Media

The term media includes a wide variety of information delivery systems that, taken together, constitute a comprehensive system of bringing words and images to a mass population. During the last half of the 20th century, American media experienced profound change, primarily from the influence of television and, in the 1980s and 1990s, computers and the Internet. The result was a virtual explosion of information available to the American public, the content and presentation of which significantly influenced America’s cultural, social, political, and economic development.

Because, in 2001, nearly 100 percent of American homes had at least one television set, television is the most powerful and pervasive form of media. In addition to being the primary source of home entertainment, it plays an overwhelming role in the selling of goods and services through advertising and, as such, has become the most desirable and expensive medium for advertising. Television also plays a significant role as educator. Although network broadcasting devotes little time to instructional programming, documentaries aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the proliferation of documentary-oriented stations offered by cable television provide a wealth of information, however simplified, on a wide range of topics, including science, history, and cultures of other countries. Television’s educational contribution is its ability to provide live coverage of contemporary events. Coverage of the Vietnam War, the upheavals of the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s, and the Persian Gulf War in 1991, proved the capability of television to alter public beliefs and attitudes. Television is also the primary source from which Americans receive the news. During the 1980s, the networks began requiring their news departments to finance their own budgets and, as a result, entertainment value became as critical to the success of news programs as was the factual representation of the news. Thus, television has greatly contributed to Americans’ relatively simplistic understanding of issues and events. In addition, network news programs faced competition from the cable news networks, such as CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel, whose all-news formats provided real-time access to information. Cable news channels gained steadily in the number of regular viewers between 1996 and 2006. Fox News Channel dominated cable evening news, attracting more than 800,000 viewers. MSNBC attracted approximately

100,000 viewers to its evening news. These numbers still

This image from video was broadcast in real time by CNN reporters embedded with the U. S. Army 7th Cavalry on March 21, 2003, as they moved from Kuwait into southern Iraq. (Getty Images)

Did not compare to network news programs that attracted millions of viewers. By the end of the 20th century, television became the primary source of cultural, social, and political information for the American public.

Its preeminent status among the media made television the subject of a great deal of criticism. Debates over journalistic integrity followed the transformation of its presentation of the news. Its content invited criticism from minority and women’s groups, who sought less stereotypical images in programming and greater representation of their memberships, both in programming and in industry management. Television became the target of various groups disturbed by the potential impact on children, because of the often violent and explicit nature of its content. Others argued that its rapid presentation of visual images inhibited viewers’ ability to concentrate, and contributed to, if not caused, attention deficit disorder (ADD) among young children. Although the merits and shortcomings of television will be debated for years, its dominance in American media cannot be doubted. Its development over the last three decades was so significant that it forced the other media (books, newspapers, magazines, and radio) to change their formats to compete as information delivery systems.

Publishing did not immediately suffer from the advent of television. The number of new books published per year rose dramatically, from just over 6,000 in 1945 to 30,053 in 1966, 40,846 in 1974, 56,000 in 1987, and more than

120,000 in 2000. Although economic recession reduced the number to about 40,000 per year during the 1990s, the book business emerged as a $25 billion industry by 2000. The Book Industry Study Group estimates book publishing will be a $38 billion industry by 2004. During the 1990s, mass-market paperbacks held 30 percent of the book market, and fiction was the most popular reading. Despite the financial health of the book industry, Americans during the last third of the 20th century increasingly became less likely to read.

MoviES, television, periodicals, and computers provided great competition for books as sources of information and entertainment. At the end of the 20th century, computer technology offered the potential for the creation of “virtual” libraries containing massive collections of fully digitized volumes. Book clubs and online bookstores like Amazon. com, however, have helped books maintain their position, but often at the expense of quality and substance. Bookstore shelves were dominated by self-help books, “historical” romances, and various other genres of fiction designed for mass appeal. Similar transformations occurred with newspapers.

