The Television Industry: What Most People Don't Know

From the stark rise of television usage in the mid-20^th century to the advent of new media technologies in the late 90s, television has blazed a trail with a fair share of twists, bumps, and turns. Of course, the primary purpose of television has always been to turn a profit. Making money, after all, is television's means of survival. In order to ensure that their pockets stay padded and their businesses continue to prosper, the people behind the scenes of television production, distribution, and transmission must do whatever necessary to capture the attention of the American public, thereby ensuring that the advertisers will follow. The television industry must ensure that viewers keep coming back, and to accomplish that task the industry must maintain power over the viewers. A few primary factors provide evidence of television's control of viewers. The enforcement of commercialism, the faulty nature of the ratings system, and the passivity of most viewers provides an environment in which the television maintains control over the viewers of American television.

As television ushered in the Multi-Channel Era in the 80s, programs began to surface that catered to a wider variety of viewers than before. The television industry as a whole began to engage in narrowcasting, in which it targeted niche audience categories. Minorities of all sorts suddenly had programs, even cable channels, created for them. Some would argue that the wider selection of programs would lead to viewers who watch a greater variety of shows and thereby experience television that was unique and informative to any given viewer. In their research on viewing habits, however, Kubey and Csikzentmihalyi found that viewers "may prefer to seek out information that confirms what they already know" (1990, p. 8). In doing so, viewers are avoiding the state of cognitive dissonance, and thereby avoiding conflicting thoughts. If many viewers avoid television that is different, informative, and potentially thought-provoking, then it may be reasonable to say that the wider array of programs is not necessarily advantageous to viewers, in terms of informing them, forcing them to be critical viewers, and giving them power over the industry.

Black Entertainment Television (BET) was launched in 1980 for African American viewers to enjoy news and entertainment from their perspective. Critics, however, have criticized the station, and its founder, Bob Johnson, for its overrepresentation of music videos with gangster rappers surrounded by half-naked women. "Although Bob Johnson reportedly cared about the public interest programming on his network," says African American author Keith Boykin, "It's abundantly clear that what he cares about most is money" (Boykin, 2002, P. 2). Johnson only served to support this theory when he sold BET to Viacom in 2000. Of course, Viacom is not the only major corporation contributing to the lack of diversity in television ownership.

While there is certainly a greater array of television stations and programs than there was 50 years ago, ownership in the television industry is still dominated by a few giant corporations. Viacom, for example, is a vertically integrated company, with companies involved in production, distribution, and transmission. In addition to Viacom, the other four major media corporations are vertically integrated: Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, and NBC Universal. By attaining vertical integration, these conglomerates have great power over their viewers. They are free to represent their own interests in their shows, for example, by inserting ad placements for products produced by the same parent company.

Despite the inherently commercial nature of television and the heavy dependence of television producers on advertisers, the television industry relies just as heavily on ratings. Specifically, the A. C. Nielsen company is the U.S.'s primary collector and distributor of ratings. Through People-meters and surveys, "Nielsen families", the thousands of families that report their viewing patterns at any given time, provide a sample of viewing practices for the television industry to examine. This system, however, does not necessarily provide the American public with the ability to control television content. Only the relatively small sample of the Nielsen families affects the ratings, leaving a margin of error for each rating. This is significant because a slight difference between the ratings of two shows can mean a breadth of more advertisements and millions more dollars for one show. In the case of a new show, perhaps a pilot episode, it could be the difference between a switch to primetime and being discontinued altogether.

Another issue for ratings is that the system provides quantitative results, while qualitative results are largely left out. The numbers provided in the form of ratings do not convey deeper insights into viewership, such as the meanings viewers detract from shows or the level of attention they pay to the television. With ratings, "the numbers only sample sets tuned in, not necessarily shows watched, let alone grasped, remembered, loved, learned from, deeply anticipated, or mildly tolerated" (Gitlin, 1983, p. 54 cited in Ang, 1991, p. 62). So ratings do not exactly provide viewers with a voice, nor do ratings provide the television industry with an in-depth perception of its viewers.

Rather than rely purely on ratings, however, the television industry attempts to gain further insight into its audience through surveys and interviews. But by asking a viewer to share his or her thoughts on a program, the researcher creates a confounding variable. The viewer may take an analytical and thoughtful stance on television merely because he is being asked to do so. So while a viewer sharing his thoughts with the industry may appear to be an active viewer with a critical eye, "a viewer's immediate experience of a program may deviate significantly from the more cerebral and logical explanations often offered" (Wren-Lewis, 1983, p. 196). Essentially, by asking viewers to give their critiques of television, researchers violate Ulrich Neisser's (1976) theory of 'ecological validity.' Experiments involving viewers giving their thoughts and analysis of television encourages them to give critical answers that make them appear to be active viewers.

On the other hand, when researchers have asked viewers to isolate their feelings, behaviors, and detailed variables concerning the way they watch, viewers report higher levels of passivity, as well as negative side effects. Kubey and Csikzentmihalyi found that viewers "report feeling more passive and less challenged and alert" (1990, p. 171) while watching television. The viewers also likened their levels of concentration and use of skills to when they are at rest. This provides evidence that viewers lean to side of passivity in their viewing habits. In this situation, the television industry has power over the viewer, though the viewer is not necessarily being 'injected' with television as the hypodermic needle model would suggest.

Perhaps worse than the concept of passivity, though, is the idea that television can yield harmful results. Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross (1961) found that children imitated aggressive acts against dolls. With the abundance of aggression exhibited on television, there is reason to believe that violence on television could lead to elevated violence in society. The cultivation theory, stating that television's influence on viewers is manifested in society over time, could provide a means for imitation of violence to incorporate itself into the real world. Furthermore, the introduction of American television to the island of Fiji in 1998 was thought to be a leading factor in the rise in eating disorders thereafter. In addition to this evidence of a stark contrast between television viewers and non-viewers, one study found that viewers who watch a heavy load of television reported feeling more negative than lighter viewers during the week (Kubey & Csikzentmihalyi, 1990, p. 172). It seems like television viewers, for the most part, not only struggle to exhibit power over the television industry; they can suffer negative effects as well.

A few factors provide the landscape for the television industry to ultimately maintain control over its viewers. The commercial nature of television orients viewers towards consumerism through advertisements and programming as well. The ratings system does not provide viewers with ample voice concerning the programs that are truly important to them, let alone beneficial. And the passivity of viewers ultimately disallows them from viewing television critically and interpreting its meanings for their themselves. While research has clearly been conducted on the subject, the power of the television industry can also be seen in some of television viewed in class this year by we, the students. The Merchants of Cool (2001) and Outfoxed (2004), to name a couple, demonstrated the effects that the brains behind television can intentionally enforce upon their viewers. It was only too obvious while watching these television productions that the power struggle between the industry and viewers only leaves one man standing. And it's not the American public.

Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Bandura, Albert; Ross, Dorothea; Ross, Sheila A. "Transmission of Aggression Through Imitation of Aggressive Models." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, p. 575-582 (1961). Found in Classics in the History of Psychology. Green, Christopher D.

Boykin, Keith. "All Hail Bob Johnson." KeithBoykin.com. 18 December, 2002.

Kubey, Robert & Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1990.

Neuman, Russell W. "Television and American Culture: The Mass Medium and the Pluralist Audience." The Public Opinion Quarterly 46.4, 1982