What's Happening to Television, reel 1 (1966)

Once again, the money, skills, and madcap hopes of all three commercial lies to capturing audience. Now, we fly at 9.3. NBC week. Opening week for shows on the full color network. Don't miss the biggest week in television. NBC week. Do you prefer your entertainment to be of a quiet nature? Then by all means, don't watch Hogan's Heroes. There's just too much going on. See how the West was fun. Watch F Troop every week on ABC. This fall, watch programs that are a choice, not an echo on NET, National Educational Television. Once the shows had faded out, critics took pen in hand to perform their seasonal act of genocide. Terence O'Flaherty, San Francisco Chronicle. Television now finds itself in a tough spot because they have encouraged mediocrity, and they've got it, and they've got the audience. Which is worse, they've got the audience that is undemanding. The audience that will take mediocrity without a question. Critic Bill Greeley, Variety. I did my own survey, upon which I based a story in Variety, and I had various people. They all happen to be TV executives themselves. They labeled it a pulp grain, a comic strip, a supermarket, and one called it just plain garbage. Critic Percy Shain, Boston Globe. Television is moving toward infantilism so fast that soon the four-year-old viewer may be the norm they are shooting for. It used to be the 12-year-old. Last year, it was on about an 8-year-old level. And now with Batman and a whole slew of comic strips that will follow in its wake, maybe the standard will be half the end. No cows were held to be sacred, not even educational television. Larry Laurent, Washington Post. One of the problems with NET has been a lack of money, naturally, and the second fault has been the tendency to go wide with great big problems to avoid the specific aspects of the problem and to suggest solutions for those problems. The generalized studies seem to get nowhere, really, except to give you some idea of what what the problem is, not how to deal with it, not how to solve it. National Educational Television presents At Issue, a commentary on events, people, and ideas. At Issue this month, what's happening to television? It is the end of another long day in Big Sur, Roanoke, Brattleboro, and Brooklyn. You name the city, you name the town. On this ordinary, passive evening, very few are reflecting on the classic struggles of life and death and the enemy within us. Rather, we're reflecting upon Hogan's Heroes, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Dean Martin Show. According to the audience rating services, more than 35 million people across this land on this weekday night are watching an average of 3 and 1/2 hours of television. It is a habit which has been virtually unbreakable ever since 1948 or so, when television meant Tuesday night WITH MILTON BERLE. AND NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, INTRODUCING AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE TELEVISION STAR, WHO JUST RETURNED from California, MILTON BERLE. DOWN, LASSIE, DOWN. IN ITS ALMOST 20 years of life, the medium once affectionately known as the fabulous infant has transmitted millions of hours of images, some of them noble or lovable in profile, such as Uncle Miltie, most of them faceless and forgettable. But is it truly fair to so indict television in an age that has produced both the Cold War and the peptic ulcer? Was TV ever intended to be anything more than an entertainment medium, a vehicle of escape? How often was its original purpose also to educate, elevate, ennoble a public? Let us hear a man who speaks for the medium, a man who, in more storied times, once spanked it to life. The 1939 New York World's Fair. General David Sarnoff introduces a new art form called television. It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art, so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in a troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind. In dedicating this RCA building as the birthplace of a new American art and industry, we have in mind the conception of a great service which will benefit our social and economic life and the national ideals of our people. On how many nights has television lived up to such a splendid promise? This is the core of the controversy today. One important not only because it affects the programs we watch, but the airwaves we own. The airwaves, we sometimes forget, are public property. 40 years ago, the Federal Communications Commission was established as a kindred spirit over our television antennas to ensure that broadcasters respect the public's interest, convenience, and necessity. In the course of this program, we will examine how well that interest is being served. 1966, the critics say that along the new television alley, six times as power is breeding enormous arrogance. The battle cry of television executives, according to a Variety story, is a quote by a network man who says, "Since we licked Newton Minow, we couldn't care less." At the new offices of the American Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and the National Broadcasting Company, gross revenues are up to nearly $2 billion. The broadcasting business has never been better. NBC Chairman Robert Sarnoff is once to have said, "If we listen to the eggheads, we'd be out of business in 6 months." For the current season, network prime time evening schedules show 72 and 1/2 hours a week of situation comedy, adventure, and spy episodes versus a solitary hour a week of regularly scheduled public traces of radioactivity found among Spanish police looking This is beyond newscasts or infrequent specials, and beyond the Sunday ghetto where most public affairs shows are now buried. One educator implies this is as it should be, claiming that more than half of America's adults cannot read above the fifth grade level anyhow. If this is true, that still leaves a sizable audience which can. What about them? Who programs for these families? The question must be asked. Doesn't television also have an obligation to meet their needs and raise others' perceptions? John Schneider, group vice president, broadcasting, CBS. How does he regard TV and his role in it? I think we're in a a commercial art form. Um and as such operating this commercial