In 1969 there were 1,758 daily newspapers in the United States, competing with other media such as television and magazines; by 2000 there were 1,480 daily newspapers. The number of cities with more than one daily paper continued a downward trend, going from 55 in 1999 to 49 in 2001. A few, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, enjoyed strong national and international reputations for stressing foreign and national news, analysis and interpretation, politics, science, economics, and culture. Additionally, there were more than 8,000 nondaily newspapers, representing African Americans and other racial and ethnic groups, the military, university students, prison populations, and a wide variety of hobbyists.

Cultural historian John Tebbell argues that television became the primary source of the news for most Americans, and as a result, most newspapers became primarily community bulletin boards in small towns and cities. Newspapers in large urban centers, Tebbell maintains, have been able to provide better in-depth coverage and investigative reporting than television. The exposure of the Watergate scandal by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward is perhaps the best example. Many other newspapers undertook investigative reporting on the state and local level as well. Two exceptions to the localization of newspapers are the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Both achieved circulations of nearly 2 million during the 1990s and reached a national audience. The former represents the best in serious news reporting, with a focus on BUSINESS and the economy. The latter, while not as sensational as the popular National Enquirer, which thrives on rumor, innuendo, and fabrication, represents a transformation in newspapers in response to the primacy of television. With its wide variety of brief stories and its use of color and photographs, USA Today is a hybrid of television and newspaper. Still, regular newspaper readership declined steadily since 1965, when seven out of 10 Americans got their news from newspapers. In 2006 only 40 percent of Americans regularly read the newspaper, although readership remained relatively unchanged after 2002 as newspapers began offering online versions.

The story of magazines since the 1960s has been one of specialization. Since the 1960s, the number of magazines devoted to very narrow areas of interest grew tremendously, so much so that by 1991 there were over 11,500 magazines and periodicals published in the United States. Industry surveys revealed that, by the mid-1990s, 80 percent of published periodicals were for specialized audiences. The growth in magazines reflected the rapid social changes occurring during the 1960s and 1970s. Playboy, first published in 1953, reflected the changing sexual mores of the time, while Ms. (founded in 1972) and others dedicated themselves to the changing status of women. Ebony (founded in 1945) and Jet (founded in 1951) echoed African-American pride. During the 1980s, magazines such as Us and People (founded in 1974) took advantage of Americans’ obsession with movies, movie stars, and other celebrities, while Sports Illustrated and other sports-related magazines focused on Americans’ passion for SPORTS and recreation activities. The last 30 years also witnessed an increase in the number of trade, scientific, technical, and academic journals and magazines. By the end of the 20th century, a magazine existed for virtually every activity undertaken by the American public.

Magazines, like newspapers, have been hurt by having to compete with television and the Internet for advertising dollars. In the early 1990s advertisers bought about $7 billion in magazine advertising, which was only 5 percent of total advertising expenditures. This competition was the primary factor in the decline of large-circulation general magazines, as well as many smaller publications. Specialization allowed magazine publishers to target specific audiences, and thereby make their publications more appealing to advertisers. Moreover, magazines became primarily informational and directed at particular age, gender, ethnic, or income groups. For national photo magazines such as Look and Life, their failure was attributable to rising costs of production, especially paper and ink, and the trend toward specialization that came with competition with television and the Internet for advertising dollars.

Specialization also marked radio’s response to the pervasiveness of television. Some stations broadcast news around the clock, while others specialized in talk shows, consisting of in-studio interviews or listener call-in formats. Most stations, both AM and FM, broadcast MUSic and featured a specific musical genre such as rock and roll, country, jazz, urban contemporary, or classical. Many further specialize with formats, such as 1970s and 1980s “easy listening,” album-oriented rock and roll, ethnic, or children’s popular music. By 2000 there were 10,716 commercial radio stations in the United States, but by 2007 the number of commercial stations had shrunk to a little more than 6,000. Here again the economics of too many media outlets (television, Internet, radio) chasing too few advertising dollars played a role in this decline. Fewer listeners translated into fewer advertisers, which meant certain radio stations became less profitable, leading to consolidation in the industry. In addition, radio can now be broadcast over the Internet, which technically makes it possible to receive a radio station’s broadcast anywhere that Internet service is available. While this helps overcome one of radio’s major drawbacks (limited broadcasting range), it also helped to further the demise of more radio stations. Further consolidation might be on the horizon due to new broadcasting technology in the form of satellite radio. This type of radio broadcast has certain advantages over its earthbound cousin; namely it can broadcast its signal over a much wider area and can offer a much larger menu of programming, although listeners must pay a subscription fee to have access.

