Core Response #1: The Truth Can Be Adjusted: Broadcast News and Violating Realism

The Truth Can Be Adjusted: Broadcast News and Violating Realism

by Bobby Sevenich

Broadcast News is a 1986 romantic comedy that dramatizes the temporal chaos of live television broadcasting. In the film, a novice anchor (Tom) decides to head a stirring human-interest piece on date rape to uphold his sensitive on-camera persona. [2] During the taped report, Tom visibly wipes a tear from his cheek as he listens to a victim of sexual assault recall her experiences. Once the special is aired, the network producers – and domestic target audiences – laud him for his empathy and journalistic integrity. Near the end of the film, raw footage of the interview discloses that his tearful moment was caught on camera after the interview was complete and consequently re-edited into the interview to deceptively intensify the dramatic effect. Tom interrupts the point of view shot of the subject and inserts a deceitful image shot of out of sequence. The crux of the issue is that Tom’s manipulation of the structure and challenges the authenticity of TV’s communication.

Feuer questions the essence of television and suggests that the “live” quality of television grants spectators the opportunity to be present with the TV occurrences and, in a sense, witness a kind of telecommunicated realism. They can experience the exterior world beyond that of the living room. TV’s continuous presentation of material, such as news broadcasting, gives the spectator a “seamless scan of the world and is classified as “flow.” Williams argues that television’s dissemination of world news, although driven by economic demands, provides a public service. Yet with the semblance of realism, there is a latent natural ruse of television – as Bazin also supports in his claims about cinema giving the impression of truth. Stam argues that perhaps the editing of a TV program is one way the liveness is challenged; does this also constitute a departure from realism? Editing does rework the continuity of a given sequence and can mislead the viewer, especially when the broadcast is presented as factual. “Much of the real content of news has been altered by the facts of visual presentation”(Williams, 40). In the case of Broadcast News, the insertion of Tom crying in the interview or the reordering of true intervals might connote one truth – that the victim’s testimony is sad – but at the expense of a lie – that Tom cried during their conversation.

Lynn Spiegel attests that “television – at its most ideal – promised to bring audiences not merely an illusion of realism […] but a sense of ‘being there,’ a kind of hyper-realism.”[2] Do filmic techniques employed during the broadcasting processes – like editing – give way to a kind of realism by way of manipulation (in the same way an actor can play a character to communicate human truths). Is truth in any way jeopardized during the process?

[1] Broadcast News. Dir. James L. Brooks. 20^th Century Fox: 1987.

[2] Lynn Spigel. “Installing the Television Set: Popular Discourses on Television and Domestic Spaces, 1948 – 1955.” 1999. Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer. Edited by Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann. University of Minnesota, 1992. 14.

Core Response 1: The Destruction of Live TV

Lauren Tyler 

One of the concepts I found most interesting in Jane Feuer’s “The Concept of Live Television” was that “American network television, in the very process of technological advancement, has nearly destroyed even the simplest meaning of “live” transmission. Videotape, though perceptually equivalent to “live” transmission, preserves the event, eliminating process and thus aura (15).” This is even more prevalent in today’s Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus era. We have transformed into an instant gratification society. The days of a nation huddled around their television sets to find out “Who Shot J.R.” have been replaced with eager viewers trying to avoid “Scandal” spoilers on their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds. Viewers no longer watch television at the same pace. 

Prior to recording devices, viewers were at the mercy of network scheduling. If they wanted see Lucy have a baby, they had to sit at their television sets and watch it live, commercials and all. Thus, television became a family bonding experience where everyone sat together and enjoyed a baseball game or sitcom while crowded around the television set. Now, streaming has destroyed that entirely. If my mom has “The Young and the Restless” playing on DVR, I can simply throw on some headphones and tune her out with Netflix on my laptop. There’s no need to agree on what’s watched and when, which has become even more apparent in the “Netflix Binge Watching” era. 

When Netflix decided to release their original programming all at once, rather than weekly episodes, they changed the way many people view television programming. I know many people who actually hold off on watching new network television shows until they can binge the entire season in one or two sittings. Netflix allows viewers to watch their shows at a breakneck pace, in effect forcing many viewers to follow suit or else risk having their entire viewer experience ruined before pressing play. If you’re someone who doesn’t like to be spoiled, you’d better watch “House of Cards” just as quickly as keyboard trigger happy Frances Underwood fanatics, or else run the risk of knowing every death, murder and misdeed committed before you can add it to your Netflix queue. The introduction of binge watching has transformed television watching into a binge eating contest instead of the once leisurely weekly meal it used to be. 