art form in a cultural democracy which I think we have to grant these United States being. Then I would like to have most people I would like to be the most popular. I'd like to have the attention of most people looking at my network because that's really that's an honorable goal. I want to be best. I want to strive to be best. I want to be more popular. Now, if I say to the uh the public I don't really care whether you look at me or not. I don't see how their interest is served with that attitude. I think it's important that I want to be best, that I'm competitive. I want to be in first place when the report cards are issued. I want to get an A. And as long as I'm striving for an A, then the public is served. If I only strive for a C I don't know who's served by that. I'm mediocre. And uh the public isn't getting the maximum. If I'm second, I want to be first. And I'm if I'm third or fourth or fifth I'm darn ashamed of myself. I want to be better, and I want to stimulate the people I work with to be better, to be more popular. What should television ideally be? And what obligations does Mr. Schneider have to the viewer? Well, I think that television programming should be looked on as a mix. I think there is uh the head of the household acquired a television set for his home as an entertainment medium. He bought it to be entertained. Uh and primarily I think it's our job to entertain him. Uh incidentally, he maybe as a byproduct maybe subconsciously maybe accidentally he wants to be informed, and we inform him. We inform him in many, many ways. We inform him uh clearly in news, and weather, and sport and information programs designed to inform. But we also inform him and his family in programs like Captain Kangaroo. We inform him in many ways and in a program like Password. Across the street at ABC, President Tom Moore defined his obligation to minority programming needs this way. We are in a development stage of television and have been since our very inception. We are adolescents. Uh we have not reached a maturity, and it will take a long time for us to do so. But we have come a a long way in our programming, and it has changed. But as we get into the second set in the home, as we get into entire color programming, as we get into deeper research into audience composition it will become necessary to know more about our audiences. And it And if we have enough facilities that would support more than three choices in most television markets. I think that there will be a tendency for us to program or some members of our our industry to program toward minority groups, but I think that's some distance away. Critics often fondly allude to the 1950s as the golden age of television. John Schneider disagrees. The golden age is perfectly dreadful. Some of the things that were done in television in the alleged golden age are simply wouldn't stand up today. Programs go off the air because they fail. Studio One was not popular and then it went off the air and Playhouse 90 was not popular and it went off the air. It didn't go off the air because it was successful. Our goal is to have a successful program, to have a popular program. The critics have been terribly short memory if you will because Playhouse 90 was on every week and we found that the creative well ran dry, so it went on every other week in an effort to keep it on. When that failed, we tried to keep it on as a special. As an approximately once a month, we irregularly programmed it the following year. We tried to keep Playhouse 90 on. We couldn't get material. And I must say if this program had the time and unfortunately it doesn't, I would be delighted to read some of the old criticisms that these very critics now say give me back the wonderful Playhouse 90. They wrapped it and wrapped it and wrapped it and drove it off the air along with the lack of audience. What's going on? WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT? Worthington Minor, the celebrated former producer of Studio One, takes quite another view of who killed drama. Today, as president of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he works with young actors and on occasion answers questions about television's era of live drama. What do you say? Okay. Alan, why did Studio One end? How and why did it end? Well, it's a very simple thing. Up until the time when I left and went over to NBC, the control of that program was entirely in the hands of the network. The moment the advertising agency got control of that program, it began immediately to go downhill and never stopped until it just disappeared. And uh the clear evidence of the fact that what they believed was going to increase the appeal and increase the rating of the show turned out to be a cumulative disaster. And I think this happened to a good many shows for different circumstances, not perhaps the fact that a person left as I did, but the fact that advertising agencies put the screws on and got their hands in the control. And at that point, programming began to decline in quality. You think that and in excitement. The public likes television the way it is, says John Warwick of Warwick and Legler Advertising. It's good for business, which means it's good for everyone. Critic Terrence O'Flaherty thinks otherwise. The role of commercial TV is to sell products. And I think if we forget that for for 1 minute, uh we've forgotten the important thing. It is to sell products. And that's what the networks are interested in, that's what the sponsor is interested in. That's what uh uh everybody on the other side of the camera is concerned about. to provide entertainment, I suppose. But there again, entertainment with some substance. But they've set the terrible thing there is they have set uh, mediocrity because they're as their ideal because it's selling products. They want the lowest common denominator. Dick Pinkham, Ted Bates Agency, TV billing $136 million. That's a very familiar point of view, I think. And of course, the objective of television is not to sell products. The objective of television from the point of view of the television people is to put on programs which will be attractive to advertisers so that they can sell products. From the point of view of the advertiser, of course, it is to buy programs which will sell products. But