Media in the US

Television

• There are 3 basic types of TV in the US: broadcast, cable and satellite.

• Broadcast TV is available to anyone who owns a TV for free.

• The four major TV networks in the US are NBC (National Broadcasting Company), CBS (Colombia Broadcasting System), ABC (American Broadcasting Company) and FOX

• The US does not have a national broadcasting station run by the government.

• There are the large networks, and smaller local stations which may be connected with or owned and operated by the major networks.

• The local stations will usually produce their own local news programs, but will use the rest of their time running the programs developed by the networks, or bought off independent producers (syndicated).

• Most stations connected with the major networks run similar schedules.

• In the mornings during the week there will be a local news show, then a network morning show which mixes news, weather, interviews and music.

• Afterwards the talk shows will be on.• At noon, there will be another local news

program, then usually the soap operas.• In the afternoon major talk shows like the

Oprah Winfrey show will be on.

• In the early evening, there will be more local news, then the network news will be on.

• After dinner, prime-time network shows come on.

• The earlier shows are usually family-oriented comedy programs or reality shows such as ‘Dancing with the Stars’

• Later, the Dramas come on, shows like CSI or Grey’s Anatomy

• More news is on at ten or eleven, followed by the late night interview shows like the ‘Late Show with David Letterman’ or ‘ The Tonight Show’

• During the late night and early mornings, stations may run news, or reruns of popular shows, or often infomercials.

• Infomercials are advertising that is much longer than normal advertisements on television, and promote a product in more depth.

• Saturday mornings are usually children’s programs like cartoons.

• Weekend afternoons are mainly sport.

• There are public TV stations, which are not designed to earn money.

• The main organization is the Public Broadcasting Service.

• These stations tend to produce programs that are not as popular as the commercial programs, but which are often more educational, or concerned with culture or public affairs.

Cable and Satellite TV

• Cable television was used originally just to provide access to television to areas which did not receive the broadcast signals.

• This slowly changed until today most American households receive cable TV.

• Unlike the broadcast networks, which let the local stations run slightly different programs to each other, the cable networks run the same programs everywhere.

• Satellite TV is similar to cable except that a satellite dish receives the signal, instead of a cable.

• The different types of networks, broadcast and cable, have slightly different ways of making money.

• The commercial broadcast networks like CBS and Fox make their money mainly from advertising.

• The public broadcasting networks like PBS support themselves by asking for donations and subscriptions

• The basic cable companies have some advertising, but also get people to pay for subscriptions

• Premium cable networks, like HBO, do not have advertisements, but charge a higher rate than basic cable networks.

Programming

• American TV programs have been very successful around the world.

• One type of popular program is the situation comedy, commonly called the Sitcom.

• These programs are comedies which usually feature a few standard characters in a certain situation, and are generally about 30 mins long.

• Two famous and popular sitcoms were Friends and Seinfeld.

• Both were shows featuring a small group of friends with quirky behaviours, who got into various funny situations.

• Drama series are more serious shows, dealing with topics of life and death.

• Years ago, westerns were a popular form of drama series, but not anymore, although Deadwood, on HBO, was still popular.

• Drama series these days are dominated by crime dramas, like CSI, and medical shows, like House, MD.

• Other drama type shows which have become more popular are supernatural type programs, about things like vampires or monsters, and science fiction shows.

• Shows about vampires were cult classics in the 90s with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, both created by Joss Whedon.

• These days vampire shows are more popular and mainstream, following the success of movies like Twilight.

• Other shows like Supernatural also combine drama and supernatural themes.

• Science fiction shows like the X-Files were also popular in the 90s, but these days tend to get smaller, but very dedicated audiences eg. Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, etc.

• Network news programs on the major broadcast stations have huge audiences, adn generally have one very famous news presenter to represent the program, like Dan Rather on CBS, and Tom Brokaw on NBC.

• Reality television has existed in the US for a long time, with shows like COPS, in which real police are followed around by cameramen.