Although the number of Americans turning to radio for news coverage dropped steadily since 1998, the number of listeners to National Public Radio (NPR) doubled over the same time period, rising to 17 percent in 2006. In addition, the talk radio format acquired new popularity beginning in the 1990s, becoming for millions of Americans a source of news on political and social issues. Although most Americans still relied on television for news coverage, the Pew Research Center reported that in 2006, 20 percent were regular listeners of talk shows with a call-in format. NPR and talk shows reflected a partisan nature among listeners. Talk radio shows, led by personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, attracted a predominantly conservative audience, while the majority of NPR listeners identified themselves as liberal. Liberal talk shows, such as Air America, launched by Al Franken in 2004, struggled to gain a national audience and experienced financial difficulty. In 2007 the increasingly partisan nature of radio and television shows led to congressional efforts to enact legislation similar to the “fairness doctrine” adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, which required stations presenting controversial issues to allow discussion of contrasting viewpoints.

The role of movies in American culture has remained relatively unchanged throughout the 20th century. Despite the introduction of videotape in the 1980s and digital videodiscs (DVD) in the 1990s, Americans continued to go to theaters to see first-release movies in record numbers. In 1969-70, movie attendance was 200 million; in 2000, movie attendance had risen to 1.42 billion in the United States. Although movies are essentially an entertainment medium, the big-screen images are informational in that they continued to offer standards for the country’s fashion, sense of morality, manners, and attitudes. In that sense, movies serve as a transmitter of ideas as well as information. Film can also be primarily informational, however. Business, industry, and government use film for training purposes, for selling products, and for general public relations.

As the 20th century came to a close, perhaps the most significant transformations in media were the result of rapidly advancing computer technology. New production techniques and storage systems made possible by computers helped print media survive in its competition with television for advertising dollars. The major development was the use by publishers of CD-ROMs for encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works. Also, many magazines developed “e-zines,” or electronic magazines that allowed publishers to more easily reach a wider readership at lower costs. Moreover, computer technology opened new avenues for the delivery of information, and is poised to revolutionize media in general. Chief among these developments is the growth of computer networks and the Internet. Networks make possible the storage and easy retrieval of vast amounts of information, and allow users to exchange information with each other, even from geographically remote locations. Various computer network systems provide interactive access via computers or television sets. Subscribers can access information on the weather, news, attractions, or virtually any other matter of interest. By 2006 nearly one in three Americans regularly accessed the Internet for news. An Internet “surfer” can view full-length movies, see up-to-date sports scores, or take a virtual tour of an Egyptian pyramid.

All the media—print, film, electronic, and computer— have played and continue to play a formative role in politics, economics, and social and cultural distinctiveness in the United States. Television, in particular, influences American political life by bringing people and events closer together and by providing the primary avenue of exposure for political candidates. However simplistic television’s representation of the news is, it does make events, national and international, more immediate. The Internet, as well, makes available almost limitless information on issues and candidates. Media significantly influence the economy because, in all their forms, they are the principal vehicle for local and national advertising. Socially and culturally, the media both serve the nation’s diverse intellectual need, and collectively reflect the identity of the American people who, at the beginning of the 21st century, are perhaps the most informed people on Earth.

See also CENSORSHIP; literature; science and

TECHNOLOGY.

Further reading: James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture Journalis'm, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); George Rodman, Mass Media in a Changing World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

—William L. Glankler and Cynthia Stachecki