that's not television's objective. As far as uh, the lowest common denominator is concerned, that's one of those wonderful catch phrases with which the intellectual uh, tends to uh, demean the taste of the American public. And by the same token, you could say that successful movies are programmed for the lowest common denominator, successful books, successful magazines. Any mass medium obviously has to appeal to as many people as possible. The greatest suspense stories in television are found not in the spy episodes, but in the twice-monthly rating reports. These critically affect three men who've been responsible for selecting most of the programs now on television. Mort Werner, NBC. Ed Sherick, ABC. And at CBS, screening a program that found favor among the critics but not the top the rating charts. CBS programming executive Mike Dann. You quite often are governed by what you think will be popular with most of the people. That's a basic entertainment or show business motivation. Something that you think will be a hit. Now, what you really want to do is combine something you think is a hit at the same time doing something that you think points up or is of of of quality if possible. How many of the programs that Mike Dann chose for CBS this season were to his taste? I do not personally think most programs on the CBS Television Network are to my taste. But that goes for most books, for most newspapers, and for most magazines. They're not to my taste. I have a some favorites. I have five or six favorites which I look at very regularly. And I look at the others for professional reasons. But I do not look for on the basis of enjoyment or for information or communications from the media medium itself to most programs. F Troop was picked by programming head Ed Sherick. Though he left April 1st for independent production, ABC says his statements still speak for the network. We program seven nights a week from 7:30 till 11:00. Our needs are again in my area specifically because I work in conjunction with news, with public affairs. Our needs are to provide the most variegated entertainment schedule. Our talent and the creative talent of the people we work with can allow will allow. We have operated against a maxim in evaluating every program. That maxim is does it contain a touch of singularity? How many of his recommendations did he personally enjoy? Well, if if they're done well, I enjoy all of them. Uh I may not select naturally all of them to view. Um but as far as liking shows that go on the air, I think you'd be it would be suicide to put any show on the air you did not like. Mort Werner of NBC reduces the complex design for survival to this. We discuss our overall strategy. We look at our competition. We program against other networks. Uh we select the programs we think have the best organized staff and the best possibility of doing well. In some cases, we go after high ratings. In some cases, we know we're not going to get high ratings. But the program department makes its recommendation and it's either approved or disapproved. It is generally approved. Far from the entertainment side of programming, standing on a plateau where the air is allegedly purer are the news and public affairs departments of commercial television. What's happening to this kind of television? It appears that while straight news coverage has had an ambitious increase in terms of expanded nightly and weekend newscasts, there's been a parallel shortage in the area of hard analysis. It has been charged that coverage of Vietnam and other major issues have failed to provide insight and perspective. That documentary is seldom if ever take a point of view and that most non-fiction programs are so vacuous, they've become mere extensions of evening fun shows. In February, these issues were joined in an historic clash between the imperatives of entertainment and information. CBS News President Fred Friendly resigned when John Schneider, who oversees the network, ran I Love Lucy rather than the Senate hearings on Vietnam. Mr. Schneider said the housewives wouldn't be interested, that the public would be better served by a 20-minute summary later that evening. Said Friendly in his resignation letter, "The decision not to carry the hearings was a business, not a news judgment." Mr. Friendly took issue with Mr. Schneider's argument that the housewife wouldn't be interested. Referring to the network which that day covered the Vietnam hearings, he asked, "Why were NBC's housewives interested?" He then quoted this from a speech made by Ed Murrow back in 1958, which he said spelled it all out. "One of the basic troubles with television news is that it has grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising, and news. When you get all three under one roof," said Murrow, "the dust never settles." The dissatisfaction extends to such critics as John Horn, who's troubled with the lack of analysis on many issues, especially Vietnam. He writes, "There's something radically wrong when television cannot find more times and ways to explain and discuss a war that can escalate to World War III." Walter Cronkite. I got quite upset over the criticism of it. I don't know what we can do more than what we're doing. Some of that that we're doing we might do better. Yes, we have certainly exposed as deeply as we can the arguments for and against Vietnamese involvement with our documentaries, and our daily programs, the statements from the Secretary of State, from the President, from the Secretary of Defense, and from those who are opposed to the war effort. I don't see where this criticism comes from or why. I suspect that why we get this criticism of the Vietnam War uh stems from the fact that we're all confused about this war. And we in television cannot make up the answer to the Vietnam War. We can only reflect the confusion. And when we do, those critics uh who watch and criticize uh themselves are confused and blame us for not throwing the spotlight on on the answers when there aren't any answers. Some of the critics are within television. During a speech made last October, Howard K. Smith of ABC News said he was troubled by television's present definition of objectivity. Objectivity does not mean what present documentarians think it means. That is, balancing each thought