TEXTBOOK: Ch. 8: Television, Cable, and Mobile Video

*premium cable* *fiber optic*

Cable and Satellite Television: John Walson's brainchild reshaped the face of modern television. During cable's infancy, many over-the-air broadcasters saw it as something of a friend. It extended their reach, boosting both audience size and profits. Then, in November 1972, Sterling Manhattan Cable launched a new channel called Home Box Office. Only a handful of homes caught the debut of what we now call HBO, but broadcasters' mild concern over this development turned to outright antagonism toward cable in 1975, when new HBO owner Time Ince. began distributing the movie channel by satellite. Now *_____________________* was eating into the broadcasters' audience by offering high-quality, nationally produced and distributed content. The public enthusiastically embraced cable, which, coupled with the widespread diffusion of *________________* cable (the transmission of signals by light beam over glass, permitting the delivery of hundreds of channels), brought the medium to maturity.

*digital video recorder (DVR)*

DVR: In March 1999 Philips Electronics unveiled the *____________________________*. It contains digital software that puts a significant amount of control over content in viewers' hands. They can "rewind" and play back portions of a program while they are watching and recording it without losing any of that show. By designating their favorite shows, viewers can instruct DVR to automatically record and deliver not only those programs but all similar content over a specified period of time. This application can even be used with the name of a favorite actor. Type in Shemar Moore, and DVR will automatically record all programming in which he appears. DVR does not deliver programming the way broadcasters, cable casters, and DBS systems do. Rather, it is employed "in addition to" these content providers. Bot DBS providers and almost every MSO now offer low-cost DVR as part of their technology platform, significantly hastening its diffusion into American homes. Today, about 1/2 of all TV household have DVR. Naturally, traditional broadcast and as-supported cable networks found the rapid diffusion of DVR troubling, and while it is true that DVR dramatically changed television viewing as we knew it, it has not has as negative an effect on those traditional programming sources as originally anticipated. While DVR does allow viewers to fast-forward through commercials, we saw earlier in this chapter that traditional broadcasters rely on DVR playback to boost their ratings and therefore profits.

*iconoscope tube* *kinescope*

Electronic scanning came either from another Russian or from a U.S. farm boy; historians disagree. Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant living near Pittsburgh and working for Westinghouse, demonstrated his *___________________*, the first practical television camera tube, in 1923. In 1929 David Sarnoff lured him to RCA to head its electronics research lab, and it was there that Zworykin developed the *_________________*, an improved picture tube. At the same time, young Philo Farnsworth had moved from Idaho to San Francisco to perfect an electronic television system, the design for which he had shown his high school science teacher when he was 15 years old. In 1927, at the age of 20, he made his first public demonstration— film clips of a prize fight, movie scenes, and other graphic images. The "Boy Wonder" and Zworykin's RCA spent the next decade fighting fierce patent battles in court. In 1939 RCA capitulated, agreeing to pay Farnsworth royalties for the use of his patents. In April of that year, at the World's Fair in New York, RCA made the first true public demonstration of television in the form of regularly scheduled 2-hour NBC broadcasts. These black-and-white telecasts consisted of cooking demonstrations, singers, jugglers, comedians, puppets— just about anything that could fit in a hot, brightly lit studio and demonstrate motion. People could buy television sets at the RCA Pavilion at prices ranging from $200 for the 5-inch screen to $600 for the deluxe 12-inch-screen model. The FCC granted construction permits to the first 2 commercial stations in 1941, and then World War II intervened. But as was the case with radio during World War I, technical development and improvement of the new medium continued.

network; streamed

Free from __________ television's commercial restrictions, producers of _____________ content can take creative chances.

*digital cable television* *video-on-demand (VOD)*

Interactive Television: The Internet is not the only technology that permits interactivity. Cable and satellite also allow viewers to "talk back" to content providers. But it is *___________________________*, the delivery of digital images and other information to subscribers, that offers the truest form of interactive television. There are 61 million digital cable subscribers in the U.S. Cable's digital channels permit multiplexing, carrying 2 or more different signals over the same channel. This, in turn, is made possible by "digital compression", which "squeezes" signals to permit multiple signals to be carried over one channel. Digital compression works by removing redundant information from the transmission of the final. For example, the set behind 2 actor in a movie scene ,night not change for several minutes. So why transmit the information that the set is there? Simply transmit the digital data that indicate what has changed in the scene, not what has not. This expanded capacity makes possible "interactive cable", that is, the ability of subscribers to talk back to the system operator (extra space on the channel is used for this back talk). And "this" permits the following services, may of which you already use: one-click shopping (you see it, you click it, you buy it), local information on demand (news, traffic, and weather), program interactivity (choose a camera angle, learn more about an actor's career, play along with game show contestants), interactive program guides, and video games. But it is *________________________________* -- the ability to access pay-per-view movies and other content that can be watched at any time -- that best shows the economic advantage of putting more control into viewers' hands. American television homes annually log 4.4 billion hours of on-demand movies and TV shows via cable.

own; CBS reruns live off-network syndication New York; Hollywood quickly; inexpensively

Lucy and Desi borrowed the necessary money and produced "I Love Lucy" on their _____, selling the broadcast rights to _______. In doing so, the woman now best remembered as "that zany redhead" transformed the business and look of television: -Filmed __________ were now possible, something that had been impossible with ______ television, and this, in turn, created the _______________________ industry. -The television industry moved from _______________, with its stage drama orientation, to _________________, with its entertainment film mind-set. More action and more flash came to the screen. -Weekly series could now be produced relatively __________ and ______________. A 39-week series could be completed in 20 or 24 weeks, saving money on actors, crew, equipment, and facilities. In addition, the same stock shots— for example, certain exterior views— could be used in different episodes.

