On Television
FRANK, REUVEN
On TElevision FOR NOW IT'S STILL THE OLD NETWORKS BY REUVEN FRANK THE HERALDED demise of the major networks has apparently been postponed again. First signs of new life could be discerned as...
...The picture will keep changing...
...First signs of new life could be discerned as early as last October, when Advertising Age noted that after four successive years of declining prime time ratings during premiere week, in 1993 premiere week registered a gain...
...But even the most widely watched cable service, USA Network, attains less than an average of 1.5 million homes in prime time...
...Interactive" seems to boil down to movies on demand, catalog shopping of a rather low-end sort, and video games—which, it has been hinted, could be used for gambling...
...In fact, only environmentalists scored higher than the media in being judged a good influence...
...Environmentalists...
...put too much emphasis on negative news...
...Think of two funerals, John F. Kennedy's and Richard M. Nixon's, and imagine how public participation in such events will be accomplished in an era of 500 channels...
...One point, though, is clear: Most of whatever is coming will cost money...
...Majorities in the eight countries appreciated the media's watchdog role and thought it kept politicians honest...
...It further should be noted that the cable people entered a demurrer when Nielsen published the figures I have cited...
...Some had seen their new bosses as mere asset-strippers, ready to slash costs and squeeze out every last penny of revenue left in the supposedly dying institutions before casting them aside to make way for those about to be thrown up by the pending Communications Revolution...
...NBC News'rigging the pictures of abuming General Motors truck was deemed typical of what the media did to get news (see "The Camera Never Lies," NL, April 5-19,1993...
...To coin a Yogi Berraism, however, until it happens it ain't happened...
...The greatest number of complaints about privacy being invaded were directed at British newspapers, no doubt a response to the British tabloids' treatment of the royal family and its problems...
...The old networks' 61 per cent of the TV audience, although not the 90 per cent it once was, is still in a different league...
...It is not unlikely that in time networks will die?or they will be so numerous it will amount to the same thing...
...Several movie companies are setting up small networks, but their affiliates will come primarily from the present unaffiliated independents and will have little effect on viewer totals...
...More people on both sides of the Atlantic said newspapers and television were a good influence than said that about trade unions, national legislatures, business leaders, or—except in Mexico?churches and religious authorities...
...But, equally, many welcome the end of networks, being sure despite all logic or evidence that the value systems of their replacements will be better...
...This year's said the media, in eight countries no less, were trusted more than other fundamental institutions...
...And there was every sign that advertisers agreed...
...This survey asked respondents to rank the media against other important institutions, specifically their government and the church...
...In the United States 73 per cent of the respondents said TV news was believable, 68 per cent said the same for newspapers, 60 for the church, and 49 for the "nation's leader...
...Thus it appears that subscribers to cable use it most often to watch major networks and the other "over-the-air" stations...
...The remaining 17 per cent was shared among the recently somewhat enlarged Fox network, public television, wholly independent broadcast stations, and the pay-cable channels like HBO and Showtime...
...Last year, a media critic could cite polls by Yankelovich, Harris and Gallup as charting a steady drop in viewer confidence...
...The big three boasted aloud that only free television, especially free network television, could assemble audiences of such magnitude...
...The formal end of the 1993-94 season saw their prime time audience totals grow slightly, from 60 to 61 per cent, and for the first time ever each posted a gain...
...More of these, of varying size and complexity, are in the works...
...Viacom did actually assume control of Paramount, yet even here the on-again, off-again participation of Blockbuster Video keeps altering the nature and size of the new entity...
...Moreover, relatively speaking, today the old networks are trusted...
...There are many fascinating sidelights in the Times Mirror Center's study...
...Besides, this is a different kind of conglomeration, involving a distributing company seeking to ensure it has something to distribute if and when things change...
...Basic cable totaled just 22 per cent...
...But this season broadcasters and corporate owners alike, in addition to basking in their entertainment programs' resurgent ratings and rising profits, were buoyed by the most watched Winter Olympics in history—thanks to Tonya Harding...
