Television - J. Butler PDF

4TH EDITION
Television
JEREMY G. BUTLER
CRITICAL METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

1111
2
3
4
5111
6
7 Television
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6 For nearly two decades, Television: Critical Methods and Applications has served as
7111 the foremost guide to television studies. Designed for the television studies course
8 in communication and media studies curricula, Television explains in depth how
9 television programs and commercials are made and how they function as
20111 producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera
1 style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that
2 viewers take away from their television experience. He supplies students with a
whole toolbox of implements to disassemble television and read between the
3
lines, teaching them to incorporate critical thinking into their own television
4 viewing. The fourth edition builds upon the pedagogy of previous editions to best
5 accommodate current modes of understanding and teaching television.
6 Highlights of the fourth edition include:
7
8  New chapter and part organization to reflect the current approach to
9 teaching television—with greatly expanded methods and theories chapters.
30111  An entirely new chapter on modes of production and their impact on what
1 you see on the screen.
2
 Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in television’s
3
on-going convergence with other media, including material on transmedia
4 storytelling and YouTube’s impact on video distribution.
35
6  Over three hundred printed illustrations, including new and better quality
7 frame grabs of recent television shows and commercials.
8  A companion website containing color frame grabs, a glossary, flash cards,
9 and do-it-yourself video editing and sound exercises for students, as well
40111 as PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi, and sample student papers for
1 instructors. Links to online videos that support examples in the text are also
2 provided.
3
With its distinctive approach to examining television, Television is appropriate for
4 courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies.
5
6 Jeremy G. Butler is Professor of Telecommunication and Film at the University of
7 Alabama. He has taught television, film, and new media courses since 1980 and
8111 is active in online educational resources for television and film studies.
i
Routledge Communication Series
Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, Series Editors
Selected titles in Television include:
Bracken/Skalski: Immersed in Media: Telepresence in Everyday Life

Bryant/Oliver: Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, Third Edition
Lipschultz: Broadcast and Internet Indecency: Defining Free Speech
Diefenbach: Video Production Techniques: Theory and Practice From Concept
to Screen
ii
1111
2
3
4
5111
6
7
8
Television
9
1011
1
2
3111
Critical Methods and Applications
4
5
6
7111
8
9
20111
Fourth Edition
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Jeremy G. Butler
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8111
iii
Please visit the companion website for the book at www.routledge.com/cw/butler.
Fourth edition published 2012

by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jeremy G. Butler to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Wadsworth Publishing Company 1994
Fourth edition published by Taylor & Francis Group 2012
The cover photograph was shot by Francis Miller in Little Rock,
Arkansas, on September 1, 1958 for Time/Life magazines. It shows
high school students watching an educational TV program at a
time when Little Rock’s school system was shut down in order
to avoid integration.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Butler, Jeremy G., 1954–.
Television: critical methods and applications/Jeremy G. Butler.—
4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Television—Psychological aspects. 2. Television—Semiotics.
3. Television broadcasting—United States. 4. Television criticism.
I. Title.
PN1992.6.B86 2011
384.55—dc23 2011025887
ISBN: 978-0-415-88327-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-88328-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-84524-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Book Antiqua and Optima

by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper

by Sheridan Books, Inc.
iv
1111
2
3
Brief Contents
4
5111
6
7 Preface xi
8
9 Acknowledgments xvii
1011
1
2 PART I
3111
TELEVISION STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS 1
4
5
Chapter 1
6
An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems:
7111
Ebb and Flow in the Postnetwork Era 3
8
9
Chapter 2
20111
Narrative Structure: Television Stories 21
1
2
Chapter 3
3
Building Narrative: Character, Actor, Star 55
4
5
Chapter 4
6
Beyond and Beside Narrative Structure 97
7
8
Chapter 5
9
The Television Commercial 149
30111
1
2
3 PART II
4 TELEVISION STYLE: IMAGE AND SOUND 209
35
6 Chapter 6
7 An Introduction to Television Style: Modes of Production 211
8
9 Chapter 7
40111 Style and Setting: Mise-en-Scene 227
1
2 Chapter 8
3 Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography 253
4
5 Chapter 9
6 Style and Editing 293
7
8111 Chapter 10
Style and Sound 325
v
vi Brief Contents
PART III
TELEVISION STUDIES 357
Chapter 11
An Introduction to Television Studies 359
Chapter 12
Textual Analysis 367
Chapter 13
Discourse and Identity 395
Appendix I: Sample Analyses and Exercises 429
Appendix II: Mass Communication Research 435
Glossary 445
Index 473
vi
1111
2
3
Contents
4
5111
6
7 Preface xi
8
9 Acknowledgments xvii
1011
1
2 PART I
3111 TELEVISION STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS 1
4
5 1. An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems:
6 Ebb and Flow in the Postnetwork Era 3
7111
8 Television’s Not-So-Distant Past: The Network Era 4
9 Polysemy, Heterogeneity, Contradiction 6
20111 Interruption and Sequence 12
1 Segmentation 13
2 Halting the Flow: Television in the Postnetwork Era 13
3 Summary 17
4 Further Readings 18
5
6 2. Narrative Structure: Television Stories 21
7
8 The Theatrical Film 22
9 The Television Series 33
30111 The Television Serial 41
1 Transmedia Storytelling 48
2 Summary 51
4
35 3. Building Narrative: Character, Actor, Star 55
6 Building Characters 57
7 Building Performances 65
8 The Star System? 80
9 Summary 92
1
2
4. Beyond and Beside Narrative Structure 97
3
4 Television’s Reality 98
5 Television’s Reality: Forms and Modes 101
6 Television’s Reality: Genres 113
7 Summary 142
vii
viii Contents
5. The Television Commercial 149

U.S. TV’s Economic Structure 150
The Polysemy of Commodities 159
The Persuasive Style of Commercials 176
Summary: “Capitalism in Action” 204
Further Readings 205
PART II
TELEVISION STYLE: IMAGE AND SOUND 209
6. An Introduction to Television Style: Modes of Production 211
Single-Camera Mode of Production 213
Multiple-Camera Mode of Production 218
Hybrid Modes of Production 222
Summary 224
7. Style and Setting: Mise-en-Scene 227

Set Design 227
Costume Design 240
Lighting Design 240
Actor Movement 248
Summary 249
8. Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography 253

Basic Optics: The Camera Lens 254
Image Definition and Resolution 261
Color and Black-and-White 269
Framing 270
In-Camera Visual Effects 288
Summary 290
9. Style and Editing 293

The Single-Camera Mode of Production 293
The Multiple-Camera Mode of Production 314
Continuity Editing and Hybrid Modes of Production 319
Summary 321
10. Style and Sound 325

Types of Television Sound 326
Purposes of Sound on Television 335
viii
Contents ix
1111 Acoustic Properties and Sound Technology 341

2 Space, Time, and Narrative 350
3 Summary 353
5111
6
7
8 PART III
9 TELEVISION STUDIES 357
1011
1 11. An Introduction to Television Studies 359
2 Critical Research and Television 360
4
5 12. Textual Analysis 367
6
7111 Television Authorship 367
8 Style and Stylistics 370
9 Genre Study 375
20111 Semiotics 381
1 Summary 390
3
4 13. Discourse and Identity 395
5 Ideological Criticism and Cultural Studies 395
6 The Discourse of the Industry I: Production Studies 403
7 The Discourse of the Industry II: Political Economy 406
8 Discourse and Identity I: Gender 410
9 Discourse and Identity II: Queer Theory 416
30111 Discourse and Identity III: Race and Ethnicity 418
1 Summary 421
3
4
35
6 Appendix I: Sample Analyses and Exercises 429
7
8 Appendix II: Mass Communication Research 435
9
40111 Glossary 445
1
2 Index 473
3
4
5
6
7
8111
ix
x
1111
2
3
4
5111
6
1
7
8
9
1011
Preface
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7111
8
9
S hould we take television seriously?
Should we take television seriously as a cultural or aesthetic medium,

20111 as a text capable of producing meaning? Should we take The Jersey Shore
1 seriously? Should we commission studies on The Wire’s visual style?
2 Should an interpretation of the discourse of The Beverly Hillbillies be
3 permitted in an academic journal? And, most pertinent to this book,
4 should there be college courses on these programs? Should The Simpsons
5 be allowed in today’s syllabi?
6 Yes, we should study television in school. And, yes, we should take
7 television seriously. Why? Because television provides meanings, many
8 meanings, as it entertains. There is little doubt that it is the predominant
9 meaning-producing and entertainment medium of the past 60 years. As
30111 such it demands our scrutiny. In order to dissect the pleasures and
1 meanings that television affords us, we need an understanding of how
2 narrative is structured, and how commercials persuade, and how sets are
3 designed, and how the camera positions the viewer’s perspective, and how
4 sound interacts with image.
35 Television: Critical Methods and Applications supplies the student with
6 a whole toolbox of implements to disassemble television. It explains how
7 television works, how television programs and commercials are made and
8 how they function as fertile producers of meanings. Television does not
9 attempt to teach taste or aesthetics. It is less concerned with evaluation
40111 than with interpretation. It resists asking, “Is The Bachelor great art?” Instead,
1 it poses the question, “What meanings does The Bachelor signify and how
2 does it do so?” To answer this question brings viewers closer to under-
3 standing television as a meaning-producing phenomenon, and thus helps
4 them stay afloat in a sea of frequently contradictory meanings.
5 The form of analysis stressed here asks the viewer, first, to explore the
6 structures of narrative, non-narrative, and commercial television material.
7 Second, Television questions how those structures emphasize certain
8111 meanings (and repress others) to viewers, who approach television with
xi
xii Preface
many varying understandings of how the world works. And third, it

considers how television’s images and sounds work together to create its
programs, commercials and assorted on-screen flotsam and jetsam. Thus,
this textbook works from the very concrete (light and shadow on an
illuminated video screen, accompanied by sound) to the very abstract
(discourses on many aspects of the human experience)—and back again.
Accordingly, Part I of this textbook introduces the student to the
principles organizing television’s narrative, non-narrative, and commercial
content. Part II explains how that content is communicated to the viewer
through the medium’s style, its manipulation of image and sound. And it
accounts for how the American TV industry generates that style through
two main modes of production: single-camera and multiple-camera. Part
III departs from Television’s consideration of television texts to survey the
critical approaches—the methods of television studies—that have been
applied to the medium. This part of the book first grounds the student in
methods of analyzing programs themselves and then outlines methods of
examining how TV’s meanings are received by viewers and produced by
TV-industry workers. Additionally, Appendix I provides guidance for
writing papers about TV. It outlines how the principles of textual analysis
that are developed over the previous chapters may be applied to a specific
program. Appendix II discusses approaches to television from social-
scientific or empirical methods, which contrast with the television-studies
approach advocated in the bulk of the book.
Television’s first edition was written during the year that Websites
evolved from a relatively primitive, text-only format to one that
accommodated images and sounds (1993, when the Mosaic browser was
released). We’re excited about the possibilities for TV analysis that online
platforms provide and we’ve developed a companion Website for
Television at tvcrit.com. Here you’ll find sample student analyses, color
versions of all the illustrations (larger than reproduced in print, too), links
to further readings, and many additional television materials that cannot
fit between the covers of a book—specifically, audio and video clips. Parts
of the site are reserved for Television users and require the following
account name and password:
Account name: tvcrit

