Networks

views updated

Networks

Communications media networks were born with the 1926 radio sign-on of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), signaling the dawn of a new era of both communications and culture in America. The network concept is purely abstract—even in its practical form nothing but a series of wires or satellite connections. Yet the history and influence of the broadcast networks is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, for though they did not create it, the networks did cement the process of homogenizing American culture. By 1930, for the first time America was whistling to the same tunes, laughing at the same comedians, hearing the same politicians' speeches—instantaneously. The taste and judgement of a relative few urban, Northeastern network executives set national standards of everything from dialect and language to fashion and behavior. Only when the influence of the old-line networks had faded, by the end of the century, was it truly possible to grasp the power they held over the nation for so long.

Though the number of networks has grown exponentially over the decades, with the technology of their distribution methods improving by light-years, the concept has remained the same. A network is simply a set of affiliate stations that receive programming from one central source, then beam that programming by some method, either broadcast wave or cable wire, into the eyes and ears of a waiting public.

The first major radio network, the National Broadcasting Company, debuted in November 1926 with a glittering, distinctly high-brow, multi-city broadcast. Parent company RCA announced that the new network would "provide the best program available for broadcasting in the United States." In those early days, network broadcasting wore the cloak of dignity—announcers in nightclothes and no commercials; only "indirect" advertising was allowed on the air—shrouding its very definite for-profit intentions. A rousing success, NBC was soon running two separate chains, the "Red network" and the "Blue network." Each carried its own programs to its own set of affiliate stations, though the networks sometimes combined efforts to carry an important speech or news event. Meanwhile, the "indirect" advertising rule quickly gave way to the now-familiar "commercial announcement."

By late 1927, NBC faced some competition. William Paley was the restless but ambitious 27-year-old heir to his family's cigar fortune. Having already seen radio's potential as a medium for advertising cigars, Paley jumped at the chance to enter the exciting new business of broadcasting. He bought out the struggling Columbia Broadcasting System (previously known as the United Independent Broadcasters chain, then the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System when that company invested heavily), signed up affiliates—and soon, NBC had itself some real, albeit impoverished competition in CBS.

The first genuine fad of the network age hit in 1929, when a pair of Chicago radio performers came to the NBC airwaves in a 15-minute nightly comedy serial called Amos and Andy. The series had been a smash in Chicago and in syndication, but it took national exposure on the NBC network to propel the series' popularity into the stratosphere. Volumes have been written about Amos and Andy : stores and theatres piped in the broadcast to keep customers from fleeing homeward at the appointed hour; you could walk down any street on a warm night and hear the broadcast wafting out open windows at every house and store; most Americans could do their own imitations of such Amos and Andy catchphrases as "I'se regusted" and "Ooh Wah! Ooh Wah!"; both local and national leaders debated whether the program was harmless comedy or racial bigotry. That such scenes were playing themselves out simultaneously in every city, village, and hamlet across the land was the first real testament to the power of this new cultural force, the broadcast network.

By 1930, the old notion of radio as a purely local force was gone forever. Network programming soon stretched from morning 'til midnight, the networks assuming ironclad contractual control over much of their affiliates' airtime. This practice guaranteed maximum "clearance" for advertisers' commercials; it coincidentally ensured that Americans would share a collective common experience each time they sat before their radios.

When vaudevillians like Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor debuted on the networks in the early 1930s, they found themselves playing to a bigger audience in a single half-hour than they would have faced in a lifetime of stage work. Likewise, listeners in Idaho or Alabama who would never have been able to see Benny or Cantor perform soon took for granted a free show—in their own homes yet—each week. When President Franklin Roosevelt took to the network air upon his inauguration in 1933, his efforts at calming a Depression-panicked populace succeeded in large measure because his words were heard instantaneously by millions of Americans.

The Mutual Broadcasting System came next, formed in 1934 as a loosely organized co-op of major independent stations like WGN in Chicago and WOR in New York. Though it eventually found itself with the most affiliates of any of the networks, Mutual never really competed with NBC or CBS in terms of ratings or budget. Attempts at launching new national chains—like comedian Ed Wynn's Amalgamated network in 1934—were notorious failures, though several smaller regional networks did operate successfully: Intercity on the east coast, Don Lee on the west.

The "big boys" continued to thrive, settling into the routines and traditions that exist to this day. The broadcast schedule consisted of news in the morning; soaps and talk shows in the daytime; more news in the evening; then big-time, big-budget entertainment at night. The September to May broadcast "season" became a tradition. Tired shows fell by the wayside; new favorites quickly took their places. A "next wave" of popular entertainers and programs—Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Edgar Bergen—took hold in the late 1930s. But it was an incident that occurred on the night of October 30, 1938 that provided the clearest demonstration yet of the broadcast networks' power over the populace.