...Italy at 67 per cent and Spain at 65 were lowest...
...These findings were more focused and quantified, but they corresponded to what students and critics of the media were saying, what intelligent viewers and readers believed, in short, the conventional wisdom...
...Meanwhile, the most overreported news story of 1993, about the impact of the 500 TV channels that would soon be in every home, has faded into the background...
...Almost exactly a year later, the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, a highly respected independent research organization financed by the corporation that owns the Los Angeles Times, did a careful, detailed evaluation of electronic and print journalism in eight countries—the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, and Spain...
...CNN, which truly has changed our times, has done so with an average prime time American audience of barely half a million homes...
...In each of the eight countries, television news programs were judged more believable than the newspapers, government or church...
...nevertheless, it was singled out as untrustworthy, malicious and scurrilous...
...For example, those who, like me, have been blaming diminishing American interest in foreign news on the networks' current budget-cutting, profit-hungry constraints are in for a shock: The situation is no different in the other seven countries, regard-less of whether TV news budgets have been cut...
...Many bemoan the disappearance of a forum for shared national experience unparalleled in American history...
...Advertising trade papers continue to give a good deal of space to the problems and opportunities expected with the emergence of "interactive" television, but the laity seems to have decided it doesn't much care...
...If the survey is placed alongside the one done a year earlier, it becomes obvious that it is not so much the media, or a particular medium, but our public institutions that have suffered a decline of people's confidence...
...The highest television news rating was scored in Germany, with 90 per cent, followed by Britain, with 85...
...The biggest of them was the arranged merger of TCI, the country's largest and wealthiest cable conglomerate, and Bell Atlantic, the giant among the "Baby Bell" regional telephone companies born when Federal Judge Harold Greene broke up AT&T...
...The public, to the degree it cared, thought the same...
...Anational poll taken by the Los Angeles Times in April 1993 found majorities agreeing that the media "look out mainly for powerful people...
...Between the Winter Olympics and the confusion caused by recent technical realignments of cable channels in many areas, they argued, their audience share was less than it normally would be...
...We are left with the following...
...Why that merger was abruptly called off has never been explained adequately for the casual newspaper reader...
...Executives at all three networks had maintained an air of gloom and foreboding in the dozen or so years since the takeovers by new proprietors...
...Only in Spain and Mexico did less than 70 per cent watch television news...
...Newspapers had their highest readership levels in Germany and Britain, with Canada eking a bare majority and the United States 49 per cent...
...They opposed censorship and other news controls when the question was put in the abstract, but favored limiting depictions of unnecessary violence or—except in Italy and Spain—explicit sex...
...Where television is concerned, one of the reasons for the last perception is showing the questioning as well as the answers—not simply the story but how it was obtained...
...The endless expositions in newspapers and magazines have not made the "information superhighway" understandable to consumers...
...This, too, flies in the face of widely held belief, supported by past public opinion polls...
...The similarity of the responses was astonishing...
...That is not an especially happy situation, yet it is something quite different, and broader than unhappiness with the news purveyors...
...True, the previous samplings lumped television with the rest of the media...
...This had to do mostly with news, but that is the public face of television: News defines networks...
...Of course, technology is moving ahead, albeit at a disconcerting pace...
...Last year's survey said the media, including television, were little trusted...
...The three old networks are here to stay—for a while...
...The season has also been marked by the dribbling away of the great corporate upheavals set in motion to accommodate totally changed landscapes of information and entertainment...
...Some advances have been, in the classic turn of phrase, solutions without problems, but others will speak to a need or want a lot of people are willing to pay for...
...If both surveys are right, we live in a time when all institutions are distrusted, but television almost the least...
...Respondents in all eight countries felt the media were biased, sensational and guilty of invasion of privacy...
...Unfortunately, the sex item dominated most of the newspaper and magazine reporting of the survey when it was released...
...don't worry very much about hurting people...
...On the other hand, that's how Fox started...
Vol. 77 • May 1994 • No. 5