Password: tvcrit4u
Television, this book, was born of the author’s frustration as a teacher of

television studies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many television textbooks
from that era deal with the history and structure of television as an
industry, but few offer students a way to analyze that industry’s products
from a critical perspective. Other TV textbooks emphasize the nuts-and-
bolts of video production (how to operate cameras, microphones, and the
like) to the extent that they seldom have space to consider television
meanings and how they are generated by those “nuts-and-bolts.” Textbooks
that do address television analysis as part of “mass communication”
research and theory rely largely upon empirical methods drawn from
xii
Preface xiii
1111 psychology and sociology. They often neglect the issue of critical
2 interpretation.
3 Aside from Appendix II, Television does not engage extensively with
4 the mass-communication research tradition. Instead, its author draws
5111 upon non-empirical models for his inspiration. Much of Television will
6 look familiar, for example, to readers who have encountered film-studies
7 textbooks. Moreover, Television also bears the marks of non-empirical
8 disciplines such as literary criticism, semiotics (the study of signs and
9 meaning), and ideological criticism. It refers to these approaches where
1011 appropriate, but the authors are concerned above all else to analyze
1 television as television and not as a test case for a particular research
2 method. As such, this textbook fits within the still developing field of
3111 “television studies”—a label that was firmly established between 1998 and
4 2004 with the publication of no less than six books with it in their titles.
5 Television studies’ core principles are still a bit fuzzy, but Part III will
6 attempt to bring them into focus.
7111 Ironically, television studies and this, the fourth edition of Television
8 (prepared 2010–11), are arriving at a time when conventional broadcast
9 television is in decline and the boundaries between television and other
20111 media are fast dissolving. When one looks at a “television” screen these
1 days, one could be responding to e-mail or playing a video game
2 instead of watching a TV program. Now that digital broadcasting is the
3 American standard and high-definition television is becoming increasingly
4 common, our TV sets begin to look more and more like our computers or
5 like screens at movie theaters. And as audio and video files stream through
6 our computers and we digitally edit home movies, our computers begin
7 to look more and more like our stereos, DVD players, home-theater
8 systems, and televisions.
9 This is not just a time of great technological shifts. There have also been
30111 huge changes in the economics of television—particularly in the US. The
1 broadcast networks are under siege from newer media. They no longer
2 command our attention as they did from the 1950s to the 1970s. Some critics
3 have even proclaimed an end to the “broadcast era” or “network era” of
4 television, but the mode of production associated with broadcast television
35 is far from dead. Despite the appearance of television programs on mobile
6 devices such as smartphones and the Apple iPod and iPad, the distribution
7 of television over the air and on cable/satellite systems is still the engine
8 that powers the television machine. Television originated as a commercial,
9 network medium in the years after World War II and will continue to have
40111 an impact as such for the foreseeable future. Just how much longer this
1 will hold true is currently the subject of much speculation.
2 To keep Television comprehensible (and a reasonable length), I have
3 had to set some perimeters—even though I occasionally stroll across them,
4 looking over my shoulder guiltily. Television is still principally a book about
5 network television that emphasizes its commercial-supported formats, but
6 without ignoring commercial-free, premium-cable channels such as HBO
7 and Showtime. “Network television,” in this sense, refers to the material
8111 that is transmitted on a television network at some point in its life span,
xiii
xiv Preface
whether that transmission is done over-the-airwaves or through cable/

satellite providers. Furthermore, Television’s network-TV examples are
drawn largely from U.S. television (with occasional reference to Canadian
and British TV). It would be dangerous to assume that this particular model
of television defines everything one sees on the television set or that it is
an unchanging monolith or that it is the same throughout the world. Clearly
it is not and the next few years could bring some very interesting changes
to television.
Television, then, does not pretend to be a comprehensive guide to
deconstructing everything that appears on a video screen. No single
volume could. It does, however, help students understand television’s
principal manifestation: the ever-present, ever-flowing, commercial
television system.
New to the Fourth Edition

Readers familiar with previous editions will note the following changes:
 The previous editions’ television-studies chapter has been greatly

enlarged and updated—incorporating new sections on fan studies
and production studies and freshening the information on
previously discussed methods. In fact, the television-studies chapter
grew so large that it became unwieldy and so it has been divided it
into two chapters: “Textual Analysis” (Chapter 12) and “Discourse
and Identity” (Chapter 13). And it has been positioned within its own
“television-studies” section, which begins with a general intro-
duction to the field.
 Previous editions of Television defined critical approaches in opposi-
tion to empirical, mass-communication approaches. Television
studies can now be defined as its own entity and so the segment on
empirical methods has been de-emphasized by moving it from
within the television-studies chapter to Appendix II.
 The old “special topics” section has been eliminated. One of its
chapters—on the TV commercial—was moved to the section titled
“Understanding Television’s Structures and Systems,” where its
explanation of television’s economic structure better fits (Chapter 5).
 Three other special-topics chapters were removed and not updated,
but they have been placed online for teachers who have found them
useful in the past: “A History of Television Style” (tvcrit.com/
find/history), “Music Television” (tvcrit.com/find/musictv), and
“Animated Television” (tvcrit.com/find/animation).
 A new chapter, “An Introduction to Television Style: Modes of
Production” (Chapter 6), takes into consideration some of the recent
work done in production studies in its discussion of single-camera
and multiple-camera modes of production and their impact on what
you see on the screen.
xiv
Preface xv
1111  The chapter “An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems:

2 Ebb and Flow in the Postnetwork Era” (Chapter 1) and other sections
3 of the book assess the latest developments in television’s ongoing
4 convergence with other media, including newly added material on
5111 YouTube’s impact on video distribution and a significant section on
6 transmedia storytelling.
7
 A new system for integrating illustrative video clips has been
8
implemented online. Short URLs have been devised that will direct
9
students to online video clips that have been placed online expressly
1011
for Television or could be found on sources such as YouTube. A URL-
1
shortening system allows us to refer to a long Web address such as:
2
3111 http://criticalcommons.org/Members/jbutler/clips/AFV20101010
4 qq00_06_17qq.mp4/view
5
with a much more manageable address such as:
6
7111 http://tvcrit.com/find/afvcrane
8
Moreover, short URLs may be easily updated if an online video
9
source disappears or is moved.
20111
1 Links to online resources will be indicated in the margin with an
2 icon, as on this page.
3
 Of course, dozens of our still illustrations have also been newly added
4
or updated—eliminating ones from shows no longer generally
5
available and incorporating new ones from recent shows and those
6
that have been released on DVD, Blu-ray discs and online. Also, new
7
hardware/software has allowed us to improve the quality of the
8
frame grabs.
9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8111
xv
xvi
1111
2
3
4
5111
6
CHAPTER
1
7
8
9
1011
Acknowledgments
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7111
8
9
B laine Allan and Gary Copeland each wrote a Television chapter that
appeared in previous editions, but their contributions to this project
go far beyond that. They were there for the original conceptualization of
20111 the project, helped shepherd it through various drafts and re-writes,
1 furnished key examples when my mind went blank, and generally
2 illustrated just how collegial colleagues can be. Daniel Goldmark stepped
3 up and rewrote much of the “Animated Television” chapter for the third
4 edition, which is now online.
5 I thank my editor, Linda Bathgate, for her diligence in bringing this
6 project to fruition and for supporting it through multiple editions. I also
7 thank Routledge for its continuing efforts in the area of television studies.
8 Several persons read and provided useful comments on previous
9 editions: David Bordwell, Jim Castonguay, Brent Davis, Maureen Furniss,
30111 Carolyn Hales, Chad Harriss, Michele Hilmes, Lynne Joyrich, Chuck
1 Kleinhans, Ken Kwapis, Tara McPherson, Ellen Seiter, Greg Stroud, Lang
2 Thompson, Robert M. Young, Kristen Warner, Mark J. P. Wolf, and Shuhua
3 Zhou. Among the television-industry workers I have consulted are Tom
4 Azzari, Tom Cherones, Aaron Greer, Dean Holland, Michael Laibson,
35 Chuck Meyers, Bryan C. Fails, and Craig Pettigrew. I am grateful for all
6 of their time and insights.
7 The Center for Public Television and Radio at the University of
8 Alabama, its current director, Elizabeth Brock, and its former director, Tom
9 Rieland, graciously assisted with the preparation of illustrations. Videog-
40111 rapher Preston Sullivan set up several illustrative shots, with the help of
1 Brent Davis, Dawn Haskew, Jim Holliman, Glen Richard, and Jason Ruha.
2 The frame enlargements in this book were created by digitally
3 capturing individual frames from videotapes, DVDs, video files, and Blu-
4 ray discs (as technology has marched on). Barry Smith ably assisted in this
5 task originally. Details on the process are provided in a tutorial on
6 tvcrit.com. Other illustrations were created by Laura Lineberry (drawings),
7 Rickey Yanaura (photographs), and Aaron Greer (nonlinear editing).
8111 Figure 4.9 is courtesy of MTV. Figure 8.51 is courtesy of The Weather
xvii
xviii Acknowledgments
Channel and photographer Richard Grant. The STEADICAM® photo in

Figure 8.36 is courtesy of The Tiffen Company. STEADICAM® is a
registered trademark of The Tiffen Company. Tables 5.2 and 6.1 are
courtesy of Nielsen Media Research.
Rosemary McMahill diligently compiled the glossary for the first
edition and also provided valuable assistance with the word processing
of the manuscript.
My students at the University of Alabama were the first to be exposed
to this text, while still a manuscript. I thank them for their patience in
dealing with Television in photocopied form—missing an illustration here
and there and lacking a binding that would properly hold it together for
a 15-week semester. Their responses and comments helped make this a
much more readable book.
Not all support for this book was academic. Jeremy, Penelope, and Reid
Butler took me under their wings during Television’s initial development—
allowing me the privilege of writing time unfettered by concerns of room
and board. My eight-year-old son, Ian, has become an avid reader this year
and I hope to convince his second-grade teacher to include Television in
her reading plan for next semester. This edition of Television is dedicated
to Marysia Galbraith, a Renaissance woman and scholar herself. When I
first met her, she didn’t own a television set and she generally disdained
the medium, and yet she has never been critical of my own enthusiasm
for it and has wholeheartedly supported my labors in the groves of TV
academe.
xviii
1111
2
3
4
PART I
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
Television Structures
7111
8
9
and Systems
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8111
1
2
1111
2
3
4
5111
6
CHAPTER
1
7
8
9
1011
An Introduction to
1
2
Television Structures and
3111
4
5
Systems: Ebb and Flow in
6
7111
the Postnetwork Era
8
9
20111
1
2
3
T elevision is dead. According to various pundits, it was killed by cable
TV and the VCR in the 1980s, by the Internet and video games in the
1990s, by Netflix, TiVo and the iPod in the 2000s, and by smartphones in
4 the 2010s.
5 Considering its multiple deaths, television’s corpse is remarkably
6 active. The “total television universe,” to use Nielsen Media Research’s
7 term, still contains nearly 116 million homes—approximately 99 percent
8 of all households—in the United States. And over 25 million Americans
9 watch TV’s most popular programs on conventional broadcast networks
30111 each week. This dwarfs the numbers that go see a particular movie, play
1 a video game, check out individual videos on YouTube or Hulu, or
2 download a movie to an iPod. Despite assaults on their primacy, broadcast
3 networks—ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC, and PBS—and cable/satellite net-
4 works—ESPN, USA, Lifetime, TNT, HBO, and so on—are not prepared
35 to concede defeat. Television remains the principal medium through which
6 most people obtain visual entertainment and information and through
7 which advertisers reach the largest audiences.
8 Yet, there is no denying that overall viewership is declining precipi-
9 tously, television viewing habits are changing rapidly, and advertisers are
40111 getting very nervous. While the number of TV viewers remains enormous,
1 it is dropping quickly as viewers find other screens—principally, of their
2 computers—more compelling. Advertisers are particularly anxious about
3 new technologies that grant viewers increased control over programming.
4 The remote control and VCR were just the beginning of this trend. TiVo
5 and other digital video recorders (DVRs), as well as video-on-demand
6 (VOD) services, not only let viewers time-shift programs; they also permit
7 the pausing and rewinding of live broadcasts and fast-forwarding through
8111 commercials. And video downloaded to an iPod or similar mobile device
3
4 TV Structures and Systems
permits both time-shifting and location-shifting as viewers can watch Gossip