Advertisers

MCCARTHYISM: THE GROWING POWER OF TELEVISION: The Red Scare that cowed the movie business also touched television, aided by the publication in 1950 of "Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television", the work of 3 former FBI agents operating a company called American Business Consultants. Its 200 pages detailed the alleged pro-Communist sympathies of 151 broadcast personalities, including Orson Welles and journalist Howard K. Smith. __________________ were encouraged to avoid buying time from broadcasters who employed these "Red sympathizers." Like the movie studios, the television industry caved in. The networks employed security checkers to look into people's backgrounds, refused to hire suspect talent, and demanded loyalty oaths from performers. In its infancy, television had taken the safe path. Many gifted artists were denied not only a paycheck but also the opportunity to shape the medium's content. Ironically, it was this same Red Scare that allowed television to demonstrate its enormous power as a vehicle of democracy and freedom. Joseph McCarthy, the Republican junior senator from Wisconsin whose tactics gave this era its name, was seen by millions of viewers as his investigation of Reds in the U.S. Army was broadcast by all the networks for 36 days in 1954. Daytime ratings increased 50%. At the same time, Edward R. Murrow used his "See It Now", a documentary series broadcast by CBS, to expose the senator's lies and hypocrisy. As a consequence of the 2 broadcasts, McCarthy was ruined; he was censured by his Senate colleagues and later died a lonely alcoholic's death. Television had given the people eyes and ears— and power— where before they had had little. The Army- McCarthy Hearings and Murrow's challenge to McCarthyism are still regarded as 2 of television's finest moments.

*Nipkow disc* *pixels* mechanical

Mechanical and Electronic Scanning: In 1884 Paul Nipkow, a Russian scientist living in Berlin, developed the first workable device for generating electrical signals suitable for the transmission of a scene that people could see. His *_______________* consisted of a rotating scanning disc spinning in front of a photoelectric cell. It produced 4,000 *__________* (picture dots) per second, producing a picture composed of 18 parallel lines. Although his ______________ system proved too limiting, Nipkow demonstrated the possibility of using a scanning system to divide a scene into an orderly pattern of transmittable picture elements that could be recomposed as a visual image. British inventor John Logie Baird was able to transmit moving images using a mechanical disc as early as 1925, and in 1928 he successfully sent a television picture from London to Hartsdale, New York.

neutral ubiquitous; powerful

No one is ___________ about television. We either love it or hate it. Many of us do both. This is because it is our most _______________ and socially and culturally ________________ mass medium. Several recent and converging technologies promise to make it even more so.

*bundling*

Phone-over-Cable: Another service offered by many MSOs is phone service over cable wires. Currently there are 31 million cable-delivered residential telephone subscribers. Phone-over-cable offers a special benefit to MSOs. If telephone service can be delivered by the same cable that brings television into the home, so too can the Internet. And what's more, if the cable line is broadband and capable of handling digitally compressed data, that Internet service can be even faster than the service provided over traditional phone lines. Cable, in other words, can become a one-stop communication provider: television, VOD, audio, high-speed Internet access, long-distance and local phone service, multiple phone lines, and fax. This *__________________.* How valuable isa bundle-receiving subscriber to an MSO? Add together the bills you're probably paying right now - basic or premium cable, your Internet service provider, and your phone bill. What does that total? Now speculate how much pay-per-view and VOD you might buy now that you have broadband and a super fast cable modem. And what would you pay for home delivery of real-time sports or financial data? And the MSO would collect each time you accessed an interactive classified or commercial ad. That's how valuable a bundled subscriber will be.

ABC; CBS; NBC; Fox *tiers*

Programming: Cable's share of the prime-time audience exceeded that of the Big 4 broadcast networks for the first time in 2002. Its total audience share has exceeded that of _______, ________, ________, and ______ eery year since. What attracts these viewers is programming, a fact highlighted by 2 pieces of recent industry data: cable shows annually garner the majority of all prime-time Emmy Awards nominations (HBO's "Game of Thrones" earned 38 Emmy Awards in 2016, an industry record for a single show), and cable viewing exceeds network viewing for every single American age demographic. As we've seen, cable operator attract viewers through a combination of basic and premium channels, as well as with some programming of local origin. There are more than 900 national and regional cable networks. We all know national networks such as CNN, Lifetime, HBO, and the History Channel. Regional network North-West Cable News serves Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, northern California, and parts of Alaska; New England Cable News serves the region that gives it its name; and several regional sports-oriented channels serve different parts of the country. The financial support and targeted audiences for these program providers differ, as does their place on a system's *___________*, groupings of channels made available to subscribers at varying prices.

