it wants, but
through the figure of what is wanted of it. Televi-
sion is a discourse conducted in the name of the
audience butthrough the medium of moneyit
proceeds on the power of the corporation and the
authority of the commodity. What drives and
shapes television form is a set of manufactured
objects that can efficiently be advertised on na-
tional televisionchiefly, food, toiletries, cars,
medicines, and soapsproducts intimately linked
to the ongoing biological and social maintenance
of the subject and the family unit in time through
the life cycle. The discursive authority, then, that
generates and sustains television seriality is, in an
extended sense, the complex, dispersed figure of
the network, and as such is extended in space to
the subjects that it addresses and is extended in
time to cover the habitual/socially formulated,
requirements of subject maintenance. Television's
serial forms serve to continue the subject along the
itinerary of habituated consumption.
The Made-for-Television Movie
The study of feature-length movies as they are
deployed on prime-time network television offers
a more contemporary perspective on the differ-
ences between the institutional and discursive
relations of the two media. Specifically, it opens a
perspective onto the form and function of a rela-
tively stable formatthat of the freestanding,
autonomous programin television schedules
composed chiefly of serial forms, and it can serve
as a window on the changing economic and cultur-
al determinants of popular forms of feature-length
dramatic entertainment. In this respect, movies
continue the role of anthology drama in televi-
sion's prime-time schedule.
The history of movies on network television is
characterized by several rapid, significant trans-
formations.2 First introduced on the NBC network
in 1961, the (theatrical) movie became part of the
prime-time schedules of all three networks in 1965.
By 1968, a movie was scheduled each night of the
 BROWNE/The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text
week, and in 1973, the networks' movies competed
head to head four nights a week. By the mid-sixties,
with the depletion of the inventory of theatrical
films and with Hollywood demanding higher and
higher licensing fees, the networks implemented a
counter-strategythe made-for-television movie.
The Hollywood theatrical movie has a form
determined by its intended release in theaters. It is
characterized by a certain "theatrical" approach to
story, casting, budget, look, etc. Televisionnet-
work and, later, syndicationwas the last stop in
the domestic distribution chain for such a form of
film. By contrast, the made-for-television movie is
a form specific to televisionit is conceived for
and premiered on network television. That is, it is a
new entertainment form designed for the particu-
lar requirements and audiences of network televi-
sion. The introduction of the two-hour telemovie
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seemed, in part, to substitute for the older form,
but in doing so served to reaffirm the continuing
importance of the two-hour autonomous film
experience in the television schedule.
Original production of made-for-television
movies became feasible in the late sixties when, in
relation to their power to draw an audience, they
became cheaper than licensing theatrical films.
The first regular television movie was introduced
in 1966; two years later (1968) all three networks
showed them; and by 1972, all three networks
scheduled more original made-for-television
movies (about 100) than theatrical films. The new
format had quickly become a strategic program-
ming tool in restructuring television's relations
with movie studios, and at the same time had
become an important part of networks' competi-
tion with each other. Within six seasons, the made-
for-television movie became the dominant two-
hour fictional entertainment form on television.
Theatrical movies, though currently under pres-
sure from pay television, have nevertheless main-
tained a strong position. In the 1982-83 season, the
networks showed about 180 movies, 80 of them
theatricals. Nielsen reported, in November 1982,
that "feature films" (which include both theatricals
and made-fors) were the most popular television
179
fare (compared, say, to "situation comedy/' "ad-
venture," etc.) and they attracted the highest
numbers of women in two age categories espe-
cially important to advertisers: 18-34 and 35-54.3
As in previous years, theatrical films and made-
for-television movies continue to play distinctly
different roles in the prime-time network schedule
and have established distinctly different relations
to their audiences. During the 1982-83 season,
approximately two-thirds of the theatrical movies
played on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Indeed,
Sunday was the only day of the week where theat-
ricals outnumbered made-fors. Five nights a week,
made-fors outnumbered theatricals (basically,
Thursday was not a movie night). Heaviest schedul-
ing of made-fors was, in order, on Monday, Tues-
day and Wednesday, though Sunday was also
strong. Movies, of any kind, figured least promi-
nently on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The
heaviest movie night (for any kind) was Sunday,
followed by Monday. Moreover, movie types
(genres) seem to have been scheduled in certain
positions during the week: horror movies on Fri-
day, Saturday, Sunday; biographies on Monday
and Tuesday; fantasy on Sunday, etc.
The audiences for movies on television have
distinct though variable demographic profiles.