Girl while commuting on a bus instead of parked on their living room
couch, tuned into the CW, at 9:00 p.m. Mondays.
What does all this mean for the study of television? Is a book such as
the one you’re holding useless and outdated? Obviously, we do not think
so. As Lynn Spigel writes in Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in
Transition, “[W]hile mutated in form television remains a central mode of
information and entertainment in our present-day global culture, and it
appears that it will continue to do so for many years to come. Under-
standing what is new about the medium thus demands an understanding
of both its past and present.”1 To this end, we begin our study of television
with a consideration of the medium’s structure circa 2012, which still greatly
resembles how it has worked for the past 60 years. This is an “age of
uncertainty” for television, however.2 And so we will offer some thoughts
on fundamental changes in the medium. Fortunately, most of the analytical
methods in the following chapters may be easily adapted to whatever form
television takes in the future.
Television’s Not-So-Distant Past: The Network Era

In the not-so-distant past, television broadcasting in the US was built
on a system in which three networks dominated general programming.
Over the years, the number of networks multiplied—exploding to dozens
of channels in the 1980s, with the widespread acceptance of cable and
satellite delivery. For the sake of convenience, let us call this network-era
television, without initially distinguishing over-the-air or so-called
terrestrial broadcast networks from cable/satellite ones. Newspapers,
magazines such as TV Guide, and online program guides find it convenient
to list today’s numerous channels on a grid that represents an evening’s
schedule. In many of them, the channels run vertically down the left side
of the grid, while half-hour time “slots” run horizontally along the top.
(Figure 1.1 shows one such grid for a typical day in January 2006.) The
reasoning behind this array is obvious. At a glance, we can fix our location
in the grid, noting the axis of channel (say, channel 9) and the axis of time
(say, 7:00). After figuring that location, we can quickly see what will
follow the current program in time (horizontal) and what is happening on
other channels at that same time (vertical).
Grids such as these may help us understand the basic structure of
network-era TV and the current experience of watching television live. Most
listings emphasize programming time slots as much as the individual
programs themselves. Television programs are positioned by network pro-
grammers and experienced by viewers as one program within a sequence
of other programs in an ongoing series of timed segments. Further,
programs are also associated—potentially linked—with other programs
by their shared time slot. During the time that a television set is on in
American households—over eight hours per day, on average—we are
carried along in the horizontal current of television time, flowing from one
4
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
9
8
6
5
4
2
1
9
8
7
6
4
3
2
35
8111
7111
3111
1011
5111
1111
40111
30111
20111
Tuesday, 10 January 2006, Prime-Time Schedule
Channel 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30
Broadcast
ABC According to Jim Rodney Commander In Chief Boston Legal
CBS NCIS The 32nd Annual People's Choice Awards
Fox Bones House FOX6 News at 9PM FOX6 News at 9:30PM
NBC Fear Factor Scrubs Scrubs Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
PBS Nova Frontline: Country Boys
WB Gilmore Girls Supernatural WB21 News at 9 Everybody Loves Raymond
Cable
COMEDY The Daily Show With… The Colbert Report Chappelle's Show South Park Distraction Mind of Mencia
ESPN College Basketball College Basketball
HBO Love Actually (2003) Son of the Mask (2005)
MTV2 High School Stories High School Stories Wild Boyz Wild Boyz MTV2 Hip Hop
NIK SpongeBob… Ned's Declassified… Full House Fatherhood Roseanne Roseanne
TBS Friends Friends Sex and the City Sex and the City Daisy Does America Seinfeld
USA Law & Order: Criminal Intent A Man Apart (2003)
Figure 1.1 Tuesday, January 10, 2006, prime-time schedule.
5
bit of TV to the next. Equally important, we may move vertically from one
channel to another, creating associations among concurrent programs. A
listing grid depicts visually these two axes of television’s structure:
sequence (one thing after another) and association (connections among
simultaneous programs).
We begin with this brief consideration of program listings because it
illustrates the fundamental principle of network-era television’s structure.
As Raymond Williams first argued in 1974, television differs crucially from
other art forms in its blending of disparate units of narrative, information,
and advertising into a never-ending flow of television.3 Although we
often talk of watching a single television program as if it were a separate
discrete entity, during the network era we more commonly simply watch
television. The set is on. Programs, advertisements, and announcements
come and go (horizontal axis). Mere fragments of programs, advertise-
ments, and announcements flash by as we switch channels (vertical axis).
We stay on the couch, drawn into the virtually ceaseless flow. We watch
television more than we seek a specific television program. Or, at least,
that is how TV watching worked during the network era. (See pp. 14–15
for a discussion of how DVRs, VOD, and other new delivery systems
disrupt the idea of flow.)
The maintenance of television flow dominates nearly every aspect of
network-era television’s structures and systems. It determines how stories
will be told, how advertisements will be constructed, and even how
television’s visuals will be designed. Every chapter of this book will
account in one way or another for the consequences of television flow.
Before we start, however, we need to note three of this principle’s general
ramifications:
1. polysemy
2. interruption
3. segmentation
Polysemy, Heterogeneity, Contradiction