*clear time* *reverse compensation* *retransmission fees*

Scope and Nature of the Broadcast Television Industry: Today, as it has been from the beginning, the business of broadcast television is dominated by a few centralized production, distribution, and decision-making organizations. These networks link affiliates for the purpose of delivering and selling viewers to advertisers. The large majority of the 1,387 commercial stations in the United States are affiliated with a national broadcasting network: ABC, NBC, and CBS each have over 200 affiliates, and Fox has close to that number. Many more stations are affiliated with the CW Network, jointly owned by CBS and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Although cable has introduced us to dozens of popular cable networks— ESPN, MTV, Comedy Central, and A& E, to name a few— for decades most programs that came to mind when we thought of television were either conceived, approved, funded, produced, or distributed by the broadcast networks. Although, as you read at this chapter's outset, that's quickly changing. Local affiliates carry network programs (they *________________*). Until quite recently, affiliates received direct payment for carrying a show, called compensation, and the right to keep all income from the sale of local commercials on that program. But loss of network audience and the rise of cable have altered this arrangement. Now networks receive *_____________________________*, a fee paid by the local station for the right to be that network's affiliate. It is typically based on the amount of money the local cable operation pays to the station to carry its signal, called *___________________________*.

*bandwidth* *broadband*

Streaming Video: Television on the Internet was slow to take off because of copyright and piracy concerns, and because few viewers had sufficient *________________*, space on the wires bringing content into their homes. So for several years the most typical video fare on the Internet was a variety of short specialty transmissions such as movie trailers, music videos, and news clips. But the development of increasingly sophisticated video compression software and the parallel rise of homes with *____________________* Internet connections (73% of all US. Inernet homes have broadband) have changed that. Because broadband offers greater information carrying capacity (that is, it increased bandwidth), watching true television on the Internet is now common. Much of that viewing is of content that originated on network and cable television, but much is also Web-only video ("most" if streaming service video is considered; half of all U.S. TV homes subscribe to a streaming video service). And as we saw in this chapter's opening, the distinction between Web-only and broadcast/cable programming is disappearing. Internet video sites Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and YouTube commission original content. We stream 5 billion videos every dat on Youtube, and we also stream 8 billion a day on Facebook. And there are many other successful, more narrowly targeted video streaming sites. Crackle, for example, offers new and classic television comedy, and Fandor and Mubi serve die-hard independent movie fans. This wealth of internet video is altering viewing habits, especially among young people. You can see the steady and precipitous decline in weekly traditional TV viewing among 18-to-24 -year-olds:

time brokers *spot commercial sales* golden age

THE QUIZ SHOW SCANDAL AND CHANGES IN SPONSORSHIP: Throughout the 1950s the networks served primarily as ______________, offering airtime and distribution (their affiliates) and accepting payment for access to both. Except for their own news and sports coverage, the networks relied on outside agencies to provide programs. An advertising agency, for example, would hire a production company to produce a program for its client. That client would then be the show's sponsor— The Kraft Television Theatre and Westinghouse Studio One are two examples. The agency would then pay a network to air the program over its national collection of stations. This system had enriched the networks during the heyday of radio, and they saw no reason to change. But in 1959 a quiz show scandal (enveloping independently produced, single-advertiser-sponsored programs) changed the way the networks did business. When it was discovered that popular shows like The $64,000 Question had been fixed by advertisers and producers to ensure desired outcomes, the networks, mindful of their reputations, were determined to take control of their schedules. They, themselves, began commissioning or buying the entertainment fare that filled their broadcast days and nights. Now, rather than selling blocks of time to ad agencies and sponsors, the networks paid for the content they aired through *___________________________* (selling individual 60-second spots on a given program to a wide variety of advertisers). As a result, the content of television was altered. Some critics argue that this change to spot sales put an end to the _____________________ of television. When sponsors agreed to attach their names to programs, Alcoa Presents or the Texaco Star Theater, for example, they had an incentive to demand high-quality programming. Spot sales, with network salespeople offering small bits of time to a number of different sponsors, reduced the demand for quality. Because individual sponsors were not identified with a given show, they had no stake in how well it was made— only in how many viewers it attracted. Spot sales also reduced the willingness of the networks to try innovative or different types of content. Familiarity and predictability attracted more viewers and, therefore, more advertisers. There is a counterargument, however. Once the financial well-being of the networks became dependent on the programming they aired, the networks themselves became more concerned with program quality, lifting television from its dull infancy (remembered now as the golden age only by those small, early audiences committed to serious character-driven televised drama). Different historians and critics offer arguments for both views.

