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History of Broadcasting: Review Questions

Midterm Exam

The in-class midterm exam covers the readings and lectures from the first half of the course. Use the review questions and the Key terms below to study for the exam.

As this exam is subjective, your score will be based on how well you explain your response and demonstrate your understanding of the course material, more than providing the “correct answer.”

The exam consists of the following types of questions:

Identification

In two-to-three sentences, identify the term and describe its significance for the history of radio broadcasting. Eight questions, five points each.

For example:

Jack Benny
Jack Benny was a vaudevillian comedian who transitioned to radio in the 1930s. His program was initially sponsored by Canada Dry on NBC, but he would move to CBS in the latter half of the decade. He would portray a penny-pinching cheapskate.

Short answer

Answer the question with a one-paragraph response, about four-to-five sentences in length. Three questions, twenty points each.

For example:

Why did both left-wing and conservative critics distrust radio as a mass cultural form?
Radio as a mass cultural form emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century. It was met with resistance due to two cultural trends at this time: progressivism and nativism. Progressives worried that radio as a mass medium would deceive its audience and promote commercialism over education. Nativists were concerned that radio would undermine national purity as radio brought voices from afar and new cultures. The two would pressure radio regulation and the broadcast industry throughout radio’s formative years.

Radio, 1880–1919

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What factors does the Great Man version of broadcasting history ignore?
  2. Describe some of the major demographic changes the United States experienced between 1880 and 1920?
  3. How did nativist movements regard newly arrived immigrants at the turn of the 20th century?
  4. How did progressives regard forms of mass culture and popular media, such as motion pictures and mass-produced print?
  5. Why did vaudeville as a popular form of entertainment end in the 1930s?
  6. What did the amateur radio operators of the 1910s contribute to our conception of broadcasting?

Key Terms: Radio, 1880–1919

Radio, 1919–1926

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. How did the immigration acts of the early twentieth century Arayanize the United States?
  2. How did the Harlem Renaissance help usher in the Jazz Age in the 1920s?
  3. How did the fear of fragmentation lead to a boom for consumerist and media industries in the years, 1926–40?
  4. Why did distrust of foreign interests after World War I lead to the formation of the Radio Corporation of America?
  5. What were the companies that were part of the RCA patent pool?
  6. How did the establishment of Class B stations in 1922 help wealthier and more established organizations maintain supremacy in early radio broadcasting?
  7. What were the three recommendations arising from the 1922 Radio Conference?
  8. Explain how the Radio Act of 1927 established the concepts of quality programming, public interest, content regulation, and private ownership of broadcasting?
  9. How does a radio network differ from a series of separate individual radio stations?
  10. What radio innovation did the National Carbon Company pioneer in 1923?
  11. How did RCA start the first radio network?
  12. What four kinds of unity did radio offer, according to Michele Hilmes?
  13. What system of broadcasting did the United States ultimately select after years of debated in 1919–1926?

Key Terms: Radio, 1919–1926

Radio as Industry, 1926–1940

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What were some of the effects of the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933?
  2. How did the easy relationship between government and industry inform what Michele Hilmes calls the “Progressive Compromise?”
  3. What is the difference between a “general interest” and a “propaganda” station? Which did the Federal Radio Commission prefer?
  4. What were some ways that Roosevelt’s FCC challenged the commercial monopoly of the broadcast radio?
  5. How did frustration with the de facto monopoly of NBC lead to the founding of CBS in the late 1920s?
  6. What was the “Paley Plan” and how did it help CBS compete against NBC’s networks?
  7. What network emerged from four powerful independent stations in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit? How did this network compete against CBS and the NBC networks?
  8. What three factors led to the center of radio production away from networks to the sponsors?
  9. What was the difference between daytime and nighttime programming?
  10. If the radio networks had lost most control over programming production, what roles did they keep?