Many critics of television presume that it speaks with a single voice,
that it broadcasts meanings from a single perspective. Sometimes
television’s significance becomes part of a national debate. During the 1992
presidential election campaign, Vice President Dan Quayle repeatedly
advocated a return to traditional “family values,” an ideologically loaded
term for conservative beliefs about the family. In one frequently discussed
speech he singled out the TV pregnancy of an unwed mother – Murphy
Brown (Candice Bergen)—as indicative of television’s assault on the
family. He claimed she was “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing
a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”4 For Quayle, the
meanings presented on TV had systematically and unambiguously under-
mined the idea of the conventional nuclear family: father, mother, and
6
An Introduction to TV Structures and Systems 7
1111 correct number of children; the father working and the mother caring
2 for children in the home; no divorce; no sex outside of marriage; and no
3 single or gay parenthood. The phrase “family values” quickly became a
4 rallying cry for conservatives and today, twenty years later, it is still
5111 invoked by right-wing politicians such as Sarah Palin and former President
6 George W. Bush. Such individuals often accuse television of eroding
7 family values. One conservative lobbying organization, the American
8 Family Association (AFA), contends that television and other entertain-
9 ment media have “played a major role in the decline of those values on
1011 which our country was founded and which keep a society and its families
1 strong and healthy.”5 Television’s discourse on the family has become too
2 liberal—even decadent—according to Quayle, Palin, Bush, the AFA, and
3111 their supporters.
4 What these individuals and organizations fail to take into consideration,
5 however, is the almost overwhelming flow of programs on network-era
6 television. Murphy Brown (1988–98) is but one show among the hundreds
7111 that comprise TV flow. And its endorsement of single parenthood, if such
8 indeed is the case, is just one meaning that bobs along in the deluge of
9 meanings flooding from the TV set. The many meanings, or polysemy,
20111 that television offers may be illustrated by excerpting a chunk of the tele-
1 vision flow. Look at the Tuesday-night prime-time schedule reproduced
2 in Figure 1.1. Let’s presume that a typical household might have started
3 its prime-time viewing with Gilmore Girls on the WB, sampled enough of
4 The People’s Choice Awards on CBS to grow bored with it, shifted over to
5 TBS for Sex and the City, and then finished prime-time with NBC’s Law &
6 Order: Special Victims Unit. After prime-time ended (and beyond the grid
7 in Figure 1.1), mom and dad might have turned the remote over to the
8 teenagers, who channel surfed from The Cosby Show on Nik at Nite to MTV2
9 for Viva La Bam. What meanings surrounding the U.S. family, we might
30111 ask, do these programs present? Or, in Quayle’s terms, is television
1 destroying family values?
2 Let’s start with a program that supports conservatives’ critique: Viva
3 La Bam (2003–05), a reality-TV program about professional skateboarder
4 Brandon Cole “Bam” Margera, his friends and his long-suffering parents,
35 April and Phil. Margera is the ultimate rebellious son. He constantly
6 disobeys and pulls pranks on his parents and mostly gets away with them.
7 The family is completely dysfunctional. In typical fashion, the episode
8 broadcast on our sample night contains a scene in which Margera and a
9 friend tear up his parents’ property by spinning four-wheelers around in
40111 the mud. Dripping with slime, they come inside the house. His mother,
1 April, asks them not to track mud on a new rug and they defy her by
2 stomping all over it and then roll around on it—ruining the rug. And that
3 is just one of his milder acts of destruction. In the first episode of the
4 program, Margera inserts ground meat in tubes of toothpaste, destroys
5 his father’s van, and renovates parts of the family home to create a skate
6 park. One can only imagine the horror that conservatives would express
7 were they to watch Margera’s antics and the inability of his parents to
8111 control him.
7
However, our sample night also contains a program that is the polar
opposite of Viva La Bam. On The Cosby Show (1984–92), which was
the highest rated program on American television from 1985 to 1990, the
traditional family is far from disintegrating, dysfunctional, or oppressive.
Quite the contrary, The Cosby Show illustrates the strengths of the nuclear
family—not surprising, considering that producer Bill Cosby has a
doctorate in education and used the program to propound his approach
to child-rearing. There may be occasional friction within The Cosby Show’s
family, but in the final analysis it provides an enclave, a safety zone, of
affection and nurturing. In “Jitterbug Break,” the episode rerun on our
sample Thursday and originally aired during the show’s first season, the
Huxtables’ teenaged children misbehave, but not excessively so. Daughter
Denise (Lisa Bonet) schemes to spend the night on the street outside a
theater, waiting to buy tickets to a rock concert. Father Cliff (Bill Cosby)
prohibits it and she accepts his authority. However, she contends that his
dancing style is inferior to break dancing (hence the episode’s title). When
her friends arrive at their home and begin break dancing in the living room,
Cliff has his friends demonstrate the superiority of their style of dancing.
But this friendly competition between dance styles does not lead to conflict
between the generations. Eventually, Cliff and Denise dance together—
suggesting the strength of their love for one another. This scene reinforces
Cliff’s skill with children (even adolescents) and emphasizes the import-
ance of the parent–child relationship. In short, the Huxtables signify all
that is positive about the conventional family structure.
The polysemy of most television programs is not as black or white as
Viva La Bam and The Cosby Show. Gilmore Girls (2000–07), for example, is
positioned rather ambivalently in terms of family values. Like Murphy
Brown, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) is a single mother and she is
unapologetic about becoming pregnant as a teenager and not marrying
the father of her daughter, Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore (Alexis Bledel). The
show validates that decision by presenting her as happy and satisfied and
her bond with her daughter as being phenomenally strong. Because of her
unwed pregnancy, the “casual treatment of sexual material,” and “harsh
language” (for example, “screw,” “crap,” and “damn”) one conservative
organization, the Parents Television Council, has said, “the show is not
very family-friendly.”6 And yet when Gilmore Girls was originally being
planned, its script development was financially supported, and approved,
by the pointedly named Family Friendly Programming Forum (FFPF), a
coalition of some 40 advertisers whose script development fund provides
seed money for new programs that honor family values.7 The FFPF’s
publicly stated mission is to promote programming which “is relevant to
today’s TV viewer, has generational appeal, depicts real life and is
appropriate in theme, content and language for a broad family audience.
Family friendly programs also embody a responsible resolution.”8 And still
another “family”-labeled media outlet, the ABC Family channel, found
Gilmore Girls’ representation of mother and daughter to be appropriate for
family viewing—and this is a channel that was founded by conservative
televangelist Pat Robertson as the Christian Broadcasting Network. ABC
8
1111 Family currently carries the program on its channel and describes Gilmore
2 Girls’ premise thus: “In [Stars Hollow] resides Lorelai Gilmore, a single
3 mother with a teenage daughter, Rory, who she tries to raise by being a
4 good mother and an even better friend.”9
5111 An examination of “The Perfect Dress,” the episode from January 10,
6 2006, reveals the contradictory meanings, the polysemy, in the program.
7 The episode begins with Lorelai and Rory excitedly telling Luke (Scott
8 Patterson) about their trip to Atlantic City to commemorate Rory’s 21st
9 birthday—making it sound not at all like a mother–daughter outing, but
1011 like two friends on a wild adventure (including flirting with men). This
1 unconventional mother–daughter relationship is further confirmed when
2 Lorelai advises Rory that she should tell her therapist that “Your mother
3111 is hot.” The episode, as with the program as a whole, celebrates Lorelai
4 and Rory’s quirky relationship—often inverting the mother and daughter
5 roles by casting the daughter as more mature and responsible than the
6 mother. In one episode early in the program’s run, Lorelai pesters Rory
7111 to interrupt her schoolwork and relax with some ice cream. Annoyed with
8 her mother’s lack of a work ethic, Rory snaps, “Lorelai, go to your room!”10
9 Lorelai’s single motherhood, her childlike (bordering on childish)
20111 irresponsibility, and her non-maternal, sisterly relationship with Rory
1 contradict and disturb the “family values” advocated by Quayle,
2 Robertson, the American Family Association, and the Parents Television
3 Council.
4 Despite Gilmore Girls’ blunt rejection of the nuclear family structure,
5 the program shares with The Cosby Show a warm, loving, devoted
6 relationship between parent and child. When, in “The Perfect Dress,”
7 Rory has an emotional crisis involving her ex-boyfriend and her re-entry
8 into college, it is her mother whom she phones and to whom she pours
9 her heart out. Here and elsewhere throughout the show’s seasons, their
30111 sisterly bond is overshadowed by Lorelai’s mothering skills. In fact, when
1 Rory does something seriously irresponsible—losing her virginity to a
2 married man, dropping out of college—Lorelai sheds the role of sisterly
3 confidante and co-conspirator and becomes a conventional mother,
4 exerting her parental responsibility and trying to set her daughter straight.
35 As the FFPF demands, the program comes to a “responsible resolution”
6 with regard to the authority of the parent over the child.
7 One could make a similar case for the polysemy of Sex and the City
8 (1998–2004). Based on the title, one would expect this to be an anti-family
9 program, but actually the show’s four main characters (single women in
40111 New York City) embody a range of opinions toward the conventional
1 family. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), a sexually irrepressible libertine, has no
2 interest in finding a husband and starting a family; she revels in her
3 promiscuity (although the show sometimes presents that promiscuity as
4 unfulfilling). In stark contrast, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) yearns desperately
5 for a “knight in shining armor” and a “normal” family life. Over the course
6 of the program’s run, however, she gets neither. Carrie (Sarah Jessica
7 Parker) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) are positioned in between these two
8111 in terms of both sexual activity and polysemy. Miranda changes the most
9
over the program’s six-year run. She starts as a bitter man-hater, whose
romantic life is a shambles and who detests the idea of becoming a mother.
However, by the program’s end, she has had a child, gotten married, and,
significantly, left Manhattan for Brooklyn—a symbolic rejection of urban
cynicism. Thus, Sex and the City is remarkably, perhaps surprisingly,
polysemic—offering the viewer a range of meanings from which to select.
As this small portion of the television flow illustrates, network-era
television contradicts itself frequently and haphazardly. It presents many
heterogeneous meanings in any one night’s viewing. This polysemy
contributes to television’s broad appeal. As Lauren Graham, the actor who
plays Lorelai, said, Gilmore Girls’ “strength is that it’s a family show that
does not pander or condescend to families. It’s not so soft that your
grandmother could watch it with her dentures out.”11 That, in a nutshell,
illustrates the power of polysemy: conflicting meanings reside within the
same program and facilitate the viewing pleasure of a broad range of
individuals. With so many different meanings being signified, we are
bound to find some that agree with our world view. Does this mean that
television can mean anything to anyone? And how are these meanings
constructed? Three axioms will guide our approach to network-era
television.
Axiom 1
A segment of the television flow, whether it be an individual program, a
commercial, a newscast, or an entire evening’s viewing, may be thought
of as a television text—offering a multiplicity of meanings or polysemy.
We may interpret Lorelai and Rory’s actions as signifying, among other
things, “the unconventional family can nurture loving relationships.” In
its broadest sense, a “text” is any phenomenon that pulls together elements
that have meaning for readers or viewers or spectators who encounter it.
Just as we read and interpret a book’s organization of words in sentences,
so we view and interpret a television program’s sequence of sounds and
images. Thus, narrative and non-narrative structures, lighting and set
design, camera style, editing, and sound may be thought of as television’s
textual elements—those basic building blocks that the makers of television
use to communicate with their audience. This book will present ways for
students to better understand how these textual devices mount potential
meanings for the viewer’s consideration.
Axiom 2
The television text does not present all meanings equally positively or
strongly. Through dialogue, acting styles, music, and other attributes of
the text, television emphasizes some meanings and de-emphasizes others.
When the Huxtable family is seen dancing together, blending break
dancing and older dancing styles, the text is obviously suggesting that
10
1111 family togetherness and generational harmony are positive meanings. But
2 although television is polysemic, not all meanings are equal. TV is not un-
3 structured or infinitely meaningful. Or, as John Fiske writes, “[Television’s]
4 polysemic potential is neither boundless nor structureless: the text
5111 delineates the terrain within which meanings may be made or proffers some
6 meanings more than others.”12 The crucial work of television studies is to
7 analyze the medium’s hierarchy of meanings. Which meanings does the
8 text stress? How are they stressed? These are key questions for the
9 television critic. To answer them requires an awareness of the cultural codes
1011 of class, gender, race, and such that predominate in a society. As Stuart
1 Hall has noted, “Any society/culture tends, with varying degrees of
2 closure, to impose its classifications of the social and cultural and political
3111 world. This constitutes a dominant cultural order, though it is neither
4 univocal nor uncontested.”13 Television always has been a medium
5 encoded with the meanings prevalent in the society to which it appeals.
6 In contemporary American society, many meanings circulate, but some are
7111 given greater weight than others by the dominant cultural order.
8 Correspondingly, although television is polysemic, it must be stressed that
9 it is a structured polysemy. There is a pattern or structure implicit in the
20111 meanings that are offered on television. That structure tends to support
1 those who hold positions of economic and political power in a particular
2 society, but there is always room for contrary meanings.
3
4
5 Axiom 3
6
7 The act of viewing television is one in which the discourses of the viewer
8 encounter those of the text. “Discourse” is a term that can have many
9 meanings. We will here rely on Fiske’s definition: “a language or system
30111 of representation that has developed socially in order to make and circulate
1 a coherent set of meanings about an important topic area. These meanings
2 serve the interests of that section of society within which the discourse
3 originates.”14 But what does he mean by this? Let’s examine his definition
4 in detail.
35 Fiske’s discourse is a group or “set” of meanings: for example, a
6 working-class discourse might include the meanings “unions protect
7 workers’ rights,” “capitalists are evil,” “the economy is based on workers’
8 labor,” and so on. Discourses contain meanings that arise from a certain
9 segment or section of society. Unions and other representatives of workers,
40111 for example, are sources of many meanings associated with working-class
1 discourse and those meanings serve their interests. Thus, we come to a TV
2 text with belief structures—discourses—shaped by the social environment
3 in which we grew up: schooling, religion, upbringing, class, gender. And
4 the TV text, too, has meaning structures that are governed by ideology and
5 television-specific conventions. When we “read” the text, our discourses
6 overlay those of the text. Sometimes they fit well and sometimes they don’t.
7 Discourses do not advertize themselves as such. As Fiske suggests,
8111 discourse “works ideologically to naturalize those meanings into common
11
sense.”15 He means that the dominant discourse is so pervasive that it

disappears into common sense, into the taken-for-granted. Consider the
common presumption that in America everyone can become financially
successful if they work hard enough. Most Americans believe this to be a
truth, “just” common sense—despite the fact that statistics show that the
economic class and education level of your parents virtually guarantees
whether or not you’ll succeed financially. The notion of success for all
thus has a rather tenuous connection to the real world of work. However,
it has a very strong connection to the discourse of corporate capitalism.
If workers, even very poor workers, believe they may succeed if they work
hard, then they will struggle to do good work and not dispute the basic
economic system. So we may see that the commonsensical “truth” of the
Horatio Alger success story is a fundamental part of a dominant discourse.
As critics of television it is our responsibility to examine these normally
unexamined ideals.
Interruption and Sequence

Up to now we have depicted television as a continuous flow of sounds
and images and meanings, but it is equally important to recognize the
discontinuous component of network-era TV watching and of TV itself—
the ebb to its flow.
On the Tuesday-night grid in Figure 1.1, we can move horizontally
across the page and see, obviously, that an evening’s schedule is
interrupted every half-hour or hour with different programs. One
program’s progression is halted by the next program, which is halted by
the next and the next. Within programs the flow is frequently interrupted
by advertisements and announcements and the like. And on an even
smaller level, within narrative programs’ storylines there tend to be many
interruptions. Soap operas, for example, often present scenes in which
characters are interrupted just as they are about to commit murder,
discover their true paternity, or consummate a romance that has been
developing for years.
The point is that network-era television is constantly interrupting
itself. Although the flow that gushes from our TV sets is continuously
television texts, it is not continuously the same type of texts. There are
narrative texts and non-narrative texts and texts of advertising and
information and advice, and on and on it goes. Furthermore, we as viewers
often interrupt ourselves while watching television. We leave the viewing
area to visit the kitchen or the bathroom. Our attention drifts as we talk
on the phone or argue with friends and family. We doze.
All of these forms of interruption—from television’s self-interruptions
to the interruptions we perform while watching—are not a perversion of
the TV-viewing experience. Rather, they define that experience. This is not
to suggest, however, that television does not try to combat the breaks in
its flow. Clearly, advertisers and networks want viewers to overcome
television’s fragmentary nature and continue watching their particular
12
1111 commercials/programs. To this end, storylines, music, visual design, and

2 dialogue must maintain our attention, to hold us through the commercial
3 breaks, to quell the desire to check out another channel or, worse still, to
4 turn off the TV.
5111
6
7 Segmentation
8
9 Network-era television’s discontinuous nature has led to a particular way
1011 of packaging narrative, informational, and commercial material. The
1 overall flow of television is segmented into small parcels, which often bear
2 little logical connection to one another. A shampoo commercial might
3111 follow a Parks and Recreation scene and lead into a station identification.
4 One segment of television does not necessarily link with the next, in a chain
5 of cause and effect. In Fiske’s view, “[Television] is composed of a rapid
6 succession of compressed, vivid segments where the principle of logic and
7111 cause and effect is subordinated to that of association and consequence to
8 sequence.”16 That is, fairly random association and sequence—rather than
9 cause and effect and consequence—govern TV’s flow.
20111 TV’s segmental nature peaks in the 30-second (and shorter) advertise-
1 ment, but it is evident in all types of programs. News programs are
2 compartmentalized into news, weather, and sports segments, then
3 further subdivided into individual 90-second (and shorter) “packages” or
4 stories. Game shows play rounds of a fixed, brief duration. Narrative
5 programs must structure their stories so that a segment can fit neatly within
6 the commercial breaks. After all, to the television industry, programs are
7 just filler, a necessary inconvenience interrupting the true function of
8 television: broadcasting commercials.
9 The construction of these television segments and their relationship
30111 to each other are two major concerns of television’s advertisers, producers,
1 and programmers. For it is on this level that the battle for our continuing
2 attention is won or lost. We should also be mindful of TV’s segmental
3 structure because it determines much of how stories are told, information
4 presented, and commodities advertised on broadcast television.
35
6
7 Halting the Flow: Television in the Postnetwork Era
8
9 As we noted at the start of this chapter, television is an age of extreme
40111 uncertainty. Everyone—network executives, individual TV station owners,
1 advertisers, venture capitalists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, actors,
2 critics, historians, scholars, and even viewers themselves—is aware that
3 television is changing, but no one knows exactly what it is mutating into.
4 What will postnetwork television be like? How will it look? What will it
5 sound like? How will we receive it? What ideological significance will
6 it have? Who will make money from it?
7 One thing that is already clear is that is that the TV industry has entered
8111 an era of convergence from which there is no going back. Convergence
13
refers to the many ways in which previously separate media have grown
closer and closer together. In other words, television, the Internet, print
media, movies, and telephones are converging into one large digital stew.
We watch television on our computers and play online games on our HD
television monitors while we use our phones to text American Idol to vote
for our favorite contestant. This convergence culture, as Henry Jenkins calls
it, has had many effects, not the least of which is the way that characters
can exist across many different media.17 The story world of Star Trek
characters, for example, originated on television, but transferred to movies
and then developed a life of its own in video games, at conventions and
within online, fan-created fiction. This transmedia storytelling is not
entirely new. There have long been television-to-movie crossovers, for
example. But the digital age has greatly accelerated transmedia storytelling
and enlarged these stories into entire narrative universes with many points
of entry and different ways in which one medium affects another.
As the television industry has struggled to adapt to convergence, it
has become clear that two revolutionary changes are occurring to viewers’
experience of the medium:
1. The potential for viewers’ agency and interactivity is increasing

exponentially.
2. The potential for viewers becoming producers—and not just
receivers—of television might become a reality.
Agency and Interactivity

