Henry Jenkins (henry3@athena.mit.edu), Literature Section, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02138.

The 1992 Presidential campaign marked a dramatic transition in American politics with candidates devoting as much attention to cable channels like C-Span, CNN and MTV as to the four major networks. he age of network-domination of American television has shifted into a new period of specialized channels targeted at more narrowly defined audiences. This course will take this transition as a central concern, investigating the history of American broadcasting in terms of shifting institutions and audiences. The first part of the class will look closely at the ways contemporary scholars have studied and theorized television audiences, focusing particularly on how race and gender shape the content and reception of network programs. The second part will provide a historical overview of the evolution of American television, from its roots in radio to the present. The final segment of the course will look more closely at the ways cable television is redefining American broadcasting and examine a variety of more specialized networks, including Nickelodeon, MTV, CNN, Lifetime and the Home Shopping Channel. Students will prepare a series of short 2-3 page reports reflecting on their own research on various aspects of American television and participate in a computer discussion group commenting on course issues. Weekly screenings will allow students to sample a range of programs, both contemporary and historical. Students will also be required to read critical, theoretical and historical essays on American television.

Required Texts: (Available at the Coop)
Justin Lewis, The Ideological Octopus: An Exploration of Television and Its Audience

Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann (Eds.) Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer (PS)

John E. O'Connor, American History/American Television: Interpreting the Video Past (AHAT)

Course Pack (available at MIT Graphic Arts) (CP)

Assignments:

1)Participation in Electronic Journal (15%): Students are expected to post entries to Discuss amertv (Host: nemesis; Path: /usr/spool/discuss/amertv) each week which respond to the course readings, screenings, and discussions. As currently established, Discuss amertv is moderated by the course instructor and open access. If we find too many outside lurkers/contributors, we may restrict it simply to the class membership. I will be monitering participation and occassionally engaging in the discussion. The entry should be a substantive discussion of issues originating within the class. Remember, this will be the primary means by which I will moniter whether you are doing the readings, etc. so it should reflect what you are learning and thinking. My expectation is, however, that this discussion will soon take on an interactive dimension as you respond to (perhaps even flame?) postings from your classmates. If, for some reason you do not wish to participate in the electronic discussion, you should submit regularly to me 1-2 page journal entries covering the same material. You may opt to submit written journals in lieu of electronic journals on a week-by-week basis if for some reason you would like to send me a more personal response.

2)Flow assignment (5%): Students should select a twenty minute chunk of television, including the last ten minutes of one half hour block and the first ten minutes of a second half hour. You should identify each segment of that "flow" of broadcast materials (commercials, public service announcements, news updates, credits, continuity, etc.) and write a short analysis of your discoveries. Consult the Raymond Williams and John Hartley selections in the course reader for models. Your chart should look something like William's Medium -range analysis (pp.100-104) except that you should summarize rather than transcribe the contents of each segment. What percentage of the total is constituted by programming? What themes or subjects cut across multiple classes of program segments? What roles are served by what John Hartley calls "continuity" segments? Your analysis should be 2-3 pages in addition to the program segmentation.

3)Audience Research Project (30%)
Students will work together in groups of 5-6 students to engage in a modest audience research project. Group members should select a program or program genre (i.e. soap operas, cartoons, etc.) which has a substantial following within the MIT community. Your task as a group will be to offer some provisional arguments about the place that television materials play in the lives of MIT students. Review the discussion of research methodology in Lewis, ch. 4. Select one or more methods that are appropriate to your research task. Develop strategies as a group to investigate your subject. Your group will make a provisional oral presentation of its findings on Feb. 23 and will present a final written report on March 1. Each student will be expected to contribute an identifiable segment of the finished report reflecting his or her own perspectives on the topic. You may wish to review the samples of audience research essays on file in the reserved reading room to gain a better sense of the questions and approaches taken by audience researchers.

4)Critical Analysis Paper (20%)
Select one program which we have studied in this course and use it as the basis for a 5 page analytic essay. Your essay should consider the program's place within television history; its dominant themes; its aesthetic characteristics; its generic tradition. You may draw on the readings or other research where appropriate in making your argument.

