“We shape our tools, thereafter they shape us.”
– John Culkin, Fordham University professor
Think of cable television as a box. The box was built by ingenuity and regulations and the vaguely utopian idea that a wide cable universe would lead to increased civic involvement that would enhance democracy. What people really did with that box, however, was make money.
They also used it to make political theater.
“The age of cable television depended on undermining basic political, economic and cultural ideas embedded within the postwar era of network television,” Kathryn Cramer Brownell said.
Her new book, “Cable America: How a New Form of Television Transformed American Democracy” explores how the cable box became the cable universe, the ideology, the businessmen who hit it big, and the political chicanery.
Cable television began as a way of expanding the reach of broadcast television to rural areas. It hinted at increased access to groups that saw themselves as underserved by the three networks of the 1950s. After deregulation of the television industry, Brownell said, money, politics and cable television became a powerful brew.
Along the way she introduces us to the people who tried to shape the cable box in their own image. A good place to begin sorting this story out is a man who once defined how Americans consumed their nightly news: Walter Cronkite.
Brownell, asked whether the American public was better off when the fact that there were just three television channels led to a sharing of cultural touchstones, warns about seeing the past through a nostalgic lens rather than a historian’s eyes.
“There is a tendency to romanticize that everyone sat down and watched Walter Cronkite,” she said. “But the news he provided was very limited in terms of it was very pro-establishment. It had deference to official sources. It was very ideologically exclusionary. So yes, it is consensus-making but it is very much white, middle-class, heterosexual consensus-making.”
People who were not considered part of the establishment began to push back against the power structure of network television and saw cable television as an alternative, especially evangelical preachers and conservatives who saw it as a way to counter what they felt was a liberal media bias.
“Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”
– Newt Minow, FCC Chairman in 1961
“There is something about the medium itself, but it is because the medium developed in a very particular way,” Brownell said. “I think you have to see that there were possibilities and there were paths not taken.”
Brownell, a history professor at Purdue University, who is also senior editor of the Washington Post’s “Made by History” feature, said that in the beginning cable television was envisioned as a New Deal for the information age, funded with government support, but it soon developed as a private entity.
The line of questioning she pursues in her book played out not only through archival research but right before her eyes, and before our eyes as cable television viewers.
“Private industry built the wired infrastructure, controls that infrastructure, and they did it to make money,” she said. “So, it becomes about money and not about serving democracy. Business was going to drive it and profits were going to drive it. And that is exactly what happened.”
Brownell comes by her island credentials honestly. While getting her Ph.D. at Boston University she tended bar at The Chicken Box. She is married to Jason Brownell, whose family until recently owned Hatch’s package store. They have two daughters, Lillian, 3, and Jaqueline, 5.
Her first book, “Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life,” outlined the connection between Hollywood insiders and political candidates, as well as the use of entertainment devices in elective politics.
“Cable TV will make Athenians of us all.”
– Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, NBC executive
The business plan was simple. People love television. If you can bring it to rural areas, you can develop monthly subscribers who would pay for the service.
“In the beginning cable television was very experimental, very entrepreneurial,” she said. “In the 1950s there really weren’t a lot of rules. All policy toward cable was really kind of patchwork. Regulators didn’t really understand what it was and only saw it through the eyes of network broadcasting.”
Those early days were also marked by the hope that the cable television dial would include space for groups that felt short-changed by network news. The women’s liberation movement, civil rights activists and conservative politicians all felt ignored by network news.
Even a casual observer can see that today’s cable television landscape is dotted with reality television shows rather than the civic-minded programing that was once anticipated. Brownell said that making money was always the driving force behind the rise of cable television, and that reality shows follow a template that is a proven money-maker.
“If you look at the 1980s cable dial there is a flowering of different possibilities, but many of them only exist for several years. Then they are shut down,” she said. “Now there is an unprecedented choice of entertainment. As consumers the benefits are clear. As citizens, that is where the question comes into play.”
That question plays out in the fractured landscape of American political discourse, in the world of television news as entertainment. That landscape began to be defined the moment Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich learned about the power of cable television to elevate his political profile.
By 1984, Brian Lamb’s C-SPAN, which was built on a sort of political verité, reached over 16 million homes. Gingrich estimated that close to 200,000 viewers might be watching C-SPAN at any given moment.
He began making fiery speeches to an empty congressional hearing room, knowing that a deal between Congress and C-SPAN required cameras to stay focused on the person speaking and so to viewers it would seem as if he was delivering his speech to a full room.
“Newt Gingrich is really key to understanding that it is not the medium of cable television that does this. It is choices in how you use and deploy cable television,” Brownell said. “Gingrich is the classic example. He was this minority voice in a minority party and there is no way for him to get his ideas out there except by making a spectacle.”
“He used C-SPAN in the late hours to really wage a war, and he called it a war, to a completely empty hearing room. He calls out the opposition, dares them to come and challenge him, but they’re not there. It was an empty hearing room.”
There came a moment when then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill decided to pan the cameras and show the empty hearing room. That decision led to some heated back and forth, both sides arguing that the other was abusing power.
It was a lightbulb moment for conservative politicians.
“The Washington Post covers it. Gingrich goes on TV news shows to talk about it. All of a sudden, a small media thing became a big story,” Brownell said. “Gingrich just relishes that now he is the star. He is shaping the conversation.”
“The simple truth is, the cable systems are giving the public something they want.”
– Bruce Merrill, National Cable & Telecommunications Association chairman
A dozen years later, FOX News and MSNBC were launched. It was the moment that entertainment and politics merged and the beginning of reshaping news to be more personal for a certain viewership.
“One of the things I keep in mind a lot is that cable news is not news, it is entertainment. I think that is one of the things that changes in 1996,” Brownell said. That year Congress deregulated television. It was a move that had bipartisan support.
“The launch of MSNBC and FOX was all about what’s our brand going to be. So, all of a sudden, it’s about catering to different audiences. MSNBC wanted to cater to young audiences and FOX was thinking about conservative audiences. All of a sudden it is not about reporting the news but selling information that is attractive to what they see as their demographic.”
The business model, she said, is based on the fact that a cable television station like FOX brings in very loyal subscribers. That brand loyalty allows them to demand higher carriage rates – the fees you see on your cable bill.
“CNN, FOX, MSNBC all have the same business model,” Brownell said. “It is about the news as an ideological product rather than accuracy. There is not a clear distinction between what is opinion and what is news and I think that is so problematic. One is fundamentally entertainment.”
“Cable America: How a New Form of Television Transformed American Democracy” stops at the point where cable television and the accelerant of social media create the fractured political landscape of today. Brownell plans to explore politics in the age of the cable news wars in her next book.
“The question is how did people grapple with that environment,” she said. “In the scandal politics of the 1990s, who figured out how to deal with scandal as a political tool and as a money-making entity. I am curious as to how party practices and national politics change in the face of this.”
“I think as a historian the current moment shapes your research questions and what you try to understand. For me it’s that I want to understand about the world around us today and all these dynamics between media and politics in terms of the functioning and malfunctioning of democracy.”
