Half a century ago, on April 30, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the New York World`s Fair, NBC-a subsidiary of RCA-provided 3 1/2 hours of live television coverage, thus beginning the first regular programming in the United States.
In the cosmic scheme of things, 50 years is not a long time. As Milton Berle might say, ”I`ve got dresses older than that.”
What the hey.
Members of a certain generation-who, like the medium, also are confronting middle-age-remember the end of the classic radio era and the arrival of its brash competitor. In those early years, there were such shows as ”Juvenile Jury,” ”Kraft Television Theatre,” ”Howdy Doody,” ”Toast of the Town,” Ted Mack`s ”Original Amateur Hour,” John Cameron Swayze`s
”Camel News Caravan,” ”The Goldbergs,” ”Captain Video,” boxing on Wednesday and Friday nights, and Chicago`s own, wondrous ”Garroway at Large” and ”Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”
There were Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on ”Your Show of Shows,”
Gorgeous George on the mat, Groucho`s ”secret woid” on ”You Bet Your Life,” Jerry Lester and the ludicrously statuesque Dagmar on ”Broadway Open House,” and the blond, leggy object of every young man`s sexual fantasy, Mary Hartline, on ”Super Circus.”
But the most unavoidable star was Uncle Miltie-”Mr. Television”
himself-on ”Texaco Star Theater.” In a way, the Elvis of his day, Berle was an object to be devoured by adolescents and scorned by their parents as a crude, loud, tasteless, powderpuff-wielding lout-which, of course, he was.
The new medium gained decided validation when CBS founder William S. Paley lured over such star performers from NBC`s radio network as Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Red Skelton, and George Burns and Gracie Allen. But along with the validation, there has always been the problem of respect.
Television is ”the boob tube,” ”the idiot box,” ”chewing gum for the eyes.” ”Television is being entertained in your living room by people you wouldn`t have in your home.” Rimshot. ”They call television a medium because it`s never rare and never well-done.”
”Television is a triumph of equipment over people,” Fred Allen once said, ”and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have room beside them for a network vice president`s heart.” More prosaically, in 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow called TV ”a vast wasteland-a procession of game shows, violence . . . and, most of all, boredom.”
Still, the electronic Force, whether we like it or not, is decidedly with us. Nearly all television`s history runs alongside our postwar history and, over the years, it has usurped the power of print. It is a given that TV elects presidents and senators and mayors, and anything and everything these days seems eligible to become a ”media event.”
Unlike Dick Clark, TV has grown older, but-except for spectacular technological advances-has not necessarily matured.
It has become the definitive babysitter for American parents. It`s 10 o`clock Saturday morning: Do you know where your kids` minds are?
It has set up all kinds of debates. Was the ”Golden Age” really Golden? Is ”Sesame Street” a vital educational tool or an insidious saboteur of learning? Was Roller Derby really on the level?
Indeed, television seldom has the answers, but it always has the questions.
”Who shot J. R.?”
”Where`s the beef?”
Millions of people watch TV-the most ever, on the night of Feb. 28, 1983, for the final episode of ”M+A+S+H”-but only a fraction of those know how it actually works.
According to the Census Bureau, there are now more households with TV sets than there are with telephones and indoor plumbing. Recent studies declare that the average American household watches 7 hours and 5 minutes of television a day, and the average individual 4 hours-which certainly sounds fishy since no one you or I know watches even a single minute, except maybe for ”Nova” and ”Washington Week in Review.”
Television has been a godsend for the shut-in, the elderly, the lonely. Through its lavish programming and attendant commercials, it has been accused of stirring up discontent by allowing the have-nots to see exactly what they haven`t. It has been blamed for reinforcing racial and sexual stereotypes
(”Hi, honey, I`m home!”), and for everything from the rise in crime to the drop in SATs.
It even has been determined that television can be hazardous, not only to your brain, but also to your body. Two years ago, a report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission revealed that an estimated 25,400 people were treated in emergency rooms for TV-set-related injuries-from children swallowing knobs to grownups kicking in the console.
At its best, television is unsurpassed as a national unifier. It has provided the catharsis for grief (as it did that terrible November weekend in Dallas, when the country lost its young president and, seemingly, its hope), relief (when the hostages came home) and exultation (when man landed on the Moon). It has been there for the World Series, NCAA basketball, the Olympics, Monday night football and the thrilla in Manila. In its ”global village”
capacity, it has made the world aware of Gorbachev`s glasnost, as well as providing a platform for Middle Eastern terrorists, and has put the spotlight on African starvation and American homelessness.