5) Reception Report (10%)
Select one television program which premiered before 1980. Locate at least three reviews of the program published at the time it initially appeared. Summarize the reviews and offer a 2-3 page profile of contemporary response to the program. What issues surface in the reviews? What criteria do they employ to evaluate the program? What other programs do they use as points of comparison? What aspects of the program get highlighted as particularly innovative or significant?

6) Cable Network Profile (10%)
Select one cable channel. Develop a short 2-3 page summary of its contents and orientation. Your summary should include some attention to its program schedule, its self- promotion strategies (on-air promo spots,etc.), and its institutional status (i.e. who owns it? What else do they own?)

7) Ratings Profile (10%)
Select a contemporary television program. Trace the program's ratings throughout the semester. (Hint: Ratings are published every Wednesday in USA Today). What factors contribute to the program's rise and fall in ratings? Factors to pay attention to include scheduling shifts, promotional strategies, special episodes, etc. (You should follow the way the program is presented within TV Guide over this same period). Write a 1-2 page paper summarizing what you learned about the program's ratings.

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION TO TELEVISION STUDIES

Tues. Feb.2 Television Culture?: Basic Concepts
Rec. Reading:
Raymond Williams, "Programming: Distribution and Flow," Television: Technology and Cultural Form (New York: Schocken Books, 1977).
John Hartley, "Structural Margins," in Tele-ology: Studies in Television (New York: Routledge, 1992)

Wed. Feb. 3
Screening: Being There (Followed by a discussion with Susan Emanuel)
Justin Lewis, The Ideological Octopus Ch.1-2
Theodore Adorno, "On Popular Music," in Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin (Ed.), On Record (New York: Pantheon, 1990).

Thurs. Feb. 4
In-class Screening: Dream Worlds

Tues. Feb.9
In-class Screening: Deal

Wed. Feb. 10 Discussion (To be substituted for screening)
The New Audience Research
Justin Lewis, The Ideological Octopus, ch.3
Henry Jenkins, "Star Trek at MIT" (CP)
1st Report: Flow

Thurs. Feb. 11 In-class Screening: Color Adjustment

Tues. Feb. 16 NO CLASS

Wed. Feb. 17 Discussion
Justin Lewis, The Ideological Octopus, Ch. 7
Aniko Bodroghkozy, "Is This What You Mean by Color TV?" (PS)
Screening: Empire of the Air

PART TWO: TELEVISION: THE RISE AND FALL OF NETWORK BROADCASTING
Thurs. Feb. 18
Watching Radio
Screening: The Shadow
Catherine L. Covert, "We May Hear Too Much" (CP)

Tues. Feb. 23
Audience Research Progress Reports

Wed. Feb. 24 Screening: Variety show clips; Life With Luigi; The Goldbergs; Amos and Andy

Thurs. Feb. 25 Make Room For TV
Lynn Spigel, "Installing the Television Set" (PS)

Tues. March 1 Variety Entertainment
Arthur Frank Wertheim, "The Rise and Fall of Milton Berle" (ATAH)
Henry Jenkins, "Reconstructing the Vaudeville Aesthetic," What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).(CP)
Audience Research Reports Due

Wed. March 2 Screening: I Love Lucy; The Honeymooners; Leave It to Beaver; See It Now; Marty

Thurs. March 3 Ethnicity, Suburbanization and the Early Sitcom
George Lipsitz, "The Meaning of Memory" (PS)
Thomas Cripps, "Amos 'n' Andy and the Debate over American Racial Integration" (ATAH)
Mary Beth Haralovich, "Sit-Coms and Suburbs" (PS)

Tues. March 8 The Golden Age Myth
Daniel J. Leab, "See It Now: A Legend Reassessed" (ATAH)
Kenneth Hey, "Marty: Aesthetics Vs. Medium in Early Television Drama" (ATAH)
Audience Research Paper due

Wed. March 9 Screening: Documentary on the Game Show Scandals; Nixon's Checkers Speech; Primary

Thurs. March 10 The Promise Reascended
William Boddy, "The Seven Dwarfs and the Money Grubbers" in Patricia Mellencamp (Ed.), Logics of Television (London: BFI, 1990). (CP)
Dave Culbert, "Television's Nixon: The Politician and His Image" (ATAH)

