Description
Please carefully review the guidelines below:
1. Double space, use 12 pt. Times New Roman font and MLA formatting for your
sources.
2. Insert the word count after each question. Include any citations at the end of each
response. Points will be deducted if citations are not included or cited properly.
3. Cut and paste the question prompt onto your document, but do not include it in your
word count.
4. Avoid filler; get right to answering the question.
5. Work alone. Do not use AI/ChatGPT, the ideas of others, or “borrow” ideas you find
elsewhere. (All work will be subjected to a plagiarism review.)
6. Make sure to cite any sources including textbooks or other readings that you reference,
in the body of your answer (using in-text citations). While I encourage you to engage
with your notes and ideas from class discussion, do not use quote class discussions or use
notes as a source. For instance, avoid writing “as we said in class. . .” Develop ideas we
have explored in class and build your own analysis from them.
7. Please do not paraphrase. Use direct quotes. Paraphrasing often leads to plagiarism.
8. Make sure to provide analysis and think critically, again, go beyond what we have
may have explored in class.
9. Provide context/evidence/analysis from television shows, or documentaries we have
watched, whenever possible. Re-watching a show/film may be very helpful.
10. I strongly suggest that you outline your answers to the question prompts first to make
sure that you address what it is asking in depth. This is also important because your
answer should be well-written and have a clear structure (an intro, body, conclusion).
11. Make sure that there is no repetition, in other words, no parts of one response should
appear in another response—no double dipping.
12. Only use academic sources. This includes books, scholarly journals, newspapers, and
magazines, primarily. To search for sources, the library databases JSTOR and Project
Muse may be particularly helpful.
Grading Guidelines
The points you receive for each response are based on the following criteria:
-Following all the guidelines I’ve spelled out above.
-Effective usage of language/mechanics/structure. Please proofread!
-Answering the question with precision and clarity. No filler!
-Including research, when required, and proper citation of any sources, including in-text
citations, and full citations at the end of your response.
-Evidence of critical thinking on your part, that is, the degree to which your response
provides analysis and description.
Question Prompts ~ (Please read them carefully.)
Respond to 3 of the 4 prompts. Each response is worth a maximum of 34/33/33 points each for a
total of 100 points. Each response should be between 3 and no more than 4 pages. Remember to
include in-text citations and a full list of citations used at the end of each response.
1. TV As an Archive (Sources required)
We discussed the notion of TV as an archive at length. Describe some of the different
ways that television acts as an archive. Consider terms like preservation, nostalgia,
history, and power among other relevant concepts. Identify specific ways in which TV
has been archived and what we might learn when observing the practices of TV
archiving and the archival collections themselves. Also consider the various forms that a
TV archive might take. Be specific and use sources to support your argument/discussion.
2. TV Style and Genre (Sources required)
What is meant by style and how is style interwoven with genre? Define style and genre
then move on to providing analysis of a specific genre we have discussed and an example
of a show that we have watched. Discuss how the show’s relationship between formal
elements, style, and its generic conventions. You could also discuss one additional show
in the genre you have discussed that we have not seen, but this is not necessary.
3. The Evolution of Women in Television (Sources required)
Over many weeks we have discussed a number of influential women in television and
some of the readings and documentaries have expanded our understanding of the many
different roles that women have played in television. Provide a historical account of the
impact of some of these women and the roles they have played as creators/producers,
writers, audiences etc. You cannot account for every bit of this history in three to four
pages but find a compelling angle to approach this topic.
4. TV and Spectacle (Sources encouraged)
For this prompt I want you to think critically about the many ways in which television
functions as spectacle. Consider and define the meaning of spectacle and what it means to
look at, to be attracted to looking and the implications of the visual attributes of TV.
Select specific shows or images which highlight television’s power to draw us in and
make us look, and images or shows which have created or used visual spectacles to
attract our attention. You might also consider how the show or image you analyze has
made an impact on television or our social discourse.
I have also attached few fills for additional understanding and reading
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Television
For over two decades, Television has served as the foremost guide to television studies,
offering readers an in-depth understanding of how television programs and commercials are
made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the
ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce
meanings that viewers take away from their television experience.
Highlights of the fifth edition include:
An entirely new chapter by Amanda D. Lotz on television in the contemporary digital
media environment.
Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in screen culture during
the on-demand era, including the impact of binge-watching and the proliferation of
screens (smartphones, tablets, computer monitors, etc.).
Updates on the effects of new digital technologies on TV style.
Jeremy G. Butler is Professor of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of
Alabama. He has taught television, film, and new media courses since 1980 and is active in
online educational resources for television and film studies.
2
Television
Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture
Fifth Edition
Jeremy G. Butler
with a contribution from Amanda D. Lotz
3
Fifth edition published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jeremy G. Butler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published 1994 by Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Fourth edition published 2012 by Routledge.
The LIFE magazine photograph on the cover illustrates the variety of channels that were
available to “community antenna TV” (CATV) subscribers in 1966. CATV was the first form of
“cable television” in the U.S. and would eventually lead to the vast profusion of cable channels
in the 1990s. In turn, the proliferation of cable networks came to disrupt the dominance of
over-the-air broadcast networks—a harbinger of future upheaval caused by on-demand
streaming services. Photo credit: Arthur Schatz.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Butler, Jeremy G., 1954– author. | Lotz, Amanda D., 1974– author.
Title: Television : visual storytelling and screen culture / Jeremy G. Butler ; with a
contribution from Amanda D. Lotz.
Description: Fifth edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038602 | ISBN 9781138744004 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138743960 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Television—Psychological aspects. | Television—Semiotics. | Television
broadcasting—United States. | Television criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1992.6 .B86 2018 | DDC 302.23/45—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038602
4
ISBN: 978-1-138-74400-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-74396-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-18129-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Interstate
by Apex CoVantage, LLC.
Visit the companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/butler
5
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I
Television Structures and Systems
1 An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems: Ebb and Flow in the Network
Era
Television’s Not-So-Distant Past: The Network Era
Polysemy, Heterogeneity, Contradiction
Interruption and Sequence
Segmentation
Summary
Further Readings
2 Television in the Contemporary Media Environment
AMANDA D. LOTZ
Internet-Distributed Television: Digital Endemic and Legacy Media
But I Don’t Have a TV
We Can All Make Television
Summary
Further Readings
3 Narrative Structure: Television Stories
The Theatrical Film
The Television Series
The Television Serial
Transmedia Storytelling and Binge-Watching
Summary
Further Readings
4 Building Narrative: Character, Actor, Star
6
Building Characters
A Typology of Character Signs
Building Performances
A Typology of Performance Signs
Strategies of Performance
The Star System?
Summary
Further Readings
5 Beyond and Beside Narrative Structure
Television’s Reality
Television’s Reality: Forms and Modes
Television’s Reality: Genres
Summary
Further Readings
6 The Television Commercial
U.S. Linear-TV’s Economic Structure
The Polysemy of Commodities
The Persuasive Style of Commercials
Summary: “Capitalism in Action”
Further Readings
Part II
Television Style: Image and Sound
7 An Introduction to Television Style: Modes of Production
Single-Camera Mode of Production
Multiple-Camera Mode of Production
Hybrid Modes of Production
Summary
Further Readings
8 Style and Setting: Mise-en-Scene
Set Design
Costume Design
Lighting Design
Actor Movement
Summary
Further Readings
9 Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography
7
Basic Optics: The Camera Lens
Image Definition and Resolution
Color and Black-and-White
Framing
Aspect Ratio
In-Camera Visual Effects
Summary
Further Readings
10 Style and Editing
The Single-Camera Mode of Production
The Multiple-Camera Mode of Production
Continuity Editing and Hybrid Modes of Production
Summary
Further Readings
11 Style and Sound
Types of Television Sound
Audio’s Mode of Production
Purposes of Sound on Television
Acoustic Properties and Sound Technology
Space, Time, and Narrative
Summary
Further Readings
Part III
Television Studies
12 An Introduction to Television Studies
Critical Research and Television
Further Readings
13 Textual Analysis
Television Authorship
Style and Stylistics
Genre Study
Semiotics
Summary
Further Readings
14 Discourse and Identity
8
Ideological Criticism and Cultural Studies
The Discourse of the Industry I: Production Studies
The Discourse of the Industry II: Political Economy
Discourse and Identity I: Gender
Discourse and Identity II: Queer Theory
Discourse and Identity III: Race and Ethnicity
Summary
Further Readings
Appendix I: Sample Analyses and Exercises
Appendix II: Mass Communication Research
Glossary
Index
9
Preface
Should we take television seriously?
