MM 201 Foundations of Mass Media 1

Television

Chapter 6

MM 201 Foundations of Mass Media 2

Impact of Television

98% of American households have at least one TV set.

On average, a TV set is on seven hours per day in those households.

Television is the prime example of how mass media bind our society together in common experience.

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What has TV done to the other media? Newspapers: steady decline … loss of

national advertisers Magazines: demassification Movies: producers plan for the TV

aftermarket distribution Books: authors, agents and publishers plan

for film and TV rights

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Television technology

Vladimir Zworkin: Russian immigrant in 1920’s, worked for Westinghouse and developed the iconoscope and kinescope tubes

In 1930’s Zworkin’s team developed the present day kind of TV system (RCA)

1939 New York Worlds Fair - demo

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Television technology

Movies: 24 frames per second TV: 30 frames per second (2 fields per

frame) c. 1160 commercial TV stations in U.S. c. 5000 commercial AM radio stations c. 5000 commercial FM radio stations c.11000 local cable TV systems

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TV networks / affiliates

Local station gets 6 to 8 minutes per hour of network programmming time for local ads.

In addition, the network pays the affiliate 30% of its local ad rate for network-sold ads during network programming.

In addition, the affiliate can sell national ads on their own in “adjacencies” as well as in local programming.

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Other facts:

6 out of 10 U.S. households subscribe to cable TV

This represents c. 180 million viewers in 20,000 communities.