Television has run from the ridiculous to the riveting. It showed Arthur Godfrey firing Julius LaRosa and Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki and Jack Paar walking off in a huff. But it also presented Edward R. Murrow outlining the plight of the migrant worker, and thrust the Vietnam War into our living rooms.
Television covered Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement: the marches, the dogs, the cattle prods. It was there for Sen. Estes Kefauver`s hearings on organized crime (featuring the hands of raspy-voiced gambler Frank Costello), and for the Army-McCarthy hearings and Sen. Joseph McCarthy`s subsequent downfall, Elizabeth II`s coronation and the clashes between demonstrators and Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention. Oddly enough, Richard Nixon-hardly the quintessential creature of television-is linked with several of its most remembered moments: the ”Checkers” speech, the debates with Kennedy and Khrushchev, the smoking guns of Watergate.
In prime time, TV has settled for a handful of genres: the sitcom and the cop show, soap operas, the Merv/Mike-style talk fest, family outings like
”Father Knows Best” and ”Leave it to Beaver.” Westerns like
”Gunsmoke” and ”Bonanza,” quiz shows like ”Strike It Rich” and the eventually disgraced ”Twenty-One.”
It has showcased the comedic genius of Jackie Gleason, Ernie Kovacs and Carol Burnett, and presented original drama from ”Twelve Angry Men” on
”Studio One” to ”Roots,” ”Hill Street Blues” and ”L. A. Law.” It has given us Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock, Huntley and Brinkley, Buffalo Bob and Captain Kangaroo, Walter Cronkite and the Waltons, Lassie and Lucy.
It has given us ”Omnibus,” ”The Jewel in the Crown,” ”I, Claudius,” ”The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” ”M+A+S+H,” the cultish ”The Prisoner”
and the seminal ”All in the Family.” It has also given us ”My Little Margie,” ”The Beverly Hillbillies,” ”Let`s Make A Deal,” ”My Mother the Car,” ”Gilligan`s Island,” ”Hee Haw” and ”Mr. Smith” (which, lest we forget, was the story of a talking orangutan with an I. Q. of 256).
Certainly, there have been changes on the business side. In 1958, the NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants cost NBC $200,000 for the rights. This year, that network paid $17 million for the Super Bowl. These days, there are ”people meters” that determine the country`s viewing habits, and sophisticated attention paid to the breakdown of demographics.
Through the years, one of the most persistent criticisms has been the failure of television to adequately serve as educator.
”Television serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment,” writes NYU professor Neil Postman in ”Amusing Ourselves to Death” (Viking, 1985). ”It serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse-news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion-and turns them into entertainment packages. We would all be better off if television got worse, not better. `The A-Team` and `Cheers` are no threat to our public health. `60 Minutes,` `Eye-Witness News` and `Sesame Street` are.” During the half-century, there has been change and stasis. Forty years ago, Americans were delighted if they could watch a blurry baseball game on a 7-inch screen housed in a narrow set that looked like a Samsonite suitcase. Today, impatient viewers have resorted to channel-zapping.
Contemporary critics are snapping about ”trash TV”-Geraldo getting off on Satanism, Morton Downey Jr. tapping into a hockey-game-like studio audience-but years ago there was Joe Pyne telling his guests to ”gargle with razor blades.” We have progressed from the Nelsons to the Huxtables, but on prime time, black still is eerily similar to white: If Ozzie Nelson never gave an indication of holding a job, Cliff Huxtable isn`t exactly a workaholic.
What has television come to in this era of the Couch Potato? Is moving from ”The Honeymooners” to ”Roseanne” really a positive progression? ”All in the Family” may have discarded necessary taboos, but isn`t the legacy a barrage of coarsened language and serial-killers on parade?
I recently asked Newton Minow, who is now a partner with Chicago`s Sidley & Austin, as well as a board member of WTTW-Ch. 11 and CBS, to reflect on how things had changed since he made his ”vast wasteland” denunciation 28 years ago.
”I think in the area of news and sports, they`re spending much more effort and time,” he answered. ”I think in public television we`re doing a better and better job, although we`re miserably funded; we`ve got to find a way to regard public television the way we regard public libraries or museums or colleges.
