Revolutions in

Communication
Media History from
Gutenberg
to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik

Chapter 9 – TV, satellites, and the Global Village

Web site & textbook
http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

Textbook:

1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016

TV was anticipated for
decades

1880 – TV in the future, by French artist Albert Robida

Philo T.
Farnsworth
In 1920, at age 14,
Farnsworth showed
his high school
chemistry teacher a
design for an
electronic television.

• Farnsworth envisioned a system using electronic beams that could

scan across and light up phosphorous dots on the back of a glass
screen. The signals for the beams and the audio could be broadcast as
FM radio signals.
• He demonstrated the system in 1928, but found competition from RCA /
Westinghouse engineer Vladimir Zworykin.
• A patent fight between was eventually decided in Farnsworth’s favor
based on the sketch he did for his teacher in 1920.
RCA announces TV in 1939

RCA executive David

Sarnoff announces the
birth of television at the
World’s Fair in New York,
April 20, 1939, calling it a
“torch of hope in a
troubled world.”

Transition from radio to TV was not always so easy or hopeful: “The

notion that a picture was worth a thousand words meant, in practice, that
footage of Atlantic City beauty winners… was considered more valuable
than a thousand words… on the mounting tensions in Southeast Asia.” --
historian Erik Barnouw.
TV widely adopted 1950s
 1952, one-third of all homes (15
million) had TV sets. Within a decade,
nearly every home had a TV.
 Color technology could have come
online in the 1940s …
 FCC chose NBC system over CBS
◦ NBC had lower quality system but
◦ high-powered lobbying from Sarnoff
 Color TV finally arrives early 1960s
Fairness Doctrine
 At the end of WWII, more room for
controversy was needed.
 Mayflower Decision (1941) banning
editorializing on the air was reversed.
 Fairness Doctrine (1949) let
broadcasters take sides on issues so
long as they gave a balanced
presentation from all sides.
 Law stayed in place until 1980s, and is
often invoked by media reformers
Structure of TV system in US
 Central networks encouraged 1940s
◦ ABC, CBS, NBC, DuMont
 Limits on VHF station ownership (5)
 Expansion into UHF channels
◦ Many small, underfunded, low quality
 Cable in 1970s allowed huge
expansion in number of channels
 In 1996, ownership limits lifted
◦ Limits are now % of overall market
‘Vast wasteland’ – Newton Minow
FCC Chair 1961

"When television is good, nothing

— not the theater, not the
magazines or
newspapers — nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing
is worse… a procession of game
shows, formula comedies about
totally unbelievable families, blood
and thunder, mayhem, violence,
sadism, murder, western bad men,
western good men, private eyes,
gangsters, more violence, and
cartoons. And endlessly
commercials — many screaming,
cajoling, and offending. And most
of all, boredom.”
Red scare fades under TV
lights
Sen. Joseph McCarthy --
Creates “red scare” with
reckless charges that elements
of the government (State, CIA)
dominated by communists
Edward R. Murrow, CBS --
“We will not be driven by fear
into an age of unreason, if
we dig deep in our history and
our doctrine, and remember
that we are not descended
from fearful men….”
 Political ads on TV

Early political advertising seems primitive by modern standards.

This ad, from 1952, helped popularize the Eisenhower campaign.
 Commercial ads on TV
Before tobacco commercials
were banned on TV, even
cartoon characters told kids
it was OK to smoke.

1964 -- Surgeon General

report noting 7,000 studies
linking smoking to cancer &
heart problems

1971 – Tobacco advertising

banned on TV

Other kinds of advertising are also more controlled in broadcasting

than in printed publications.

Advertising to children is specially regulated.

TV: wires & lights in box
 If there are any historians about 50
or 100 years from now... they will
find recorded in black and white, or
color, evidence of decadence,
escapism and insulation from the
realities of the world in which we
live... This instrument can teach, it
can illuminate; yes, and it can even
inspire. But it can do so only to the
extent that humans are determined
to use it to those ends. Otherwise it
is merely wires and lights in a
box...
◦ -- Edward R. Murrow, 1958
Sputnik launches new era
1959
Russian satellite
begins orbiting on
Oct. 6, 1957

US reaction is a huge
investment in space
and science programs

International telecomm
satellites begin 1960s

Research for internet

also begins 1960s

“Young people today find it difficult to imagine how far we were … from the
global view that now seems so familiar,” Raymond Frontard, ISO, 1997
Quiz show scandals 1959

“I was involved, deeply involved, in deception…” Charles Van

Doren (right), quiz show contestant.

Congressional investigations in 1959 showed that answers

had been provided and shows were fully scripted.
Early global village
confrontation Moscow, 1959 – Then-US Vice
President Richard Nixon (right)
pokes a finger at Russian
Soviet Premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev at a US exhibit
depicting the average
American home with a stove,
washing machine, radio and
other appliances.

With television cameras

rolling, Krushchev said he
didn’t think the average
American could afford such a
home. Nixon said they could,
adding: “Diversity, the right to
choose … is the most
important thing.”
 Kennedy – Nixon debates
1960
The first presidential
debates on TV

Most people believed

that Nixon did not come
across well on
television. A majority
who heard the debate
on radio only thought he
did better than Kennedy.

Click on the picture to

get an idea of what the
debate was like. The debate format was highly structured with
four reporters asking questions and a fifth
journalist presiding as the debate chair.
TV vital to civil rights
movement
As Gandhi noted, non-violence
works best when resistance
and suffering is witnessed by
many people.

