WEBVTT - Media Madness: TV Challenges Film 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.520 How Stuff Works. Hey thereon Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.200 your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with How 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.840 Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and love all Things tech. 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:26.799 And in a previous episode just not too long ago, 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:30.720 I traced the journey of recorded audio and film from 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:34.879 early commercial efforts up to about nineteen fifty when a 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.960 couple of really big things were happening. So in the 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.839 film industry around the studio system model was broken up 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.720 by the US government because it was monopolistic type of structure. 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.280 Up to that point, movie studios had had kind of 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.720 a death grip on the entire process of producing movies. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.320 They had everything from exclusive contracts with talent and directors 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:03.120 and writers, to owning film processing facilities to owning chains 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.679 of movie theaters, so they owned the means of production, 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.400 of distribution, and exhibition, and the studios were able to 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.560 leverage their power through block booking to force independent theater 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.600 owners to agree to screen mediocre films in order to 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.640 get access to the popular movies that people actually wanted 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:23.039 to see. So they say, oh, if you want big 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:25.880 tent pole picture, A you're gonna have to take this 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:30.560 other dozen of you know, mediocre westerns as well. But 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.319 then the Supreme Court waded in and brought all that 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.640 to an end. Now, in the recording industry, the emergence 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.840 of the thirty three and a third and forty five 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:43.399 RPM records meant that the venerable seventy eight RBM format 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.240 was no longer the only game in town, and micro 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:50.120 grooves allowed recording studios to fit more audio on each 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:52.960 side of a record, so that gave birth to the 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.000 long playing album and the forty five single, both of 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:58.600 which would shape the way music would evolve as well 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.280 as how consumers would access music. That was kind of 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.000 what I ended up talking about in the last one. 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.160 One other thing I did touch upon in the last 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.240 episode was how television was just starting to catch on 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.040 around that same time. Now, technically TV had been around 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.080 in one form or another, mostly in the research and 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.000 development stage, for a couple of decades, but due to 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.200 lots of other things like the Great Depression and World 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:29.160 War Two, the rollout of television really didn't get started 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.960 in earnest until the late forties and early fifties. TV 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.120 would play a huge role in our relationship with media 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:38.960 and how we access it. Now, it's do a quick 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.600 jump back to talk about the movie going experience and 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.440 how that changed over time. So we're gonna rewind just 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.520 a bit to go into more of a personal experience 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.519 kind of of of concepts. So, starting around nineteen ten, 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:59.280 film studios began to produce newsreels in addition to producing 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.560 shorts and features. So these were sort of a predecessor 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.200 to television news programs that would follow a few decades later. 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.160 A newsreel would typically contain numerous stories, ranging from current 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.120 affairs to some rather self serving segments about the entertainment industry. 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.360 So if you were at a Universal owned theater, you 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.440 would likely be seeing some coverage of Universal themed events 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.120 and and movie premieres and that sort of thing. A 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.960 newsreel and a cartoon or two might serve as the 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.320 entertainment before a feature film or maybe even a short film. 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.200 In fact, back in the day, this is where animated 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.680 cartoons really got their start. When Disney started up his 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.040 animation studio, the performance venue for the company's work was 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.000 in theaters. There were no televisions at that point, at 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.960 least not outside those prototype labs. And a few backyard experiments. 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:50.360 So the early days of Mickey Mouse and other famous 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:54.440 vintage cartoons were geared towards a theatrical release. You would 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.000 go to a movie theater to see them, So in 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.880 some cities, theater owners would actually open up a dead 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.480 hated theater just to run newsreels and cartoons all day 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.120 long and no feature films at all, so that customers 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:07.920 could just pay an admission and then drop in to 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.880 catch up on some news, maybe watch a couple of shorts, 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.000 and then leave whenever they wanted. The news reel served 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.960 as a model for documentary films as well as how 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.599 television would first tackle covering the news several decades later. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.719 Many studios produced newsreels well into the nineteen fifties, but 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.040 by the nineteen sixties the practice would come to an 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.960 end of the United States due to television's rise in 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.640 popularity and the shift from film coverage to TV coverage 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:35.760 of news events. This is probably a good time for 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:37.680 me to mention a lot of what I'm going to 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.200 talk about specifically in these episodes has to do with 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.919 the United States. Uh. That's not to say that important 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.119 things in media weren't happening elsewhere. They absolutely were. In fact, 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.400 the early days of the film industry. The whole film 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:56.320 industry owes a lot to French entrepreneurs and innovators and inventors, 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.440 but we're largely concentrating on what happened in the US 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.800 because a lot of the business practices and technological developments 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.960 that happened in the States would end up having massive 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.040 impact across the world. Now, before television really got an 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.919 established foothold in homes, going to the movies for a 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.039 lot of families was essentially a weekly event, sometimes more 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:20.200 than once a week. You would go to the film 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.480 the movies, and along with newspapers and radio, it was 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.680 how you could find out about news events. You could 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.599 see the last in short films and animation. Short films 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.960 gave rise to the establishment of some early franchises like 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.920 Our Gang, which later on was called The Little Rascals. 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:40.080 Laurel and Hardy got uh famous through short films that 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.840 were shown in front of features. They both Laurel and 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.839 Hardy had both been in lots of movies prior to 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.440 being paired together, but they really found fame as the 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.159 comedy duo. It also helped vaudeville acts like the Three 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.440 Stooges come from the stage to the screen, and so 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:02.160 movie studios had incredible incentives to produce an enormous amount 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.200 of material to keep tempting people back into the theaters 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:09.039 because they were going multiple times a week sometimes, So 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.960 some of these movie studios became sort of content farms. 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.640 They were just churning out content. They produce good movies. 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:19.920 There were a lot of opportunities for filmmakers to get 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.360 movies made, but they also just turned out a lot 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.880 of junk because they needed to fill up all that time. 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.360 But it worked. At the height of the Golden Age 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:32.320 of cinema, more than eighty million Americans were going to 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.119 the movies at least once per week. And this wasn't 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.560 the era of the blockbuster either. This wasn't when people 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:41.880 would go back to see the same movie over and over. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.320 You weren't likely to have the same picture playing in 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.400 a theater for months on end. But again, television would 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.000 change all of that and much of the material that 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.360 has been produced specifically for theaters which shift over to 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:58.560 TV eventually. Now I bring this up to illustrate how society, entertainment, 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:02.000 and technology were of folving together over time, and it 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:06.240 was changing how we access information or entertainment. And here 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.800 we see a shift going from a centralized location, namely 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.480 a movie theater, to accessing the information at home using 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.840 radio and television. Of course, that means we need to 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.040 talk about radio too. That was still a really big 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.200 thing going on in these days, and and so you 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:27.040 could access news through different radio stations. But the power 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.920 of visuals is a very compelling one for a lot 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.680 of people, and that's what film and TV were able 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.080 to capitalize on. So you had these three prongs all 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:37.920 existing at the same time, and of course they all 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.560 still exist today, and a lot of radio shows and 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.800 radio studios would get directly involved with producing content for television. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.400 In the United States, the big networks of NBC, CBS, 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:53.560 and ABC all started as radio networks that more or 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:58.080 less quickly moved into television production once it was clear 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.360 that TV was viable. That viability had to wait until 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:03.920 the end of World War two. It just wasn't really 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.760 possible to create a new industry based off a novel technology. 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.239 During the years of the war, governments around the world 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.760 were imposing rationing on various materials, so companies couldn't produce televisions. 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:17.880 They couldn't get the raw materials needed to make the 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:22.119 TVs really until after peace was declared. And I should 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.920 also talk about the business side of media for a bit, 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.360 because that's a very important component to all of this. 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.520 The technology obviously enables media, but the business is what 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:37.600 supports it. Like without the business, there's no there's no media, 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:39.960 there's no nothing for you to go out and see 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.319 because something has to pay for all of that. Now 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.160 I've covered the business side with film. You know, the 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.720 film studios were making money by essentially owning the whole 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.120 production pipeline and selling blocks of films to theaters, as 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:53.760 well as taking a share of the box office at 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:58.320 least until and then the box office theater relationship was 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:03.079 still important but had changed dramatically. But the movie business 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.439 was a really profitable business for the successful studios at least, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.200 and block booking meant a studio could make money even 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:11.920 from a real stinker of a movie, because again, theater 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.760 owners had no choice but to