"Recodings: Possibilities and Limitations in Commercial Television Representations of African American Culture” - by Herman Gray

Gray's paper is identifies dominant assumptions in commercial television’s representation of African American culture. He believes that programs of American commercial television views African American culture from the perspective of the white middle class experience. Thus, this gives people the outlook that African Americans are just copies of white culture. “Frank’s Place” is a short lived commercial television series about black life in America, depicting Frank Parrish in a black community of New Orleans. The series was developed as an attempt to rewrite and reposition African American culture and its black subjectivities in the industry.

“Frank’s Place” was a very unique show, as it required viewers to place themselves in the perspective of the black people in the series, in order to fully understand the story and the characters themselves. Due to its distinctive setting, it received great reviews from critics and industry members. But it was not as popular with the majority of the audience, thus was canceled by CBS in 1988. Though it was a short lived television series, it affected the representation of black Americans in the industry in a positive light. “Frank’s Place” challenged the generic boundaries of commercial television, and offered a new direction in representing aspects of black life in America. The understanding of the African American culture to truly grasp the feeling of the show assisted many into recognizing the black’s culture and sensibilities.

Network Television Timeline

Boddy, William. “Alternative Television in the United States”

In terms of alternative television in the United States, a sharpening debate has emerged around notions of alternative structures and modes of production for television, a debate which might usefully reflect on the history of independent television work in the U.S. The use of video in gallery installations, saw the introduction of half-inch portable video recording equipment in the U.S. which defined subsequent independent video production. This resulted in video makers from within and outside the art world created a growing production community which formed a bond which was greater than that between the contemporary Hollywood cinema and independent filmmakers in the U.S. Broadcast television rejected independent work on aesthetic, political and even technological grounds, creating a surprisingly close-knit community which took up the tasks not only of production, but also of distribution, exhibition, critical exegesis and publicity of the new work. As a result of this, an early video art show at a 57th Street gallery in New York City in 1969, led directly to the formation of Raindance Corporation. Raindance was a self- described "countercultural think-tank" that embraced video as an alternative form of cultural communication. The activities and discourses of the proclaimed 'video guerrillas' were initially visionary and at times grandiose, promoting storefront theatres, travelling video groups and schemes for electronic democracy via interactive cable, although some of the groups later became producers of video-verite documentaries for public television and of dramatic pilots for the commercial networks. A pronounced strain of technological euphoria and utopianism animated the early guerrilla television movement, and its rhetoric was at times more ecological than political. Most people think of something 'radical' as being political, but we they were not. At times the technological determinism of Guerrilla Television obliterates history and politics altogether in an inversion of social causality: 'Broadcast television is structurally unsound. Through this presentation, I plan to elaborate on the role of guerilla television, interactive television and cable and how they have become more influential over the years.

Cable Television and the Public Interest By: Patricia Aufderheide

In this article Patricia gave a perspective on cable television and how it may have helped or changed the community as a whole. Cable television is a channel made to raise questions of the public interest in telecommunications, it has become the primary delivery medium for television in a majority of American homes. The cable communications Policy Act was passed back in 1984 with few to none public participation, no cable operator agreed with this law and physically did not have the extra money to produce a cable television channel. When the law was first in effect it had many problems like bad enforcement, sloppy language, and confusion over the First Amendment rights. In this article Patricia also mentioned how “cable today has no thriving marketplace of ideas” meaning that what we see on television is always the same and ruled by advertising programs, what we really need is a diversity of sources and viewpoints about the different issues that needs to be raised in our public concern. The access cable is made to give the public news about the public and Patricia said that the access cable should not be measured with the amount of viewers but the ability to make a difference in the community, and should not be treated like any other American public television does. Access cable is used to broadcast government and educational channels such as city council meetings, school board meetings, local high school basketball games, religious programming or community billboard. This may sound like they did an OK job with such little support but throughout the time public access has been under assault in many ways. Cable companies and cities under financial pressure are both assaulting public access because the price to have the channel is way too high for them to afford but the law has been passed that they must provide that channel for their community. The access cable did exceptionally well for the lack of professional staff and the amount of assault they received, but at the end they still managed to hang on and pulled through the rough times because as we can see today there are still channels where local games and news are broadcasted.

Exam Review Questions

Discuss the evolution of the advertising form of American broadcasting, in particular the environment of American broadcasting between 1959-1971 citing examples from No Logo and Advertising and the End of the World and the Spy genre

Discuss the role of American nightly news and other forms of mainstream media during war-times, citing examples from Hearts and Minds (1974), and Ryan and Kellner’s article from the Film Reader

Discuss the evolution of American Public broadcasting and its contested role in American society, citing examples from the Anderson, and Kraidy articles, Sesame Street, and Eyes on the Prize

Explain the rise of cable television and public access television, citing examples from the Aufderheide and Boddy articles, and Paper Tiger Television