Fault Lines by Kevin M. Kruse

Author:Kevin M. Kruse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

The Real World

Despite the Republican zeal for impeachment, the party proved to be badly out of step with the public. Cable networks won increased ratings, but in the grand scheme of things, a scandal that revolved around the private sexual relationships of a president didn’t resonate with many Americans. If the country had shifted to the right on many domestic political issues, the liberalized cultural trends of the 1960s seemed to have won out by the 1990s.

One of the most popular radio talk shows of the decade was the syndicated program of Howard Stern. Originally the host of a late-night program on WNBC in New York, Stern featured frank talk about sex, drugs, and everything else that the Moral Majority railed against. “The idea of the show is to convey real honesty on the air,” Stern explained in a 1991 interview, “to get away from the phony type of broadcasting where they bite their tongue and are afraid to say anything.” 11 By 1992, Stern’s program had spread across the country, becoming the number-one morning radio show in three major cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.12 As Stern’s empire grew, the Federal Communications Commission tried to rein him in, levying fines of over $100,000 in some instances.13 But the owner of the company that syndicated Stern’s show, Infinity’s Mel Karmazin, was happy to pay the fines since Stern generated so much in profits. With 15 million daily listeners in sixteen major cities, the shock jock brought in an estimated $20 million per year to the company. By 1995, his program was the number-one morning show in most top markets and a hit with men eighteen to thirty-four.14

The success of the outrageous radio host reflected broader trends sweeping across American culture, as sex and violence became ever more prominent in video games, movies, and television. A study from the University of California at Los Angeles reported that “sinister combat violence” could be found in most Saturday morning cartoons, while 42 percent of the movies broadcast on network television were inappropriately violent.15 According to another survey, two-thirds of prime-time programs featured sexual material, while daytime shows like The Jerry Springer Show, launched in 1991, offered discussions of once-taboo topics like bestiality and incest.16 The erotic thriller Basic Instinct became a blockbuster success at the box office in 1992, ultimately earning $350 million and inspiring a stream of other sexually explicit films like Consenting Adults, Disclosure, Showgirls, and Striptease.17 Meanwhile, MTV quickly found that the most lurid music videos in its rotation were in the highest demand.

The network also started to introduce original programming, starting with The Real World, a new style of “reality programming” that debuted in 1992. Copying the 1970s PBS documentary series An American Family, which had chronicled the dysfunction and eventual divorce of a seemingly wholesome white suburban family, MTV’s show placed a diverse set of young Americans in an apartment for a few months, all wired for video and sound. Despite its generally lighthearted style, the show occasionally tackled serious subjects.

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