In Janet Murray’s consideration of the future of telling stories in sound
and image, she writes about the pleasures of a video gamer’s agency: “the
satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our
decisions and choices.”18 In a video game, users have the power to control
their fates, to move characters through a virtual space and, essentially, to
build and star in their own stories. In this sense, they are the agents of
their own narrative actions and destinies. They exercise this agency by
interacting with the game—both physically through a controller and
visually through what they see on the screen. In contrast, when it was at
the peak of its power in the 1960s, network-era television permitted very
little agency or interactivity.19 The “big three” networks pushed their
programming at you and the only agency you had was to select one out
of three very similar choices or to turn the television off.
The only interactivity that network-era viewers were reluctantly
granted was that of channel switching. The first inkling of a revolution in
TV interactivity, therefore, came with the multiplication of channel choices
that accompanied cable and satellite delivery systems and, more
significantly, the widespread use of remote controls in the 1980s. With a
remote control, we move along the vertical axis of the programming grid,
creating a mosaic of the texts that are broadcast concurrently. We blend
together narrative and non-narrative programs, movies, advertisements,
14
1111 announcements, and credit sequences into a cacophonous supertext—

2 making for some occasionally bizarre juxtapositions (as we switch, say,
3 from a religious sermon to a heavy metal video). The pace can be dizzying,
4 especially for other viewers in the room who are not themselves punching
5111 the buttons. Such is the effect of viewer agency over television.
6 Clearly, the remote control heightened television’s discontinuous
7 nature and amped up its interruptions, but this discontinuity was still con-
8 tained by the flow of the programming. That is, networks were still pushing
9 texts at the viewer along that horizontal axis of the grid. The remote just
1011 permitted viewers to select—or, one might say, to pull—bits and pieces
1 from that flow. And, as we have already explained, television is well
2 equipped to cope successfully with interruptions and thrives despite
3111 fragmentation. But here is where a true break in the television experience
4 is occurring. DVRs such as TiVo, video-on-demand (VOD) services such
5 as those provided by cable/satellite companies, and streaming/download-
6 able video such as that displayed on computers and mobile devices allow
7111 viewers to control their experience of television time. When viewers with
8 DVRs/VOD/streaming/downloaded video sit before their television sets,
9 computers and mobile devices, they do not have to choose programming
20111 from what is showing at that time (as someone with a traditional remote
1 control does). Rather, they have the power, the agency, to interactively
2 choose programming that was on sometime in the past. It is the triumph
3 of pull over push. And, further, while watching a program (live or
4 recorded) they can pause it or rewind it. In essence, they control TV’s time.
5 They have removed the time-based, horizontal axis of the programming
6 grid. They are not picking something from the vertical axis of what is on
7 at one point in the horizontal axis. Instead, they are selecting, pulling,
8 streaming, “demanding,” programming on their own schedule, their own
9 time grids.
30111 These new digital technologies and services have not just interrupted
1 television’s flow, they have actually brought it to a complete halt. In the
2 long term, this will necessitate new, perhaps transmedia, narrative forms,
3 new visual and sound styles, and new modes of distribution for television.
4 In fact, it might bring about the death of “television” that, as noted at the
35 start of this chapter, has been so often predicted. In the short term,
6 however, television will not change much. As one industry analyst put it,
7 “The prime-time broadcast will still be the tentpole. A show won’t get
8 popular unless it succeeds there.”20 By tentpole, he meant that it will
9 continue to support all the other, derivative forms of television that use
40111 that same material. There’s a possible parallel here with the relationship
1 between a movie’s release in theaters and its release on DVD and Blu-ray
2 disc (BD). For almost 20 years, videocassette, DVD and BD rentals and
3 sales have brought in more money than tickets sold at the box office; but
4 those rentals/sales could not succeed without the huge marketing drives,
5 festival screenings, reviews, and general buzz that are attached to the
6 original theatrical release. Similarly, the prime-time release of a television
7 program—with all its attendant promotion—should continue to be the
8111 tentpole that supports alternative distributions of a program.
15
The Viewer as Participant and Producer

When the BBC decided to open much of its audio and video archives for
free acquisition and reuse by British citizens, executive producer Jennifer
Rigby explained their rationale: “We want to move from a broadcast
model to a participatory model.”21 In fact, numerous new forms of
television are evolving that are built upon a participatory model and take
advantage of user-generated content (UGC) and the rapid growth of
social media such as Facebook. Several online services let individuals
share their video productions for free or for a small charge: most notably
YouTube, but also Vimeo, Ourmedia.org, Blip.tv, and others. Even
Facebook supports the sharing of videos among one’s friends. To many
observers, online digital media distribution is part of a broad change, even
a revolution, in how knowledge and information are produced and shared.
When “systems are designed for user contribution,” technology-book
publisher Tim O’Reilly has argued, they rely on an “architecture of
participation.”22
Of the services noted above, Ourmedia.org most radically exemplifies
this architecture of participation—promoting itself as “the global home for
grassroots media.” Its mission statement illustrates the participatory
principles behind efforts such as these:
Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art,

documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio
interviews, digital storytelling, children’s tales, Flash animations, student
films, mash-ups—all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the
Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to
inform, entertain and astound each other.23
There is a possible revolution in the works here, as video made by ordinary

citizens may now compete with that of the networks, of “big media.”
However, this is a revolution that has been promised to us before and has
yet to occur. Each new image-making technology—from 16mm and 8mm
film to home-use camcorders and CD/DVD burners—has had supporters
proclaiming that the ability to make inexpensive films and videos, to
make inexpensive television even, will democratize and revolutionize
television and the cinema. And each time, big media have crushed the little
guy. Does this new “revolution” have any better chances of succeeding?
Only time will provide the answer to that question, but there is one
key element to the current situation that may make a difference. And that
is distribution. When previous technologies were introduced there was no
effective way for individuals to distribute the films and videos they made.
So-called grassroots films/videos had little impact when the only persons
viewing them were the cast, the filmmaker’s family and friends, and
perhaps a small audience at a film-society or art-house screening. But today
the Internet offers the possibility of accessing a worldwide audience.
Nowhere is this more evident than on YouTube, which is far and away
the most popular site for online video. YouTube distributes a phenomenal
16
1111 amount of user-generated content to its approximately 175 million

2 individual viewers (per month), who visit the site an average of two billion
3 times per day.24 The site began with an uploaded home movie of one of
4 its founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo, which was posted on
5111 April 23, 2005 (tvcrit.com/find/karim). Initially, YouTube was notorious
6 for hosting copyrighted material from films and television, but its greater
7 cultural impact is on the dissemination of do-it-yourself videos made by
8 its users. In fact, if you discount professionally made music videos,
9 YouTube’s most-viewed videos are almost always amateur productions
1011 (tvcrit.com/find/youtube).25 Virtually any YouTube upload might become
1 a viral video and be viewed by millions worldwide. Distribution of
2 that magnitude and breadth has never before been available to non-
3111 professional producers of image/sound texts.
4 The distribution potential of online platforms has been realized in text-
5 based materials since the mid-1990s—coming into its own when search
6 engines began to effectively index all the words out there. Google and
7111 Yahoo! Search soon brought “pull” technology to online text. That is, they
8 pioneered the ability for users to quickly and efficiently find terms and
9
bring related information down to their computer screens. And now the
20111
same thing is happening with photographs and video. The indexing of
1
visual material, both still and motion, has long been a problem, but new
2
video sources such as those listed above, in addition to popular still-image
3
sites like Flickr, have come a long way toward resolving it by “tagging”
4
images/videos with descriptive terms. And the embedding of and linking
5
to videos in blogs and social media sites like Facebook further serve to
6
disseminate videos. Thus, not only has broadband access to the Internet
7
8 facilitated the uploading and downloading of large video files, but now
9 users are able to actually find video they want without resorting to TV
30111 Guide.
1 To date, the online marketing and distribution of grassroots and
2 do-it-yourself media are still in their infancy—dwarfed by the marketing/
3 distribution systems of television networks. Certainly, one cannot count
4 on a video “going viral” as a systematic way to get one’s work to a broad
35 public. And no one yet knows exactly what type of impact new partici-
6 patory models will have on the conventional broadcast model. But, clearly,
7 the potential for change is greater now than it has ever been.
8
9
40111 Summary
1
2 Television flow—Raymond Williams’s term for television’s sequence
3 of diverse fragments of narrative, information, and advertising—defines
4 the medium’s fundamental structure during the network era. This flow
5 facilitates the multiplicity of meanings, or polysemy, that television
6 broadcasts.
7 Our consideration of television flow grows from three rudimentary
8111 axioms:
17
1. Television texts (programs, commercials, entire blocks of television

time) contain meanings.
2. Not all meanings are presented equally. Textual devices emphasize
some meanings over others and thus offer a hierarchy of meanings
to the viewer. TV’s polysemy is structured, by the dominant cultural
order, into discourses (systems of belief).
3. The experience of television watching brings the discourses of the
viewer into contact with the discourses of the text.
Television flow is riddled with interruptions. TV continually interrupts

itself, shifting from one text to the next. And as often as the text inter-
rupts itself, so too do we disrupt our consumption of television with trips
out of the room or simple inattention. These constant interruptions lead
television to adopt a segmented structure, constructing portions of TV in
such a way as to encourage viewer concentration.
The aspiration of this book is to analyze television’s production of
meaning. We set aside the evaluation of television programs for the time
being in order to focus on TV’s structured polysemy and the systems that
contribute to its creation: narrative and non-narrative structures, mise-en-
scene, camera style, editing, sound. The chapters that follow are rooted in
network-era television implementation of that polysemy and those
systems. Two important challenges to its supremacy are currently
evolving: the potential for viewers’ increased interactivity and agency and
the potential for viewers becoming video producers. We believe that much
of what holds true for network-era television will also hold true for future
mutations of it. There is, of course, no way of knowing for sure.
Further Readings
The basic principle of television flow stems from Raymond Williams,
Television: Technology and Cultural Form (New York: Schocken, 1974). This
short book is one of the fundamental building blocks of contemporary
television studies.
John Corner, Critical Ideas in Television Studies (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1999) devotes an entire chapter to the notion of flow. John Fiske,
Television Culture (New York: Methuen, 1987) and John Ellis, Visible Fictions:
Cinema:Television:Video (Boston: Routledge, 1992) both elaborate upon the
concept. Fiske is also concerned with articulating television’s meanings and
how they may be organized into discourses. Todd Gitlin confronts
television’s role in advocating a society’s dominant or “hegemonic”
discourse in “Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television
Entertainment” in Television: The Critical View, Horace Newcomb, ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000): 574–94.
Further discussion of how meaning is produced in television texts may
be found in the writings of British television scholars associated with the
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (University of Birmingham,
18
1111 England). This school of analysis is summarized in Fiske’s Television

