• Communication 130

Professor Joseph Turow

• Aim of this class:

• PAPER:

• Meet with your TA

• Synergy between radio and recordings

• Billboard Hot 100 components

• Singles sales

• Paid digital downloads

• Streaming media and on-demand services (eg AOL Music and Yahoo! Music)

• Synergy between radio and recordings

• Billboard Hot 100 components

• Singles sales

• Paid digital downloads

• Streaming media and on-demand services (eg AOL Music and Yahoo! Music)

•
The Movies

• Two filmmakers who helped to change that were George Melies of France and Edwin S. Porter in the United States.

– Trip to the Moon (Melies)

– Great Train Robbery (Porter)

• 1912 Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph & others formed a trust called The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC).

• Aim: To control all aspects of the motion picture business.

• Charlie Chaplin

• The trust failed to stop their upstart competitors, mostly immigrants.

• The new immigrant run studios, on the other hand, prospered.

• Keeping control of that business was a high priority.

• vertical integration and the studio system.

•
Theda Bara,
Alice White

• One part of it involved the star system.

• Another part involved dividing the studio into ‘A’ and ‘B’ movie units.

• block booking.

• Irving Thalberg of MGM

• Small companies emerged to create niche pictures.

• But it was the “majors,” as they came to be known, that ran the industry.

• By the late 1940s, the major US companies were riding high.

• Just then, though, things began to fall apart.

• Consent decree--1948

• The second development of the late 1940s that pointed to a different future: TV

• TV’s early years

• The idea of television had been around for quite some time before its commercial introduction in the US in 1946.

• Nipkow disk

• Laboratory work started in Germany (Paul Nipkow) during the 1880s

• Zworkykin 1938
patent diagram

• Engineers did not consider the technology used for these performances very acceptable, though.

• RCA team during the 1930s

• RCA introduced the system at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.

• Only after World War II, beginning in 1946, can it be said that television started its commercial life in the US.

• `

• From the start, that commercial life was clearly tied to the companies that controlled radio.

• FCC freeze on new licences: 1948-52

• TV became more powerful
than all other media: a
super medium!

• By the mid & late 1950s, Hollywood threw in the towl and started dealing with TV.

• The example of I Love Lucy

• Walt Disney & Disneyland

• Jack Warner and Maverick,
Sugerfoot, Cheyanne

• The challenge for movie firms now became what to with their traditional exhibition arena, the theaters.

• Todd-AO, Cinescope, and Cinerama.

• 3-D pictures.

• They failed.

• Movies became “events.”

• Dismantled star system; gave cultivation of stars to talent agencies.

• Got rid of Hays Office Code, and substituted ratings system.

• TV in the 1960s and 1970s:

• Advertisers were rushing toward the new medium

• Rise of participating sponsorship

• Justice Department concerns lead to

– Fyn-Syn rules

– Prime Time access rules

• Despite these drawbacks, ABC, NBC and CBS were flying high in the 1970s.

• But a technology was in the wings that would begin to tear away at broadcast TV’s dominance.

• The technology was coaxial cable.

• Despite these drawbacks, ABC, NBC and CBS were flying high in the 1970s.

• But a technology was in the wings that would begin to tear away at broadcast TV’s dominance.

• The technology was coaxial cable.

• Rise of Cable TV

• Coaxial cable was not really a new technology in the 1970s.

• Early uses as CATV

• Beginning in the late 1970s, the FCC started assigning a large number of new, mostly UHF, broadcast TV licenses.

• As a result, the number of "independent" TV broadcasters soared.

• The early 1980s saw the start of a raft of new satellite-delivered television channels.

• As the number of cable channels grew, so did the number of broadcast outlets.

• The Telecommunications Act of 1996 got rid of the fin/syn rules.

• In the 1990s, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney owned, while Paramount and Warner had small-scale broadcast operations.

• Perhaps most important to Hollywood's link to television of all sorts was its reputation for creating popular programming.

• Ironically, the Hollywood film industry, which fifty years earlier had pretended that TV would go away, was deeply involved in this new era.

• Movie powerhouses and VCRs

• Rise of Fox & other new networks.

• Spread of the video cassette recorder (the VCR) and direct-to-home satellite services.

• Use of computer services.

• Competition for viewers between producers and distributors increased enormously.