Tues. March 15 The Vast Wasteland?
Newton Minnow, "The Vast Wasteland" (CP)
Vance Kepley, "From 'Frontal Lobes' to the 'Bob-and-Bob' Show" in Tino Balio (Ed.), Hollywood in the Age of Television (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990). (CP)
Audience Research Paper due

Wed. March 16 Screening: Bewitched; Batman; Get Smart; Beverley Hillbillies; The Wild Wild West

Thurs. March 17 Contra the Vast Wasteland
Lynn Spigel, "From Domestic Space to Outer Space" in Constance Penley, Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel and Janet Bergstrom (Eds.) Close Encounters: Film, Feminism and Science Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991) (CP)
Lynn Spigel and Henry Jenkins, "Same Bat Channel, Different Bat Times" in Robeerta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (Eds.), The Many Lives of the Batman (New York: Routledge, 19991).(CP)

SPRING BREAK

Tues. March 29 Television and Vietnam
Bert Spector, "A Clash of Cultures: The Smothers Brothers vs. CBS Television" (ATAH)

Wed. March 30 Screening: The Fugitive; The Lieutenant; Maude; All in the Family

Thurs. April 1 Television Melodrama
Guest Lecture: David Thorburn
David Thorburn, "Television Melodrama" in Horace Newcomb (Ed.), Television: The Critical View (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).(CP)

Tues. April 5 Topical Sitcoms
Todd Gitlin, "The Turn Toward Relevance," Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1985) (CP)
Reception Study Report

April 6 Screening: Mary Tyler Moore Show; Hill Street Blues; Cagney and Lacey

Thurs. April 7 Quality Television?
Jane Feuer, "MTM Enterprises: An Overview" (CP)
Jane Feuer, "The MTM Style" (CP)

Tues. April 11 Cops and Robbers
Julie D'Acci, "Defining Women: The Case of Cagney and Lacey" (PS)
4th Assignment: Critical Analysis

Wed. April 12 Screening: Roots (excerpt); 1992 Presidential Campaign Coverage; Paper Tiger TV's Gulf War coverage

Thurs. April 13 Tracing our Roots
Leslie Fishbein, "Roots: Docudrama and the Interpretation of History" (ATAH)

Wed. April 19 Screening: Northern Exposures; The Simpsons; Twin Peaks; Ratings documentary

PART THREE: TELEVISION IN THE AGE OF CABLE
Thurs. April 20 Viewers and Consumers in the Post-Network Age
Eileen Meehan, "Why We Don't Count" in Patricia Mellencamp (Ed.), Logics of Television (London: BFI, 1990). (CP)
Sue Brower, "Fans as Tastemakers: Viewers for Quality Television," in Lisa A. Lewis (Ed.), The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (New York: Routledge, 1992). (CP)

Tues. April 27 Postmodernism and MTV
Andrew Goodwin, "A Televisual Context: MTV," Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992) (CP)
Lauren Rabinowitz, "Animation, Postmodernism and MTV," The Velvet Light Trap, Fall 1989 (CP)

Wed. April 28 Screening: Veronica Claire; The Hidden Room; Confessions of a Crime; Are You Afraid of the Dark?; Hey Dude; Clarissa Tells All

Thurs. April 29 Gendered Viewers, Gendered Networks
Robert H. Deming, "Kate and Allie: "New Women" and the Audience's Television Archive" (PS)
Eithne Johnson, "LIFETIME Television and Women: A Psychographic Space of Their Own," Work in Progress (CP)
5th Assignment: Cable Network Analysis

Tues. May 4 The Kid's Only Network
Tom Engelhardt, "The Shortcake Strategy" in Todd Gitlin (Ed.), Watching Television (New York: Pantheon, 1986).(CP)

Wed. May 5 Screening: Rush Limbaugh; Oprah; Selections from tabloid television programs

Thurs. May 6 Buying Community
Mimi White, "Watching the Girls Go Buy: Shop-At-Home Television," Tele- Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television (Chapel Hill: University of North Carlonia, 1992) (CP)
6th Assignment: Ratings Report

Week 14
Tues. May 10 Tabloid Television