The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (9 page)

(Mueller, 1999). Broadcasting to a national audience, then, just like national

cinema, may turn out to be a momentary historical deviation, as media now

return to their origins in wires (the telegraph). When social scientists were

minting concepts for media analysis at mid-twentieth century, mass commun-

ication had paradigmatic status. Today, different conditions, such as smaller

audience size, differentiated niches, and altered social norms, raise new

questions.

One such question is the fate of social integration amidst the proliferation of

channels and fragmentation of audiences. As recently as the 1970s, the three

American television networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, shared up to 95 percent of

the viewing audience. By the late 1990s, that figure has dropped to about 65

percent, shared among NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox, owing to competition with

cable services, but also satellites, video rentals, home computers, and the Internet. Since the 1970s, advertisers have sought purer demographic segments. This

is clearly a radical shift in the national provision of news and entertainment ±

though not an utter meltdown. A common fear is that citizens will be isolated by their idiosyncratic tastes. Instead of national newspapers people will read the

daily me; identity politics will vanquish the common good. Yet the potential to

fragment into a Tower of Babel, each of us speaking a private cultural tongue, is a problem only for the very rich, as unlimited programming choices remain, for

the time being, outside the reach of most. Clearly, channel-multiplication has

created neither cultural nor cognitive chaos, as some postmodern writers on

information blizzards fear. The statistical limits on human energy always cen-

tralize attention. Tastes in programming are not infinitely diverse, but cluster into taste cultures. In the case of Germany, Italy, and Greece, for instance, four television networks shared 65±75 percent of the television audience in the early 1990s, as in the United States. In Britain, just two channels draw a comparable

percentage (Curran, 1998). Of the twenty-five or so radio formats in the USA,

the top five have nearly half of the audience. Format concentration is found

across media (Neuman, 1991), though we should not assume that popular

demand alone is the controlling factor. The fear that media segmentation will

cause citizens to retreat to a cocoon of private egoism (a fear in social theory that dates at least to Tocqueville) is checked by the habitual preferences of audiences for programming that engages a societal frame. Fragmentation has replaced

homogenization as the chief fear aroused by media.

Media and Communications

23

The Shifting Moral Economy of Media

The waning of a nationally organized schedule of programs as a cultural grid

suggests a more significant, but more subtle, transformation of the place

of broadcasting in the general moral economy. Because it entered the homes of

the nation, broadcasting historically accepted constraints on topics and forms of expression. Radio, like television, was painted as a guest in the family circle, and was hence pressured to embody a culture of middle-brow mundaneness and

normality, a tonality that continued from early radio through much of television, though never with full compliance. From Mae West's banishment from the

airwaves in 1938 for inviting the puppet Charlie McCarthy to play in her

``wood pile,'' through the 1978 Supreme Court case Pacifica concerning the

broadcast of comedian George Carlin's satirical monologue about thè`seven

dirty words'' that could never be said on the air ± a case which found that

broadcasting's `ùnique pervasiveness'' justified tighter content controls than

other media ± radio and television have been bound by a thick set of normative,

if obviously ideologically loaded, constraints (the nation as patriarchal family).

Because they spoke to the nation at home, radio and television in their heydays

were regarded, for better or worse, as forums whose tone should be suitable

to all.

Film, in contrast, never quite assumed the same burden of public decency as

broadcasting, despite an even more intense history of attack by the guardians of public morals. The theatrical exhibition of movies took place outside the home,

in dark spaces set apart for collective fantasy on extraordinary topics such as

romance, sex, crime, and adventure. The dangers of such fantasy were buffered

by collective viewing; the assembled peer group of fellow citizens, as Cantril and Allport (1935) argued, immunized against anti-social consequences. Wandering

eyes and hearts were cathartically reserved to the film palace. For both film and broadcasting around mid-twentieth century, the audience experience was intensely normed: one watched movies collectively and took part in broadcasting

with the awareness that one's reference groups were also simultaneously doing so.

The division of media labor ± broadcasting as normalizing the family circle,

film as fantasizing the collective psyche ± has crumbled. The multiplication of

channels and shifting modes of exhibition and delivery suggest shifting con-

straints on the audience experience. The old standard of broadcast decency has

weakened, as has the sense of a simultaneous collectivity of fellow watchers.

Katz (1998) argues that proliferation of channels breaks the collective norm of

obligatory viewing. Viewing becomes an asocial experience, not a simultaneous

communion of reference groups that sets the agenda for water-cooler discussions

the next day. The very notion of à`Home Box Office,'' the first dominant cable

channel (1975) and a leader in getting content hitherto allowed only in theaters onto television screens, signals these changes.

The normative frame of much American television programming has shifted

from common culture to private club, allowing forms and contents of expression

adapted to homogeneous in-groups. No longer under the ideological and

24

John Durham Peters

economic constraint of reaching general audiences, American television today

includes R-rated prime time drama, explicitly indecent talk shows, and caught-

on-tape programs such as animals (or police officers) attacking people. As

programs proliferated into niches, television lost its halo as the collective hearth, even if still viewed by a plurality of citizens. Such programs as MTV's Beavis and Butthead, with its sophomoric humor and crudity, were even designed to scare

away viewers over a certain age, thus purifying its demographics for advertisers in search of young buyers (Turow, 1997). Now programs can be designed to

expel as much as to include.

