TV violence and self-regulation
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- United States
- television
Although the FCC is forbidden to regulate the content of television (except for content unprotected by the First Amendment and that falling under the indecency rule), the agency strongly urged networks to adopt a system of self-regulation in the mid-1970s. In 1975 the chairman of the FCC, Richard Wiley, reportedly encouraged the networks to limit violent programming to time slots after 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Arthur Taylor, then president of CBS, became the chief advocate of what became known as “family viewing time” (8:00–9:00 pm, as far as the networks were concerned), and he enlisted the support of the other networks as well. Many producers, on the other hand, were not eager to offer their support. Among other things, they were concerned that the family viewing time agreement would restrict the times in which stations could air their shows in syndication. All in the Family’s producer, Norman Lear, who at the time had several adult-themed shows airing on the networks between 8:00 and 9:00 pm, led the attack on the idea, claiming First Amendment rights and declaring that the networks had broken antitrust regulations by conspiring to bring family viewing time into being. A Los Angeles federal district court disallowed the self-regulatory action in 1976.
The issue of television violence reemerged in the early 1970s with the publication of the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior’s five-volume report in 1972. The surgeon general told a Senate committee that “the overwhelming consensus and the unanimous Scientific Advisory Committee’s report indicates that televised violence, indeed, does have an adverse effect on certain members of our society.” The report encouraged remedial action, but the FCC, limited by the First Amendment, took no action until 1996, when it mandated a ratings system designed to inform parents of programs that might be inappropriate for children. Over the next decade, however, several important legal cases addressed the relationship between violence on TV and violent behaviour among television viewers. In Zamora et al. v. Columbia Broadcasting System et al. (1979), the parents of a 15-year-old boy who killed his neighbour sued a television network for “intoxicating” their son with TV violence. In 1981 the complainants in Niemi v. National Broadcasting Company argued that the mechanics of a brutal rape were learned on a made-for-TV movie called Born Innocent (NBC, 1974). Other cases not directly related to violence sought to hold television broadcasters responsible for behaviour learned from their programs. A boy who was partially blinded while performing an experiment demonstrated on The Mickey Mouse Club was the subject of Walt Disney Productions et al. v. Shannon et al. (1981), and DeFilippo v. National Broadcasting Company et al. (1982) brought suit against NBC after a youth hanged himself while imitating a stunt man’s demonstration he had seen on The Tonight Show.
The late 1970s: the new escapism
The significant critical and commercial success of relevance programming opened television to entirely new areas of content. Whereas much of entertainment TV before 1970 had shied from the subjects covered on the evening news, from this point forward many programs would use timely topics as a principal source of story ideas. Although such programs thrived, yet another programming trend was becoming evident during the mid-1970s. A changing cultural climate, brought on in part by the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War and by the Watergate Scandal, led some network executives and television producers to believe that audiences might be ready for a return to escapism.
In the 1976–77 season, All in the Family gave up its five-year reign at the top of the ratings to Happy Days (ABC, 1974–84), a high school comedy starring a former member of The Andy Griffith Show (Ron Howard) and set in the 1950s, before the Watergate hotel was built and before most Americans had heard of Vietnam. Other nostalgic programming such as Laverne & Shirley (ABC, 1976–83), set in the early 1960s, The Waltons (CBS, 1972–81), the saga of a Depression-era mountain family, and Little House on the Prairie (NBC, 1974–83), set in the late 19th century, also reached large audiences during this period. As its title suggests, Happy Days returned to the old television philosophy of providing amusing entertainment divorced from the disturbing features of the real world.
“Jiggle TV”
The escapist fare of the late 1970s, however, was not the same as that which had dominated in the days before All in the Family. The relevance programs had brought on a relaxation of industry and public attitudes regarding appropriate television content, and the new escapist shows inherited a television culture that was more open and tolerant than ever before. These programs took advantage of that openness not so much to portray controversial social issues as to present more sexually oriented material. Before 1970 human sexuality was a topic that was only hinted at on television, and television’s married couples slept in separate beds until the late 1960s. That was about to change.
Whereas CBS had led the networks in the development of relevance programming in the early 1970s, ABC took the lead in the last half of the decade, led by its president of entertainment, Fred Silverman. The new trend was referred to as “jiggle TV” in the popular press (“T&A TV” in less-polite publications) because it tended to feature young, attractive, often scantily clad women (and later men as well). Shows in this genre included The Love Boat (ABC, 1977–86), a romantic comedy that took place on a Caribbean cruise ship; Charlie’s Angels (ABC, 1977–81), which presented three female detectives whose undercover investigations required them to disguise themselves in beachwear and other revealing attire; Three’s Company (ABC, 1977–84), which had the then-titillating premise of two young women and a man sharing an apartment; and Fantasy Island (ABC, 1978–84), which was set on a tropical island where people went to have their (often romantic) dreams fulfilled.