Media: We Get the Message

Most of us recently witnessed the State of the Union address. And everyone who watched has formed their own opinion of it, pro or con, largely depending on how the particular issues of the day affect them individually. But if you are undecided on how you feel about this year’s address, there is no shortage of places to go to get an opinion.

Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Chris Matthews among many others will gladly tell you how you feel about the news. And if you want a second opinion, you can tune in the next day and they’ll tell you again.

Fair and balanced? Perhaps. It often depends on who’s telling the story. There are twenty-four hours of programming for networks to fill and only so many ways to explain the big stories of the day.

The Tiger Woods story, John Edwards, and the late night talk show battles are all media favorites. I’m actually thankful the Vikings didn’t get into the Super Bowl because I wouldn’t have been able to stand two weeks of Brett Favre’s baby and childhood pictures.

Does the media crave sensationalism? They might. But actually they are just filling time. I am old enough to harken back to an earlier time, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and there were only three original networks and a few independent stations. These stations didn’t stay on the airwaves a full twenty-four hours.

Stations would sign off the air after The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or the Late Movie. Viewers would hear network information, the Star Spangled Banner, and then see a test pattern for about four hours until the network returned to the airwaves around 6 AM.

One of the test patterns gained a level of notoriety. It was the Indian Head black and white test pattern, introduced by RCA of Harrison, New Jersey in 1939. The Indian Head pattern eventually disappeared in the late 1970s. This pattern was actually more entertaining to watch than “The Jersey Shore”, but we’ll overlook that for now.

While the networks were signing off, they occasionally showed something known as the “Seal of Good Practice.” It was a slogan which indicated a commitment to quality. Honest.

This seal indicated the network’s compliance with the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, established in 1951 by the National Association of Broadcasters.

The code prohibited profanity on television, illicit sex, drunkenness and addiction, horror, and the negative portrayal of law enforcement officials. Television performers needed to be within the “bounds of decency,” and news reporting was to be “factual, fair, and without bias.”

The Seal of Good Practice was displayed during the closing credits of most shows through the early 1970s. The Code of Practices was suspended in the early 1980s after receiving pressure from broadcasters.

In the South Jersey area, back in 1986 WPHL-TV 17 was known as “The Great Entertainer.” And Channel 29 operated as WTAF-TV standing for Taft Broadcasting before they joined Fox.

Then in October 2008, Fox accommodated Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s purchase of thirty minutes of television air time at 8:00 PM by pushing back the time of World Series Game number six. The other major networks except ABC accepted Obama’s broadcast, and overall it reached 33.55 million viewers.

It’s a bit of a different era nowadays, and today viewers are concerned with a Presidential address will interrupt “Lost” or a “Charlie Brown Christmas”. But Obama’s pitch to the nation was likely to have had a large effect on his success in gaining the presidency. It was the first such purchase of airtime by a presidential candidate since rich eccentric Ross Perot spoke on Election Day eve in November 1996.

The governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, gave the rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Later everyone else networks could fit into twenty-four hours gave their own. The first rebuttal to an address came in 1966 in a studio which had no audience. Then in 1970 the Democrats turned their response into a television program.

During this particular era, local news programming would occur at 6 PM, and later national news at 6:30. News generally runs for two hours on our local networks today, airing anywhere between 4 and 7 PM. Promos in between broadcasts tell us to “stay tuned” for more on a major story, or to find out whether or not the area will receive snow. We can’t tell you right now. Stay with us at 6.

Later in prime time, strong personalities like Olbermann and O’Reilly tend to become the focus of their programs rather than the major issues of the day which need to be discussed rationally.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make the attempt to play referee between the dueling heads. They receive more latitude than most, because there are no ground rules in comedy. Just keep it decent and offend everyone equally.

I must admit that I could not have researched some of this information that old age and fogeyism has allowed me to forget without the advancement of the Internet. But I’d say a bombardment of information on television is helping much of the US population to become angry and lose patience. Especially if they are watching more television because they are unemployed.

I guess we’ll have to tune in to MSN or Fox to have them decide for us whether that anger is justified. Personally, I’d rather read the newspaper.