COMM 1174 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Lowest Common Denominator, Big Three Television Networks, Post-Fordism
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Broadcast television industry
-television that you receive over the air for free, sponsored by commercials (Mass era)
Shift from network television to post-network television.
TV in the Convergence Era
I. What happened
II. Why this happened
III. Social Issues
Fordism and the High Network Era
-Fordism: way of organizing a captilst economy
-introduced by Henry Ford
-Mass productions, mass consumption, mass distribution
-centralizing production and timing distribution and sales
.-during time of Fordism, all cars made in Detroit.
-engine that drove American economy after WW2
A ig fator i depressio as that you had ass produtio ad ass distriutio, ut did’t hae ass
consumption.
After WW2, one of the main ways to solve this problem was mass advertising. TV advertising became
central the way the economy worked. In order to spur the consumption, you needed the tv advertising
to do this.
3 ai haels, NBC, CB“, ABC…. Noody kos priiple. eer ko if a t sho ill e suessful.
The uncertainty of success is balanced by the 3 main channels (only 3 options).
Least common denominator programming: Not too appealing to many people, but not offensive either.
Ca appeal to eeryody, ut as’t too egagig to ay people
-Deficit financing, residual profits
-tv show loses money for the first 3 years it is on
-producer creates the tv show, the network liscenses the show and pays about 70% of the
production costs
-only start to make money once you sell it for re-runs
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
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