It was only a dramatization, but later estimates report more than one million people believed it—and panicked—when Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air presented a modern-day version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, told partly through a series of staged but authentic-sounding news bulletins. People ran for their lives; police and radio station switchboards were flooded with frantic calls; at CBS headquarters, armed guards surrounded Welles' studio even as the broadcast proceeded. "War of the Worlds" was a sensation; the panic was front-page news. Ironically, it was CBS' own recent coverage of the European war crisis that had conditioned the radio audience to respond when somebody said, "We interrupt this program." By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, radio's real-time news capability was commonplace.

It would be impossible to overstate the effect the radio networks had on America's wartime psyche. Entertainment programs never doubted the righteousness of America's cause or the skill of its leaders; indeed, wartime events served as a creative jump-start for many series. Meanwhile, the broadcast journalism of the period successfully walked a fine line between patriotism and jingoism. True, Americans heard scant criticism of war aims or military leadership; but in terms of simple reporting of facts, the networks' news departments were in top form, managed by dedicated professionals who vowed to treat their audience equally seriously. The notion that the entire nation could gather round its radios and hear a status report on the latest battle or campaign—this was an incredible innovation, a revolution of both journalism and its public consumption.

By this time there was a "new" national network, after a government anti-trust decision forced NBC to sell one of its two chains. The network had been accused of using its decidedly second-string Blue network to stifle competition in cities that were just getting their second or third radio station. The Blue was sold to Life Savers candy magnate Edward Noble, becoming the Blue Network of the American Broadcasting Company, then simply the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC, by September 1945.

Those early post-war years were some of the grandest in network history; prime-time entertainment programs were at their slickest, big-budget best. CBS chief William Paley returned from wartime service determined to take his chain to number one; the results would resound for decades. Whereas previously advertising agencies had complete control over the programs broadcast on the network air, CBS began producing many of its own shows, then selling the advertising time. The result was a set of series (Our Miss Brooks, My Friend Irma, My Favorite Husband) that invented the modern-day sitcom. Meanwhile, having apparently despaired of developing his own big-name talent, Paley also managed to steal away many NBC favorites in the legendary 1948-49 talent raids known as "Paley's Comet." Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen, Groucho Marx, Edgar Bergen, and others all defected during this period, for various reasons. CBS ruled the ratings chart for the first time in its history. And while NBC managed to hang on to Bob Hope, Fibber McGee and Molly, One Man's Family, and others, the damage was done. CBS, purposely or not, had also managed to put itself into the best competitive position in that new medium—television.

The networks' TV experimentation had started in earnest nearly a decade-and-a-half earlier; NBC had even begun a pattern of "regular broadcasts" with an extravaganza from the 1939 New York World's Fair. There was not much of an available audience and the war put a halt to most of the experimenting. By 1947, however, the networks were back at full steam. Although initially CBS stubbornly held out for color TV, featuring a system that would have rendered every current black-and-white set useless, the network finally relented when consumers proved unwilling to abandon their existing sets. Meanwhile, the fledgling DuMont network—founded and managed by the electronics manufacturer of the same name—seemed to be in a good position to overtake ABC as the "third network" in the new medium. Without its own radio chain to provide talent and financial support, however, that goal proved unattainable.

None of the big radio stars were willing to take the plunge at this early date, but advertisers were testing the television waters. Even as the papers were full of stories about Jack Benny's switch of radio networks, a definite trend developed: in cities where viewers could choose, TV became the favorite. NBC television found its first bona-fide hit in Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater in 1948. Viewing outpaced radio listening in city after city by 1949.

Radio ratings didn't collapse all at once; instead, the sun set agonizingly slowly over the networks' glory days. A Korean War freeze on some manufacturing put the brakes on the spread of television during the early 1950s, to interesting effect: even as television ruled the nation's cities, the outlying areas were still totally dependent on radio. Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Red Skelton, and others made the jump to television early in the new decade; Jackie Gleason and Lucille Ball joined Milton Berle as the first genuine sensations the new medium had produced on its own. To be sure, network radio was enjoying a creative resurgence during this period; daring new series like Dragnet and Gunsmoke were a breath of fresh air to viewers.

The radio advertising market had collapsed. The city audience had deserted the medium in droves; most remaining listeners joined the exodus when mass manufacturing resumed in 1953. By 1955, of the legendary comedians who had ruled the airwaves for 25 years, only Edgar Bergen remained on the radio. Nighttime drama was all but dead; NBC, in particular, began experimenting with the long-form news/talk format; network "news on the hour" was an innovation during this period. November 25, 1960 is often referred to as "the last day of network radio": on that Friday after Thanksgiving, CBS broadcast the final installments of everything from Ma Perkins to Amos and Andy. The last two network dramas came to an end in 1962. (The long-running detective opus Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was the last radio network drama). Network television was now the unchallenged king of America's living rooms, a position it would hold for another two decades.

