THE 1960s: MEDIA: OVERVIEW

Not a Revolution

In the media, if not in other segments of American life, the 1960s were a decade of consolidation, not revolution. After the radical change brought about by television in the 1950s, the next decade was consumed with evolutionary change as television and radio broadcasters, newspaper and magazine publishers, and the general public attempted to come to terms with the revolution they had made in the previous decade.

Technical Problems

The television industry saw two new technological wrinkles come into widespread use, but neither was a new idea. By the end of the decade the majority of programs were broadcast in color, even if in 1967 only 15 percent of American homes were equipped with color television. UHF-band broadcasting was also given the regulatory go-ahead, though it was still looked down upon as a poor substitute for VHF broadcasting.

Content, or the Lack Thereof

Whatever the technical format of the broadcasting, the content of the programs being shown became a center of controversy during the decade. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow came into office in 1961 with a strong condemnation of the poor quality of most television programs. Network officials responded that they only gave the audience what it wanted. And it apparently did not want the level of cultural broadcasting that Minow and other critics desired.

Public Television

One solution, if not the one Minow advocated, was the formation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in 1967. Up and running by 1969, PBS and the programs funded by the CPB gave viewers alternatives to network broadcasting that were not otherwise available until the rise of cable in the 1980s. Children's television was one of the prime concerns of the CPB, one of its first programs being Sesame Street. The woeful level of children's programming on the networks was a topic late in the decade, but not until the 1970s was it seriously addressed.

Social Issues

With the social turmoil of the 1960s—the assassinations, the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, the youth culture—television was compelled to address the issues facing the American public. Black Americans gained a more prominent position on television during the decade, as did young people. Most critics pointed out that television did a poor job in its attempts at investigating and explaining social problems but that the society at large did not do a good job either. But the goal of bringing more segments of the American public into the world of television was a new and laudable one, however imperfectly realized.

Rise of Television News

The 1960s were the decade of television news. Beginning with President John F. Kennedy, presidential press conferences began to be held according to the needs of television, a change that did not enthrall the print journalists. But even they had to recognize the superiority of television's coverage of the 1963 assassination of Kennedy. The five days of almost-continuous coverage given by the networks to the events surrounding Kennedy's death, the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Kennedy funeral had a drama and immediacy that other media could not come close to matching.

Radio

Other big news events throughout the decade—the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landings—played to the strengths of television and reduced the relative stature that other media had historically enjoyed. Radio, which had for decades been the medium of immediacy, found itself becoming what Newton Minow called "publicly franchised jukeboxes." Helped by the development of the transistor and the truly portable radio set, most radio programmers adapted well to the medium's changed role of providing musical entertainment to young people and automobile drivers.

The Plight of Newspapers

Newspapers, however, were still struggling both with their mission in a world with television and the economics of their changing business. Faced with an audience which now had many more choices for news and entertainment, newspapers also were hit with rising production costs, stubborn unions, and a changing newspaper market. Newspapers found that they were outclassed by television as immediate news outlets and by radio and television as entertainment and as advertising outlets. During the decade most newspaper markets underwent severe rationalization; in New York the number of major daily newspapers shrank from seven in 1959 to three in 1967. Total newspaper circulation in the city was reduced during the same period from 5.1 million to 3.5 million. Total circulation for all newspapers in the United States rose slightly to 62.1 million by 1971 but remained stagnant thereafter. Small-town newspapers were responsible for much of this growth, so larger newspapers were left with a smaller slice of the circulation pie.

Magazines

Magazines faced many of the same troubles as newspapers. By the 1950s and 1960s general-interest magazines were no longer thought of as a major source of entertainment for the general public, despite the fact that circulations had remained steady. As a result, advertising became harder to attract in competition with television and radio. Magazines were also troubled with rising costs at a time when revenues were stagnant. One of the best-known American magazines, the Saturday Evening Post, disappeared in 1969, a victim not of a lack of quality but of the public's and advertisers' lack of interest. The great age of the general-interest magazine was over; successful publications were either those which serviced niche markets—such as Penthouse, the English soft pornography magazine—or those, like the news-magazines, which served more utilitarian purposes. The major newsmagazines—Time and Newsweek—continued to flourish, both part of media empires: Time, part of Henry Luce's Time-Life; and Newsweek, since 1961 part of Katherine and Philip Graham's Washington Post Company.

The World to Come

Change is constant, though the nature of that change is variable. Just as the revolutionary change of the 1950s had its origins in developments in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, events in the 1960s would not have their full impact until the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The launch of the Telstar and Early Bird satellites affected the media in the 1960s, but it would be the 1970s and 1980s before opportunities for global broad-casting would be more fully realized. The regulatory mess with UHF broadcasting would affect the development of cable television in the 1980s. The ultimate effects of media changes in the 1960s have yet to be felt fully.