Should we take television seriously as a cultural or aesthetic medium, as a text capable of
producing meaning? Should we take The Real Housewives of Orange County seriously? Should
we commission studies on The Wire’s visual style? Should an interpretation of the discourse of
The Beverly Hillbillies be permitted in an academic journal? And, most pertinent to this book,
should there be college courses on these programs? Should The Simpsons be allowed in today’s
syllabi?
Yes, we should study television in school. And, yes, we should take television seriously.
Why? Because television provides meanings, many meanings, as it entertains. There is little
doubt that it is the predominant meaning-producing and entertainment medium of the past 70
years. As such it demands our scrutiny. In order to dissect the pleasures and meanings that
television affords us, we need an understanding of how narrative is structured, and how
commercials persuade, and how sets are designed, and how the camera positions the viewer’s
perspective, and how sound interacts with image.
Television: Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture (formerly subtitled Critical Methods and
Applications) supplies the student with a whole toolbox of implements to disassemble
television. It explains how television works, how television programs and commercials are
made, and how they function as fertile producers of meanings. Television does not attempt to
teach taste or aesthetics. It is less concerned with evaluation than with interpretation. It resists
asking, “Is The Bachelor great art?” Instead, it poses the question, “What meanings does The
Bachelor signify and how does it do so?” To answer this question brings viewers closer to
understanding television as a meaning-producing phenomenon and thus helps them stay
afloat in a sea of frequently contradictory meanings.
The form of analysis stressed here asks the viewer, first, to explore the structures of
narrative, non-narrative, and commercial television material. Second, Television questions
how those structures emphasize certain meanings (and repress others) to viewers, who
approach television with many varying understandings of how the world works. And third, it
considers how television’s images and sounds work together to create its programs,
commercials, and assorted on-screen flotsam and jetsam. Thus, this textbook works from the
very concrete (light and shadow on an illuminated screen, accompanied by sound) to the very
abstract (discourses on many aspects of the human experience)—and back again.
Accordingly, Part I of this textbook introduces the student to the principles organizing
television’s narrative, non-narrative, and commercial content and the industrial organization
of network-era TV and today’s on-demand media. Part II explains how that content is
10
communicated to the viewer through the medium’s style—its manipulation of image and
sound. And it accounts for how the American TV industry generates that style through two
main modes of production: single-camera and multiple-camera. Part III departs from
Television’s consideration of television texts to survey the critical approaches—the methods of
television studies—that have been applied to the medium. This part of the book first grounds
the student in methods of analyzing programs themselves and then outlines methods of
examining how TV’s meanings are received by viewers and produced by TV-industry
workers. Additionally, Appendix I provides guidance for writing papers about TV. It outlines
how the principles of textual analysis that are developed over the previous chapters may be
applied to a specific program. Appendix II discusses approaches to television from socialscientific or empirical methods, which contrast with the television-studies approach advocated
in the bulk of the book.
Television’s first edition was written during the year that websites evolved from a relatively
primitive, text-only format to one that accommodated images and sounds (1993, when the
Mosaic browser was released). We’re excited about the possibilities for TV analysis that online
platforms provide, and we’ve developed a companion website for Television at tvcrit.com.
Here you’ll find sample student analyses, color versions of all the illustrations (larger than
reproduced in print, too), and many additional television materials that cannot fit between the
covers of a book—specifically, audio and video clips. Parts of the site are reserved for
Television users and require the following account name and password:
Account name: tvcrit
Password: tvcrit4u
Television, this book, was born of the author’s frustration as a teacher of television studies
in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many television textbooks from that era deal with the history
and structure of television as an industry, but few offer students a way to analyze that
industry’s products from a critical perspective. Other TV textbooks emphasize the “nuts-andbolts” of video production (how to operate cameras, microphones, and the like) to the extent
that they seldom have space to consider television meanings and how they are generated by
those nuts-and-bolts. Textbooks that do address television analysis as part of “mass
communication” research and theory rely largely upon empirical methods drawn from
psychology and sociology. They often neglect the issue of critical interpretation.