Though each network differs as to the composition
of its general audience, and indeed as to the
audience for its moviesand though audience
composition for movies varies according to day of
the week, program type, etc.we can say, never-
theless, that a general profile emerges. Chiefly, it is
this: the network audience for theatrical movies is
much more balanced by gender than is the audi-
ence for made-for-television movies. Within the
adult network-viewing population (18+), the pro-
portion of female to male viewers for theatrical
films in the 1982-83 season was nearly equal; in
marked contrast, the adult audience (18+) for
made-for-television movies was distinctly female
(on average, 52 percent of the made-for's audi-
ence was female [18+], and 34 percent male [18+]).
Similarly, there were differences in the age mix of
the audience for the two types of movies. Women
 180 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES/Summer 1984
made up a greater part of the "made-for" audi-
ence for all networks in all age categories; made-
fors had a greater percentage of younger viewers
(in the 18-54 category) than theatricals; theatricals
had a greater percentage of their audience in the
55+ category, and older men watching theatrical
movies outnumbered older women. In sum, there
are distinct television audiences for different movie
formats, and such differences are both adapted to
and manipulated by the producers of the televi-
sion supertext.
Women comprise, statistically, and perhaps cul-
turally, the most important part of the audience for
those movie forms designed specifically for televi-
sion. Presumably, such an orientation toward
women maximizes the size of the television world.
Indeed, during the 1982-83 season, on an average,
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made-for-television movies drew larger ratings
and audience share points than did theatrical
filmstypically an audience of 14 million house-
holds. The made-for-television movie is thus a
program format that efficiently addresses and
reaches commercially significant segments of the
television audience, namely, the audience that
uses products advertised on national television.
The made-for-television narratives fall into var-
ious genres (drama, comedy, crime-mystery, biog-
raphy, etc.) though chiefly they are variants of the
family melodrama. Of course, they have a particu-
lar inflectionfocusing in the 1982-83 season on
the dynamic, and the danger, of the dissolution of
the domestic social uniteither the couple or the
nuclear family. In this regard, the television movie
relates, though in a different mode, and in specific
dramatic ways, to the long tradition of family serial
drama on television. In its most popular instances
the format performs its social work by providing
the audience flexible, dialectical terms with which
to negotiate the tension between the advantages
of personal freedom and the virtues of moral and
familial restraint. As a format, in other words, it
rests its economic viability on the representation of
suffering and redemption in the familythat is,
within the register and on the site of its reception.
To summarize thenthe scheduling of movies
on network television follows certain patterns:
movies are distributed unevenly through the days
of the week: theatricals and made-fors tend to be
segregated, and are clustered by sets in certain
parts of the week, etc. These patterns indicate a
distinctive strategy for organizing the week, and
presumably the season as a whole, in ways that
address the distinctive interests and preferences of
the audience and its movement into and through
the workweek. In general, by considering the
transformation of the role of movies on television
and the appearance of a new form specific to tele-
vision, we can see the evolution of the links
between program type, the pattern of its schedul-
ing, the character of the television audience, and
the advertiser's perception of new or significant
agencies and aptitudes for extended consumption.
The Form of Television's
Discursive Economy
Practically, in order to construct an analytic
framework for considering an "economy of the
television supertext" in the way we have proposed,
it is necessary to consider the formal and semiotic
relation of the program proper to the series of ads
interpolated into the structure of the program. It is
one of the traditional commitments of network
programming to try to secure a loyal flow of
audience attention through the prime-time hours,
warding off potential defections through strategies
of continuity. How then can the effect of commer-
cial interruptions be handled so as to maintain
program and schedule flow? The problem be-
comes especially acute when we consider not only
the abrupt breaks of narrative, but also the marked
alteration of narrative voice, from third person in
the program, to first-person address in the ad.
The discursive form of the television supertext,
its mode of linking program and ad, works to effect
a series of unifying symbolic exchanges at two lev-
els. We might suppose at this early stage, for exam-
ple, that program and ad are linked formally as
question and answer, and psychologically as lack
and liquidation. In this "model," the story's prob-
lem and its resolution are answered, if only by
 BROWNE / The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text
implication, by the presentation of an interpolated
micro-story, an ad, in which a similar difficulty is
resolved by an object. Though interruptive, the ad,
in its role as agent of symbolic restitution for a lack
in the narrative proper, constructs a kind of narra-
tive pleasure that assures formal resolution and
confers on the represented object the status of the
good object.
