Television in the United States
This article is about television in the United States, specifically its history, art, business and government regulation. Information about television technologies is covered in the main television article and elsewhere.
Television is an important part of American media and culture. In an expansive country of more than 300 million people, television programs are some of the few things that nearly all Americans can share nationally. Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one.
Television channels and networks
There are two basic types of television in the United States: broadcast, or "over-the-air" television, which is freely available to anyone with a TV in the broadcast area, and cable television, which requires a subscription to receive.
Broadcast television
The United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system. Unlike many other countries, the United States has no national broadcast stations. Instead, local media markets have their own television stations, which may be affiliated to a TV network. Stations may sign affiliation agreements with one of the national networks. Except in very small markets with few stations, affiliation agreements are usually exclusive: If a station is an NBC affiliate, the station would not air programs from ABC, CBS or other networks. NBC is one of the "Big Three" networks which conglomerate into the top markets in the U.S ranking for television programming.
However, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting, federal law restricts the amount of network programming local stations can run. Until the 1970s and '80s, local stations supplemented network programming with a good deal of their own produced shows. Today, however, many stations produce only local news shows. They fill the rest of their schedule with syndicated shows, or material produced independently and sold to individual stations in each local market.
The three major networks
The three major commercial television networks in the U.S. include NBC and CBS, which date to the early days of television (in fact, they both began in the 1920's as radio networks), and ABC, founded (in its modern form) in 1953. In big cities, affiliates of these networks almost always broadcast in the VHF band, which, in the days before cable became widespread, was premium real estate.
Major-network affiliates run very similar schedules. Typically, they begin weekdays with an early-morning locally produced news show, followed by a network morning show, such as NBC's Today, which mixes news, weather, interviews and music. Syndicated programming, especially talk shows, fill the late morning, followed often by local news at noon. Soap operas dominate the early afternoon, while syndicated talk shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show appear in the late afternoon. Local news comes on again in the early evening, followed by the national network's news program at 5:30 or 6:30 p.m.
More syndication occupies the next hour before the networks take over for prime time, the most-watched three hours of television. Typically, family-oriented comedy programs led in the early part of prime time, although in recent years, reality television like Dancing with the Stars has largely replaced them. Later in the evening, dramas like CSI and Desperate Housewives air.
At 10 or 11 p.m., another local news program comes on, usually followed by late-night interview shows, such as The Tonight Show. Rather than sign off for the wee hours of the night (as was standard practice until the 1980's or so), TV stations now fill the time with syndicated programming or 30-minute advertisements, known as infomercials.
Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children (including animated cartoons), while Sunday mornings include public-affairs programs that help fulfill stations' legal obligations to provide public-service programming. Sports and infomercials can be found on weekend afternoons, followed again by the same type of prime-time shows aired during the week.
Other over-the-air commercial television
Until 1987, all English-language stations not affiliated with the big three networks were independent, airing only locally produced and syndicated programming. Many independent stations still exist in the U.S., usually broadcasting on the UHF band. Syndicated shows, often reruns of old TV series and old movies, take up much of their schedule.
In 1987, however, the Fox Network launched a challenge to the big three networks. Thanks largely to the success of shows like The Simpsons and American Idol, as well as the network's acquisition of rights to show National Football League games, Fox has established itself as a major player in broadcast television. However, Fox differs from the three older networks in that it does not air a nightly news program, its prime-time schedule is only two hours long, and some of its big-city affiliates still broadcast on UHF.
In the late 1990s, three new networks -- The WB, UPN and PAX -- joined the scene. The fledging WB and UPN merged into The CW in fall 2006, while News Corp's MyNetworkTV, created to replace UPN programming on FOX's O&Os, debuted in fall 2006 as well. PAX, now known as "i," has had very low ratings since its launch and is no longer even remotely considered a major player.
Foreign-language broadcast television
Univision, a network of Spanish language stations, is the fifth-largest TV network behind NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. Its major competition is Telemundo, a sister network of NBC. Univision-owned TeleFutura, aimed at a younger Hispanic demographic, and Azteca America, the American version of Mexico's TV Azteca, are two other popular Spanish-language over-the-air networks.
Non-commercial television
Public television has a far smaller role in the U.S. than in most other countries. There is no state-owned broadcaster. Instead, the federal government subsidizes non-commercial television stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, the money stations receive from the government is not nearly enough to cover their expenses. They must rely on corporate sponsorships and viewer contributions to get by.