Aside from Appendix II, Television does not engage extensively with the masscommunication research tradition. Instead, its authors draw upon nonempirical models for
their inspiration. Much of Television will look familiar, for example, to readers who have
encountered film-studies textbooks. Moreover, Television also bears the marks of nonempirical
disciplines such as literary criticism, semiotics (the study of signs and meaning), and
ideological criticism. It refers to these approaches where appropriate, but the authors are
concerned above all else to analyze television as television and not as a test case for a
particular research method. As such, this textbook fits within the still developing field of
“television studies”—a label that was firmly established in the early 2000s with the publication
of about a dozen books with it in their titles (see p. 311 for specific titles). The core principles
of television studies remain a bit fuzzy, but Part III will attempt to bring them into focus.
This, the fifth edition of Television (prepared 2017–18), arrives at a time when screen culture
11
is evolving rapidly. For many viewers, especially younger ones, the smartphone has become
the screen with which they spend the most time—sometimes supplanting the old-fashioned TV
set in front of the living room couch and sometimes serving as a second screen that can
distract from or enhance what’s on that TV set. We live in a time of a plenitude of screens: one
constantly in our pocket, one in the living room, one in the doctor’s waiting room, a dozen in
the sports bar, and on and on. The programming on all these screens is sometimes unique to
one technology, the way that Snapchat only works on phones; or, it can slide from one screen
to another, the way a humorous monologue on TV monitors later shows up on your
smartphone. Our 4K television sets can offer us a visual experience rivaling a movie theater,
and smart TVs can provide an interactive user interface much like a desktop computer. Our
phones can amuse us with cat videos, but they can also tell us the weather, entice us to play
games, allow us to communicate with our friends via social media, or play us the latest tune
from Beyoncé. Screen technology in the twenty-first century continues to mutate, blurring the
functions of specific devices and offering possibilities that at times seem endless.
This is not just a time of great technological shifts. There have also been huge changes in
the economics of television—particularly in the United States. The broadcast networks are
under siege from online, video-on-demand (VOD) portals such as Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.
These VOD systems have significantly disrupted old broadcasting models by providing new
ways for getting storytelling video from a producer to a viewer. It is obvious that conventional
television no longer commands our attention as it did from the 1950s to the 1970s. Some critics
have even proclaimed an end to the “broadcast era” or “network era” of television, but the
mode of production associated with broadcast television is far from dead. Despite the
appearance of television programs on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, the
distribution of television via over-the-air or cable/satellite networks is still the engine that
powers the television machine. Television originated as a commercial, network medium in the
years after World War II and will continue to have an impact as such for the foreseeable
future. Just how much longer this will hold true is currently the subject of much speculation.
Television does not pretend to be a comprehensive guide to deconstructing everything that
appears on a video screen. No single volume could. We spend little time, for example, on video
gaming or the cultural discourse on social media. Rather, we here emphasize storytelling with
sound and image as it originated in the cinema and network-era television and as it remains,
perhaps surprisingly healthy, on streaming services. Television helps students understand
television’s various manifestations, emphasizing the ever-present, ever-flowing, network-era
television system and its many descendants.
12
New to the Fifth Edition
Readers familiar with previous editions will note the following changes:
An entirely new chapter by Amanda D. Lotz on television in the contemporary media
environment.
Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in screen culture during
the on-demand era, including the impact of binge-watching and the proliferation of
screens (smartphones, tablets, computer monitors, etc.).
Updates on the effects of new digital technologies on TV style.
The online availability of previously eliminated “special-topics” chapters: “A History of
Television Style” (tvcrit.com/find/history), “Music Television” (tvcrit.com/find/musictv),
and “Animated Television” (tvcrit.com/find/animation).
Additional video examples, to which short links are provided.
Dozens of newly added or updated still illustrations—eliminating ones from shows no
longer generally available and incorporating new ones from recent shows.
13
Acknowledgments
Blaine Allan and Gary Copeland each wrote a Television chapter that appeared in previous
editions, but their contributions to this project go far beyond that. They were there for the
original conceptualization of the project, helped shepherd it through various drafts and
rewrites, furnished key examples when my mind went blank, and generally illustrated just
how collegial colleagues can be. Daniel Goldmark stepped up and rewrote much of the
“Animated Television” chapter for the third edition.