*all-channel legislation* Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) *vast wasteland*

Television and Its Audiences: The 1960s saw some refinement in the technical structure of television, which influenced its organization and audience. In 1962 Congress passed *__________________________*, which required that all sets imported into or manufactured in the United States be equipped with both VHF and UHF receivers. This had little immediate impact; U.S. viewers were now hooked on the 3 national networks and their VHF affiliates. Still, UHF independents and educational stations were able to at least attract some semblance of an audience. The UHF independents would have to wait for the coming of cable to give them clout. Now that the educational stations were attracting more viewers, they began to look less educational in the strictest sense of the word and began programming more entertaining cultural fare. The _________________________________ united the educational stations into an important network, the _________________________________, which today has 350 member stations. The 1960s also witnessed the immense social and political power of the new medium to force profound alterations in the country's consciousness and behavior. Particularly influential were the Nixon- Kennedy campaign debates of 1960, broadcasts of the aftermath of Kennedy's assassination and funeral in 1963, the 1969 transmission of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, and the use of television at the end of the decade by civil rights and anti- Vietnam War leaders. The 1960s also gave rise to a descriptive expression sometimes used today when television is discussed. Speaking to the 1961 convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, John F. Kennedy's new FCC chair, Newton Minow, invited broadcasters to - "sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet, or ratings book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a *__________________*." Whether or not one agrees with Minow's assessment of television, then or now, there is no doubt that audiences continue to watch: -There are more than 123 million television households in the United States, 96% of all U.S. homes. -The average American watches television 32 hours and 1 minute a week. -Television reaches more adults each day than any other medium, and those people spend more time with television than with any other medium. -Traditional television watching accounts for 78% of all time spent with video. -70% of TV viewers admit to binge viewing, watching 5 or more episodes of a series in one sitting. There can be no doubt, either, that television is successful as an advertising medium: -Total annual billings for television are around $80 billion, with approximately 2/3 generated by broadcast and 1/3 by cable television. Together they collect 40% of all U.S. ad spending. -The average 30-second prime-time network television spot costs more than $300,000 (Sunday Night Football gets $673,664; spots on Empire run $437,100; 30 seconds on Star run $300,000). -Prime ad time on the February 2017 Patriots- Falcons Super Bowl broadcast cost a minimum of $5 million for 30 seconds, or more than $166,666 per second. Advertisers consider the annual Super Bowl broadcast "the single most important communication channel a marketer can exploit". -Television has the greatest reach of all ad-supported media, and consumers cite it as the medium most likely to influence their purchasing decisions.

90% born feature films; talk shows radio personalities powerful quiz show; "I Love Lucy"; McCarthyism; ratings cable

The 1950s: In 1952, 108 stations were broadcasting to 17 million television homes. By the end of the decade, there were 559 stations, and nearly ____% of U.S. households had televisions. In the 1950s more television sets were sold in the United States (70 million) than there were children _______ (40.5 million). The technical standards were fixed, stations proliferated and flourished, the public tuned in, and advertisers were enthusiastic. The content and character of the medium were set in this decade as well: -Carried over from the radio networks, television genres included variety shows, situation comedies, dramas (including Westerns and cop shows), soap operas, and quiz shows. -Two new formats appeared: ________________ and __________. -Talk shows were instrumental in introducing _______________________ to the television audience, which could see its favorites for the first time. -Television news and documentary remade broadcast journalism as a _______________ force in its own right, led by CBS's Edward R. Murrow (See It Now, 1951) and NBC's David Brinkley and Chet Huntley. -Huntley and Brinkley's 1956 coverage of the major political conventions gave audiences an early glimpse of the power of television to cover news and history in the making. -AT& T completed its national coaxial cable and microwave relay network for the distribution of television programming in the summer of 1951. -The entire United States was now within the reach of the major television networks, and they came to dominate the medium. 4 other events from the 1950s would permanently shape how television operated: -the ______________ scandal, -the appearance of ________________, -__________________, -establishment of the _____________ system. Another, in 1948, would permanently reshape the television industry. -That development, as you'll soon see, was ___________ television.

*community antenna television (CATV)* cable *importation of distant signals*

The Coming of Cable: In 1948 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, appliance sales representative John Walson was having trouble selling televisions. The Pocono Mountains sat between his town and Philadelphia's 3 new stations. But Walson was also a powerline worker, so he convinced his bosses to let him run a wire to his store from a tower he erected on New Boston Mountain. As more and more people became aware of his system, he began wiring the homes of customers who bought his sets. In June of that year, Walson had 727 subscribers for his *__________________________________* system. Although no one calls it CATV anymore, _______ television was born. The cable Walson used was a twin-lead wire, much like the cord that connects a lamp to an outlet. To attract even more subscribers, he had to offer improved picture quality. He accomplished this by using "coaxial cable" and self-manufactured boosters (or amplifiers). Coaxial cable — copper-clad aluminum wire encased in plastic foam insulation, covered by an aluminum outer conductor, and then sheathed in plastic — had more bandwidth than did twin-lead wire. As a result, it allowed more of the original signal to pass and even permitted Walson to carry a greater number of channels. With expanded bandwidth and new, powerful signal boosters developed by Milton Jerrold Shapp, who would later become Pennsylvania's governor, these systems began experimenting with the *_________________________________*, using wires not only to provide improved reception but also to offer a wider variety of programming. They began delivering independent stations from as far away as New York to fill their then-amazing 7 to 10 channels. By 1962, 800 systems were providing cable television to more than 850,000 homes. The industry today is composed of 5,208 individual cable systems delivering video to 53 million households, high-speed Internet to 61 million, and digital telephone to 31 million. The industry generates revenues of over $108 billion, with about 10% of that amount earned through advertising.