accept those stinkers if 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:16.960 they also wanted to get the good stuff. But what 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.400 about radio and television. How did they make money? Well, 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:22.520 let's start with radio. Now, back in the very very 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.600 early days of radio, in the wake of World War One, 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.360 there was no radio advertising. So how do you make 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:31.880 money with a radio station, assuming you weren't in the 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.600 business of communicating wireless telegrams across the country and acting 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.959 like a communication system. Well, primarily you did it by 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.640 also being in the business of selling radio sets. So, 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.520 in other words, you weren't producing radio programs to make 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:49.120 money directly. You were producing radio programs to create a 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.360 business case to convince customers to buy a radio set. 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:54.720 No one's gonna buy a radio if there's nothing to 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:58.720 listen to, So they the companies that were trying to 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.840 sell radios, whether they were manufacturers or retailers, would create 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.320 radio stations in order to create the demand for the 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.680 product they were trying to sell. There were a lot 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.600 of department stores in the United States that sold radio 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:14.720 sets and also owned a radio broadcast station. Sometimes it 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:16.960 was a pretty small one that had a very limited range, 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:19.520 but that was how they convinced people to buy radio sets. 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.600 But there is a big problem with this particular model, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.400 and you've probably already spotted it. Eventually you're gonna hit 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:30.640 market saturation, which means everyone who can afford a radio 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.640 has one already, and it's pretty darn hard to convince 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.320 someone to upgrade their radio set if they're old, one 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.280 works just fine. Also, keep in mind that radios were 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.840 really expensive luxuries when they first debuted. They were not cheap. 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.360 You couldn't just go out and buy one for ten bucks. 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:50.520 They were sometimes hundreds of dollars. And then in August 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.960 nineteen two everything changed, because that's when a New York 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.080 radio station with the station I D of w e 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.960 A F aired the for paid commercial and it was 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:06.319 for the Hawthorne Court apartments in Jackson Heights. It was 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.480 an innovative approach for the era. A radio station would 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:14.079 charge people or company's money and in return, those entities 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:16.920 would get air time on the radio. So the more 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.480 time you wanted, the more you had to pay. The 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.200 company running w e A F was at the time 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:24.839 A T and T, and A T and T had 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.360 already established the same sort of concept. They applied it 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:31.440 to long distance phone calls. You guys might not remember this, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.080 and the older ones of us remember quite well, but 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.040 back in the old days, you had to pay for 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.679 long distance calls, and the amount you paid would depend 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:41.760 upon how long you're on the phone, and we still 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.200 sometimes see this with many providers when it comes to 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:46.160 international calls. At least, if you happen to be the 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.079 one traveling internationally, then you want to use a cell 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.720 phone on our partnered service. But these days you don't 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.840 really hear about paid long distance that much any But 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:57.959 in the day that that was true, and the longer 0:11:58.000 --> 0:11:59.679 you stay on the phone, the more you would owe 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.240 the phone company. Well, this was the same idea, but 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.200 applied to radio stations. The W E a F model 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.960 would spread far and wide, with other radio stations following suit. Now, 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:14.600 this in turn created a new need in the industry. 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.440 Stations needed to get an idea about how many people 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:23.040 were tuning into their programs, because the more people that listened, 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.760 the more valuable that block of programming would be. Right, 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.960 and then the more money a station could charge for airtime. 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.520 The station could say, well, if you want to air 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:35.960 a commercial during this block of programming, we know that 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:38.960 that's our most popular block, and therefore there's a premium 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:41.920 on running ads there. But on the flip side, your 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.880 ad will reach way more people than if you chose 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.040 to to advertise during one of these less popular blocks 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.000 of programming. You know, that's a basic idea, but first 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.520 you have to measure that. You have to get those metrics. 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.120 So that created a new industry. It allowed companies like 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:01.000 Nielsen to step in and measure radio consumption. The Nielsen 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.880 Company had been in the business of retail and consumer 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.680 studies for more than a decade when in nineteen thirty 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.959 six it purchased the rights to a device called the autometer. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.360 And an autometer would allow like if it's connected to 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.240 a radio, it would actually record when that radio was on, 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:20.880 so when it was powered on, and it would also 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.319 register what station the radio had been tuned to. So 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.880 Nielsen would use that to establish a radio index, and 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:32.280 Nielsen could provide information to radio stations and let them 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.800 know about which programs were the most popular, usually extrapolating 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.360 the data from their their findings, so they would say 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.480 that one radio would represent a certain percentage of radios 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.840 for the entire region. They wouldn't have full granular detail 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.120 of every single radio within a given area, so they'd 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:53.960 have to kind of you know, there's some guestimation that 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.880 happens with this, but those in charge of radio programming 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:00.800 could then use that information and they could experiment. They 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.520 could move programs around and try to find out which 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.680 time slots worked best for different types of shows and 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.439 thus maximize their effect You know, you might find out 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:12.080 that one program works pretty well in the morning, but 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.679 it tanks in the afternoon, so it tells you, well, 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:17.000 we want to shift that to the morning to maximize 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.960 its effectiveness. Then they could turn things over to the 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:23.040 sales side of the business, and the sales team could 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.640 determine what the best advertising rates they could use that 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:30.400 the market would support for those different programs. In addition 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.480 to running ads during or between programs, radio shows also 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:36.560 experimented with something that you'll hear in a lot of 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.200 podcasts and also online video series, and that's sponsored content. 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.120 In the early days of radio, station owners were trying 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:45.880 all sorts of different ways to incorporate ads without making 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:49.280 the audience so irritated that they stopped listening, something we 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.080 in the podcasting world still deal with today. So some 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.840 shows were sponsored by a company outright and at the 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.800 top of the show, and maybe during station identification breaks, 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.640 you would hear someone's saying the company's name, like this 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.160 brought to you by such and such, and sometimes it 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.800 would be associated with an entire block of programming, like 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.720 you might have the Texico Star Theater, and some radio 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.640 shows would actually work in references to sponsors within the 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.200 program itself, though it is far more common to hear 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.560 an ad before, after, or in the break of a program. 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.080 Turns out a lot of people get a little stevie 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.120 if you try to work and add into the content 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:30.120 of a program itself. The ads of radio would set 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.800 the ground for similar ads on television decades later, and 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.320 if you had a radio or later a television, you 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.760 could access all of the programming in the broadcast range 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.120 for free. In other words, if your antenna could pick 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.120 it up, you could watch it. There are no scrambled 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.440 channels or anything like that for as far as entertainment goes, 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.680 and all you had to do in return was watch 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:52.960 or listen to a few ads. Of course, this was 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:56.320 after you had already ponied up the cash of that 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.000 was required to actually buy the radio or television set 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:01.720 in the first place, which was quite a bit of money. 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.080 In the early days. We got a lot more to 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:07.479 talk about as far as the business, tech and consumption 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.480 of media is concerned, but first, let's take a quick 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:20.600 break to think our sponsor. Okay, So now we've got 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.040 the business of film, radio, and TV in the early 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:27.400 days covered. As television emerged after World War Two, it 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:30.800 was forcing the film industry to change. The birth of 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.160 TV news would kill off news reels for the most part, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.240 but that was just one small way that DV was 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.360 causing waves, and television was helped by another trend, a 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:44.240 move to the suburbs. So there were a combination of 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.080 external forces that changed the economic status of lots of 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:54.120 Americans in the years following the First World War. So 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.080 let's walk through those because all of these are important 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.840 for us to understand why things happened the way they did, 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:04.359 and in turn, the way the economic shift happened shape 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.560 the way media would change, and it shaped the way 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.679 we would consume media. So all of these fit together. 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.879 It's a real big picture kind of approach. So you 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.240 had the Great Depression, which was essentially twenty to thirty nine, 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.439 and that had forced a lot of people around the world, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.680 not just in the United States, to do the best 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:26.919 they could to save every penny possible because it was 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.480 a very uncertain economic world out there and everyone was 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:36.240 terrified of being destitute, and lots of people were struggling 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.800 trying to make ends meet during that that decade. So 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:45.280 that had really instilled a sense of responsibility with money 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.600 to the point where people were, you know, sitting on 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.840 money that they wouldn't spend because they felt that they 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.200 were going to need it later. Then you had World 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.600 War Two that happened that ended up making a big 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.679 industrial boom because obviously the to support the war effort, 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:06.359 lots of factories would convert over to working on