I thank my original editor, Linda Bathgate, for her diligence in bringing this project to
fruition and for supporting it through multiple editions and Erica Wetter for assuming editing
duties on the current edition. I am also grateful to Routledge for its continuing efforts in the
area of television studies.
Several persons read and provided useful comments on previous editions: David Bordwell,
Jim Castonguay, Brent Davis, Maureen Furniss, Carolyn Hales, Chad Harriss, Michele Hilmes,
Lynne Joyrich, Chuck Kleinhans, Tara McPherson, Ellen Seiter, Greg Stroud, Lang Thompson,
Robert M. Young, Kristen Warner, Mark J. P. Wolf, and Shuhua Zhou. Among the televisionindustry workers I have consulted are Tom Azzari, Tom Cherones, Aaron Greer, Dean
Holland, Ken Kwapis, Michael Laibson, Chuck Meyers, Bryan C. Fails, Michael Parnes, and
Craig Pettigrew. I am grateful for all of their time and insights.
The Center for Public Television and Radio at the University of Alabama; its current
director, Elizabeth Brock; and its former director, Tom Rieland, graciously assisted with the
preparation of illustrations. Videographer Preston Sullivan set up several illustrative shots,
with the help of Brent Davis, Dawn Haskew, Jim Holliman, Glen Richard, and Jason Ruha.
Additionally, Catherine May assisted with photographs of a CPT&R editing suite, with
accompanying screen shots.
Most screen shots in this book were created by digitally capturing individual frames from
videotapes, DVDs, video files, Blu-ray discs, and mobile devices (as technology has marched
on). Barry Smith ably assisted in this task originally. Details on the process are provided in a
tutorial on tvcrit.com. Nathan Dains (and his son) kindly provided a screen shot from
Pokémon Go. Other illustrations were created by Laura Lineberry (drawings), and Rickey
Yanaura (photographs). Our narrative charts were inspired by a diagram created by Victoria
Costley. Figure 5.9 is courtesy of MTV. Figure 9.51 is courtesy of The Weather Channel and
photographer Richard Grant. The STEADICAM® photo in Figure 9.37 is courtesy of The
Tiffen Company. STEADICAM® is a registered trademark of The Tiffen Company. Tables 6.2
and 7.1 are courtesy of Nielsen Media Research. Figures 8.28–8.30 are courtesy of Steven
DiCasa, co-founder of Rethink Films.
14
Rosemary McMahill diligently compiled the glossary for the first edition and also provided
valuable assistance with the word processing of the manuscript.
My students at the University of Alabama were the first to be exposed to this text, while
still a manuscript. I thank them for their patience in dealing with Television in photocopied
form—missing an illustration here and there and lacking a binding that would properly hold it
together for a 15-week semester. Their responses and comments helped make this a much
more readable book.
Not all support for this book was academic. Jeremy, Penelope, and Reid Butler took me
under their wings during Television’s initial development—allowing me the privilege of
writing time unfettered by concerns of room and board. Marysia Galbraith supports my
writing efforts in so many ways, even though my love of Rick and Morty perplexes her. My
14-year-old son’s interest in Overwatch gameplay videos on YouTube reminds me on a daily
basis that “television,” if we can call it that, is not the television with which I grew up. And
that’s mostly for the best. During the time since the last edition, my mother and father passed
away. He was a part-time announcer for KBUN-AM radio in the 1950s and she was one of
Arizona’s first women sports reporters in the 1970s, at the Arizona Republic. Clearly, media
are in my DNA because of them. This edition of Television is therefore dedicated to Jeremy E.
and Penelope W. Butler.
15
Part I
Television Structures and Systems
16
1 An Introduction to Television Structures and
Systems
Ebb and Flow in the Network Era
Television is dead. According to various pundits, it was killed by cable TV and the VCR in the
1980s; by the Internet and video games in the 1990s; by Netflix, TiVo, and the iPod in the
2000s; and by smartphones and the iPad in the 2010s.
