Television in the United States

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Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one. As a whole, the television networks of the United States are the largest and most syndicated in the world.

Television channels and networks

There are at least 200 basic types of television in the United States: broadcast, or "over-the-air" television, unencrypted satellite or "free-to-air", Direct Broadcast Satellite, cable television, and IPTV (internet protocol television).

Over-the-air and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while Cable, Direct Broadcast Satellite, and IPTV require a monthly payment that varies depending on how many channels a subscriber chooses to pay for. Channels are usually sold in groups, rather than singly.

Broadcast television

The United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system. The United States has a national public broadcast service known as PBS Public Broadcasting Service. Local media markets have their own television stations, which may be affiliated with or owned and operated by a TV network. Stations may sign affiliation agreements with one of the national networks. Except in very small markets with few stations, affiliation agreements are usually exclusive: If a station is an NBC affiliate, the station would not air programs from ABC, CBS or other networks.

However, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting, federal law restricts the amount of network programming local stations can run. Until the 1970s and '80s, local stations supplemented network programming with a good deal of their own produced shows. Today, however, many stations produce only local news shows. They fill the rest of their schedule with syndicated shows, or material produced independently and sold to individual stations in each local market..

Major broadcast networks

See also: Big Three television networks and Fourth television network

The five major U.S. networks are NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and The CW. The first three began as radio networks: NBC and CBS in the 1920's, and ABC was spun off from NBC in 1943. Fox is a relative newcomer which began in 1986. The CW was created in 2006 when UPN merged with The WB.

Weekday schedules on ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates tend to be similar. (Fox does not air network daytime programming.) Typically, they begin with an early-morning local news show, followed by a network morning show, such as NBC's Today, which mixes news, weather, interviews and music. Network daytime schedules consist of talk shows, soap operas or game shows; local news may air at midday. Syndicated talk shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show appear in the late afternoon, followed by local news again in the early evening. ABC, CBS and NBC offer network news, generally at 6:30 or 7:00 in the Eastern Time zone and 5:30 or 6:00 in other areas. Local newscasts or syndicated programs fill the "prime access" hour or half-hour, and lead into the networks' prime time schedules, which are the day's most-watched three hours of television.

Typically, family-oriented comedy programs led in the early part of prime time, although in recent years, reality television like Dancing with the Stars has largely replaced them. Later in the evening, dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House, M.D., and Grey's Anatomy air.

At the end of prime time, another local news program comes on, usually followed by late-night interview shows, such as Late Show with David Letterman or The Tonight Show. Rather than sign off for the early hours of the morning (as was standard practice until the early 1970s in larger markets and until the mid 1980's in smaller ones), TV stations now fill the time with syndicated programming, reruns of prime time television shows or the local late news o'clock news, or 30-minute advertisements, known as infomercials, and in the case of CBS and ABC, overnight network news programs.

Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children (including animated cartoons), while Sunday mornings include public-affairs programs that help fulfill stations' legal obligations to provide public-service programming. Sports and infomercials can be found on weekend afternoons, followed again by the same type of prime-time shows aired during the week.

Other over-the-air commercial television

From 1955 until 1986, all English-language stations not affiliated with the big three networks were independent, airing only locally produced and syndicated programming. Many independent stations still exist in the U.S., usually historically broadcasting on the UHF band. Syndicated shows, often reruns of old TV series and old movies, take up much of their schedule.

In 1986, however, the Fox Broadcasting Company launched a challenge to the big three networks. Thanks largely to the success of shows like The Simpsons, as well as the network's acquisition of rights to show National Football League games, Fox has established itself as a major player in broadcast television. However, Fox differs from the three older networks in that it does not air daily morning and nightly news programs or have network-run daytime or weeknight late night schedules (though late night shows do air on Saturday nights), its nightly prime-time schedule is only two hours long (three hours on Sundays), some of its big-city affiliates used to broadcast on UHF before the transition to digital, many of its smaller-market affiliates outsource news production to Big Three affiliates rather produce their own newscasts, and its flagship stations are WNYW (not "WFOX") and KTTV, not KFOX (but the KFOX-TV callsign is used for El Paso's Fox affiliate). Its only scheduled news program is Fox News Sunday, on Sunday mornings; special news coverage on Fox comes from the staff of cable's Fox News Channel, though not all affiliates carry breaking news bulletins from Fox News outside of primetime presidential addresses. Most Fox affiliates now have local newscasts, in primetime usually airing an hour earlier competing with network dramas, rather than other local newscasts, and in the morning for two additional hours.

