American Television in the 1980s

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the decade of the 1980s is seen as the explosion of television culture in terms of the proliferation of networks and the availability of programming through the cable. The author points out that Wallace and DeLillo are both concerned with postmodern characters that are absent internal selves, or rather, characters that seem to be informed of behavior primarily through the use of television. The author believes that sports on television now seems to be as dysfunctional as the nuclear family: a series of different schedules with a lot of hype, dreams or delusions of grandeur, with no meaningful connection to the simple love of the game.

Table of Contents
Cultural History of American Television
The Postmodern Television Consumer Culture: "White Noise" and "Girl with Curious Hair"
Television's Impact on Sports

From the Paper:

"The FCC continued to be the regulating body that determined what would be permissible for the American public to view. However, the Reagan administration that preached supply-side economics, believed that deregulation was the best method of growing the economy given the many slow-downs that dominated the 1970's. "For FCC chairman (Reagan appointee) [Mark] Fowler, the only kind of regulation that was legitimate came from the market itself, and he made this clear to gleeful industry executives from his earliest days in office" (Steyer 137). Fowler also acknowledged that such regulation should be at the hands of media and broadcasting executives because they had first hand knowledge of what Americans really wanted to see. Ironically, it seemed that the Reagan administration passively promoted a liberal media that looked for alternative methods of programming even though the business executives would assess its effectiveness and its decency."

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