*off-network* Availability production; distribution; established audience

The Networks and Program Content: Networks control what appears on the vast majority of local television stations, but they also control what appears on non-network television, that is, when affiliates program their own content. In addition, they influence what appears on independent stations and on cable channels. This non-network material not only tends to be network-type programming but most often is programming that originally aired on the networks themselves (called *____________________* programs). Why do network and network-type content dominate television? ________________ is one factor. -There is 75 years' worth of already successful network content available for airing on local stations. A second factor is that the _______________ and ________________ mechanisms that have long served the broadcast networks are well _________________ and serve the newer outlets just as well as they did NBC, CBS, and ABC. The final reason is us, the ________________. -The formats we are most comfortable with— our television tastes and expectations— have been and continue to be developed on the networks.

50%; Netflix creative freedom

Whether or not our aspiring star will ever benefit from it, there is indeed quite a bit of action surrounding contemporary television and video. In the last few years, Netflix outbid established video giants HBO and AMC for "House of Cards", originally ordering two seasons for over $100 million. YouTube committed $100 million to commission original programming designed exclusively for some 2 dozen new channels. Online retailer Amazon commissions program pilots, offers them free to viewers who vote on which should be turned into full series, and then produces the winners for its Amazon Prime subscribers. Its show "Transparent" won a Golden Globe for Best TV series in 2015, and its star, Jeffrey Tambor, won Best Actor, both firsts for streaming television. Hulu Plus streams original shows like "Casual" and "The Handmaid's Tale". Viewers have enthusiastically taken to this new form of television— _______ of all U.S. households now subscribe to at least one of these services and the top 4 television series among 18- to 24-year-olds in 2016 were all from ___________. The "new" television also offers a great deal of ___________________ to those who produce its content. "It's much harder to bring innovation to network television because network television works as a strong corporate entity where change is maybe not as easily applied," explains House of Cards cinematographer Igor Martinovic. Streaming companies are "willing to experiment; they're willing to take chances".

World War II cable advertising

Yes, television is changing, and this chapter details that change, from early experiments with mechanical scanning to the electronic marvel that sits in our homes to the mobile screens we carry in our pockets. We trace the rapid transformation of television into a mature medium after _________________ and examine how the medium, the entire television industry in fact, was altered by the emergence and success of ________ television. And significant change is once again remaking what we currently know as television ... and what we once knew as the audience. All of us are now TV executives, choosing our programs and our schedules, no longer limited by what some distant network television executives think is the schedule that best serves their advertisers' needs. The remarkable reach of television— in all its forms— accounts for its attractiveness as an ________________ medium. We discuss this reach, and we explore the structure, programming, and economics of the television and cable industries. We consider new technologies, their convergence with television, and how they promise to change the interaction between the medium and its audiences. Finally, we discuss media literacy in terms of the role of satirical television news in the cultural forum.

live; 3 Hollywood; film; New York refused

"I LOVE LUCY" AND MORE CHANGES: In 1951 CBS asked Lucille Ball to move her hit radio program, "My Favorite Husband", to television. Lucy was willing but wanted her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, to play the part of her on-air spouse. The network refused (some historians say the network objected to the prime-time presentation of an interracial marriage— Desi Arnaz was Cuban— but CBS denies this). But Lucy made additional demands. Television programming at the time was broadcast ______: Images were typically captured by ___ large television cameras, with a director in a booth choosing among the 3 available images. Lucy wanted her program produced in the same manner— in front of a live audience with 3 simultaneously running cameras— but these cameras would be film cameras. Editors could then review the 3 sets of film and edit them together to give the best combination of action and reaction shots. Lucy also wanted the production to take place in _______________, the nation's _____ capital, instead of _______________, the television center at the time. CBS was uncertain about this departure from how television was typically produced and ______________ these requests as well.

