Sunday, October 6, 2013
Socially Relevant Coverage in the 1960s
Why did the networks begin to lengthen their news coverage, broadcast presidential debates, and program more socially-relevant documentaries like Crisis during the 1960s? How did this material illuminate civil rights issues and inflect the way that people understood national politics?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Networks began to lengthen their news coverage for a multitude of reasons. They wanted to appeal to their critics who claimed that everything on TV was a vast wasteland first and foremost. By lengthening the news cycles, they somewhat take their critics arguments and break them. The networks were still as profit hungry as ever, so the change was in no way benevolent. I doubt the change was intended to be socially aware, but rather to appeal to their audience that was socially aware. The news coverage was still primarily conservative, but just having the social change present was something that people took note of. The idea that this would come as magnanimous is absurd given the conservative, profit driven nature of the networks. The result being liberal leaning was likely the work of the liberal producers rather than a network decision.
ReplyDeleteI believe that every decision the networks make revolve around the desire to make money. The networks want to be profitable, and they will do whatever it takes to be more profitable than one another. The networks know that money comes from selling commercials to sponsors, and that the sponsors are drawn to the programs that have the largest audiences. Therefore, the networks base their programming on what the audience wants at the time. I think that the networks lengthened their new coverage and added documentaries because that is what the audience wanted at the time. The audience wanted more news and were going to go to whichever network was showing what they wanted.
ReplyDeleteThe news was the main way that most of the audience received their information about politics. Because most of the networks were run by corporations that tended to be more conservative, the networks were forced to frame news in a conservative light. The networks could not entirely ignore civil rights, so they maintained control by showing the news in a way that still appealed to the conservative right. In the 1960s, cable was not as widely spread as it is today, so the networks still had control over most of the audience, which meant that they could control the information American citizens were receiving. The networks had control over their news, and could therefore frame the news in any way they wanted and the audience had no way of learning about the other side of the issue. If all the news stations showed the same side of the story, then that was the story the audience got. Audiences understood national politics in the way that the news wanted them to understand it.
After Newton Minow’s infamous “vast wasteland” speech about the state of television, networks began policing themselves to put out better content, focusing more on what was happening around the country instead of filling their hours with mindless programming. This programming included coverage of one of the major social and political movements occurring in the 1960s – the Civil Rights Movement. While it may have been easier to ignore when news coverage was limited to a few fifteen minute segments each day – they could choose to focus on easier, all white issues instead – it was such a large part of what was happening nationally that they could no longer ignore it when forced to spend more time on the news. Eventually, almost everything happening politically and socially became tied up in the movement and there was no way to ignore it. Now, people could watch the news instead of just reading about it in the paper or hearing about it on the radio. Instead of merely hearing about protesters getting shot with water hoses, viewers could watch children and the elderly get bowled over by high-pressure hoses as they tried to become equal citizens under the law. Since it was such a big issue, everyone in America was forced t see it play out, and perhaps become more involved than they would have been before.
ReplyDelete