In the 1990s, three new networks -- The WB (1995), UPN (1995) and PAX (1998; became "i" in 2005 and ION in 2007) -- launched. The fledging WB and UPN merged into The CW in fall 2006, while News Corporation's MyNetworkTV, created to replace UPN programming on Fox's O&Os, debuted in fall 2006 as well.

ION broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, making the ION network totally responsible for its affiliates, although it mostly airs infomercials outside its prime time. MyNetworkTV broadcasts 10 hours a week, Monday through Saturday. The CW broadcasts 10 hours a week in prime time, 10 hours in daytime.

Broadcast television in non-English languages

Univision, a network of Spanish language stations, is the fifth-largest TV network behind NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. Its major competition is Telemundo, a sister network of NBC. Univision-owned TeleFutura, aimed at a younger Hispanic demographic, and Azteca América, the American version of Mexico's TV Azteca, are two other popular Spanish-language over-the-air networks.

In addition, the Miami, Florida-based Haitian Television Network offers locally produced Haitian Creole and French language programming in Miami and parts of New Jersey, New York City, and Boston.

Especially after the transition to digital television, many large cities have Asian language broadcast stations, such as KYAZ in Houston.

There have also been a few, local stations in American Sign Language accompanied by closed captioned English.

Non-commercial television

Public television has a far smaller role than in most other countries. There is no federal state-owned broadcasting authority. However, a number of states, including Wisconsin, Maryland, Minnesota, and South Carolina, among others, do have state-owned public broadcasting authorities which operate and fund all public television stations in their respective states. The federal government does subsidize non-commercial educational television stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The income received from the government is insufficient to cover expenses and stations rely on corporate sponsorships and viewer contributions.

American public television stations air programming that commercial stations do not offer, such as educational, including cultural, and public affairs programming. Most public TV stations are affiliates of the Public Broadcasting Service, sharing programs like Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theatre. Unlike the commercial networks, PBS does not produce its own programming; instead, individual PBS stations create programming and provide these to other affiliates. New York City's municipally-owned broadcast service, NYCTV, creates original programming that airs in several markets. Few cities have major municipally-owned stations.

Many religious broadcasting stations exist, also surviving on viewer contributions, including Trinity Broadcasting Network, Three Angels Broadcasting Network, Hope Channel, Amazing Facts Television, Daystar Television Network, The Word Network, The Worship Network, Total Christian Television, and INSP.

Cable and satellite television

While pay television systems existed as early as the late 1940s, until the early 1970s cable television only brought distant over-the-air TV to rural areas without local stations. This role was reflected in the original meaning of the CATV acronym: community antenna TV. In that decade, national networks dedicated exclusively to cable broadcasting appeared along with cable-TV systems in major cities with over-the-air TV. By the mid 1970's some form of cable-TV was available in almost every market that already had over-the-air TV. Today, most American households receive cable TV, and cable networks collectively have greater viewership than broadcast networks.

Unlike broadcast networks, most cable networks air the same programming nationwide. Top cable networks include USA Network (general entertainment), ESPN and Fox Sports (sports), MTV (music), CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC (news), Syfy (science fiction), Disney Channel (family), Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network (Children's), Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (documentaries), TBS (comedy), TNT (drama) and Lifetime (women's).

The national cable TV network became possible in the mid 1970s with the launch of domestic communication satellites that could economically broadcast TV programs to cable operators anywhere in the continental US. (Some domestic satellites also covered Alaska and Hawaii with dedicated spot beams.) Until then, cable networks like HBO had been limited to regional coverage by expensive terrestrial microwave links leased from the telephone companies (primarily AT&T). Satellites were generally used only for international (i.e., transoceanic) communications; their antennas covered an entire hemisphere, producing weak signals that required large, expensive receiving antennas. The first domestic communications satellite, Westar 1, was launched in 1974. By concentrating its signal on the continental United States with a directional antenna, Westar 1 could transmit to TVRO ("TV, receive only") dishes only a few meters in diameter, well within the means of local cable TV operators.

Satellite TV receiver dishes

Cable system operators now receive programming by satellite, terrestrial optical fiber, off the air, and from in-house sources and relay it to subscribers' homes. Usually, local governments award a monopoly to provide cable-TV service in a given area. By law, cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings to customers.

Enterprising individuals soon found they could install their own satellite dishes and eavesdrop on the feeds to the cable operators. The signals were transmitted as unscrambled analog FM that did not require advanced or expensive technology. Since these same satellites were also used internally by the TV networks they could also watch programs not intended for public broadcast such as affiliate feeds without commercials and/or intended for another time zone; raw footage from remote news teams; advance transmissions of upcoming programs; and live news and talk shows during breaks when those on camera might not realize that anyone outside the network could hear them.