Cable Television Consumer Protection and Consumer Act of 1992 *expanded basic cable* *Multiple system operators (MSO's)* *à la carte pricing*

Basic Cable Programming: In recognition of the growing dependence of the public on cable delivery of broadcast service as the spread of cable increased, Congress passed the _____________________________________. This law requires operators to offer a truly basic service composed of the broadcast station sin their area and their public access channels. Cable operators also offer another form of basic service, *___________________________*, composed primarily of local broadcast stations and services with broad appeal such as TBS, TNT, the USA Network, and Comedy Central. These networks offer a wide array of programming not unlike that found on the traditional, over-the-air broadcast networks. Ad-supported cable networks such as these want to be on cable's basic tiers because sponsors covet those large potential audiences. This is the dispute, for example, at the heart of the NFL Network's frequent battles with many of the nation's cable operators. Most operators want to put the network on a premium tier to attract more subscribers. NFL Network wants placement on basic cable where more viewers means more ad dollars. Because of concentration, operators are increasingly choosing to carry a specific basic channel because their owners (who have a financial stake in that channels) insist that they do. *__________________________________* are companies that own several cable franchises. -Time Warner owns truTV. -Comcast has an interest in numerous prime channels. -Viacom owns BET. Naturally, these networks are more likely to be carried by systems controlled by the MSOs that own them and are less likely to be carried by other systems. The long-standard concept of different pricing for different packages or tiers of channels is frequently under attack by the FCC and some members of Congress. Concerns over viewers' accidental access to unwanted, offensive content and rising cable prices are leading to calls for *______________________*-that is, paying for cable on a channel-by-channel basis. The industry itself is split on the issue, system operators versus programmers.

*digital video disc (DVD)*

DVD: In March 1996 the *_______________________*WENT ON SALE IN u.s. STORES. uSING A dvd, viewers can stop images with no loss of fidelity; can subtitle a movie in a number of languages; can search for specific scenes from an on-screen menu; and can access bonus features that give background on the movie, its production, and its personnel. Scenes and music not used in the theatrical release of a movie are often included on the disc. Innovations such as these made DVD at the time of its introduction the fastest-growing consumer electronic product of all time. DVD players now sit in about 50% of U.S. homes, down from 80% just a few years ago. Because of the many viewing options now available, DVD sales and rental have fallen dramatically for the last several years. In 2012, the number of online movie transactions (sales and rentals) exceeded the number of physical, that is disc, transactions for the first time, 3.4 billion to 2.4 billion; and in 2016, video streaming subscription revenues surpassed those from physical disc sales and rental for the first time. Despite its looming obsolescence, DVD served to further alter the relationship between television and its audiences. Viewers became accustomed to having greater control over what they watched, when they watched, and how they watched on a platform much more satisfying than the earlier VCR. In addition, people watching DVDs were viewers that broadcasters could not sell to advertisers, helping to erode television's dominance as an advertising medium.

*pilots* *put* *First-run syndication* *stripped*

How a Program Traditionally Gets on the Air: The national broadcast and cable networks look at about 4,000 proposals a year for new television series. Many, if not most, are submitted at the networks' invitation or instigation. Of the 4,000, about 90 will be filmed as *____________*, or trial programs, at a cost of $3 million for a 30-minute pilot to $7 million for an hour drama. Perhaps 20 to 30 will become one of the 400 scripted series on air at any time. The networks spend over $500 million a season to suffer this process. For this reason, they prefer to see ideas from producers with established track records and financial and organizational stability— for example, Jerry Bruckheimer is the source of CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, The Amazing Race, Cold Case, and Without a Trace in addition to nearly 20 other prime-time series aired in recent years. The way a program typically makes it onto the air differs somewhat for those who have been asked to submit an idea and for producers who bring their concepts to the networks. First, a producer has an idea, or a network has an idea and asks a proven producer to propose a show based on it (possibly offering a *________*, a deal that guarantees the producer that the network will order at least a pilot or have to pay a hefty penalty). The producer must then shop the idea to one of the networks; naturally, an invited producer submits the proposal only to the network that asked for it. In either case, if the network is persuaded, it buys the option and asks for a written outline in which the original idea is refined. If still interested, the network will order a full "script." If the network approves that script, it will order the production of a pilot. Pilots are then subjected to rigorous testing by the networks' own and independent audience research organizations. Based on this research, networks will often demand changes, such as writing out characters who tested poorly or beefing up story lines that test audiences particularly liked. If the network is still interested, that is, if it believes that the show will be a hit, it orders a set number of episodes and schedules the show. In television's early days, an order might be for 26 or 39 episodes. Today, however, because of escalating production costs, the convention is at first to order 6 episodes. If these are successful, a second order of 9 more is placed. Then, if the show is still doing well, a final 9 episodes (referred to as the back nine) will be commissioned. The reason television program producers participate in this expensive enterprise is that they can make large amounts of money in syndication, the sale of their programs to stations on a market-by-market basis. Even though the networks control the process from idea to scheduling and decide how long a show stays in their lineups, producers continue to own the rights to their programs. Once enough episodes are made (generally about 88, which is the product of 4 years on a network), producers can sell the syndicated package to the highest bidder in each of the 210 U.S. television markets, keeping all the revenues for themselves. This is the legacy of Lucille Ball's business genius (CBS still earns about $15 million a year from "I Love Lucy" syndication). The price of a syndicated program depends on the market size, the level of competition between the station in the market, and the age and popularity of the program itself. The station buys the rights to a specified number of plays, or airings. After that, the rights return to the producer to be sold again and again. A program that has survived at least 4 years on one of the networks has proven its popularity, has attracted a following, and has accumulated enough individual episodes so that local station can offer weeks of daily scheduling without too many repeats. In a word, it is a moneymaker. Paramount has already earned more than $2 billion from its syndication of "Frasier"; Warner Brothers collected more than $5.8 million an episode from its original syndication of "Friends" and today get $4 million an episode for "The Big Bang Theory", although it is still in its network run. So attractive is syndication's income potential, especially when coupled with the promise of profits from digital downloads, the sale of DVD collections, and pick up by streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, that the networks themselves have become their own producers (and therefore syndicators). In fact, the major broadcast networks now produce the vast majority of all the prime-time programming on their own and the top 20 cable networks. It is important to note that there is another form of syndicated programming. *_________________________*is programming produced specifically for sale into syndication on a market-by-market basis. It is attractive to producers because they don't have to run the gauntlet of the network programming process, and they keep 100% of the income. Game and talk shows, long staples of the business, have been joined by programs such as "Judge Judy", court shows distributed daily to hundreds of stations. They are inexpensive to make, inexpensive to distribute, and easily *______________* (broadcast at the same time 5 evenings a week). They allow an inexhaustible number of episodes with no repeats and are east to promote (for example, "Watch the case of the peeping landlord. Tune in at 5:30.") And despite the fact that the most-watched programs in history were all aired by the traditional television networks, the process by which programs now come to our screens is changing because the central position of networks in that process has been altered. Because they must compete with the streaming services, the networks are no longer the only game in town for top talent, so they themselves are increasingly offering producers more straight-to-series production deals. BNC's "The Good Place", Fox's "Son of Born", and ABC's "Designated Survivor" and "Somewhere Between" were beneficiaries of these arrangements. In addition, much quality programming gets to us not because a network elected to air it, but as you saw in this chapter's opening, because a streaming service asked its subscribers which shows they wanted to watch or simply paid quality artists to come work with them. For example, after rejection by the traditional network and cable channels, the producers of "House of Cards" approached Netflix. Kevin Spacey, the star of the show, said Netflix was the only network that told then, "We believe in you..."We don't need you to do a pilot. How many [episodes] do you wanna do? Netflix alone spends more than $5 billion a year on original programming, triple HBO's outlay, and requires no pilots. Of course, all this change is the product of the introduction of new technologies-cable, VCT, DVD, digital video recorders, satellite, the Internet and digitization, and smartphones-that have upset the long-standing relationship between medium and audience. Convergence is also reshaping that relationship.