Key Terms: Radio as Industry, 1926–1940

Radio as Popular Culture, 1926–1940

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. How did radio take advantage of moving to Hollywood between 1926–1940?
  2. How did the years 1926–1940 spell the end of vaudeville? How did radio keep it alive?
  3. How did the music industry take to radio “like a duck to water,” according to Michele Hilmes?
  4. How did trial of the Lindbergh baby kidnapper provoke a crisis in press-radio relations?
  5. What American ethnic groups did radio represent as “different” in the years 1926–1940?
  6. Why did radio prefer seriality for its programming?
  7. How did the radio feature dramatize news stories?
  8. Why did the “War of the Worlds” broadcast in 1938 induce panic among its listeners?
  9. Why did radio use the daytime daypart to schedule programming for women?
  10. What innovations did daytime talk programs bring to radio?
  11. Why did both left-wing and conservative critics distrust radio as a mass cultural form?

Key Terms: Radio as Popular Culture, 1926–1940

Radio, 1940–1945

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What were some events that led to World War II?
  2. What led to the US to declare war on Japan, Germany, and Italy and join World War II?
  3. What were some ways that radio helped mobilize during the war effort?
  4. How did radio build morale during the war years?
  5. What was the aim of the program We Hold These Truths?
  6. Compare these three ways of measuring radio audiences used between 1930 and 1960: telephone recall method, telephone coincidental method, and Arbitron’s audimeter. Why were these necessary?
  7. What was a unifying concern among communication researchers studying radio in the 1930s and 1940s?
  8. Although the government did not take control of broadcasting, how did the US government use radio during the war years?
  9. What were some changes that radio news underwent during the war years?
  10. How did American Broadcasting Company come to be in the early 1940s?
  11. What two parties waged a spectrum battle over the use of FM radio technology in the 1930s and 1940s?
  12. What television system, between RCA’s black-and-white VHF CBS’s color UHF, did the FCC approve for US television in 1945? Why?

Key Terms: Radio, 1940–1945

Final Exam

The in-class final exam covers the readings and lectures from the second half of the course, after the midterm exam. Use the review questions and the Key terms below to study for the exam.

As this exam is subjective, your score will be based on how well you explain your response and demonstrate your understanding of the course material, more than providing the “correct answer.”

The exam will consist of the following types of questions:

Identification

In two-to-three sentences, identify the term and describe its significance for the history of television. Eight questions, five points each.

For example:

Whorehouse Era
The “whorehouse era” refers to the period in the 1950s when the FCC would consistently adopt policies and grant judgements in favor of the broadcast industry. The period was personified by the Chairman John Doerfer who was asked to resign after the discovery of receiving gifts and favors from the television industry. The period would end with the inauguration of US President Kennedy and his appointment of Newton Minow as the new FCC chairman.

Short Answer

Answer the question with a one-paragraph response, about four-to-five sentences in length. Three questions, twenty points each.

For example:

What three alternatives to broadcast network TV emerged in 1960s and 1970s?
Although the 1960s and 1970s represent the heyday of the classic network TV system, three alternatives emerged in this period. The first is independent TV stations that found a home on the UHF band and could schedule off-network and first-run syndicated programming, as well as their own local programming. The second is public TV stations that grew after Congress passed the Public Television Act of 1967 and funded them through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The third is cable TV stations that bypassed the broadcast system entirely and were distributed, via satellite, to TV households connected to cable service.

Television, 1945–1955

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. Why did the FCC entrust the radio networks to shepherd television in the post–World War II era?
  2. How did the Cold War effect American attitudes towards Hollywood and broadcasting?
  3. How did the Truman administration begin to advance civil rights in the postwar years.
  4. Why was Hollywood not involved with television in the early postwar years?
  5. What were some ways that Hollywood address the competitive threat of television?
  6. How did radio change after the introduction of television in the post–World War II year?
  7. Why did the FCC impose a freeze on new television broadcasting licenses in 1948?
  8. How did the Freeze help networks consolidate control over broadcast television between 1948 and 1952?
  9. Why did networks prefer live television programming to filmed television programs?
  10. How did live anthology drama series help bring respectability to television in the 1950s?
  11. How did Hollywood use the “telefilm” enter the television industry?