2 Culture and in his “British Cultural Studies and Television” chapter in
3 Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, Robert C. Allen, ed. (Chapel Hill:
4 University of North Carolina Press, 1992). Students interested in the
5111 seminal work in this area should read Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,”
6 in Culture, Media, Language, Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe,
7 Paul Willis, eds. (London: Hutchinson, 1980).
8 The implications of Dan Quayle’s comments about Murphy Brown are
9 examined in Rebecca L. Walkowitz, “Reproducing Reality: Murphy Brown
1011 and Illegitimate Politics,” in Feminist Television Criticism, Charlotte
1 Brunsdon, Julie D’Acci, Lynn Spigel, eds. (New York: Clarendon, 1997).
2 Walkowitz is concerned with the ideology of “family values” and the
3111 representation of women working in television news.
4 The demise of network-era television is explored and theorized in many
5 essays and books, among them: John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the
6 Age of Uncertainty (London: I. B. Taurus, 2000); Jostein Gripsrud, ed.,
7111 Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context (New York: Routledge,
8 2010); Amanda D. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York:
9 New York University Press, 2007); Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson, eds.,
20111 Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham, NC: Duke
1 University Press, 2004); and a special issue of The Journal of Film & Television
2 appropriately titled “Mixed-Up Confusion: Television in the Twenty-First
3 Century” (guest editors Ron Simon and Brian Rose; 38, no. 2 [2010]). The
4 most substantive consideration of the cultural impact of the media
5
convergence hastening network-era TV’s presumed demise is Henry
6
Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York:
7
New York University Press, 2006); but one article that attempts to delineate
8
the specific convergence of television and digital forms is Jeremy Butler,
9
“VR in the ER: ER’s Use of E-media,” Screen 42, no. 4 (Winter 2001),
30111
313–31.
1
2
3
4
Notes
35 1 Lynn Spigel, Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham, NC:
6 Duke University Press, 2004), 1.
7 2 John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I. B. Taurus,
8 2000).
9 3 Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (New York:
Schocken, 1974), 86.
40111
4 Dan Quayle, “Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (On Family
1 Values),” May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle, http://www.vicepresident
2 danquayle.com/speeches_StandingFirm_CCC_3.html, accessed December 22,
3 2010.
4 5 “General Information,” The American Family Association, January 13, 2006,
5 www.afa.net/about.asp. They continue, “For example, over the last 25 years
we have seen the entertainment industry ‘normalize’ and glorify premarital
6 sex. During that time we have suffered a dramatic increase in teen pregnancies,
7 sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS and abortion as a means of birth
8111 control.” Ibid.
19
6 “Gilmore Girls,” Family Guide to TV Viewing, Parents Television Council,

www.parentstv.org/ptc/shows/main.asp?shwid=605, accessed January 12,
2006.
7 Here’s how the FFPF’s program works (and how the WB network used it when
Gilmore Girls was being planned): The FFPF covers the cost of script
development for new programs. If the program is eventually produced and
makes it on air, then the WB returns the development fee to FFPF—as was the
case with Gilmore Girls. If, as is more typically the case, the script does not result
in a pilot, the FFPF absorbs the cost.
8 “Family Friendly Programming Forum Mission,” Family Friendly Program-
ming Forum, 13 January 2006, www.ana.net/family/familyprogramawards/
mission_A.cfm.
9 “Gilmore Girls,” ABC Family, abcfamily.go.com/shows/gilmore-girls, accessed
December 22, 2010.
10 “Fall TV Preview 2000,” Entertainment Weekly, 2000, www.ew.com/ew/
features/000929/falltv/gilmore.html, accessed January 13, 2006.
11 Ibid.
12 John Fiske, Television Culture (New York: Methuen, 1987), 16.
13 Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Culture, Media, Language, Stuart Hall,
Dorothy Hobson, Andre Lowe, Paul Willis, eds. (London: Hutchinson, 1980),
134.
14 Fiske, 14.
15 Ibid.
16 Fiske, 105.
17 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York:
New York University Press, 2006).
18 Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 126.
19 I can personally remember a television set in my childhood home that lost
its channel-changing knob and had to be adjusted with pliers—often giving
the channel changer a bit of a shock. Everyone in our family feared interacting
with that TV.
20 Josh Bernoff, a vice president with Forrester Research, quoted in Jennifer
Armstrong, “The Revolution Will Be Televised,” Entertainment Weekly,
December 16, 2005, 55.
21 Quoted in David Weinberger, “The BBC: A Case Study in Going Digital,” Wired,
September 2005, 117.
22 Tim O’Reilly, “Open Source Paradigm Shift,” June 2004, tim.oreilly.com/
articles/paradigmshift_0504.html, accessed January 16, 2006.
23 “Mission,” Ourmedia, www.ourmedia.org/mission, accessed January 14,
2006.
24 The second most popular site, Yahoo!, does not even come close: 53 million
unique viewers. These numbers were compiled by comScore for October
2010. “comScore Releases October 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings,” comScore,
November 15, 2010, www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/
2010/11/comScore_Releases_October_2010_U.S._Online_Video_Rankings,
accessed December 23, 2010.
25 YouTube allows you to list its “most viewed” videos by the day, week, month,
or “all time”: www.youtube.com/charts/videos_views?t=a.
20
1111
2
3
4
5111
6
CHAPTER
2
7
8
9
1011
Narrative Structure:
1
2
Television Stories
3111
4
5
6
7111
8
9
W hen asked if he thought films should be a slice of life, director
Alfred Hitchcock is reported to have said, no, they should be a slice
of cake. We might well pose the same question about television: Is it a
20111 slice of life or a slice of cake? The images we see on the screen show us
1 real people and objects, and the sounds we hear are taken from our real
2 experience, with dialogue spoken in a language and idiom with which we
3 are familiar. Often we suspend disbelief and imagine that television
4 characters are real persons, with tangible pasts and a future toward which
5 time is carrying them. We might muse, “I wonder what happened to
6 Screech after Saved by the Bell was canceled.” It seems as if we just dropped
7 in on these TV people and tasted a slice of their lives.
8 But we should be aware that, for all their seeming reality, the stories
9 we watch are actually slices of televisual confections. As if making a cake,
30111 the screenwriters and directors follow storytelling “recipes” that suggest
1 the proper ingredients and their proper amounts for creating a television
2 program. They mix those ingredients in conventionally prescribed ways—
3 adding a chase scene here and a romantic clinch there—to maximize
4 viewer pleasure. Just like the frosting on the top of a birthday cake, a
35 television narrative has been blended to satisfy our appetites.
6 To understand television narrative, then, we must look beyond the
7 appearance of reality the medium promotes and understand the recipe that
8 created that reality. We may ask of any program, “How is this story put
9 together? What are its narrative components and how do they relate to
40111 one another?” As we begin to look at television’s narratives, we will notice
1 a limited number of basic structures, a finite set of recipes for mixing story
2 ingredients. Historically, there have been three principal narrative modes
3 on television:
4
5 1. the theatrical film (originally shown in theaters) and the made-for-
6 TV film (also known as the movie of the week or MOW);
7
2. the series program;
8111
3. the serial program.
21
This chapter charts these three structures and explores the differences
and similarities among them. It also briefly considers how television’s
convergence with online media is necessitating new narrative forms. Later
chapters look at how narrative influences other aspects of television, such
as reality TV and the news.
The Theatrical Film
From Antagonism to Alliance
When television experienced its first growth spurt in the years after
World War II, the U.S. motion picture studios and the television industry
antagonized each other. TV, an upstart medium, stole the cinema’s
customers and undermined the studio system that had dominated North
America’s narrative market. Indeed, the entire world depended on
Hollywood for its stories. But the 1950s would be the last decade that U.S.
viewers would rely so heavily upon the cinema for their entertainment.
By 1960, television had replaced the cinema as America’s primary form of
entertainment, and many within the film industry were bitter about this
loss of control. Just as film executives resented television’s inclusion into
their domain, so were their counterparts in the television industry hesitant
to deal with the film studios. Television producers wanted to create their
own material and not have to depend upon the whims of the film industry
for their product.
What began as antagonism between the film studios and the television
industry soon evolved into a wary alliance. Television was hungry for
narrative product; the studios controlled thousands of movies. After their
initial runs, these films were warehoused, seldom heard from again, and
thus not a financial asset. RKO, Monogram, and Republic—three of the
smaller studios—were the first to begin leasing their older movies to
television. Soon the major studios were compelled to join in. It wasn’t long
before newer and newer films began making their way to television more
and more quickly. The ratings success of NBC’s Saturday Night at the
Movies (1961) led to all of the broadcast networks featuring “nights at the
movies.” By the end of the decade there were recent theatrical films
running on television just about every night of the week.
Since that time, the relationship between theatrical filmmaking and
television has only become more complex. Today’s theatrical film studios
and television networks are all owned by the same few transnational
media corporations, blurring the economic distinctions between the two
media. And technologically speaking, film and television were brought
even closer together when theatrical film releases began to be offered
on videocassette, DVD, and Blu-ray disc (BD)—players for which were
introduced to the U.S. home market in 1976, 1997, and 2006, respectively.
Indeed, in the late 1980s the watching of films in actual theaters declined
to the point that theatrical box office receipts were surpassed by video-
22
Narrative Structure 23
1111 cassette rental revenue for the first time. And DVD/BD-rental revenue since
2 then has continued that trend.
3 Thus, by the 1990s, the film studios had come to rely financially on
4 venues where movies could be shown after their initial theatrical run—
5111 which were called ancillary markets. These highly profitable ancillary
6 markets developed a fairly rigid release schedule in the US. Over a year
7 or more, a theatrical film could be released, in order, to:
8
9 1. “home” video—videocassette and DVD;
1011
1 2. “premium” cable channels—channels for which cable-TV customers
2 pay extra (prominently, HBO and Showtime);
3111 3. over-the-air, network television (ABC, CBS, NBC, et al.);
4
5 4. “basic,” non-premium cable networks (e.g. TNT, USA, TBS, etc.);
6 5. television syndication.
7111
8 The most recent addition to this mix are the various video-on-demand
9 (VOD) services—from cable companies’ “on-demand” offerings to
20111 Netflix’s online streaming and the like. Just where VOD fits into the
1 release schedule is currently a point of contention. Initially, it came after
2 DVD releases, but more and more services are now releasing movies
3
simultaneously on VOD and DVD/BD.
4
The main point here is that theatrical films continue to play a major
5
role in what we view on our televisions—whether it’s a network pro-
6
gramming a movie into a specific time slot or we viewers popping a BD
7
into a player connected to our home theater system. The notion of ancillary
8
markets is changing, however, and has been strongly affected by the
9
30111 consolidation of media outlets. Nowadays, a corporation like Viacom
1 might own both a home-video distributor (e.g. Paramount) and a television
2 network (e.g. Comedy Central). They have vested interests in all of these
3 markets, unlike the early days of television broadcasting when film studios
4 and television networks were competing for our leisure time. Today,
35 media corporations are only “competing” within themselves. The staggered
6 release schedule of a theatrical film remains important in order to build
7 marketing buzz, but it’s likely to change radically as on-demand services
8 improve.
9 Although VCR/DVD/BD/VOD technologies, shifting ancillary
40111 markets, and corporate consolidation have radically changed the way we
1 view/consume movies on television and virtually eliminated programs
2 such as Saturday Night at the Movies, we still spend much of our television-
3 viewing time watching films originally shown in theaters. Moreover, the
4 narrative structure of the theatrical film is still used as a standard by which
5 other TV programs are judged. It is important, therefore, to consider how
6 the theatrical film structures its stories and how those structures are
7 modified when they appear on broadcast television or in a movie of the
8111 week.
23
The Classical Paradigm