”But on the networks, the day-to-day routine hasn`t changed for the better. Once in a while you can get a special event, like `Day One` and
`Lonesome Dove,` which show what television can do.
”With the constantly rising level of education, I think people in television will finally realize that the public is smarter than they think. But things really haven`t changed since `61.”
”Television couldn`t be any worse than it is,” Fred W. Friendly, Edward R. Murrow professor emeritus at Columbia University`s Graduate School of Journalism and onetime president of CBS News, told me a couple of seasons ago. ”The problem with commercial television in this country is that it makes so much money doing its worst, it can`t afford to do its best.
”And people at the networks are no longer broadcasters. They`re in the pork-belly business. The ones who buy programs don`t know anything about television. If you walked one of them into a control room, they wouldn`t know anything about television. They could be buying sausages or haberdashery.”
Whatever. Unlike the past, TV is being Taken Seriously.
College professors are calling television ”our 20th-Century art form,”
and perhaps at this very minute, a pop-culture course is being taught at a major university on the exegesis of ”Mr. Ed.”
”So much American money is now connected to television, that it`s almost impossible not to pay some attention to it,” says Professor Jack Nachbar of Bowling Green University`s Center for the Study of Popular Culture. ”Our studies have become more and more part of the academic establishment, and we`re getting less snide, condescending remarks that we used to-say, 10 years ago.
”In a way, academia tends to run behind what`s going on in society, especially in the humanities and communications. There wasn`t any American literature taught regularly until around 1905, and obviously American literature had been around for a long time. Today, what we`ve got are people who started off in programs that were considered eccentric and crazy and silly, and who now are writing their dissertations and are getting published regularly.”
The biggest news these days is the decline in the share for the major networks, with the continued erosion due to competition from cable, videocassette recorders and syndication on independent stations. A decade ago, ABC, CBS and NBC were getting 90 percent of the viewing audience. These days, it is 68 percent. However, because network TV remains the best bet for advertisers to reach mass audiences, there are expectations that by the mid-1990s, the percentage will level off to the high 50s or low 60s.
Some have predicted that, because of increasingly sophisticated technology, local newscasts eventually will supplant the network`s evening hours. Others foresee the breakdown of the networks themselves.
”The technology now is totally different than when I was in the government,” Minow says. ”Also, what you`ve got now is an explosion in the number of channels, largely through cable and satellites. What is happening is very much like what happened to radio, with the splitting of a mass audience into smaller, more specialized interests.
”With television today, you`ve got all-news channels, all-sports channels, all-foreign-language channels, all-children channels. So as that progresses, depending on your value system, television is going to provide more and more choice. I`m not entirely convinced that`s always good. Because one of the main values of television is that it offers a shared, simultaneous experience.
”If you have a great national event-a tragedy like a presidential assassination or a moon shot or a release of hostages-television is the one thing that brings together this big, diverse country, and I think it would be very bad if we lost that. On the other hand, it`s good we have ever-expanding choices. So I guess it`s the good with the bad.”
Others are worried about the information implosion and the diminution of history.
”I worry that my own business helps to make this an anxious age of agitated amnesiacs,” PBS` Bill Moyers has said. ”We Americans seem to know everything about the last 24 hours, but very little of the last 60 centuries or the last 60 years.”
And so we have gone from 16 mm. kinescope to state-of-the-art tape, from Jerry Lester and Steve Allen to Johnny Carson and David Letterman, from
”Twenty-One” to ”60 Minutes” and ”thirtysomething,” from ”Speedy”
Alka-Seltzer to Spuds MacKenzie.
For now, we are left with all those images. Betty Furness opening the refrigerator. Loretta Young twirling around. Charles van Doren taking a quiz- show dive. Sgt. Bilko barking orders. Fred Astaire gliding with Barrie Chase. Ed Murrow pulling on still-another cigarette. Mary Richards tremulously confronting Mr. Grant. Ralph Kramden promising to send Alice to you-know-where. The Fugitive seeking the one-armed man. Goodnight, Chet, and goodnight, David. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.
And we are left to reflect about what the medium should accomplish-perhaps looking back at the words of the late E. B. White, who once wrote that television should be ”the visual counterpart of the literary essay,”
that it ”should arouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys. . . . It should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky`s and our Camelot. . . . Once in a while it is, and you get a quick glimpse of its potential.”