The national-social logic of broadcasting taught viewers that there were other,

unknown audiences out there. Hence, as a cultural field, broadcasting is a breeding ground for worries about effects on others (third-person effects). Broadcasting breeds offended viewers, if not for themselves, then for children or other vulnerable souls in the audience. In our age of increased fragmentation, this logic

persists, as content once taboo for a national audience fills channels aimed at a few but available to many. Conservative backlash against cultural industries, and efforts to label, rate, or otherwise police the vast output of new film, television, and music commodities, will likely remain part of the political landscape. Such

initiatives as the V-chip, a content-regulating device required by US law to be

installed in all new TV sets, or the Communications Decency Act, which President Clinton appended to the 1996 Telecommunications Act in an effort to protect

both children in cyberspace and his election prospects, and which was almost

instantly found unconstitutional, are state-sponsored answers to the decline of

moral inhibitions in the wake of splintering audiences and globalized program-

ming flows. What some read as symptoms of large moral or civilizational decline

reflect, in fact, changing industrial and technical conditions. As long as profit is the chief value that governs media production, new kinds of content will continue to appear that can make money from marginal audiences.

Channel-multiplication creates a huge demand for content. Prime-time televi-

sion drama is still sometimes lavishly produced (or at least expensively, as in the case of Seinfeld), but talk, game, and caught-on-tape shows have the advantage

of attracting salable audiences with low production budgets. The race for con-

tent also makes control over the rights to film, television, and music libraries industrially crucial (and worrisome to historians and purists, who fear such

commercially motivated tampering as the colorization of old black-and-white

movies). Amid the general frenzy of media mergers, a clear trend is union

between producers of hardware (electronics or delivery systems) and software

(programming): General Electric and NBC, Matsushita's short-lived purchase of

Universal Pictures and MCA (later bought by Seagram), Sony and Columbia

Pictures, Viacom and Paramount, AOL and Time-Warner. The scarcest com-

modity today is not channel capacity, as it was when broadcasting emerged; it is desirable programming.

The proliferation of channels, then, does not imply social fragmentation; it

implies a changed social place of broadcasting and an attendant loss of moral

inhibitions. Will stations and networks continue to exist? Will there be a need for a nationwide program schedule if video on demand becomes available?

Media and Communications

25

Probably, given the social (and economic) value of centralized audiences and the utility of cultural packaging. Such changes have created an institutional identity crisis for European public service broadcasting, whose mission of providing

quality programs to the nation is threatened by the transnational appeals of

commercial television. Perhaps the unique mission of public service broadcasting should not be a national program schedule but a distinct kind of social contract with the audience: commercial-free quality programming available to all within

a morally moderate national frame (Curran, 1998).

Globalization

Media flows have long been studied for their threats to national culture. In the 1970s, the common critique was that American film and television were agents

of cultural imperialism, since national entertainment industries could not com-

pete with their slick products. While such arguments could serve to fortify

nationalist sentiments at home, they correctly saw Hollywood's comparative

advantage in its production values and economies of scale. For the price of

creating one hour of original TV, countries can lease from ten to one hundred

times as much US prime-time drama. Audiences worldwide prefer local or

national content, but the hitch is always production quality. Still, globalization and Americanization are not the same thing. Like everything else, media globalize unevenly. The media aren't as American as they used to be. Multiple centers of production trouble the old model of one center and one periphery: Brazilian

telenovelas in Russia, Mexican programs in Latin America, Egyptian television

in the Arab world, wordless Polish cartoons, Bollywood (Indian) movies in East

Africa, Eastern Europe, and China, or Hong Kong action cinema in the USA.

There is important regionalization of media flows, often based on common

language and culture, but also mixtures and pockets (Chinese heavy metal,

Franco-Maghrebi rap, karaoke in the Philippines, etc.). Even so, America still

dominates, and without reciprocation. Compared to the vast majority of other

nations, the USA is quite lacking in foreign media. Countries average about one-

third foreign TV programming, but the USA has about 2 percent. The American

market can absorb Power Rangers and Teletubbies, but in entertainment as in

news, it remains isolated by its giantism. It is strange indeed that the world's chief exporter of cultural matter is blind to what every other nation sees constantly.

States often seek to protect national culture by building dams for media flows.

France, Canada, and New Zealand, for instance, all have quotas for the radio

play of nationally produced music. States also find other motives for blockage,

usually sex and politics. Some Muslim nations ban dangerous performers

(Madonna) or depictions (of kissing). Both China and Singapore police e-mail

by way of firewalls. In all efforts to block media flows, the state walks a tight-rope between global political-economic pressures (since regulation erects a

statist obstacle to global capitalism) and national-political ones (preservation of national distinctness).

Besides state intervention, there are other subtler impediments to media flows,

such as cultural accessibility. Violence and sex travel readily across national and 26

John Durham Peters

linguistic borders: the martial arts of a Jackie Chan or musclebound antics of an Arnold Schwarzeneggar, the beautiful people of Baywatch or Beverly Hills

90210, require little translation; culturally specific and dialogue-heavy programming such as comedy and drama do. Because of its topical references and

involuted humor, Seinfeld, the number one rated program in late 1990s America,

will probably prove a less profitable export than Baywatch, which never scored

big at home.

The miniaturization and cheapening of media production also fuels transbor-

der media flows. Much can be done at a desktop or in a basement, thanks to