What was TV? | thetvguide

What Was TV? Traditional Broadcast Television

To better frame our understanding of the debates surrounding the definition and state of television today, I have outlined below a brief historical overview of the iterations of the medium in Australia, following its beginnings overseas. From it’s inception, up to its current form. To allude to possible futures of Western TV, we must first define what it is, and where it came from.

THE NETWORK ERA

Structural Influence

America and the U.K started their first television broadcasts in the 1930’s. During WWII, (1939-1945), British TV stations suspended broadcasting, (Graham 2005), and only half of the American stations continued to operate at vastly reduced air times, (a mere maximum of 4 hours, down from 15 per day, was required by the FCC, (Federal Communications Commission, (Smith, Ostroff & Wright 1998, pg 78)). The interruption of the war meant that when regular broadcasting resumed after its conclusion in 1945, Australia wasn’t too far behind. However America and Britain had already laid the foundations for the operation of Australian Broadcast.

British TV was ruled by the BBC, (Curthoys 1991), a government-broadcasting corporation, which derived its main revenue from compulsory viewer license fees. The U.S in contrast adopted a majority commercial system, (Curthoys 1991), based on privately owned stations, who derived their primary revenue from advertising with a minor public broadcasting, (government created), component.

Australia’s Broadcasting Act 1948 actually specifically prohibited the granting of commercial TV licenses. The government of the day; Chifley-Labor, opted in June 1948 to follow the British model, establishing a Public Broadcaster in each capital city with no commercial broadcasters whatsoever. The Chifley-Labor government was overturned by the Menzies-Liberal coalition in 1949, a government that was to hold power for the next 23 years. This government altered Chifley’s plans, by amending the Broadcasting Act in 1953, to allow for a dual system that mirrored aspects of both the American and British systems; allowing for the establishment of American-style commercial stations, alongside the state Public broadcasters, (Curthoys 1991). This system probably also owed part of it’s conception to the pre-existing, two-tiered (public/commercial), structure of Australian broadcast radio.

Economic Influence

The structural influences of America and Britain on Australian Broadcast is apparent above. Compounding this structural influence, was Australia’s post-war economic state. In the early 1950’s, pre-recorded program playback was expensive and difficult. In this post-war period Australia was suffering a severe material and man-shortage. Because of this, the unreliable technological newcomer, television, was seen as a pursuit that drained needed resources from more important projects. (Curthoys, 1991).

Content Influence

Due to this, the majority of Australian-made content was produced via the cheaper live-to-air and quiz formats. Australian content could not compete financially with the high budgets, established distribution and recognised international talent pool of the imported content. To add proverbial salt, American networks also offered their programs to Aussie broadcasters in discounted ‘bundles’, making taking a bundle of American shows, cheaper than making one at home, (O’Regan 1999). Even the government co-ordinated ABC, modelled as it was on the BBC, rejected local content in favour of British, (Skwirk: Online Education, 2015). In 1963 the Vincent Committee Report, (A.K.A Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television), found that 97% of all TV drama on Australian screens between 1956 and 1963 was imported from the U.S, ( Cunningham, Turnbull & Turner, 2001, p.175). At the beginning of the 60’s, 80% of all Australian TV content was sourced from the USA, (Skwirk: Online Education, 2015). The effect of Australia’s post-war economic situation meant that our TV was dominated by “imported product”, (O’Regan, 1999), from the inception of television solidly through to the mid-sixties. This is important to note as this was the period when Australia was establishing its Broadcast practices and identity. The importation of content and practices from the traditional media capitals; the U.S/ U.K content umbrellas (Turner & Tay 2009; Lotz, 2014), has meant that Australian practices are often a reflection of its vacillating position within the “anglo-American nexus”, (Lotz 2009; O’Regan 1999). Australia thus forms a fertile ground for enquiry into the future of TV, as findings can be applied to it’s ‘relative’ Western markets of lineage.

Influence Effect

Because of the economic instability of the post-war period, the Menzies government chose to grant initial commercial licenses to established media proprietors, (Television.Au, 2015). This was to maintain the industry’s long-term viability, creating fledgling media-‘network’ conglomerates.The Menzies government officially introduced the two-tiered public/commercial structure in 1954, in preparation for the upcoming broadcast of the Melbourne, 1956 Summer Olympics. This broadcast acts as a symbolic marker for the start of the Australian Broadcast era. Below, a few historical notes to bring us up to speed with the developing structure of the broadcast system.

1956: The Olympics were broadcast on the early iterations of the commercial channels 7 (previously HSV7 ) and 9 (previously TCN9) and the public broadcaster, ABC, the only metro stations in existence.

