The broadcasting industry’s trade association, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), sought to sanitize television content via its self-regulatory document, the Television Code. The Code covered everything from the stories, images, and sounds of TV programs (no profanity, illicit sex and drinking, negative portrayals of family life and law enforcement officials, or irreverence for God and religion) to the allowable number of commercial minutes per hour of programming. It mandated that broadcasters make time for religious programming and discouraged them from charging for it. And it called for tasteful and accurate coverage of news, public events, and controversial issues. Using archival documents from the Federal Communications Commission, NBC, the NAB, and a television reformer, Senator William Benton, this book explores the run-up to the adoption of the 1952 Television Code from the perspectives of the government, TV viewers, local broadcasters, national networks, and the industry’s trade association. Deborah L. Jaramillo analyzes the competing motives and agendas of each of these groups as she builds a convincing case that the NAB actually developed the Television Code to protect commercial television from reformers who wanted more educational programming, as well as from advocates of subscription television, an alternative distribution model to the commercial system. By agreeing to self-censor content that viewers, local stations, and politicians found objectionable, Jaramillo concludes, the NAB helped to ensure that commercial broadcast television would remain the dominant model for decades to come.

The authors argue that TV regulation should be based on the same principles used for print media, for which control of editorial content lies in private hands rather than the government.

From unraveling the confusion surrounding digital TV to revealing the inner workings of Nielsen ratings Broadcast Television: A Complete Guide to the Industry takes an impartial and in-depth look at the business of commercial television. Unlike many books addressing this topic, the purpose of this primer is not to support a partisan opinion about what is right or wrong with television but rather to provide objective information from which the reader can make his or her own judgments. To that end the organization and presentation style is also unique in that the industry is explained as a dynamic and interdependent system of technology, economics, and regulation. This systems approach to learning helps the reader understand better the interwoven parts of television business. As a concise and highly focused overview of the business of commercial television, Broadcast Television: A Complete Guide to the Industry can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to other course readings addressing an array of topics involving television today.

This is the first look at the particular strengths and weaknesses of broadcast television written during the new age of television: an era that includes cable, home video, and digital satellite systems as competing distribution systems.The Broadcast Television Industry is a current, comprehensive review of the dominant distributor of television programming in the United States. The book reviews the history and current practices of both commercial and public television. Separate chapters explore the regulation of television, the operation of local stations and national networks, audience research, the impact of our most pervasive medium, and the future of broadcasting as a means of television distribution in an increasingly competitive environment. Broadcast and cable television managers and employees.Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Mass Communication