*subscription TV* DirecTV; Dish Network *cord-cutting* *cord-nevers* *over-the-top (OTT)* *zero-TV homes*

Premium Cable: As the FCC lifted restrictions on cable's freedom to import distant signals and to show current movies, HBO grew and was joined by a host of other satellite-delivered pay networks. Today, among the most familiar and popular premium cable networks are HBO, Showtime, Sundance Channel, and Cinemax. In addition to freedom from regulatory constraint, 2 important programming discoveries ensured the success of the new premium channels. After television's early experiments with over-the-air *__________________________* failed, many experts believed people simply would not pay for television. So the first crucial discovery was that viewers would indeed pay for packages of contemporary, popular movies. These movie packages would be sold less expensively than could films bought one at a time, and viewers were willing to be billed on a monthly basis for the whole package rather than pay for each viewing. The second realization boosting the fortunes of the premium networks was the discovery that viewers not only did not mind repeats (as many did with over-the-air television) but welcomed them as a benefit of paying for the provider's slate of films. Premium channel owners were delighted. Replaying content reduced their programming costs and solved the problem of how to fill all those hours of operation. Premium services come in 2 forms: movie channels (HBO, Starz!, and encore, for example) that offer packages of new and old movies along with big sports and other special events--all available for one monthly fee--and pay-per-view channels, through which viewers choose from a menu of offerings (almost always of very new movies and very big sporting events) and pay a fee for the chosen viewing. People enjoy premium channels in the home for their ability to present unedited and uninterrupted movies and other content not usually found on broadcast channels--for example, adult fare, championship boxing, ultimate fighting, and wrestling. Increasingly, however, that "content not usually found on broadcast channels" often consists not of movies and sports but of high-quality serial programming--content unencumbered by the need to attract the largest possible audience possessing a specific set of demographics. Premium cable series such as "Game of Thrones", "Westworld", "Veep", "Homeland", "Curb Your Enthusiasm", and "Power" attract large and loyal followings. The other dominant multichannel service is direct broadcast satellite. (DBS). First available to the public in 1994, it has brought cable's subscriber growth to a standstill because, from the viewer's perspective, what is on a DBS-supplied screen differs little from what is on a cable-supplied screen. DBS in the U.S. is dominated by 2 companies, ___________ (owned by AT&T) and ) ________________. DirecTV has 25.3 million subscribers; Dish Network has 13.9 million. These 2 companies, along with Verizon's fiber optic FiOS-TV and its 4.7 million subscribers, have recently been peeling away subscribers from cable. Look at the list of the 10 largest pay-TV services. -Note that Dish and DirecTV are among that soup. But, DBS providers, like other MSOs, face the troubling problem of *____________________*, viewers leaving cable and DBS altogether and relying on Internet-only television viewing. From 2011 to 2016, cable lost 6.7 million subscribers, and more than 1/4 of Millenials report never having subscribed to cable, that is, they are *____________________*. Much of this decline is attributed to what the industry calls *_____________________* television, delivery of video without the involvement of an MSO, as in "over (avoiding) the set-top box." Because of OTT, which also make skinny bundles possible, the number of *_____________________*, those with sets that receive neither over-the-air nor cable/satellite television, now account for 6% of all TV homes, including 13% of homes with 18-34-year-olds. Look again at the "Top 10 Pay-TV Services". -You'll notice that there were 2 non-MSO services, Netflix and Hulu, among the country's top 10 providers of pay television in 2017. One OTT, Netflix, was number one by a very wide margin.

