Network Nations by Michele Hilmes

Author:Michele Hilmes [Hilmes, Michele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9780415883856
Google: qimGXa2MwHEC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-15T05:12:08+00:00

Alistair Cooke, the Ford Foundation, and Omnibus

In the early 1950s, as radio in Britain soared to new heights and US educational broadcasting got its long-awaited second wind, it seemed as though even American commercial broadcasters felt the pull towards public service. Many had served in the OWI or the AFRS during the war, and sustained strong feelings about broadcasting’s central role in mobilizing and motivating citizens in a cause larger than selling toothpaste. Sylvester “Pat” Weaver at NBC was one of these; having produced Command Performance for the OWI, he returned to his pre-war employer, the Young and Rubicam advertising agency, convinced that television should take a different path from radio. In this he sounded positively Reithian:

For some time I had been disturbed by the question of whether advertisers and their agencies should exercise so much control over what went on the air…. Only the networks, it seemed to me, were in a position to help television fulfill its promise…. If properly developed, [television] could raise the educational and cultural level of the entire nation. It could enrich the common man—make him the uncommon man. (Weaver 1994, 164–65)

Weaver recognized, too, that television would be far more expensive to produce than radio, potentially straining the resources of the single sponsor system. Weaver first approached William Paley of CBS with his ideas, aware that CBS had moved ahead of NBC in pursuing network responsibility for programming. As early as 1936, CBS had begun to articulate a philosophy of network-originated sustaining production, with Norman Corwin and the Columbia Workshop as its signature, and had also pioneered in the production of its own package shows before the war (Boddy 1990). When Paley failed to respond positively, Weaver turned to NBC, where “they weren’t much interested in my vision of television’s future, but it soon became apparent that they were interested in me” (Weaver 1994, 167).

Hired as Director of Television Programs, he departed from previous commercial radio practice by putting together an in-house programming department and began the effort to convince sponsors, agencies, and General David Sarnoff that the future lay with network control over programming and a “spot advertising” system for sponsors. In this he was doubtless influenced by the need to please the FCC as station license applications were being evaluated, but the idea of the network not merely as time-broker but as a center for creative production also served key network objectives, as Vance Kepley notes: not only did high profile programming help to line up and retain affiliates during a competitive period, it pointed in a direction that would give control over the entire programming schedule to the networks, who could use it to build audiences and ratings more effectively than they were able to do under the sponsor system (Kepley 1990, 50).

Weaver’s “Operation Frontal Lobes” at NBC achieved these objectives both through high-quality documentary/actuality series, like Victory At Sea, Project XX, and Wisdom, as well as NBC’s much-vaunted “spectaculars,” one-time prestige event programs an hour or longer that would feature literary adaptations, original dramatic works, or stage presentations.

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