American public television stations air programming of public interest that commercial stations shy away from, such as educational, cultural, and public affairs shows. Most public TV stations are affiliates of the Public Broadcasting Service, through which they share programs like Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theater. Unlike the commercial networks, PBS does not produce its own programming; instead, individual PBS stations do so. New York City's municipally-owned broadcast service, NYCTV, creates original programming that airs in several metropolitan markets. Few cities have major city-owned broadcasters, however.
Many religious broadcasting stations also exist, surviving on viewer contributions.
Cable and satellite television
Until the 1970s, cable television was used only to rebroadcast over-the-air TV to areas that had trouble receiving signals. But in that decade, national networks dedicated exclusively to cable broadcasting appeared, along with cable-TV systems that provided service to major cities. Today, most American households receive cable TV, and cable networks collectively have greater viewership than broadcast networks.
Unlike broadcast networks, most cable networks air the same programming nationwide. Top cable networks include ESPN (sports), MTV (music), CNN (news), Sci Fi (science fiction) and Discovery Channel (documentaries).
Cable-TV subscribers receive these channels through local cable system operators, who receive the programming from the networks and transmit them into homes. Usually, local governments award a monopoly to a system operator to provide cable-TV service in a given area. By law, cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings to customers.
Direct broadcast satellite television, which became available in the U.S. in the 1990s, offers programming similar to cable TV. Dish Network and News Corporation's DirecTV are the major DBS providers in the country.
The business of television
Over-the-air commercial stations and networks generate the vast majority of their revenue from advertisements. According to a 2001 survey, broadcast stations allocated 16 to 21 minutes per hour to commercials. Most cable networks also generate income from advertisements. However, premium cable networks, such as the movie network HBO, do not air commercials. Instead, cable-TV subscribers must pay extra to receive the premium networks. Cable-TV system operators get revenue from subscription fees and by selling local advertisements.
Programming
American television has had very successful programming that has inspired television networks across the world to make shows of similar types or broadcast these shows in their own country. Some of these shows are still on the air and some are still alive and well in syndication. The opposite is also true; a number of popular American programs were based on shows from other countries, especially the United Kingdom and Canada.
Primetime comedy has included situation comedies such as I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as sketch comedy/variety series such as Milton Berle's early shows, The Carol Burnett Show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and the late-night Saturday Night Live.
Dramatic series have taken many forms over the years. Westerns such as Gunsmoke had their greatest popularity in the '50s and '60s. Medical dramas have endured (Marcus Welby, M.D., St. Elsewhere, ER), as have family dramas (Eight is Enough, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie) and crime dramas (Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Hill Street Blues, Law & Order and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - the last two of which have spawned multiple spin-offs). Some series, such as HBO's The Sopranos, successfully bend the traditional drama categories.
The major networks all offer a morning news program (NBC's The Today Show and ABC's Good Morning America are the standard bearers), as well as an early-evening newscast anchored by the de facto face of the network's news operations (Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather for CBS; NBC's Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw; ABC's Peter Jennings). Successful newsmagazines have included 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline in primetime and Meet the Press (the US's oldest series, having debuted in 1947), Face the Nation and This Week on Sunday mornings.
Reality television has long existed in the United States, both played for laughs (Candid Camera, Real People) and as drama (COPS). A new variant - competition series - exploded in popularity in 2000 with the launch of Survivor. Big Brother, The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model, and American Idol followed.
American soap operas have been running for over six decades. Of the nine current daytime soaps, seven have been on the air for over thirty years: The Guiding Light, As the World Turns, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live, All My Children, and The Young and the Restless. Primetime soap operas of note have included Peyton Place, Dallas, Dynasty, and Beverly Hills, 90210.
Daytime has also been home of many popular game shows over the years (particularly during the 1970s), such as The Price is Right, Family Feud, Match Game, The Newlywed Game and Concentration. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! have found their greatest success in the early-evening slot before primetime, while game shows actually aired within primetime had great popularity in the 1950s and 1960s (What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth) and again, intermittently, in the 2000s (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Weakest Link, Deal or No Deal). The Price Is Right, which has appeared on CBS since 1972, is the only daytime game show remaining on the broadcast networks.
The most successful talk show has been the late-night (after 11:30 PM Eastern/Pacific) Tonight Show (particularly when hosted by Johnny Carson). Tonight ushered in a multi-decade period of dominance by one network in American late-night programming and paved the way for many similar combinations of comedy and celebrity interviews, such as those hosted by Merv Griffin and David Letterman.
Daytime talk show hits have included The Oprah Winfrey Show, Phil Donahue, Ellen, The Tyra Banks Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly, and run the gamut from serious to lighthearted; a subset of so-called trash TV talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show also veered into exploitation and titillation.
