Measuring quality television.

I have read Newton Minow's famous speech, "Television and the Public Interest," (1) and I decided to assess how (or indeed, whether) the United States's broadcasting industry successfully responded to his challenge to improve the "vast wasteland" that was television in 1961. It is easy enough to insert television programming schedules into a computer and tabulate the number of hours dedicated to situation comedies, public affairs, drama, education, news, sports, etc. I could also perform a wide array of more granular content analyses, such as tabulating the number of acts of violence we see during prime-time viewing, or describing the number of beer commercials aired during weekend sports programming, or specifying the percentage of Latinos in desirable professional roles in dramas. Finally, I could discuss the enormous amount of specialized programming now available via terrestrial and satellite multi-channel networks. Empirically, we can learn a lot about how television has changed since 1961.

So I did all this. Along with some trusted colleagues, I spent the past six months in computer and media laboratories (usually wearing a white lab coat) exhaustively measuring and assessing America's television output since 1961. We scanned and coded millions of programming hours of television, including advertisements and public service announcements. My team employed a complex computer algorithm to study this material, factoring in America's broad diversity, yet also accounting for certain common social values. Also, we were able to input 1500 audience personality prototypes to ensure that even idiosyncratic viewers' experiences were not overlooked. Moreover, we particularly focused on certain social ills (violence, low educational attainment, etc.) for which everyone knows the media are responsible. Finally, unlike those other media studies you will no doubt read, my team was able to use live test subjects to account for remote-control channel surfing behavior and late-night semi-conscious viewing habits.

Based on my research, I conclude that American television slowly improved during the 1960s after Minow's speech, eventually crossing from a "vast wasteland" to a "lush rainforest" in late 1972, with the debut of The Waltons; crossing briefly back into the "vast wasteland" during portions of 1983-84 (due mostly to nauseating televised displays of American narcissism during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics). Since 1984, however, television has made a steady climb into the lush, teeming tropics, although data for the surprisingly poor period of 2001-02 (The Bachelor?) has not yet been fully tabulated. So, based on my research, I have cracked the mysteries of American television and firmly established the quality levels that viewers do or do not experience. Further details of my findings will be published in the near future, replete with numerous charts and tables. (2) Until then, you should just trust me because I'm an expert, with solid credentials.

Something tells me that I have not convinced you. If you remain skeptical about my findings, then maybe you will be sympathetic to other concerns I have. When Newton Minow suggested that television was a vast wasteland, that was really a comparison, wasn't it? It was a comparison to something "lush," something teeming with diversity and life--a rainforest springs to mind as the obvious comparison. His comparison could have been with another media form, such as the movies or the book industry, but I think a fair reading of his speech is that it was a comparison to what television could be. The challenge Minow made was for broadcasters to live up to the promise of television. Similar sentiments were expressed in the earlier days of television; (3) we want the "best" out of our new media.

It is, perhaps, a natural human tendency to attempt to ordinally rank things we encounter. In television, we constantly specify the quality of programming. We have numerous award ceremonies covering television quality, such as the Emmys or the Golden Globes. These award ceremonies are usually televised, and have as their central premise the concept that the best comedy series or the best miniseries is capable of being specified. For most of these awards, especially the most prestigious awards, the viewer usually does not select the winner. The winner is typically selected by "experts," often called "academy members" or something similarly important-sounding. We typically don't trust the average viewer. (4) If we did, we would simply award the best miniseries award to the miniseries that garnered the highest audience share, or commanded the highest advertising rates. But no, we leave those quality decisions to experts. Similar to a critic of modern art masterpieces, they apparently can sniff out important elements of quality television that elude the average viewer. Through their awards, the experts suggest that, during a particular year (or perhaps every year) The West Wing was of a higher quality than The District. These same experts will also often criticize networks that cancel a particular show for low ratings, when that show is otherwise a critical success, emblematic of the "best" in television.