With TV as a witness, and the

force of ethics, the constitution
and logic behind the civil rights
movement, laws allowing
discrimination were eventually
repealed, and new guarantees
were put in place.

For a while, southern TV

stations refused to air civil
rights news. When the license
at one (WLBT) was challenged,
a Supreme Court justice said
its conduct, along with the FCC,
was “beyond repair.”
 WLBT license case
 1954 – Civil rights groups begin studying
blackouts on civil rights news in Southern
US media – esp. WLBT in Jackson
Miss.
 1963 – Complaints lead WLBT to allow
talk by Medgar Evers; soon he is killed.
 1964 – Rights groups challenge FCC
license
 1966 – Federal court O Ks hearings
 1967 – FCC holds biased hearings
Justice Warren Burger, 1966
 “A broadcaster is not a public utility . . .
but neither is it a purely private
enterprise like a newspaper or an
automobile agency... A broadcaster
seeks and is granted the free and
exclusive use of a limited and valuable
part of the public domain; when he
accepts that franchise it is burdened by
enforceable public obligations… . After
nearly five decades of operation the
broadcast industry does not seem to
have grasped the simple fact that a
broadcast license is a public trust subject
Bonanza cast backed civil rights
Vietnam war on TV
 Morley Safer at Cam Ne, 1965
The traditional myth was
that the “living room war”
proved too horrible for
sensitive Americans and
had a morale-sapping
effect.
But detailed studies of TV
and public opinion show a
far more complex picture.
The steady drop in public
support for the war seems
unrelated to any one set of
events or images, but
rather, to highly public
national debates about its
overall
purposes and conduct.
These were carried in the
Pres. Johnson resigns 1968

President Lyndon Johnson makes a surprise announcement that

he will not run again for president in 1968. The impact of the
televised Vietnam war, and its television critics, was a factor.
PBS born 1968
Educational radio was sidetracked
in the 1920s, and TV broadcasters
were determined to avoid that.

In 1952, some 242 TV channels

reserved fir educational use.

1967 Public Broadcasting Act

funded PBS, but only on a year-to-
year basis. (Unlike BBC in the UK)

Public-funded broadcasting is
controversial – Why not just leave
it to commercial TV?

But would commercial TV have

created Seseme Street ?
McBride Report, 1980
 Controversial UN commission

• Observed one-way flow of information

from industrial to developing nations

• Recommended more training and local media

development, protection for journalists and freedom
of the press

• Said developing nations should control cultural

influences from outside – US saw this as an attack
on free press
Cable television
• First cable 1940s
• Satellite backbone 1970s
• Like Post Office for newspapers
• Telegraph for wire services
• Telephone for radio networks
• Superstations grew into larger organizations
• Atlanta WTBS -> CNN
• High market penetration by late 1980s
• Cable companies become local monopolies
• Cable costs grow @ 3x inflation
• Leads to satellite TV as circumventing technology
Satellite TV rises and falls
 Small dish direct broadcasting
◦ DirecTV (1994) now 19 million
subscribers
◦ Dish network (1996) – now 14 million
 By 2010, cable TV had peaked at
about 60 percent of all US homes,
while satellite TV had about 30
percent of the market.
 Both are dropping rapidly in
competition with broadband
Traditional TV loses audience
 1976 -- ABC, CBS and NBC = 92%
 2008 – These + Fox = 46%
 With more channels, no “scarcity
rationale” for government-imposed
boundaries (eg Fairness Doctrine).
 TV news more shrill & partisan
 Cable peaks around 2010, in shar
John Stewart’s take on
Murrow
 “The press can hold its magnifying glass up
to our problems, bringing them into focus,
illuminating issues heretofore unseen, or it
can use its magnifying glass to light ants on
fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows
on the sudden, unexpected dangerous
flaming-ant epidemic.
 If we amplify everything, we hear nothing…
The press is our immune system. If it
overreacts to everything, we actually get
sicker… And yet, with that being said, I feel
good. Strangely, calmly good, because the
image of Americans that is reflected back to
us by our political and media process is false.
It is us through a funhouse mirror....” (2010)
‘Global Village’ emerges
 TV, satellites, cable, internet
 Europe’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989
 It “doesn’t necessarily mean harmony
and peace and quiet, but it does mean
huge involvement in everybody else’s
affairs.” – Marshall McLuhan
 Islamic – European tensions
◦ British books (Salmon Rusdie, 1988)
◦ Danish cartoons (Jyllands-Posten, 2005)
◦ US minister to burn Koran (2010)
◦ Drone attacks / Terrorist attacks (2012 –
present)
Declining traditional audience
Crossover to Broadband
Free video hosting services, along with
other kinds of commercial video streaming,
have turned the old top-down broadcasting
model inside out. Vimeo started in 2004,
and YouTube (now owned by Google) in
2005.
YouTube changes music
promotions

In 2010, OK Go fought music publisher EMI to allow

fans to embed videos on their own pages. “It’s been like
a corporate version of the Three Stooges,” Damian
Kulash said.
Review: people
 Albert Robida, Philo T. Farnsworth,
Vladimir Zworkin, David Sarnoff,
Newton Minow, Edward R. Murrow,
Walter Cronkite, Sean MacBride
Review: Concepts
 Sputnik, vast wasteland, quiz show
scandals, Checkers speech, presidential
debates, Vietnam coverage, WLBT
case, public broadcasting, restrictions
on tobacco advertising, satellite TV,
Next: Chapter 10
Computers