Considering its multiple deaths, television’s corpse is remarkably active. The “television
household universe,” to use a TV-rating term, still contains 118.4 million homes in the United
States—accounting for 96 percent of all U.S. households.1 Perhaps surprisingly, the number of
TV households has actually increased during most of the twenty-first century—dipping during
2010 to 2013 but then resuming its growth.2 And upwards of 20 million Americans continue to
watch TV’s most popular recurring programs on conventional broadcast networks each week.
This dwarfs the numbers that go see a particular movie, play a video game, check out
individual videos on YouTube or Netflix, or stream a movie to a cell phone. Despite assaults
on their primacy, broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC, and PBS—and
cable/satellite networks—ESPN, AMC, USA, Lifetime, TNT, HBO, and so on—are not prepared
to concede defeat. Television remains the principal medium through which most people obtain
visual entertainment and information and through which advertisers reach the largest
audiences.
Yet, there is no denying that overall viewership is declining precipitously, televisionviewing habits are changing rapidly, and advertisers are getting very nervous. While the
number of TV viewers remains enormous, it is dropping quickly as viewers find other screens
—principally, of their digital devices—more compelling. Advertisers are particularly anxious
about new technologies that grant viewers increased control over programming. The remote
control and VCR were just the beginning of this trend. TiVo and other digital video recorders
(DVRs), as well as video-on-demand (VOD) services streamed via the Internet, not only let
viewers time-shift programs; they also permit the pausing and rewinding of live broadcasts
and fast-forwarding through commercials. And Internet-distributed television supports both
time-shifting and location-shifting as viewers can watch Walking Dead while commuting on a
bus instead of parked on their living room couch, tuned into the AMC channel at 10:00 p.m.
Sundays.
What does all this mean for the study of television? Is a book such as the one you’re
holding useless and outdated? Obviously, we do not think so. As Lynn Spigel writes in
Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition,
17
[W]hile mutated in form television remains a central mode of information and
entertainment in our present-day global culture, and it appears that it will continue to do
so for many years to come. Understanding what is new about the medium thus demands
an understanding of both its past and present.3
To this end, we begin our study of television with a consideration of the medium’s structure
circa 2018, which still greatly resembles how it has worked for the past 60 years. This is an
“age of uncertainty” for television, however.4 And so Amanda D. Lotz will offer some
thoughts on the impact of Internet-delivered TV in the next chapter. It is inaccurate, however,
to assume that Internet-delivered TV has wholly replaced network-era television. We are not
yet in a post-network era, as some scholars have suggested. Once the dust settles after this
current stage of upheaval, it may even be that network-era TV and other legacy media
survive as choices among a profusion of other options. After all, in the 1950s television
usurped many of radio’s functions (and a lot of its advertising revenue), but radio persists in
various forms in the present day. Fortunately, most of the analytical methods in the following
chapters may be easily adapted to whatever form television takes in the future.
18
Television’s Not-So-Distant Past: The Network Era
“Network-era television” refers to that time, in the not-so-distant past, when television
broadcasting in the U.S. operated through a system in which three networks dominated
general programming. Over the years, the number of networks multiplied—exploding to
dozens of channels in the 1980s, with the widespread acceptance of cable and satellite delivery.
For the sake of convenience, we will initially lump together TV shows that originate on overthe-air (a.k.a. “terrestrial”) broadcast networks with those that come into our home via cable
and satellite systems. Viewers born in the 1980s and after likely grew up receiving both
broadcast networks and cable-originating channels from cable and satellite distribution
services such as Comcast and DirecTV, respectively. Although the rules governing broadcast
networks and the nature of their businesses are very different from cable channels, they are all
based on the idea of “casting” a single program at a time toward their viewers and attempting
to entice those viewers to tune in while that broadcasting is actually happening. Programs are
pushed toward viewers, and the viewers then decide whether to accept the networks’
invitations to watch at a particular time. Internet-distributed TV, in contrast, is where an
individual viewer seeks a show and then pulls it toward them—on-demand, whenever they
wish. Within the television industry, these two types of viewer experiences are known as
linear and nonlinear television. The former consists of programs broadcast toward viewers
at a specific time and as part of an ordered schedule of other individual programs—one after
another, as in a line. The latter denotes programming that is acquired with no regard for the
order in which it was provided on VOD services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu.