• The combination of reality show and competition has become more popular though, with the success of shows like Survivor, Big Brother, American Idol etc.

• Soap operas are dramas which tend to be concerned more with relationships and romantic issues, and storylines tend to continue for ling periods of time.

• In the US, these types of shows are very popular, and many have been running for over 40 years, like Days of Our Lives.

• Game shows are a type of program that puts the contestants in a competition on stage with a presenter

• Late night talk shows are generally an opportunity for actors and musicians to promote new films or albums, and generally have a charismatic presenter who interviews them and makes jokes.

• The daytime talk shows can be more serious, like Oprah Winfrey, or ridiculous, like the Jerry Springer show, in which crazy situations are set up on stage to cause conflict between the people being interviewed.

• Children’s programs are not as popular on broadcast Tv, but shows which combine traditional children’s formats, like cartoons, with adult humour have been very successful.

• The Simpsons was the start of this trend, and these shows have become increasingly meant for adults, like Family Guy and South Park.

• The standard season for broadcast TV is 22 episodes in a season, although sitcoms often have more.

• On cable television it is usually ten to twelve episodes.

• Daytime Soap operas run all through the year.• Broadcast television is regulated by the FCC,

the Federal Communications Commission.• This is a government organisation which gives

the licenses to the local TV stations, and makes rules about compulsory educational and public interest programming

• The FCC also bans certain things from being shown on TV at certain times, like during the day, if they are considered indecent eg.nudity and swearing.

• Although late at night more is allowed, the broadcast networks usually don’t show these sorts of things on TV, as they depend on advertisers for their money, and are worried about losing income and tighter controls by the government.

• Cable channels , especially premium cable, can put whatever they want on, however, so shows on these networks tend to have more explicit content.

• Some channels have pornography, or programs with a lot of nudity, sex and violence.

Cinema

• The early days of cinema in the US were based around New York

• When the technology was still being developed, however, there were problems deciding who owned the patents, and so companies who did not have rights to the technology set up in places like California.

• The early films were silent, although the quality was quite good.

• Because the films did not have any sound, the actors used mainly body language and facial expressions to show what was happening.

• Any dialogue or explanations of story had to be shown to the audience by using subtitles.

• Because of the limitations of not being able to talk, most of the early films were slapstick comedy, with actors such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton

• Music to the films was often provided by live orchestras.

• During the 1920s, while Hollywood was taking over the world’s film industry with its silent movies, the technology was being developed to produce movies with sound.

• By the end of 1929, almost all of the Hollywood movies were “talkies”.

• This began what is usually referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted until the late 1940s

• The actors of this period were huge stars such as Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Greta Garbo, but the biggest of all was the child star Shirley Temple

• The new technology of sound mixed with film also meant that the change was quite expensive, and smaller companies were forced out of business.

• This left the large film companies, like Warner Brothers, to take advantage of the new technology and the huge crowds who wanted to see it.

• Musical films became popular because sound could be used, and also many monster films were made, like Dracula, Frankenstein and King Kong.

• Also in the 30s, Walt Disney started to produce feature length films, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

• In 1939 two very famous films were released, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind.

• With the start of the war, the 1940s brought many patriotic propaganda films, and Humphrey Bogart starred in films such as Casablanca, and The Maltese Falcon, the beginning of film noir.

• Film noir was the name given to stylish Hollywood crime dramas, with cynical heroes and sexual themes.

• The 40s also saw the release of the movie many consider the greatest of all time, Citizen Kane, made by Orson Welles.

• During the Golden Age of Hollywood, the biggest studios such as MGM had a huge amount of control over the industry, because they owned the production studios where the movies were made, and the theaters were they were shown, and controlled the most famous actors

• The Golden Age came to an end when the government brought in new laws that stopped the major studios from owning the studios and theaters.

• This type of law is known as antitrust law, and it is designed to prevent big companies from getting monopolies, and to make sure there is competition between companies.

• The other thing which had a great impact on the film companies was the introduction of television.