radio; television A. C. Nielsen Company radio; television *Global Television Audience Metering (GTAM) meter* actively; passively programs; who; time *nonlinear TV* *L + 7* *C3* TV; internet; mobile video commercials all Total Content Ratings drop *share* all time

THE NIELSEN RATINGS: The concept of measuring audience was carried over from _______ to _______________, but the ratings as we know them today are far more sophisticated. The _______________________ began in 1923 as a product-testing company but soon branched into market research. In 1936 Nielsen started reporting ________ ratings and was doing the same for _________________ by 1950. To produce the ratings today, Nielsen selects 41,000 households, about 100,000 people, thought to be representative of the entire U.S. viewing audience. To record data on what people in those TV households are watching, Nielsen employs the *________________________________*, which __________ (requiring viewer input) and _______________ (automatically reading digital codes embedded in video content) measures viewing as people, with increasing mobility, consume video on a growing array of technologies. The data are then sent to Nielsen via the Internet, and the company determines the ________________ watched, _______ watched them, and the amount of _______ each viewer spent with them. But the same convergence that required the development of the GTAM meter is upsetting the business of audience measurement in many ways. In fact, many television and advertising people see the ratings as worthless, "a relic of television's rabbit-ears past" on which more than $70 billion in ad money a year is traded. To present a fuller picture of a show's total audience by accounting for multiplatform and *_________________* viewing (people watching on their own schedules), many broadcasters are calling for a new rating that measures a program's 7-day performance, called *_________*, for live plus 7 days of viewing. With this ratings system, a single episode of Fox's Empire, for example, sees its ratings among coveted 18- to 49-year-old viewers boosted by 2.3%; CBS's Big Bang Theory gets a 2.2% bump. The 4 major broadcast networks believe that a truer measure of their viewership will show the much-discussed falloff in its prime-time audience to be something of a fiction. Nielsen has responded with several fixes, including its *______ rating*, counting audiences across 3 screens— _______ (original airing plus DVR), ____________, and ________________. The "3" (and for the occasional C7, the "7") represents the viewing of the _____________________ that appear in a specific program within 3 days (or 7) of its premiere telecast. Facing pressure from competitor ComScore, who can measure viewing across ______ screens, stationary and mobile, from more than 10 million homes, even to the extent that it can count viewing of individual Web videos, Nielsen rolled out its _________________________ in 2017. The new measure captures all viewing across all possible devices, including traditional TV, video-on-demand, DVR playback, Internet-connected devices like Roku, Xbox, and Apple TV, smartphones, desktop computers, laptops, and tablets. Nonetheless, there remains great dissatisfaction with Nielsen's ratings, leading many networks to augment them with their own measures, for example levels of Twitter activity and other social network metrics. Some networks have gone as far as to ______ Nielsen altogether, most notably cable channel CNBC. Still, as it has been from the earliest days of television, the Nielsens remain the coin of the realm, that is, they are, despite their limitations, the agreed-upon currency on which the vast majority of television advertising sales are based. Another important measure of television's audience is its *_______*, which is a direct reflection of a particular show's competitive performance. Share doesn't measure viewers as a percentage of _____ television households (as do the ratings). -Instead, the share measures a program audience as a percentage of the television sets in use at the ______ it airs. -It tells us what proportion of the actual audience a program attracts, indicating how well a particular program is doing on its given night, in its time slot, and against its competition. For example, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon normally gets a rating of around .8— terrible by prime-time standards— but because it airs when fewer homes are tuned in, its share of 5 (5% of the homes with sets in use) is quite respectable.

*time-shifting* *zipping*

VCR: Introduced commercially in 1976, videocassette recorders (VCRs) quickly became common in American homes but were declared dead in 2016 as the last manufacturer, Japan's Funai Electronics, ceased production. Still, in its prime, this technology further eroded the audience for traditional over-the-air television, as people, for the first time, could now watch rented and purchased videos on their own schedules. VCR also introduced the public to *_____________________*, taping a show for later viewing, and *_______________*, fast-forwarding through taped commercials. As a result, people became comfortable with, and in fact came to expect, more control over when, what, and how they watched television.