The era was a remarkably stable one for the industry. The DuMont network folded in 1956, but NBC, CBS, and ABC thrived. Their access into the nation's homes—and consciousness—during this period was unparalleled. The networks and their product influenced fashion—everything from coon-skin caps to Capri pants and bouffant hairdos; language—expressions as familiar as "And away we go" and "Here comes the judge" began as TV catchphrases; and politics—television news led the way in questioning America's involvement in Vietnam, and while few Americans had access to the Washington Post, the networks' coverage of Watergate made it into every home in the nation. As NBC and CBS spent the decades fighting it out for first place in the ratings, the networks became adept at turning public fancy into inescapable fad: Westerns gave way to the rural comedies of the early 1960s; series such as The Beverly Hillbillies in turn surrendered to the popularity of All in the Family and other socially relevant comedies of the early 1970s. ABC (which for decades had been nicknamed "Almost a Broadcasting Company") was catapulted to its first-ever reign at the top on the strength of series like Charlie's Angels and Three's Company in the mid-1970s. As late as 1979, the networks could manage to draw nearly 100 percent of the available viewing audience on any single night.

In 1975 the Home Box Office pay channel took to the air via satellite, its signal beamed into homes via the local cable systems whose previous service had been providing clearer signals of faraway broadcast stations. The idea of receiving unedited, recent theatrical films via cable—even for a small fee—proved popular and profitable; other entrepreneurs quickly took the hint. Atlanta businessman Ted Turner was soon uplinking the signal of his UHF independent station; with characteristic modesty, Turner called his baby the "Superstation"—and it soon found a coast-to-coast audience. Turn-er's Cable News Network debuted in 1980. Although the broadcast networks sneered, their contempt soon turned to outright fear.

By the mid-1980s, dozens of cable networks had carved profitable niches for themselves. The television audience that had contented itself for decades with three or four channels suddenly had ten times that many from which to choose: everything from evangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network to the all-sports ESPN to the all-music MTV—perhaps the first cable network to spark its own generational and cultural revolution.

To be sure, the audience for each of these cable networks was tiny, the barest fraction of the audience for even the lowest-rated traditional network program. But the combined weight of cable viewership sent the old-line networks' ratings into an irreversible downward spiral by the mid-1980s. Their consignment to irrelevance was neither immediate nor quick; like the radio networks before them, the television chains found themselves dying slow, lingering deaths, with few options for salvation. A 1990s cable series, South Park, was considered a smash—featured on the cover of Newsweek, the talk of its generation, and a merchandising bonanza. Yet it drew barely two million viewers per week. True, they were the young, affluent viewers advertisers craved; yet there simply were not enough of them to make the program a success on a traditional broadcast network. It was the great paradox: the old networks' audience was still vast; yet by continuing to program for a mass, homogenous audience in the age of niches and demographic targeting, the networks had effectively ceded their long-standing role as a guiding cultural force. The addition of several new broadcast networks—Fox in the 1980s, UPN, WB, and Pax in the 1990s—served to further disperse the former mass audience.

The networks' decline had no lesser consequences than their rise. The audience became so fragmented, the number of viewing choices so great, that the concept of the great national audience simply vanished: no more universally understood catchphrases, no more monster-hit series, at least not in the old sense. The youngest generation didn't even remember the day of three or four channels; by the end of the twentieth century, even the network concept itself was permanently endangered.

Cable, too, was threatened by rapidly advancing technology. Suddenly, it was possible for consumers to bypass the network setup entirely, and have their own individual choice of program services beamed directly into their homes by satellite. The technology had existed for years, in bulkier and more expensive form, but the direct-satellite industry exploded in the late 1990s. Suddenly there were 500 or more channel choices, a development that served to further fragment the viewing audience. Many cable networks even launched second (or third or fourth) satellite-carried program services, carving their audience niches into even smaller pieces. Meanwhile, the booming satellite industry was the greatest threat yet to the traditional broadcast networks. Most satellite systems bypassed the local network affiliates entirely, in the process rendering the broadcast network apparatus, completely irrelevant.

Indeed, at the end of the century, the once-miraculous notion of radio or TV signals wafting through the air into American homes seemed superfluous, even foreign, to the youngest generation of television viewers. Truly, the era of the networks' cultural dominance was over. However, the era's legacy will live on as long as radio or television, in whatever form, continues to be a factor in American cultural life.

—Chris Chandler