The theatrical cinema was not always a powerful narrative machine.
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, film stories were in a rather
primitive state. Some early movies told no stories at all: a baby is fed, a
train arrives at a station, a wall falls over. Viewers were so enthralled with
the mere sight of movement on the screen that characters and plot were
superfluous. However, cinema viewers soon developed an obsession with
narrative, and the young film industry was more than willing to provide
it. When D. W. Griffith’s milestone The Birth of a Nation was released in
1915, the cinema had already established itself as an accomplished, mature
art form, a specifically narrative art form. The popularization of sound a
little over a decade later threw the industry into upheaval and forced the
cinema to readjust its storytelling methods. But by 1934 American movies
had settled upon a certain way of constructing stories as well as a
conventional style of editing, visual composition, dialogue and music, and
so on. This filmmaking method and the industry that supported it have
come to be known as the classical Hollywood cinema, or, more simply,
Hollywood classicism. Classical narrative structure is the concern of the
present chapter. Classical visual and sound style are discussed in Part II.
In order to avoid one possible point of confusion, it is important to
note that “classical” film, in this sense, does not refer simply to well-
established and admired films that have maintained their appeal over the
decades. Calling Casablanca (1942) or Gone with the Wind (1939) a “classic”
is not using the term as we will be using it here. Rather, classical in our
sense refers to a specific mode of filmmaking, and can be applied to
almost all films made in Hollywood since the 1930s. Casablanca and Gone
with the Wind are classical films, but so are What! No Beer? (1933), Ishtar
(1987), and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), not to mention its sequel,
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005). Moreover, of the theatrical films
shown on broadcast television, only the very rare exception is not a
classical film. Nonclassical films find a home on cable channels such as
Sundance, the Independent Film Channel, Bravo, and Arts and Entertain-
ment (A&E). The foreign-language “art” and U.S. “independent” (that is,
independent of the major studios) films are often aggressively anti-
classical. Although they have little impact on network narrative television,
one can see their influence in music videos, television commercials, and
quirky premium-cable channel programs such as Weeds (2005–).
What binds together the thousands of classical films that have been
made over the decades? The seven basic components of classical narrative
structure are listed below. As we outline these components we will
illustrate them mostly with examples from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Raiders was chosen because it is one of the most widely viewed films in
the history of the cinema and because it exemplifies classical principles so
clearly.1 Its exemplary status was recognized by the Library of Congress
when it added the film to the National Film Registry in 1999.2 Also, you
may wish to study the film’s narrative structure by examining its screen-
play, which is available online (see tvcrit.com/find/raidersscript).3
24
1111 Single Protagonist

2
The protagonist is the central character in a film, book, TV program,
3
or other fictional mode. The story revolves around him or her. Classicism
4
has usually limited a movie’s protagonist to just one or, at most, two
5111
characters. Filmmakers reason that this facilitates viewer identification and
6
streamlines the narrative action. Viewers can identify with one person more
7
readily than with a dozen and can comprehend a single character
8
more quickly than several mixed together at the beginning of the film.
9
This seems commonsensical enough, but narratives do occasionally use
1011
more than a single protagonist. Soap operas usually feature a dozen
1
protagonists at any particular point in the story. Russian silent filmmakers
2
such as Sergei Eisenstein argued that an entire class of people could be
3111
the protagonist. In Eisenstein’s Strike (1924) and Potemkin (1925) masses of
4
people serve as the narrative focus. Of course, there are even classical films
5
which break this “rule” of the single protagonist, but instead of splintering
6
the story, these films often unite several characters with a single purpose
7111
so that they function as a united force within the narrative. The four
8
“ghostbusters” in the film of the same name (1984), for example, work
9
together to destroy the ghosts.
20111
1
2 Exposition
3
The exposition introduces the viewer to two components of the story:
4
5
1. the principal characters’ personas, their “personalities”;
6
7 2. the space or environment the characters inhabit.
8
9 Every story must have an exposition, but not necessarily at the beginning
30111 of the film. Many movies, especially murder mysteries, start in the middle
1 of the action and then later explain who the characters are and what their
2 space entails. Stories that open in such a fashion are said to begin in medias
3 res. Raiders of the Lost Ark starts in medias res. The opening shot, beneath
4 the credits, presents the hero as a mysterious silhouette (Figure 2.1;
35 tvcrit.com/find/raiders01). Shortly afterwards, he is nearly crushed by a
6 huge rolling boulder, and is then pursued by angry natives. All of this
7 occurs before we know who Indiana “Indy” Jones (Harrison Ford) is and
8 why he is doing what he’s doing—although a title does tell us that it is
9 “South America 1936.” Once Indy escapes from the jungle the film’s
40111 exposition begins. His profession and motivation are established when we
1 see him lecturing about archeology; and the entire story (its characters and
2 their locations) is mapped out by the government bureaucrats who visit
3 Indy and pique his interest in the Ark of the Covenant.
4
5
Motivation
6
7 In any classical story, something must catalyze events. The action must have
8111 motivation. Here the importance of the single protagonist is re-emphasized,
25
Figure 2.1 The opening shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark begins the film in the middle of the action.
for classical narrative is motivated by the desire of a single character to attain

a goal or acquire something (or someone). Raiders of the Lost Ark illustrates
this unequivocally: Indy desires to acquire the Ark of the Covenant. The
protagonist’s desire—his or her lack of something or someone or some
emotion—catalyzes the story, provides a reason for events to happen, and
establishes the narrative’s central enigma.
Narrative Enigma
Early in any classical film a question is explicitly or implicitly asked.
This question forms the central enigma of the classical story. In Raiders
the question is, Will Indy find the Ark and prevent the Nazis from using
it? There may be secondary enigmas (What is in the Ark? Will Indy get
together with Marion [Karen Allen]?), but every other aspect of the story
stems from the one central enigma. It is essential to classical narrative that
the enigma must not be solved immediately. If it were, there would be no
story. Imagine how short Raiders of the Lost Ark would be if Indy found
the Ark in the first ten minutes. Consequently, Raiders of the Lost Ark and
all classical narratives rely upon a series of delays that forestall the solution
of the enigma.
Chief among the delaying tactics of the classical cinema is the intro-
duction of a character who blocks fulfillment of the protagonist’s desire—
and, thus, blocks the resolution of the narrative enigma. This blocking
character is known as the antagonist. The antagonist can be as simple as
a solitary character with whom the protagonist battles or competes—for
example, Belloq (Paul Freeman), Indy’s nemesis, to whom he loses an idol
in the opening scene (Figure 2.2). Or, the antagonist may take the shape
of the character’s environment: for example, the Civil War in Gone with
the Wind, North Atlantic icebergs in Titanic (1997), or Iraqi insurgents’
26
1111 explosives in The Hurt Locker (2009). Some classical films even pose the
2 antagonizing force as being within the protagonist—as in Batman Begins
3 (2005), where the title character (Christian Bale) wrestles with inner
4 demons and faces moral dilemmas. These narrative conflicts are not
5111 mutually exclusive. A film may contain a combination of them, as when,
6 in Ordinary People (1980), Conrad (Timothy Hutton) deals with his internal
7 conflicts about his brother’s death at the same time he works through his
8 antagonism with his mother (Mary Tyler Moore).
9 In any case, the conflict created by the antagonist delays the resolution
1011 of the enigma until the end of the film. These delays form the basis of the
1 chain of cause–effect actions that comprise the main body of the film.
2
3111
Cause–Effect Chain
4
5 Once the exposition has established the characters and their space, and
6 the protagonist’s desire has sparked the forward movement of the story,
7111 the narrative begins a series or chain of events that are linked to one another
8 and occur over time. Events do not occur randomly or in arbitrary order
9 in classical films. One event causes the next, which causes the next, which
20111 causes the next, and so on (Figure 2.3). Raiders of the Lost Ark illustrates
1 this: The visit by the bureaucrats causes Indy to go looking for the Ark,
2 which causes him to track down Marion Ravenwood to find a clue to the
3 Ark’s location, which causes him to become realigned with her and take
4 her to Cairo, which causes them to battle the Nazis in the Cairo market,
5 and so on. Link by link the narrative chain is built.
6 Each single narrative event is commonly called a scene or sequence.
7 A scene is a specific chunk of narrative that coheres because the event takes
8 place in a particular time at a particular place. The space of a scene is
9 consistent, and time passes in a scene as it does in real life. Contemporary
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8111 Figure 2.2 Raiders of the Lost Ark: Belloq serves as the antagonist to Indy’s protagonist.
27
Scene A
Causes Scene B
An effect of Scene A
Causes Scene C
An effect of Scene B
Causes Scene D
And so on . . .
Figure 2.3 The cause–effect narrative chain.
narrative theory has renamed the scene the syntagm. The order in which
the scenes or syntagms transpire is the film’s syntagmatic structure.
In a single scene, time is continuous, as it is in life; but as we make
the transition from one scene to another, the potential for manipulating
time arises. Time in film does not match time in reality. If it did, it would
take months to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Story time—several months,
in this case—is rarely equivalent to screen time—Raiders of the Lost Ark’s
115 minutes. To maximize narrative impact, the duration and order of story
time are manipulated as it is converted into screen time.
Most commonly, screen time’s duration is shorter than that of story
time. Very few films last as long as the actions they represent on the screen.
Obviously, films must compress time in order to tell their stories without
taxing the viewer. Only occasional oddities equate screen time with real
time. For example, in High Noon (1952) 82 minutes in the life of a sheriff
are presented in 82 minutes; Rope (1948) is presented as if it were one long,
continuous shot; and Time Code (2000) shows us four screens of continuous
action simultaneously. Further, screen time is not always shorter than
story time. This is less common than the reverse, but certainly not unheard
of. In Fantastic Voyage (1966), a tiny submarine passes through a human
heart in 57 seconds of story time, as we are told by the characters. But this
57 seconds of story time elapses over three minutes of screen time. Thus,
the duration of time may be manipulated to maximize narrative effect.
The order of screen time may be similarly manipulated. In most
classical films, the events shown in the second scene occur after those that
appear in the first scene; those in the third scene occur after the second;
and so on. That is, the temporal structure is normally chronological.
However, it is not uncommon for films to use flashbacks or, less often,
flashforwards, to rearrange a story’s temporal structure. In classical film
these departures from chronological order are clearly marked with visual
effects so that we are certain when we are shifting into the past: the image
goes wavy; the focus shifts; smoke appears before the lens; or the
character’s voice fades out. In nonclassical films, such as those by Alain
Resnais, Luis Buñuel, and Christopher Nolan, the past is jumbled up with
the present and the future in challenging and sometimes contradictory
ways. Nolan’s Memento (2000) even manages to tell its story in reverse and
28
1111 his Inception (2010) takes us in and out of the past and dream time in ways
2 that test viewer comprehension of the narrative.
3 Also important to consider is the increasing intensity of the cause–
4 effect chain’s events, the basic dynamic force of the narrative. As the enigma’s
5111 resolution is delayed again and again, narrative intensity escalates. As Indy
6 comes closer to the Ark, his battles become more and more death-defying.
7 Eventually, this results in the film’s climax.
8
9
Climax
1011
1 At a classical film’s climax the narrative conflict culminates—necessitating
2 a resolution. The film’s central enigma, which has been delayed for 90
3111 minutes or more, demands to be solved. At the climax of Raiders of the Lost
4 Ark, the conflict between Indy and Belloq peaks as Indy and Marion are
5 tied to a stake while Belloq and the Nazis open the Ark. The central
6 enigma (Will Indy find the Ark and prevent the Nazis from using it?) and
7111 its subsidiary (What is in the Ark?) are solved in this scene: apparently
8 the wrath of God is contained in the Ark and consequently the Nazis are
9 destroyed when they open it. More specifically, Indy’s antagonist, Belloq,
20111 is obliterated—thus resolving their longstanding competition (Figure 2.4;
1 tvcrit.com/find/raiders02).
2 Climaxes are the most concentrated moment of the narrative conflict,
3 but typically they are not the very end of the film. Classical films normally
4 incorporate a short resolution to answer any outstanding questions.
5
6
Resolution/Denouement
7
8 Up to the point of the resolution, the enigmas have been consistently
9 delayed and the narrative action has constantly risen. In the resolution, in
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8111 Figure 2.4 The climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark brings the narrative conflict to a peak.
29
contrast, the enigmas are solved and the narrative action (or conflict)
declines. After the apocalyptic destruction of the Nazis, Raiders of the Lost
Ark resolves its narrative by showing us Indy and Marion getting together
for a drink and, in the very last shot, the Ark being stored in an anonymous
crate in a huge warehouse (Figure 2.5; tvcrit.com/find/raiders03). The
questions about the Ark’s contents and the Nazis’ use of it are answered.
The battle with Belloq is finished. Also answered is a subsidiary question
about whether Indy and Marion will reunite. There is a strong sense of
closure at the end of this and most classical films. The enigmas that had
been opened at the start of the film are now closed off, secured. The
narrative’s questions are answered.
If a narrative concludes without answering its questions and the
ending is ambiguous or open, this is an instance of narrative aperture. For
the most part, narrative aperture exists only in nonclassical films. Jean-Luc
Godard’s Vivre sa Vie (1962), for example, concludes with the protagonist
being suddenly shot and killed, with no subsequent explanation. There
are very few films that follow classical conventions up until the very end,
and then tantalize us with an ambiguous finish. The horror genre contains
most of these films. Halloween (1978), with the mysterious disappearance
of the killer’s body, and Piranha (2010), with a main character being eaten
by an adult piranha in the final shot, are two examples among many. There
are, of course, economic reasons for the openness or aperture of horror
films. An open ending facilitates the return of the killer in sequels. But
aperture also suits the horror film’s raison d’être, which is to call into
question the stability of rational life. An ambiguous ending undermines
the narrative equilibrium that is the goal of most classical films. The horror
film does not share that goal.
Figure 2.5 Raiders of the Lost Ark: Storing the Ark in a huge warehouse is part of the film’s
narrative closure.
30
1111 Theatrical Films on Television