1956: At this point only 5% of Melbourne and 1% of Sydney households owned a TV set, (Commonwealth of Australia 2007; Television.Au, 2015).
1964: the federal government licensed a third station in major cities to address competition concerns. In the late 60’s these stations joined together to become the 0-10 Network, (previously Independent Television System, currently Network 10).
1975: Colour Television was introduced to sweeping success.
1978: 64% of Melbourne and 70% of Sydneysiders own a colour TV set, (Television.Au, 2015).
1980: a second public broadcaster the Special Broadcasting Service, (currently SBS), was introduced, (Free TV Australia, 2005).

Characteristics of the Network Era

From the 50’s to the 80’s, before the emergence of Pay TV, (mid 90’s), cable, (1995), and digital, (2001), these 4 stations; 7, 9, 10, ABC and the late addition SBS, were the only television broadcasters in major cities, (Lotz 2014). They controlled all the content coming in and out of all metro Australian screens up until the mid 80’s. This period is termed the Broadcast or Network Era as it was characterised by the “specific industrial practices”, maintained by these Networks, (Lotz 2014, pg 4), which is what we term ‘traditional broadcast TV’.

The TV of the Network Era was identified by its stacicity. The spectrum scarcity outlined above meant that the audience was restricted to few viewing options; broadcasted at a mass monolithic audience. The broadcast model assumed a large, undifferentiated audience, whose passive reception of content was undoubted. Networks aimed to please the largest amount of viewers with their programming via a strategy called “least objectionable programming”, (Paul Klein, CBS Vice President of Programming). This production policy acted as a form of censorship, infantilising adult audiences and restricting risque or adult content. Network era television typified a One-to-many approach to content.

The mass audience at which this early content was directed was engaging with the new technology in a post-war context. This meant the television was used as a uniting force, unifying in “space and time”, the disparate geographical segments of the country. It was used as a signifier of national identity, particularly in the culturally infant Australia, (Turner & Tay 2009). Turner argues the TV was used to form and maintain a distinct national identity which assisted with needed post-war social re-integration.

Culturally, Australians were now looking post-war, to the emerged global, economic power America rather than their historical idol, Britain. Capitalising on the post-war consumption boom, Australians sought to mimic the idealised ‘American dream’. With its role in producing, and maintaining, national identity, the television came to be known as a cultural or electronic hearth, where families would gather to watch, socialise, discuss and participate in an increasingly Americanised “imagined community”.

Stacicity and Scheduling

Network era television was typified by the physical television set. The television of this age was static, physically unmoving and constrained in the domestic sphere. The initial domestic nature of television severely restricted audience access, permitting viewing only on a predetermined, singular/unrepeated schedule.

In the history of television it is only extremely recently that we can watch shows on our own schedules. In the dark days of television if you missed Game of Thrones to go to your netball Grand Final, you’d missed it. Your only hope for ever viewing it, would be if the network decided to schedule a repeat broadcast or rerun. Scheduling was controlled strictly by the networks and conformed to a strictly hegemonic view of the nuclear family. As Fiske, (1982, pg 116) comments; “a day’s broadcasting is arranged so that particular programs coincide with particular supposed events in the life of the family”. The original broadcasts structured their programming around the typical day of an average family. The family, in turn structured their day around it. Vestiges of this remain today in the viewing of live sports broadcasts like the AFL Grand Final and race 7 of The Melbourne Cup.

This restrictive programming meant that the Networks aimed to appeal to the largest audience possible. As has been noted by various scholars; it is called ‘broad’-casting for a reason, (Zrzavy 2007). The TV of the Network Era was locked in the domestic sphere with networks controlling viewing and what was viewed. It was a Broadcast technology, (Turner & Tay 2009, pg 1), used similarly to radio to maintain and culture national identity.

The main characteristics of TV of the Network era, agreed upon fully by Lotz, (2014), and Turner and Tay (2009) - and tacitly by everyone else, are:

Broadcaster controlled
Restricted access: scheduled programming, censored content/ “least objectionable programming” policy, spectrum scarcity (5 channels)
Static/ confined to domestic sphere
Immobile
Post-war cultivator of national identity; a cultural hearth for society
Broadcast technology

THE MULTI-CHANNEL TRANSITION PHASE

The two decades from the 1980’s to the early 2000’s was dominated by slumberous, yet expansive changes to these practices. The advent of new technologies sparked off a revolution that undermined the unquestioned practices of the Networks. Some scholars termed this period the Post-Network period, claiming the new technologies had completely overthrown the old paradigms. Lotz, (2014), disagrees; arguing for the use of the transitionary, “Multi-channel transition phase”. This phase, she argues encompasses the period of change from the mid 80’s through to the mid 2000’s, where the “new media” agents were, undoubtedly changing our televisual experience. But Lotz emphasises, that this change happened gradually, concurrent to traditional broadcast television, which continued to operate effectively the same way as it had in the Network era, alongside the upstart new media, (Lotz 2014, pg 4).