Very few things happen “live” anymore. With websites like Youtube, it’s nearly impossible to miss a social/cultural phenomenon. The last big live event that I can recall was the Prince William/ Kate Middleton wedding, and even then you could set it to record and fast forward through all the boring parts. We’ve changed the ways we use and consume TV. There’s no worry of missing anything, because it will be posted online somewhere instantaneously. While the concept of “live” TV has been destroyed, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worse. People host binge parties, and DVR things so they can watch later with friends and family. TV can still be a bonding experience, we’re just no longer beholden to schedules and commercials. 

CORE RESPONSE 1. Week 2: TV Form, Time + Ideology -- the distaste of segmentation; nostalgia for liveness

Raymond Williams said it outright: “television has altered our world” as audiences, as consumers, and personally, as a storyteller (5).  I cannot imagine a world without it. Is that wrong? My concept of television and my parents’ is drastically different. As Williams highlighted in his recap, TV has progressed from public service/news announcement programming to “the newspaper, the public meeting, the educational class, the, theatre, the cinema, the sports stadium, the advertising, columns and billboards” (36).  I can access it on a computer, a tablet, a phone even, as compared to  the only set my parents remember at the fixture of their living room. I can hold TV in my hands: stop it, and replay it and hyperlink it and comment on it in a way my parents could not.  To engage Marshall McLuhan, “perhaps the most familiar and pathetic effect of the TV image is the posture of children in the early grades.” That was me circa age six when I used to sit “W” style (really bad for the knees) in front of my TV whenever Nickelodeon was on and I was simply a passive observer because I didn’t have TiVo or anything fancy. But then when I had the power to control how I watched TV and what I watched, everything changed. Time is in my hands now.

Williams asserted the nature of television programs “incorporating advertising from the outset, the initial conception as part of the whole package,” (83). That is what I despise most about television. I cannot stand the interruption or “segmentation” as Jane Feuer states—my focus, as a lover of cinema and storytelling, is that of full concentration, and maybe that is just me. When I sit down to read a novel I want to devour it—the same goes for TV, which is why I have found Netflix and the like as such desirable facets of TV: I like my story uninterrupted just like going to the theaters to see a feature. One could argue… then just go to see a movie instead. Bottom line is, I don’t have the resources to cough up $15 every time I want to experience a good cinematic story.  Television is more accessible and mobile in that way. McLuhan articulated some good points regarding this, that a TV view is more engaged in a response, but I am wondering, what is that a result of? Is it the ongoing nature of programming itself, whereas a theater going experience is 2 hours (more or less, a fixed end point)? What would McLuhan say about programs such as Netflix or on Demand?

Lastly, I did want to touch on Williams’ point regarding the nature of sports on TV. As a fan and former athlete, I cannot praise the liveness of sports on TV enough. The ability to see a baseball game, hockey game, or football game with the proximity and intimacy that not even the live crowd has is a tip for TV.  As viewers, we don’t have the distraction, the hassle or even the price of being at the venue itself, but we have the game sense and most especially the replays and the close ups: glimpses of gold from the athletes themselves; the blood, sweat and tears. I appreciate Williams’ point regarding the nature of commercialism in televised sports—it too, serves as an interruption. Even in the games themselves they may pause for commercial break on the ice and interrupt the intensity of the game, and now that is a staple of professional sports; it’s like a time out for everyone. But, as I mentioned earlier, it makes the games more accessible for spectators but also “potential participants” (61). Think of the Olympics, and of all the access unheard of athletes and sports receive and the connectivity to the games themselves across nations... THAT makes me want to celebrate live TV.

First Day Survey

Please take some time to answer the following questions:

Your TV habits:

How much do you watch in a given week?

What are your genres?

What role would you say TV has in your life?

Describe a favorite TV memory, good or bad?

Thinking about TV:

What TV classes have you had?

How would you define television?

WELCOME TO CTCS 587

This course examines various methodologies and theories through which scholars have engaged television over the past several decades.  We will consider TV through a variety of lenses: as a technology, as a cultural experience, as text, as ideology, and as industrial practice.  We will focus primarily on U.S. television, but we will also consider the medium’s global contexts at key junctures.  Our goal will be to consider not just television and its myriad forms but, first and foremost, the history of academic engagements with this popular medium.