2
3 The transition from theater to broadcast television can have significant
4 effects on theatrical film narrative—although many of these issues are not
5111 pertinent to premium cable channels. The most drastic of these effects is
6 the shortening of a film to fit it into a commercial-based television time
7 slot. Large parts of the narrative are excised in this process. A Chicago
8 station once ran the 118-minute From Here to Eternity (1953) in a 90-minute
9 time slot. Subtracting more time for commercials, station promotional
1011 materials, and other interruptions left about 75 minutes for the film itself.
1 The Artists Rights Foundation tracks the time cut from theatrical films.4
2 It notes, for example, how The Silence of the Lambs (1991) lost 29 minutes
3111 when broadcast on the WB network. Obviously, cutting this much time
4 from any film is going to affect severely the coherence of its narrative chain.
5 Characters appear and disappear unpredictably and entire subplots cease
6 to exist. The cause–effect linkage of classical films is disrupted, sometimes
7111 to the point of incomprehensibility, when films are edited in this fashion.
8 Movies shown on broadcast television are also shortened for reasons
9 other than time concerns. Typically, broadcast standards for television
20111 are stricter than U.S. obscenity laws for motion pictures. Images, language,
1 and even entire scenes that television networks deem unfit for family
2 viewing will be cut. Slap Shot (1977), Raging Bull (1980), and the originally
3 X-rated Midnight Cowboy (1969) have all been ravaged when broadcast on
4 commercial television.5 Even when movies are shown on cable premium
5 channels there is no guarantee they will not be edited. When Showtime—
6 a pay service that boasted running films “uncut and uninterrupted”—
7 presented Montenegro (1981), it removed a sexually suggestive scene
8 involving a motorized toy tank.
9 Thus, various bits and pieces of theatrical films are missing when they
30111 are presented on commercial television. Of course, the portions of the film
1 that remain are not presented without interruption—except on rare
2 occasions (for example, the initial screening of Schindler’s List [1993]). U.S.
3 television inherited from radio the convention of interposing commercials
4 within the body of movies and programs. Commercials and their impact
35 will be considered in Chapter 5; but we may note here that the appearance
6 of TV commercials within classical films adds a distracting, narratively
7 detrimental element. Theaters used to be devoid of these distractions, but
8 U.S. theaters now run commercials, a practice that had long been done in
9 Europe. Still, theatrical movies are not interrupted by the commercials, as
40111 they are on television, since they are always shown before the film begins.
1 The abbreviation and interruption of classical film narrative are not
2 the only ways that film stories are modified on television. In uncommon
3 circumstances, theatrical films are sometimes actually lengthened when
4 presented on television. Network TV added 49 minutes to Superman (1978)
5 and 19 minutes to Superman III (1983) when they were originally telecast.6
6 In one of the strangest of such incidents, a 1980s telecast of Rear Window
7 (1958) extended its running time by presenting the credits in slow motion
8111 and inserting a dream sequence that had not existed in the original film!
31
The narrative effect of such alterations varies from film to film, but it is
seldom beneficial.
Hence, for a variety of reasons the movies seen on television—
especially commercial-based broadcast television—may substantively
differ from the versions shown in theaters. Narrative can be a fragile
component of the movies, and often is distorted beyond recognition in the
transition from theater screen to television screen. However, theatrical films
are not the only “movies” appearing on television. There are also films that
were specifically designed for the electronic medium and are typically
called movies of the week—although such films are becoming less and less
common in contemporary television.
The MOW Variation

Until the mid-1960s, the only movies shown on television were ones that
had originally been designed for theater audiences. The early-1960s success
of “nights at the movies” made networks hungry for more, cheaper films—
ones that might also serve as springboards for television series.
Consequently, the made-for-TV movie was born, and, within the industry,
christened the MOW (for “movie of the week”). See How They Run
inaugurated this new form, debuting on NBC in 1964. After that, MOW
films mixed with theatrical ones in increasing numbers. In the 1986–87
season, for example, the networks broadcast almost 300 made-for-TV films
and fewer than 100 theatrical movies.7 Viewers seem to distinguish less
and less between the two. Of the two highest-rated movies in the history
of television, one is a theatrical film (Gone with the Wind) but the other is
a made-for-television film (The Day After [1983]).8 Moreover, the MOW/
theatrical dissimilarity is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain,
because U.S. made-for-TV movies are often shown theatrically in Europe
(for example, the pilot for Twin Peaks [1990]) and films shot for European
television are sometimes shown in U.S. theaters (for example, the Red Riding
trilogy—shown on UK television in 2009 and released to US theaters in
2010). Also, cable-TV networks such as HBO, Showtime and MTV
frequently finance films that are initially shown in theaters before finding
their way to television. In many respects, therefore, the distinction between
a made-for-TV movie and the made-for-theaters movie is less and less
important. And, not surprisingly, “nights at the movies” series on TV have
declined. Since 2006, not a single one exists on network television.
With so many similarities, what is it that distinguishes the two forms?
The narrative distinctions arise from the MOW’s recognition of inter-
ruption as a sustaining force on commercial television. In short, MOWs are
designed to be interrupted. Their narrative chain is segmented to take
advantage of commercial breaks. Rather than a continuous chain of events
in cause–effect relationship with one other, the MOW often (though not
always) halts the action and provides a small climax just before the com-
mercials begin. This climax does not resolve the enigma, as does the final
climax of a theatrical film. Instead, it heightens the enigma, posing questions
32
1111 that entice the viewer to stay with this channel through the commercials
2 to find out what happens next. Theatrical films have these small climaxes
3 on occasion, too, but they are not coordinated with television’s commercial
4 breaks; they don’t occur with regularity every 15 minutes or so. MOW
5111 narrative structure aligns itself with the rhythm of television, taking
6 advantage of the pauses to heighten narrative suspense.
7 One function that the MOW still occasionally serves is that of a
8 program’s pilot—a film to introduce a new ongoing program. This
9 function of some MOWs affects their narrative structure, distinguishing
1011 them from the classical model. Classical films end with a strong sense of
1 closure. Questions are answered; enigmas are solved; couples are united.
2 Those MOWs that do double duty as pilots for projected television
3111 programs cannot tolerate this narrative closure. Instead, they serve to open
4 the narrative of the programs to follow. Typically, a pilot will resolve some
5 narrative issues, but, more important to its producers, it must establish
6 ongoing enigmas that will underpin the program during its regular run.
7111 Thus, the two-hour pilot for Miami Vice (1984) establishes the characters
8 of Rico Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) and Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson),
9 and, through the death of Tubbs’s brother, provides the motivation for
20111 Tubbs moving to Miami. But the pilot concludes without Tubbs appre-
1 hending his brother’s murderer—as would have been typical for a classical
2 film. There is no closure to the pilot’s central enigma: Will Tubbs capture
3 the killer? We had to wait until several weeks into the season before the
4 murderer was punished during the run of the program. The pilot, which
5 is frequently presented as if it were a stand-alone movie, uses a certain
6 degree of narrative aperture to engage us, drawing us into the narrative
7 structure of the regular run of a program.
8 In sum, the TV-movie shares many attributes with its theatrical name-
9 sake. And yet, those TV-movies—if they’ve been designed to be shown
30111 on television networks which are supported by commercials—reveal clear
1 traits of having been “made for television.” They recognize television’s
2 interruptive form and have developed narrative strategies to cope with it.
3 These strategies are even more evident in the television series, a format
4 that is quite distinct from the movies, whether classical or MOW.
35
6
7 The Television Series
8
9 Early television drew upon a variety of sources for its programming
40111 material: theatrical movies, sports events, vaudeville-style music and
1 comedy skits, and such. In many regards the infant medium relied most
2 heavily upon its broadcasting predecessor, radio, for programming
3 strategies and narrative forms. Indeed, the influence of radio was so
4 strong, and the television image in the 1940s so poor, that early television
5 was little more than radio accompanied by fuzzy, indistinct, black-and-
6 white pictures—with the emphasis on sound rather than image. Television
7 has changed a good deal since then, but the basic narrative form that TV
8111 inherited from radio endures to the present day: the series.
33

Television - J. Butler PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Television - J. Butler PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

4TH EDITION

CRITICAL METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

Selected titles in Television include:

Bracken/Skalski: Immersed in Media: Telepresence in Everyday Life

Fourth edition published 2012

ISBN: 978-0-415-88327-6 (hbk)

Typeset in Book Antiqua and Optima

Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Appendix I: Sample Analyses and Exercises 429

Appendix II: Mass Communication Research 435

5. The Television Commercial 149

7. Style and Setting: Mise-en-Scene 227

8. Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography 253

9. Style and Editing 293

10. Style and Sound 325

1111 Acoustic Properties and Sound Technology 341

Should we take television seriously as a cultural or aesthetic medium,

many varying understandings of how the world works. And third, it

Account name: tvcrit

Television, this book, was born of the author’s frustration as a teacher of

whether that transmission is done over-the-airwaves or through cable/

New to the Fourth Edition

 The previous editions’ television-studies chapter has been greatly

1111  The chapter “An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems:

Channel and photographer Richard Grant. The STEADICAM® photo in

permits both time-shifting and location-shifting as viewers can watch Gossip

Television’s Not-So-Distant Past: The Network Era

Figure 1.1 Tuesday, January 10, 2006, prime-time schedule.

Polysemy, Heterogeneity, Contradiction

sense.”15 He means that the dominant discourse is so pervasive that it

Interruption and Sequence

1111 commercials/programs. To this end, storylines, music, visual design, and

1. The potential for viewers’ agency and interactivity is increasing

Agency and Interactivity

1111 announcements, and credit sequences into a cacophonous supertext—

The Viewer as Participant and Producer

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art,

There is a possible revolution in the works here, as video made by ordinary

1111 amount of user-generated content to its approximately 175 million

1. Television texts (programs, commercials, entire blocks of television

Television flow is riddled with interruptions. TV continually interrupts

1111 England). This school of analysis is summarized in Fiske’s Television

6 “Gilmore Girls,” Family Guide to TV Viewing, Parents Television Council,

The Theatrical Film

From Antagonism to Alliance

The Classical Paradigm

1111 Single Protagonist

for classical narrative is motivated by the desire of a single character to attain

Figure 2.3 The cause–effect narrative chain.

1111 Theatrical Films on Television

The MOW Variation

You might also like