The old New Media:

What

In the mid-90’s, “programming multiplicity”, ( Webster in Lotz 2014, pg 25) expanded rapidly giving audiences increasingly more choices of content. The arrival of cable provided a vast array of programming to choose from that audiences had never experienced before. They could not choose, what they watched.

When

This new choice of content was complemented by the arrival of timeshifting technologies that allowed choice over when to watch. The first of these was the humble remote control which introduced the heretofore unknown pleasures of channel surfing. Audiences no longer had allegiance to a specific channel/ network, nor did they have to have a physical connection with their television to ‘flip the switch’.

Soon after this VCR became a household name. For the first time TV shows could be watched outside of their original broadcast, and consumed in full, on the audiences’ schedule. The television drama of the Network Era had been typified by a strict set of form and narrative conventions optimised to work within the scheduled viewing framework. Before timeshifting technologies episodes of the broadcast era were designed to be stand-alone and episodes generally ended on the ‘reset button’ with the story-world returning to its normative state as though the events of the episode had never really happened. This was to maintain serial continuity”, (Mittell 2011), for audiences, so that if they missed an episode of Game of thrones for the parent-teacher meeting, there would be no advances in the narrative preventing them from rejoining the storyworld the next Monday. This was particularly important as networks would often schedule anachronistic re-runs, designed for an audience that could ‘drop-in’ on the narrative from any point in a season. The ability of audiences to access full seasons of TV shows via VCR; for the first time outside of the scheduled broadcast, ushered in a wave of complex stories, with rapidly advancing narratives, that demanded attentive, dedicated viewing. This ‘complex TV’ boosted televisions cultural clout and put it on the same artistic level as film. In fact, many film directors, ‘jumped across’ to helm television shows in this period.

The unprecedented proliferation of bootleg technologies; home-tapings of movies and shows - and the creation of the ‘home-theatre’ - expanded timeshifting capabilities; shifting viewing schedules away from the control of the Networks and into the autonomy of the viewer. This “expanded choice and control”, (Lotz 2014, pg 25), led to an unprecedented amount of personal choice in viewing. The expansion of channels, catered to more personalised audiences; moving away from the broadcasting model of the Network Era towards a narrow-casting or niche strategy. This personalised targeting disrupted the traditional articulation of television to one national identity; resulting in partial audience fragmentation and polarisation, (Webster in Lotz 2014).

How

During this period the television escaped the domestic sphere; infiltrating urban public space, (Turner & Tay 2009), appearing “everywhere… in shopping centres, on cars”. Television, while still immobile, was no longer static, stuck in the living room. This visual representation of televisions expanding horizons raised awareness of TV’s previous non-portable state. Audiences became accustomed to non-static televisions dispersed throughout their days, physically breaking the traditional fourth wall into urban space and also chronically invading the audiences work and leisure time, with their newfound ability to time-shift their choice of content.

These technological advances foregrounded more advanced successors: DVD and DVR (digital video recorder), blu-ray and the true advent of niche-casting. The introduction of the digital spectrum in 2001 and the shutdown of analogue broadcast between 2010-2013, heralded the age of indomitable technology. This is the period when the internet blew up, engulfing the majority of citizens in its intoxicating wealth of content and choice. The viability of platforms like the 2005-founded Youtube, encouraged audiences to seek content over-the-top (OTT content) of their cable boxes through the internet displaying on-demand viewing practices. The coming mobility of screens would again, redefine the industry as audience expectations shifted to bring their long disregarded preferences and desires to the fore.

The proliferation of alternative content pathways resulted in the disaggregation of some traditional media chains, (Murdoch, Tuma & Vernocchi, 2015), weakening their iron clasp on the operation of the television industry and their license on premium content.

The main characteristics of TV of the Multi-channel Transition Phase (hereon, MTCP), are a contradiction of traditional media of the Network Era and old new media: MCTP. Displayed below:

Network Era

MCTP

One-to-many
Broadcaster controlled
Restricted access: scheduled programming, censored content/ “least objectionable programming” policy, spectrum scarcity (5 channels)
Static/ confined to domestic sphere
Immobile
Post-war cultivator of national identity; a cultural hearth for society
Broadcast technology

Many-to-one
Recognition of broadcast control: initial exertion of personal choice: choosing what, when & how to watch.
Broader access: timeshifting technologies allowing repeated viewing and binge-watching, cable, Pay TV: expansion of channels = broader providers of content, allowances for production of niche-content
Escaped domestic confines; TV in Urban space
Cultivator of individual identity