Encrypting was introduced to prevent people from receiving pay content for free, and nearly every pay channel was encrypted by the mid to late 1980s. (This did not happen without protest; see Captain Midnight (HBO)). Satellite TV also began a digital transition, well before over the air broadcasting did the same, to increase satellite capacity and/or reduce the size of the receiving antennas, and this also made it more difficult for individuals to intercept these signals.

Eventually the industry began to cater to individuals who wanted to continue to receive satellite TV (and were willing to pay for it) in two ways: by authorizing the descrambling of the original satellite feeds to the cable TV operators and with new direct broadcast satellite television services using their own satellites.

These latter services, which began in the mid 1990s, offer programming similar to cable TV. Dish Network and DirecTV are the major DBS providers in the country.

Although most networks make viewers pay, some networks are broadcasting unencrypted feeds. After broadcast TV switched to all digital, new channels became available on unencrypted satellites to bring more free TV to Americans some of these are available as a digital subchannel to local broadcasters, this reason may be for the expensive costs of the DVB-S equipment. NASA TV, Pentagon Channel, ABC News Now, ThisTV, TheCoolTV, and Retro Television Network (through its affiliates) are examples, international news channels like Al Jazeera English are commonly watched this way as a result to the lack of availability on Cable, DBS and IPTV.

The business of television

Over-the-air commercial stations and networks generate the vast majority of their revenue from advertisements. According to a 2001 survey, broadcast stations allocated 16 to 21 minutes per hour to commercials. Most cable networks also generate income from advertisements, although most basic cable networks also receive subscription fees. However, premium cable networks, such as the movie network HBO, do not air commercials. Instead, cable-TV subscribers must pay extra to receive the premium networks.

In the days of broadcast television, networks allocated a portion of commercial time for their shows to the local affiliates, which allowed the local stations to generate revenue. In the same manner, cable-TV system operators generate some of their revenue by selling local commercial time for each cable network being broadcast. The other main source of revenue for the cable-TV operators is subscription fees.

Programming

American television has had very successful programming that has inspired television networks across the world to make shows of similar types or broadcast these shows in their own country. Some of these shows are still on the air and some are still alive and well in syndication. The opposite is also true; a number of popular American programs were based on shows from other countries, especially the United Kingdom and Canada.

Primetime comedy has included situation comedies such as I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends, Boy Meets World, George Lopez, The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as sketch comedy/variety series such as Saturday Night Live and Milton Berle's early shows, The Carol Burnett Show and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Dramatic series have taken many forms over the years. Westerns such as Gunsmoke had their greatest popularity in the '50s and '60s. Medical dramas have endured (Marcus Welby, M.D., St. Elsewhere, ER), as have family dramas (Eight is Enough, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie) and crime dramas (Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Hill Street Blues, Law & Order and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - the last two of which have spawned multiple spin-offs).

The major networks all offer a morning news program (NBC's The Today Show and ABC's Good Morning America are the standard bearers), as well as an early-evening newscast anchored by the de facto face of the network's news operations (Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather for CBS; NBC's Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw; ABC's Peter Jennings). Successful news magazines have included 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline in primetime and Meet the Press (the US's oldest series, having debuted in 1947), Face the Nation and This Week on Sunday mornings.

Reality television has long existed in the United States, both played for laughs (Candid Camera, Real People) and as drama (COPS, The Real World). A new variant - competition series placing ordinary people in unusual circumstances or in talent contests, generally eliminating one participant per week - exploded in popularity in 2000 with the launch of Survivor. Big Brother, America's Next Top Model and So You Think You Can Dance followed; American Idol, based on the UK's Pop Idol, debuted in 2002 and has dominated the ratings consistently as of 2009, while The Amazing Race has won the Emmy for its program category every year since its 2001 debut.

American soap operas have been running for over six decades. Of the six current daytime soaps, four have been on the air for over forty years: General Hospital, Days of our Lives, One Life to Live and All My Children. Previous long-running daytime dramas included Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, The Doctors, Another World, As The World Turns, and Guiding Light - the latter of which ended a 72-year run (combining TV and radio) in September 2009. Primetime soap operas of note have included Peyton Place, Dallas, Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Desperate Housewives.

On Wheel of Fortune, three people compete against each other to win cash and physical prizes such as trips.