More generally, at the second level, in "free"
television the opportunity for viewing a television
program is exchanged through a symbolic equa-
tion with the viewer's subjection to a call for con-
sumption. That is, in "free" television, the general
possibility of "entertainment" is exchanged for the
willingness of the audience to be subjected to a
view of something specificthe objects displayed
in ads. Most viewers in America report that it is a
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fair price to pay. The literal circuit of exchange is
closed when the viewer, through the relay of the
represented object, purchases the actual object in
whose price the invisible cost of the motivating ad
is hidden. The actual commodity, then, is the ulti-
mate referent of the television discourse. The dis-
cursive economy of the television supertext, in
other words, actualizes a second exchange in
another symbolic mediummoneyin which the
commodif ied object is treated as compensation for
the effort of production in the day's work. In
general, American televisionhowever it presents
itselfnegotiates and justifies a particular linkage
of sign and referent, money and commodity; ties
the worlds of work and of entertainment together;
and legitimates the social and economic order and
the subject's relation to it, by interpolating the
subject as a consumer freely and democratically
participating in the free-market distribution of
abundant social goods. Television presents and
sustains consumption as an answer to the problems
of everyday life. It articulates and, at the same time,
dissolves the difference between the "supertext"
and "supermarket."
Television's "textual economy" effects a current
of familiarity between the television worldits
personalities and formatsand the everydayness
of the viewer's life. The circulation of a television
181
star from a series to a made-for-television movie is
a familiarizing device that extends and completes
the self-determining power of the television insti-
tution, by inducing the audience to fully territori-
alize open slots in the scheduleslots that may
previously, for example, have been occupied by
theatrical films starring actors not otherwise visible
on television. As a producer and distributor of
feature-length drama, television is a powerful dis-
cursive institution that continuously works to con-
struct the social imagination around suitable, rec-
ognizable and familiar television personalities and
narratives. In this it seeks to extend and complete
the "world" of television. In this respect the dis-
placement of theatrical movies by made-fors in the
seventies is similar in function to the displacement
of anthology drama by serial drama in the fifties.
The commercial development of television in
the post-World War II years as a mechanism for
reaching into the household represents a singu-
larly significant moment in the development of
American economy and culture. Through televi-
sion, American business has represented, pene-
trated, and constructed the family with an eye to its
aptitude for consumption and moved to complete
its organization of the libidinal economy of the
desiring and consuming subject. In the television
age, consumption and social control have become
linked. Television regulates the social order and
offers a justification for it by inscribing the audi-
ence as consumer. The networks are one of the
central mechanisms of modern consumption and
of social discipline, working (as Foucault has sug-
gested in other contexts) through the historical
strategy of aligning and intermixing sexuality with
the representation and consumption of objects.
Television's serial and freestanding forms both
repeat, though in different dramatic registers, the
forms of everyday experience, and have proved to
be well suited to linking the consuming subject
with the system of production under multinational
capitalism.
The specific project of a political economy of the
television megatext is to analyze the history and
 182 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES / Summer 1984
form of the schedule by linking the world of televi-
sion entertainment and the world of work with the
general mechanisms of circulation of capital and
commodity in Western industrialized societies. It is
in this context that the analysis of serial forms, and
their alternatives, in the form of the schedule takes
on particular significance. The schedule, as it dis-
poses and organizes the "supertext," is, let us say,
the chief institutional mediation between the
worlds of work and of entertainment. Modeling
"television," then, along the lines of the political
economy of the television megatext consists of
elaborating a framework that links the statements
of social and psychical value specific to programs
in diverse time slots, and of particular audiences, to
the processes of the general economy. I have indi-
cated schematically the centrality of seriality, ad-
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vertising, and of scheduling, to a comprehensive
account of the discursive order and social function
of the television world.
It is in this general framework that a systematic
approach to television criticism could proceed
one that seeks to articulate and explain the specific
link between form, audience, schedule, and mode
of consumption. The description and analysis of
the political economy of the television megatext,
in the sense sketched here, coincides with one of
the chief tasks of contemporary critical theory
analyzing and rethinking the relation of economy,
society, and television culture. So far as I can tell
now, a model of political economy alone provides
the basis for linking the form of programs to
television's essential economic function in the
free-world supermarket.
Nick Browne is Professor of Theater Arts and
Chairman of the Film and Television Studies Pro-
gram at UCLA.
NOTES
1. See, in particular, Michael Gurevitch et al., eds.,
Culture, Society and the Media (London: Methuen, 1982)
and Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, Resistance Through
Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London:
Hutchinson, 1976).
2. See Douglas Gomery, "Television, Hollywood and
the Development of Movies Made-for-Television" in
Regarding Television: Critical Approaches, edited by E.
Ann Kaplan (Lanham, Maryland: University Publications
of America, Inc., 1983).
3. This assessment of the audience is provided in the
brochure, "The 1983 Nielsen Report on Television," A.C.
Nielsen Co., 1983.