Key Terms: Television, 1945–1955

Television, 1955–1965

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. Why were the Quiz Shows of the 1950s popular with both audiences and broadcasters?
  2. Why did the Quiz Show Scandals of the late 1950s disappoint intellectuals and media reformers and their prospects for television?
  3. What were two effects of the Quiz Show Scandals in the late 1950s?
  4. How did networks take advantage of their control over production, distribution, and exhibition in the early 1960s?
  5. Contrast the regulatory approaches of the FCC when it was chaired by John Doerfer versus when it was chaired by Newton Minow.
  6. How did the new audience measurement technologies help refine the construction of the audience beyond just counting total viewers?
  7. What steps did the United States take in launching educational television in the early 1960s?
  8. How did fantastic family sitcom, such as Bewitched, challenge the white, middle-class nuclear family that was a sitcom staple in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
  9. Why did documentary television programs, such as The Children Were Watching, seek to “redeem the vast wasteland” of network television?

Key Terms: Television, 1955–1965

Television, 1965–1975

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What were some of the social factors that shaped American culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s?
  2. What measures did the FCC take as an attempt to weaken the network oligopoly in this period?
  3. What three alternatives to broadcast network TV emerged in this period?
  4. Why did networks seek to attract the youth audience? Did this present any potential conflicts to their interests?
  5. Which three interest groups advocated for expanding cable TV in the US? Why did each do so?

Key Terms: Television, 1965–1975

Television, 1975–1985

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What policies did Mark Fowler seek to overturn as he became the chairman of the FCC?
  2. What rules did Mark Fowler successfully eliminate or relax during his chairmanship of the FCC between 1981 and 1984?
  3. What factors contributed to the decline of broadcast TV network share in primetime, from 90% in 1975 to 75% in 1985?
  4. How does a basic cable channel raise revenue, compared to a pay cable TV channel?
  5. Why did cable TV grow as a competitor to broadcast TV between 1975 and 1985?
  6. How did miniseries and spin-offs extend a sense of seriality in television series between 1975 and 1985?
  7. Michele Hilmes notes that 1982 “echoed cries of ‘the death of the sitcom.’” Why is that not so?

Key Terms: Television, 1975–1985

Television, 1985–1995

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. What were some of the regulations that were repealed in the years 1985–1995?
  2. What were some of the reasons that Fin/Syn rules were repealed?
  3. What were the five reasons, according to Michele Hilmes, that new broadcast networks emerged between 1985 and 1995?
  4. How did the mergers of the 1980s and 1990s help with creating synergistic relationships among media companies?
  5. Why did Congress attempt to regulate cable companies in 1992?
  6. How did Fox come to exist as a fourth broadcast network? What programming strategies did it use to become a legitimate competitor to the big three broadcast networks?
  7. How did cable networks, such as ESPN2 and FX, appear on cable TV lineups in the 1990s?

Key Terms: Television, 1985–1995

Television, 1995–2005

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. How does television programming become a part of digital convergence in the 1990s?
  2. How did the world wide web and commercial Internet access services help popularize the Internet in the 1990s?
  3. What were some ways that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulate ownership restrictions?
  4. What changes did copyright law undergo in the 1990s?
  5. Identify two mergers that came in the 1990s and explain how each realized conglomeration or digital convergence.
  6. Identify two cable networks launched in the 1990s by a television conglomerate to form a neo-network.

Key Terms: Television, 1995–2005

Television, 2005-Present

Review the Lecture Outline

  1. Why is it incorrect to speak of television audiences, since the mid–2000s, as a mass audience?
  2. Provide two examples of web 2.0 platforms. What are some user activities that web 2.0 platforms make possible?
  3. How has the emergence of web 2.0 threatened personal privacy?
  4. Identify the six companies that comprise the old media conglomerates. What are their holdings in broadcast networks, cable networks, or production studios?
  5. Identify the new media powers that have a large role in reshaping television since 2005. Why does each serve such an important role?
  6. Why is cable indispensable to the success of new media?
  7. What new ways for distribution has digital convergence made possible?
  8. Who are the three big players in gaming consoles and software? What role are they playing in television?
  9. What are some innovations that digital convergence made possible for music and radio since 2005?
  10. Contrast the concepts of TV1, TV2, and TV3 in terms of production, distribution and exhibition of television programming.

Key Terms: Television, 2005–Present