Daytime has also been home of many popular game shows over the years (particularly during the 1970s), such as The Price is Right, Family Feud, Match Game, The Newlywed Game and Concentration. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! have found their greatest success in the early-evening slot before primetime, while game shows actually aired within primetime had great popularity in the 1950s and 1960s (What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth) and again, intermittently, in the 2000s (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Weakest Link, Deal or No Deal). The Price Is Right, which has appeared on CBS since 1972, was the only daytime game show remaining on the broadcast networks for fifteen years (prior to CBS's announcement it would be joined by a remake of Let's Make a Deal in October 2009).

The most successful talk show has been the late-night (after 11:30 PM Eastern/Pacific) Tonight Show (particularly during the 29-year run of third host Johnny Carson). Tonight ushered in a multi-decade period of dominance by one network in American late-night programming and paved the way for many similar combinations of comedy and celebrity interviews, such as those hosted by Merv Griffin and David Letterman.

Daytime talk show hits have included The Oprah Winfrey Show, Phil Donahue, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly, and run the gamut from serious to lighthearted; a subset of so-called trash TV talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show also veered into exploitation and titillation.

Children's television programs are also quite popular, though with FCC rules on E/I content and regulations on commercial time during children's shows, over-the-air broadcast stations have found it much harder to profit from these programs compared to in the past. Children's programming has mostly migrated to cable television with such successful shows of recent such as Fanboy & Chum Chum, SpongeBob SquarePants, iCarly, The Suite Life on Deck, Big Time Rush, Victorious, Phineas & Ferb, The Fairly OddParents among others becoming popular on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon cable channels. Other channels offering kids and family programming include PBS Kids Sprout, Disney XD, Cartoon Network, Boomerang and others. FCC rules on E/I content may prevent series airing on these channels from being syndicated on over-the-air television stations.

While the majority of programs broadcast on United States television are produced domestically, some programs carried in syndication, on public television or on cable television are imported from outside the U.S.; most commonly, these imported programs come from the primarily English-speaking countries of Canada and the United Kingdom. PBS in particular, is commonly known for its broadcasts of British comedies such as Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By, which typically air on most PBS member stations on weekend evenings. As for Canadian programs, most of the programming imported from Canada includes children's programs from family-oriented specialty channels YTV and Family such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Naturally, Sadie and Life with Derek. Among some of the more well-known Canadian television series among American viewers include the Degrassi High franchise (which aired in Canada on CBC Television, with the later incarnation Degrassi: The Next Generation airing on CTV and presently MuchMusic), SCTV Network and The Red Green Show. American Spanish-language networks also import much of their programming; for example, Univision imports much of its programming, especially telenovelas that are broadcast on the network, from Mexican broadcaster Televisa and Venezuelan broadcaster Venevision.

The life cycle of U.S. television shows

Television production companies either commission teleplays for TV pilots or buy spec scripts. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots. Those which the production company thinks might be commercially viable are then marketed to television networks—or television distributors for first-run syndication. (KingWorld distributes Oprah in first-run syndication, for example, because that show is syndicated—is not affiliated with a particular network.) A few things in consideration for a TV network to pick up a show is if the show itself is compatible with the network's target audience, the cost of production, and if the show is well liked among network executives.

Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other nets from controlling them, and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that a show will get an order for more episodes. Those that do get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order, and the show goes into production, usually establishing itself with permanent sets, a full crew and production offices. Writers are hired, directors are selected and work begins, usually during the late spring and summer before the fall season-series premieres. (Shows can also be midseason replacement, meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the failure and cancellation of shows which premiered in the fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Office are examples of successful midseason replacements.)

The standard broadcast television season in the United States is 22 episodes per season; sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes; cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 or 12 episodes per season, much in line with British television programming.

American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that these serials air approximately 260 episodes a year, making their casts and crews the busiest in show business. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated, making it difficult for viewers to "catch up" when they miss programming. However, cable channel SOAPnet provides weekly repeats for some broadcasts.

Networks use profits from commercials run during the show to pay the production company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself. (Networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors.) As advertising rates are based on the size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months (November, February, May, and to a lesser extent July) are important landmarks in the television year — ratings earned during these periods determining advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.

Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the network to continue production, until the plotline ends (only for scripted shows) or if the contract expires. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue production by the network, known as cancellation. There are instances of initially low-rated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly-popular, but these are rare. For the most part, shows that are not immediately even moderately successful will be cancelled by the end of November sweeps. Usually if a show is canceled, there is little chance of it ever coming back again especially on the same network it was canceled from, the only show in the US to ever come back from cancellation on the same network is Family Guy. However, canceled shows like Scrubs, Southland, and Medium have been picked up by other networks, which is becoming an increasingly common practice.

