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Raiding the Lost Ark: The Golden Age of TV News Documentary

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Shift to 'breaking news' Witness of events, rather than interpreter ... More than half the news stories were about 'fire, sex, tear-jerkers, ... news bureaus ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Raiding the Lost Ark: The Golden Age of TV News Documentary


1
Raiding the Lost ArkThe Golden Age ofTV News
Documentary
  • Conclusions
  • Where have we been?
  • Where are we going?

2
From Murrow to MTV
  • Who produces docs?
  • Journalists
  • Producers
  • Motivation?
  • Prestige
  • Avoid regulation
  • Profit

3
Major Themes
  • Financing of documentaries
  • Media vs. government
  • Current issues (not past history)
  • Controversial issues (not fluff)

4
Early Motivations (1950s-60s)
  • Enthusiasm of experienced radio journalists (The
    Murrow Boys)
  • Networks needed to fill air time
  • TV was a profitable industry could afford the
    luxury of unprofitable documentary divisions

5
Early Motivations (1950s-60s)
  • Cold War provided substance
  • Legacy of WWII provided patriotism
  • Audience demand - not a factor in building the
    documentary machines of NBC and CBS

6
Profit Motive
  • 1950-1958
  • Docs not expected to make much money
  • 1958
  • demise of See It Now
  • Murrow leaves CBS
  • Increasing pressure to secure sponsored docs
  • 1958 - 1963
  • Sponsored doc heyday
  • Hundreds of hours of docs aired in prime time
  • lost revenue from prime-time entertainment shows

7
Profit Motive
  • 1963 - 1968
  • Increased pressure for doc revenue
  • 1967
  • 100 hours of docs
  • Compared to 400 hours in 1962
  • It was easy to argue against news docs
  • They produced
  • More controversy
  • Lower viewership
  • Less revenue

8
News Programming Revenue
  • In 1961, networks began to resent the disparity
    between air time devoted to news documentaries
    and revenue generated by the news divisions

9
News Programming Revenue
  • In 1962, news programming consumed even more
    time
  • but produced less revenue

10
A Dying Breed
11
Contributing TV Trends
  • Fading of the quiz-show embarrassments
  • Reduced interest by sponsors
  • Seeking bigger audiences
  • Less controversy
  • Shift to breaking news
  • Witness of events, rather than interpreter
  • Non-controversial
  • Splintering of network audiences (cable TV)
  • Emergence of all-news channels (1980)

12
Tabloid TV
  • UC Berkeley students taped news programs for a
    week in Los Angeles in 1974
  • More than half the news stories were about fire,
    sex, tear-jerkers, accidents, exorcism
  • 60 Minutes joined the tabloid trend
  • spawning copycat programs now airing on most
    networks

13
Corporate Media Takeover
  • Corporate ownership of networks
  • Loss of independent journalism ethic
  • GE and NBC
  • Disney and ABC
  • AOL and CNN
  • Corporate interest in rising profits, declining
    controversy

14
Nowhere to go
  • Foreign policy diminished as a documentary
    subject in the 1960s (after McCarthyism)
  • Domestic docs proved troublesome for the networks
    (Hunger in America, Selling of the Pentagon)

15
Other factors
  • Documentaries were elitist
  • Seemed aimed at whites (ignoring people of
    color), males, middle class
  • Seemed to ignore women and the feminist movement
    of the 1960s
  • Docs intruded on evening entertainment
  • Docs were too serious for American audiences

16
Documentary lite
  • Vietnam and Watergate, poverty and hunger,
    injustice and hate
  • were replaced by history and nature and sports
    and Hollywood

17
Downsizing the News Divisions
  • In the 1980s, as network profits fell, TV news
    units suffered hundreds of layoffs
  • Network news bureaus were closed
  • CBS News, once the pride and envy of the
    industry, is a shadow of its former self
  • CBS Reports died in 1985
  • NBC and ABC suffering similar fates

18
Should we mourn?
  • The programs you have seen are pages of history
  • Some were jewels
  • Some were watersheds
  • But its not clear that they could draw sizeable
    audiences in todays media environment
  • even if they were being produced today

19
A final word
  • Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful
    instrument of communication to insulate the
    citizenry from the hard and demanding realities
    which must be faced.
  • 1958
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