military 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.680 projects and ended up hiring a lot of people, many 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.280 women for example, in order to come in and fulfill 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:15.800 those needs while a lot of men were off to 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:19.200 fight the war. The soldiers returning home from World War 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.240 Two did so to families that had a little bit 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.560 of a nest egg because the women had been working 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.720 while the men were gone. And people have been saving 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.320 since the Great Depression, So now you had some disposable 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.400 income going on. And one of the big purchases families 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:37.040 made in the following years, you know, after World War Two, 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.119 were homes out in the suburbs. The suburban population in 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.639 the United States grew by forty three percent between the 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:48.520 year's nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty three, and it 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.600 was helped in large part by the Servicemen's Readjustment Act 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:56.040 of nineteen forty four, better known as the g I Bill, 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.160 and the g I Bill provided benefits to World War 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:04.119 Two veterans that those benefits included low cost mortgages and 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:09.400 one year of unemployment compensation, among many other benefits. At least, 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:12.480 if you happen to be white, you would get those benefits. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.840 Black veterans found it much more difficult to get access 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.120 to the benefits their white counterparts parts were getting. They 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:23.960 were completely uh owed those benefits they were they were 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.080 you know, so they met all the requirements to get them. 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:33.640 But the the distribution of benefits was largely a local concern, 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.280 not a federal concern, and a lot of local governments 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.879 were not so concerned about granting those benefits out to 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.320 non white veterans. Now, there's a lot to unpack there, 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:50.320 and obviously the story goes much much more deeply than that, 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:54.119 but it does lead into some very important discussions about 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.560 social movements in general. And it's probably a topic for 0:19:57.680 --> 0:19:59.720 stuff you missed in history class. But I want to 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.600 a knowledge that the social structure of the time didn't 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.440 account for or keyter to a sizeable part of the population. 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.240 We're talking ten or so of the population at the time. 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.680 That's that's significant. Uh So when I start talking about 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:18.000 people having disposable income and everything, I'm really talking primarily 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.080 about white families because they were the ones who were 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:24.240 able to take advantage of this government program more in 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:29.800 far greater numbers and percentages than non white uh families. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.600 So the suburb suburbs were very different from cities. Right. 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.480 You were no longer living in a dense urban environment. 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.160 You had uh this larger population living further out from 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.320 the infrastructure of urban areas. So suburbs rarely had access 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:50.840 to mass transportation. Theaters were almost exclusively in cities, so 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:53.919 getting to a theater was no longer as convenient for 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.239 a lot of Americans. In fact, a lot of the 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.199 big movie houses, the big classic movie houses that had 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.240 been built in the twenties, thirties and forties, started to 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:07.240 close around this time because there were fewer people to 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.480 fill them out. They people were out in the suburbs, 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.600 not in the cities. So television was really in a 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.640 good place and was poised to help fill the gap. 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.800 People still wanted entertainment, but they didn't want to necessarily 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.120 have to leave their home, travel for a significant amount 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:25.120 of time to get to a movie theater and then 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:28.120 go see a film. Uh television mint you could get 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:32.280 that entertainment right in your own home, at least some entertainment, 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:34.320 not exactly the same stuff that was in the theaters. 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:38.320 Movie studios we're seeing profits drop as more people moved 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.680 away from urban centers. Meanwhile, starting in nine, you had 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:47.080 several major television networks that began to broadcast a full 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:51.200 schedule during prime time viewing hours, and the movie studios 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.959 had really two choices. They could try to beat them, 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.879 or they could try to join them. So programs like 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.440 I Love Lucy were gathering a pretty big audience. In fact, 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:04.000 I Love Lucy would be ranked the number one show 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.280 in popularity for four out of its first six seasons, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.240 and color television was coming up pretty soon as well, 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.800 so the movie studios decided to join them, and soon 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:19.560 studios were buying up television production and broadcast studios, so 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.720 movie they were trying to do for the TV industry 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:25.520 what they had already done for the film industry. And 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:29.320 then the Supreme Court decision came in and broke up 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.919 the movie studios, and essentially they also said, hey, you 0:22:33.000 --> 0:22:35.480 can't do to TV what you did to film. In fact, 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:37.320 we're gonna reverse some of what you've done to the 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:39.959 film industry and we're gonna prevent you from doing that 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.639 with the television industry. The FCC could deny companies a 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:47.200 TV broadcast license if those companies have been found guilty 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:51.040