• The style of the movies made during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood was fairly straightforward.

• The storylines were mostly centered on a romantic (love) story combined with a real world plot (such as war or business or crime).

• The style of the movies started to change in the 50s and 60s, with movies like “2001:A Space Odyssey” and “Easy Rider”.

• “Easy Rider” is a movie about the counter-culture of the 60s.

• The main characters were drug dealers and users, and are riding their motorbikes across the US.

• The movie was cheap to make, and was written, acted in and produced by the two stars, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.

• “2001: A Space Odyssey” was a very different movie; very expensive to make, it was a science fiction movie directed by Stanley Kubrick

• It was actually filmed in England, but produced by MGM, a Hollywood movie company, and directed by an American.

• The 1970s was the “New Hollywood”, and the movies that were made during the early years of this period used different techniques and styles.

• More movies had complicated timelines, the storylines had twists and the main characters were not just ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

• The content of the movies became more explicit as well: sex and violence became shown in a more obvious way.

• Controversial films like “A Clockwork Orange” and “Dirty Harry” were made in the early 70s.

• New American directors emerged in the 70s.• Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman

Polanski, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Brian de Palma all had great successes during this time.

• Hollywood companies gave these directors a lot of control over their films, and they created movies that were very popular, and also of a high quality.

• Scorsese – Taxi Driver• Coppola – The Godfather movies/Apocalypse

Now• Polanski – Chinatown• Spielberg – Jaws• Lucas – Star Wars• Ridley Scott - Alien

• Some of the films in which the directors had a lot of control failed, however, and wasted huge amounts of money on movies which no-one wanted to see.

• As a result, the studio companies put more controls on what the directors could do.

• They started to focus on ‘blockbusters’ to make money.

• In the 1980s the Hollywood movies were dominated by blockbusters, sequels and special effects.

• George Lucas made two more Star Wars movies and Spielberg made ET, and three Indiana Jones movies, all of which were extremely successful

• Other science fiction movies like Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), and the Back to the Future movies did very well also.

• Some of the stars of the time made many movies.

• Harrison Ford was in all of the star wars movies, all of the Indiana Jones movies, and Blade Runner.

• Other stars also became famous, especially for roles in action movies, which became even more popular.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger made his first popular Hollywood film, Conan the Barbarian in 1982

• In 1984, he really hit the big-time, with James Cameron’s ‘The Terminator’

• He soon followed this success with Commando, Raw Deal, Running Man, Red Heat and Predator.

• Sylvester Stallone was another major action star of the 80s, making more Rocky movies, and starting the Rambo movies.

• Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal also started to appear in action movies.

• Comedy movies during the 1980s were dominated by performers from the TV show Saturday Night Live, a comedy sketch show.

• Stars such as Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Dan Ayckroyd had a lot of success with movies like Ghostbusters, Caddyshack and the Blues Brothers.

• The number of people watching home videos increased, and film companies started putting their movies onto video to sell directly to the public

• In the 1990s, special effects blockbusters kept getting more popular, with movies like Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park and Titanic becoming hugely popular.

• Independent style films also started to become popular, however, with movies made by companies separate from the big studios, or by independent filmmakers.

• Quentin Tarantino made his cult hit ‘Resevoir Dogs’ in 1992, and followed it up with the more successful movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ in 1994

• Use of DVDs also became more popular in the 1990s, starting to take over from video casettes.

• In the 2000s, Documentary filmmaking started to really make money, with successes such as Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and ‘Farenheit 911’.

• Epic historical cinema, popular in the golden age with movies like ‘Ben Hur’ and ‘Spartacus’ made a comeback with Gladiator.

• Movies based on comic books have also become more and more popular.

• The Batman movies, which had been falling in quality for years, were given new life by director Christopher Nolan.

• The Incredible Hulk, Spiderman, Iron Man, the X-men, The Watchmen, Fantastic Four and Hellboy all became successful movies in the 2000s

• With the start of a new decade, blockbuster special effects movies still dominate eg Avatar