Regulation

Broadcast television is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC awards licenses to local stations, which stipulate stations' commitments to educational and public-interest programming. The FCC also prohibits the airing of "indecent" material over the air between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Although broadcast stations can legally air almost anything they want late at night—and cable networks at all hours—nudity and graphic profanity are very rare on American television, though they are common on pay television services that are free from FCC regulations and pressure from advertisers to tone down content, and often require a subscription to view. Broadcasters fear that airing such material will turn off advertisers and encourage the federal government to strengthen its regulation of television content.

Premium cable networks are exceptions, and often air very racy programming at night, though premium channels often air program content with strong to graphic profanity, violence and nudity in some cases during the daytime hours. Some networks, such as Playboy TV, are devoted exclusively to "adult" content and therefore viewers may find scenes of simulated or graphic sexual intercourse and nudity on such channels. Cable television is largely, but not entirely, unregulated. Cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings (see must-carry) and give them low channel numbers. The systems cannot show broadcast-network affiliates from other parts of the country, however cable systems can air stations out of nearby markets if there are no stations affiliated with one of the major networks (though this is becoming far less common with the existence of over-the air stations carrying one network affiliation on the main channel, and affiliating with another network on a digital subchannel, thus allowing these network-affiliated digital subchannels to be carried via digital cable).

Cable systems can also air satellite-relayed over-the-air stations originating from other areas of the United States, known as superstations (of which there are currently only six around the country, the most prominent being WGN America, which airs some programming carried by WGN-TV in Chicago), which for the most part are often aired in rural areas and if carried nationally, may have a separate feed carrying different programming than that of the local area feed that is SyndEx-proof (i.e., syndicated programming that the superstation has obtained full signal rights to) and may omit network programming from that station's network affiliation; all superstations, except for WSBK-TV in Boston, are currently affiliated with a broadcast television network as WGN-TV, WPIX in New York City, KWGN in Denver and KTLA in Los Angeles all being affiliated with The CW and WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey affiliated with MyNetworkTV.

History of American television

Main articles: History of television and List of United States network television schedules

Television first became commercialized in the U.S. in the early 1950s, initially by RCA (through NBC, which it owned) and CBS. A number of different broadcast systems had been developed through the end of the 1930s. The National Television System Committee (NTSC) standardized on a 525-line broadcast in 1941 that would provide the basis for TV across the country through the end of the century. Television development halted with the onset of World War II, but pioneers returned to the airwaves when that conflict ended.

There were only a few dozen stations operating at the end of the decade, concentrated on the East and West coasts. The FCC began handing out broadcasting licenses to communities of all sizes in the early 1950s, spurring an explosion of growth in the medium. A brief debacle over the system to use for color broadcasts occurred at this time, but was soon settled. Half of all U.S. households had TV sets by 1955, though color was a premium feature for many years (most households able to purchase TV sets could only afford black-and-white models, and few programs were broadcast in color until the mid-1960s).

Many of the earliest TV programs were modified versions of well-established radio shows. The '50s saw the first flowering of the genres that would distinguish TV from movies and radio: talk shows like The Jack Paar Show and sitcoms like I Love Lucy. Stations across the country also produced their own local programs. Usually carried live, they ranged from simple advertisements to game shows and children's shows that often featured clowns and other offbeat characters. Local shows could often be popular and profitable, but concerns about product promotion and other issues led them to almost completely disappear by the mid-1970s.

Subscription television (such as cable and satellite) became popular in the early 1980s, and has been growing in significance since then- spurring the emergence of multinational conglomerates such as Fox

The U.S. has now moved to digital television. A law passed in 2006 required over-the-air stations to cease analog broadcasting by February 2009, but was delayed to June 12.

In 2008, there were an estimated 327 million television sets in the US.

On Sunday, February, 6, 2011, 111 million viewers tuned in to watch the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl 45, making it the largest television audience ever for a U.S. TV program. The previous record was set at last year's Super Bowl when the New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts (106.5 million viewers).

See also

• List of television stations in the United States

External links

• The Museum of Television & Radio
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Encyclopedia of Television
• Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
• Now with Bill Moyers: Politics & Media - Big Media - Media Regulation Timeline
• FCC: Television Technology - A Short History
• Turner:Cable Primed to Beat Broadcast, by Anthony Crupi, Mediaweek Dec. 7, 2005.
• AAAA/ANA Annual Study Shows TV Clutter Levels Up Across Most Dayparts by the Association of National Advertisers, Feb. 14, 2002.