But we have a media measurement problem--a significant one. Compare our ordinal ranking of television programming to measurements in the physical sciences. If a radio station reports the outside temperature as 20 degrees Fahrenheit, that measurement has meaning to me because I am familiar with the exact nature of the measurement intervals for temperature. Fahrenheit is an interval scale, and each unit higher or lower expresses the same difference in value. Our study of the media is not similar. The content of a television program cannot be reliably measured in any precise manner. Sadly, there is no Fahrenheit scale for television. For example, while we can perhaps label a program "violent" because it depicts two killings in one program, the precise interval/ratio common in the physical sciences is missing: It is not necessarily tree that a program depicting two killings is twice as violent as a program that depicts one killing. Modern media studies generally tell us that each viewer contextualizes media content. So, to return to my example, if our media-measurement abilities were translated to temperature, about the most we could say would be that it would be "cold" today--and maybe not everyone would agree! (5)

Examples abound, but the important point is this: There is no common measurement scheme we can employ whereby our society can agree on televised levels of violence or sex; (6) educational content; diversity; humor; newsworthiness and fairness, etc. So, what do we do to ameliorate our measurement problem? We use proxies. We intellectually create broad genres of programming. Policymakers and the public alike assign social values to those genres, and to the shows within those genres. These social values, however, often clash. So, if we can empirically establish that the average amount of public-affairs programming aired during prime time has increased since 1961, is that a good thing? Is television better because of that development? I'm not sure. I suppose it depends on whether you like public-affairs programming. Certainly there are no Westerns aired during prime time these days. Apparently there were too many, at least from Minow's perspective, in 1961. I would like to see more Westerns, but that is just my opinion.

If you read Minow's speech, you will note that he does not refer to the measurement scale he employed to assign levels of quality to the genres mentioned therein, including "formula comedies about totally unbelievable families." (7) No such measurement scales exist. Rupert Murdoch, in his seminal 1989 MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, questioned what we mean by "quality television." He famously concluded that, for Britain, what passed for quality television was simply that programming which was "a reflection of the values of the narrow elite which controls it and which has always thought that its tastes are synonymous with quality." (8) Is the same true for America? Is our cultural elites' assignment of certain "higher" social values for some shows, such as Nightline, and "lower" social values for other shows, such as Late Show with David Letterman, rational? (9) And who decides?

If no reliable measurement criteria for quality television exists, was it improper for Minow to make his case for a particular type of "quality" television--a case he makes to this day? Certainly not; that was his role and nothing in his tenure overstepped the boundaries set by Congress. But we are a democracy, with guaranteed rights to free speech, so the role of the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") in determining media quality should be kept in perspective. Moreover, despite all of its experience and expertise, there is no robust social science ability at the FCC that is capable of ascertaining what is quality television. I know the agency well--it has many brilliant lawyers, engineers, and economists, but very few, if any, cultural historians, ethnographers, child psychologists, media effects researchers, sociologists, etc. Media quality is an area of study largely left abandoned by the FCC. Even Michael Copps, perhaps the most outspoken member of the current Commission with respect to media quality issues, has no discernible record of study or scholarship in these areas. Copps's views are well-publicized certainly, but should they be accorded any more legitimacy than mine ... or yours?

Consider the following comparison to the role of the FCC in ensuring and promoting quality television. Most Americans would not know the identity of Tessa Jowell, but in the United Kingdom, she plays a critical role in establishing the "quality" of television programming. Jowell serves as the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She, among other people in the U.K. government, oversees the British Broadcasting Corp. ("BBC"), a public corporation that controls a commanding 38.4% of the British television marketplace, and 50.2% of the radio marketplace, (10) Stunningly, according to the BBC, the average person in the U.K. spends more than a fifth of his or her leisure time listening to or watching the BBC. (11) So, Tessa Jowell has a considerable amount of influence on British television. While there exists a certain degree of editorial independence for the BBC, Jowell nevertheless has a wide range of formal and informal powers to influence the BBC's programming, especially with regard to new business ventures, such as digital television. (12)

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