or statement with its opposite. You find a man who says the world's round, you got to find somebody who'll say it's flat. There's a magazine, a famous magazine in the 1930s which was accused of being anti-Semitic, and it defended itself and its objectivity by saying, "Look at our last year's output. For every 15 anti-Semitic pieces we did, we did 15 that weren't." Ladies and gentlemen, that brand of objectivity is really simply a respectable name for playing it safe. With each factor view that is presented canceled out by its opposite, the documentary ends with meaning vanished, like the Wicked Witch of the West, and just a puff of nothing left at the end of the program. The program programs as are as a result uninformative. They are exceedingly dull, and the public finds it possible to look away in minutes. I was a judge for the finals of the Emmy Awards this year. I sat through six solid watching what were called documentary programs. They were all extremely elaborate, in beautiful color. They must have cost each a fortune to produce. But not one dealt with the untidy but fascinating world we live in. Most were a good two or three centuries away from the present time. I protested that I was given no documentaries to judge, and I was a newsman. I was told there aren't any. I could cite innumerable examples of the kind of documentary I'm talking about. CBS's documentary on TV ratings was a careful mutual cancellation of facts and views, signifying in the end nothing. My network mass produces that kind of documentary. NBC recently displayed the typical reaction of a declining form of expression. It sought to meet what is really a question of quality by heaping on quantity. Just as the movies tried to meet their problem by making the screen three times as big without changing the story, NBC made its documentary three times as long without improving the quality. Truly, you can say of documentary reporting on television what Mark Twain said of Christianity. It's fine. The only thing wrong with it is nobody practices it. With all due respect to my esteemed colleague, Howard, I happen to think he's just absolutely wrong. Uh I think that the proof is in the documentaries we have done. We have not pulled punches. We haven't gone through the process of self-cancellation and through objectivity. Uh objectivity, I think, is not a bad word. And I do not uh decry its use or it's uh the goal of objectivity. But I do feel that uh that he's simply wrong in in the criticism. Uh Our show on cigarettes, on the Ku Klux Klan, uh as just recent examples, abortion, uh and political issues themselves. We don't I don't think that we self-cancel. The New York headquarters of NBC News, which bills itself as the world's largest broadcast news organization. Vice President Ruben Frank. His credits include the documentary The Tunnel and stewardship of the Huntley-Brinkley Report. In response to Howard K. Smith, Mr. Frank feels objectivity is a useless word. He prefers responsibility. He was asked, "Should documentaries take a point of view?" The film can't take a point of view. The editing might. The commentator, of course, can. If If there is something he ought he thinks he ought to say, and if he's one of those guys who has a license to say it, that's another thing. How are the people on television? You want them all blatting their opinions? How about some facts? Uh I think he ought to. Uh How often do NBC newsmen editorialize? Brinkley does it very rarely. Huntley does it a little often, but I think if they if they did it all the time, they Of course You know, the You wear You wear a the tolerance of the audience. They're not always looking for an editorial page. Television at its best is a narrative medium. Television does one thing that no other medium can. It transmits experience. It tells people how a situation feels. Television has, because it's because everybody watches it, responsibility to cover stories, to air discussions that it is not ideally suited for, perhaps. But uh You know, coming back to Smith and objectivity, he is stating objectively a highly subjective view. He He would like to be able to say more. Maybe he ought to, but he That's not an argument about objectivity in documentaries. But many hold it is the heart of the argument. They charge that when it comes to hard commentary, analysis, or interpretation, we are indeed in an era of no-guts journalism. In fairness, it should be noted that this season has seen a new program development, the public affairs game show, which threatens to test everything in sight, including our patience. Critics bemoan the lack of hard sustained analysis on television today. Said Jack Gould, "We deserve assessment in the tradition of such giants as Elmer Davis and Ed Murrow." Russian demand that British troops be withdrawn from Greece is only a move in the propaganda campaign against the British. September at Munich, December 7th at Pearl Harbor, 9:15 over Hiroshima, were all part of the identical moment. What's happening to television? The machine has succeeded human judgment. Audiometers and transponders and data processors, the sterile hardware of the rating services, now make programming decisions. Through an electronic vote of lack, the ratings purport to tell us how many Americans are watching a given entertainment or news show. This in turn affects the egos and pocketbooks of those in the industry, as well as the programs that appear or vanish on our sets. The major rating service is the Arthur C. Nielsen Company. Every 2 weeks, by means of a gadget attached to the samples the viewing habits of 1,100 families, claiming this represents the choice of 55 million families. Networks and ad agencies then read the charts and act accordingly. Arthur C. Nielsen Jr. Well, we must remember that television is a commercial uh system as we know it in the United States. And when the networks use uh ratings, they are really, I think, doing quite a a service to the public by finding out the types of programs which the public really enjoys, what they like, and what they don't like. As far as our company goes, we take no um position on this matter. Our function is merely to uh count the the box office. Professor Herbert Arkin, The City College of New York, has published many studies on ratings. What was the uh