The lifecycle of U.S. television shows
Television production companies either commission teleplays for TV pilots or buy specs. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots. Those which the production company thinks might be commercially viable are then marketed to television networks—or television distributors for first-run syndication. (KingWorld distributes Oprah in first-run syndication, for example, because that show is syndicated—is not affiliated with a particular network.)
Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other nets from controlling them, and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that a show will get an order for more episodes. Those that do get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order, and the show goes into production, usually establishing itself with permanent sets, a full crew and production offices. Writers are hired, directors are selected and work begins, usually during the late spring and summer before the fall season-series premieres. (Shows can also be mid-season replacements, meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the failure and cancellation of shows which premiered in the fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an example of a successful mid-season replacement.)
The standard broadcast television season in the United States is 22 episodes per season; sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes; cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 or 12 episodes per season, much in line with British television programming.
American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that these serials air approximately 260 episodes a year, making their casts and crews the busiest in show business. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated, making it difficult for viewers to "catch up" when they miss a month, or even a week, of programming.
Networks use profits from commercials run during the show to pay the production company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself. (Networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors.) As advertising rates are based on the size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months (usually May and November in the US) are important landmarks in the television year—ratings earned during these periods determining advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.
Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the network to continue production. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue production by the network, known as cancellation. There are instances of initially low-rated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly-popular, but these are rare. For the most part, shows that are not immediately even moderately successful will be cancelled by the end of November sweeps.
Regulation
Broadcast television is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC awards licenses to local stations, which stipulate stations' commitments to educational and public-interest programming. The FCC also prohibits the airing of "indecent" material over the air between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Although broadcast stations can legally air almost anything they want late at night -- and cable networks at all hours -- nudity and profanity are very rare on American television. Broadcasters fear that airing such material will turn off advertisers and encourage the federal government to strengthen its regulation of TV content. Premium cable networks are exceptions, and often air very racy programming at night. Some networks, such as Playboy TV, are devoted exclusively to "adult" content.
Cable television is largely, but not entirely, unregulated. Cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings (see must-carry) and give them low channel numbers. The systems cannot show broadcast-network affiliates from other parts of the country.
History of American television
- Main article: History of television (Technology)
- Main article: List of years in television (Milestones presented in chonological order)
- Main article: (Programming Schedules)
Television first became commercialized in the U.S. in the early 1940s, initially by RCA (through NBC, which it owned) and CBS. A number of different broadcast systems had been developed through the end of the 1930s. The National Television System Committee (NTSC) standardized on a 525-line broadcast in 1941 that would provide the basis for TV across the country through the end of the century. Television development halted with the onset of World War II, but pioneers returned to the airwaves when that conflict ended.
There were only a few dozen stations operating at the end of the decade, concentrated on the East and West coasts. The FCC began handing out broadcasting licenses to communities of all sizes in the early 1950s, spurring an explosion of growth in the medium. A brief debacle over the system to use for color broadcasts occurred at this time, but was soon settled. Half of all U.S. households had TV sets by 1955, though color was a premium feature for many years (most households able to purchase TV sets could only afford black-and-white models, and few programs were broadcast in color until the mid-1960's).
Many of the earliest TV programs were modified versions of well-established radio shows. The '50s saw the first flowering of the genres that would distinguish TV from movies and radio: talk shows like The Jack Paar Show and sitcoms like I Love Lucy. Stations across the country also produced their own local programs. Usually carried live, they ranged from simple advertisements to game shows and children's shows that often featured clowns and other offbeat characters. Local shows could often be popular and profitable, but concerns about product promotion and other issues led them to almost completely disappear by the mid-1970s.
Cable television (now often "cable" in name only — satellite broadcasts are increasingly important) became a force in the early '80s and has been growing in significance since that time.
The U.S. is now moving to digital television. A law passed in 2006 requires over-the-air stations to cease broadcasting in analog by February 2009.
See also
- Media in the United States
- List of United States broadcast television networks
- List of U.S. television series
- List of years in television
- Australian television
- British television
- Canadian television
- Latin American television
- TV Parental Guidelines
External links
- The Museum of Television & Radio
- Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Encyclopedia of Television
- Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
- Now with Bill Moyers: Politics & Media - Big Media - Media Regulation Timeline
- FCC: Television Technology - A Short History
- Dish Network Information
- Turner:Cable Primed to Beat Broadcast, by Anthony Crupi, Mediaweek Dec. 7, 2005.
- AAAA/ANA Annual Study Shows TV Clutter Levels Up Across Most Dayparts by the Association of National Advertisers, Feb. 14, 2002.