The principles behind linear television are illuminated by the program guides displayed in
cable/satellite user interfaces and printed in newspapers and magazines such as TV Guide.
These venues find it convenient to represent the television schedule as a spreadsheet-like grid.
In most of them, the channels run vertically down the left side of the grid, while half-hour
time slots run horizontally along the top. (Table 1.1 shows one such grid—limited to over-theair, linear channels—for a typical Sunday evening in November 2016.) The reasoning behind
this array is obvious. At a glance, we can fix our location in the grid, noting the axis of
channel (say, channel 9) and the axis of time (say, 7:00). After figuring that location, we can
quickly see what will follow the current program in linear time (horizontal) and what is
happening on other channels at that same time (vertical). Interactive, on-screen grids provided
by Comcast, DirecTV, et al. also allow us to scroll horizontally and vertically to explore our
current and upcoming options.
Grids such as these may help us understand the basic structure of network-era TV and the
current experience of today’s linear television. Most listings emphasize programming time
slots as much as the individual programs themselves. Television programs are positioned by
network programmers and experienced by viewers as one program within a linear sequence of
other programs in an ongoing series of timed segments. Further, programs are also associated
—potentially linked—with other programs by their shared time slot. During the time that a
television set is on in American households—over five hours per day, on average—we are
carried along in the horizontal current of linear television time, flowing from one bit of TV to
the next. Equally important, we may move vertically from one channel to another, creating
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associations among concurrent programs. A listing grid depicts visually these two axes of
television’s structure: sequence (one thing after another) and association (connections among
simultaneous programs).
We begin with this brief consideration of program listings because it illustrates the
fundamental principle of network-era television’s linear structure. As Raymond Williams first
argued in 1974, television differs crucially from other art forms in its blending of disparate
units of narrative, information, and advertising into a never-ending flow of television.5
Although we often talk of watching a single television program as if it were a separate
discrete entity, during the network era we more commonly simply watched television. The set
was on. Programs, advertisements, and announcements came and went (horizontal axis). Mere
fragments of programs, advertisements, and announcements flashed by as we switched
channels (vertical axis). We stayed on the couch, drawn into the virtually ceaseless flow. We
watched television as television more than we sought a specific television program. Or, at
least, that is how TV watching worked during the peak of the network era and how linear TV
can still work in numerous situations today. The pursuit of flow underpins linear networks’
programming of similar programs in succession—as when ABC scheduled four comedies in a
row for Tuesday and Wednesday nights during the 2017–18 season. Many viewers—especially
older viewers accustomed to network-era television—continue to experience linear TV flow in
their homes, and TV sets in public spaces such as restaurants, doctors’ waiting rooms, and
airport lounges flow programming in the direction of their captive audiences. As we’ll see in
the next chapter, DVRs and Internet-distributed VOD TV challenge and disrupt this essential
concept of flow, but its conventions refuse to be eliminated entirely.
The maintenance of television flow dominates nearly every aspect of the structures and
systems of network-era television and its descendants. It determines how stories will be told,
how advertisements will be constructed, and even how television’s visuals will be designed.
Every chapter of this book will account in one way or another for the consequences of
television flow. Before we start, however, we need to note three of this principle’s general
ramifications:
1. polysemy
2. interruption
3. segmentation.
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Polysemy, Heterogeneity, Contradiction
Many critics of television presume that it speaks with a single voice, that it broadcasts
meanings from a single perspective. Sometimes television’s significance becomes part of a
national debate. During the 1992 presidential election campaign, Vice President Dan Quayle
repeatedly advocated a return to traditional “family values,” an ideologically loaded term for
conservative beliefs about the family. In one frequently discussed speech he singled out the TV
pregnancy of an unwed sitcom mother—Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen)—as indicative of
television’s assault on the family. He claimed she was “mocking the importance of fathers by
bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”6 For Quayle, the meanings
presented on TV had systematically and unambiguously undermined the idea of the
conventional nuclear family: father, mother, and correct number of children; the father
working and the mother caring for children in the home; no divorce; no sex outside of
marriage; and no single or gay parenthood. The phrase “family values” quickly became a
rallying cry for conservatives, and today, over twenty years later, it is still invoked by rightwing politicians such as Sarah Palin and former President George W. Bush. Such individuals
