Primetime Propaganda

by Ben Shapiro

  The two action shows were The A-Team and Miami Vice. But the true breakthrough came in 1984, when Tinker and Tartikoff greenlit a show produced by Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, starring Bill Cosby. It was called The Cosby Show, and it had an underlying conservative feel. Building on the vast success of The Cosby Show, NBC moved a stalwart, Family Ties, into the follow-up slot and made that Michael J. Fox starrer a hit, too. While the creator of Family Ties, Gary David Goldberg, was vastly liberal and sought to portray conservatives as quasi-evil, the charm of Fox undermined his goals, making the show a success among conservatives.

  For politically motivated writers, the 1980s was like living in exile after the free-and-easy 1970s. Susan Harris, who had created Soap, was now relegated to writing about older women making sex jokes on Golden Girls; even if she did slip in her politics on a regular basis, it was hardly on the order of Jodie seeking a sex change. Gary David Goldberg was no longer writing about hardcore politics on Lou Grant; now he was putting out dual conservative messages of respect for parents and capitalistic entrepreneurism (even if he was trying to criticize capitalistic entrepreneurism). Carsey and Werner, both leftists, were portraying Bill Cosby as an authoritative dad with experience and knowledge, boosting the image of the two-parent black family.

  All in all, it was a quiet time for the networks. People were generally happy under Reagan, and television reflected that complacency. All of that was about to change.

  HOW THE LEFT’S MOST HATED CONSERVATIVE REVITALIZED LIBERAL TELEVISION

  The liberal resurgence, ironically enough, began with a conservative: Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch was born in Australia, the son of a rich newspaper publisher. Like Ted Turner, Murdoch lost his father at an early age and took over the family business, then grew it exponentially. Murdoch was from the beginning a capitalist without regard for the proprieties. After buying up London’s News of the World, Times, and Sun, he moved his efforts to America, where he bought the New York Post and New York Magazine. Then he got himself American citizenship in order to comply with American media-ownership laws.81

  In 1984 and 1985, Murdoch decided to get into the American film and television business. He bought up the entirety of the 20th Century–Fox film corporation, then soaked up seven major market affiliates around the country (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Houston, and Boston). He called his new network the Fox Broadcasting Company. Originally, the company lost money—in 1988, $90 million, and in 1989, $20 million. But Fox began to grow once it found its programming strategy.82

  That strategy in the mid to late 1980s resembled ABC’s in the early 1960s. It had to be risk-taking to gain audience share, and it had to be low-cost to maintain profit share. That led to programs like the short-lived Late Show with Joan Rivers, the moderately successful Tracy Ullman Show—and more important, shows like Married . . . with Children and The Simpsons.

  These latter two shows set the pace for the network. Sandy Grushow, who was the senior vice president of advertising and promotion when those two shows were picked up, told me that Fox went after “shows that had an alternative bent to them, that spoke to what was then, in the late 1980s, a very disenfranchised audience of young people, particularly young men, who weren’t interested in watching The Cosby Show.”

  Like ABC, they programmed young. And just like ABC, that meant they skewed liberal. “I think by definition when lots of people start creating content that speaks to more youthful audiences, who tend to be more progressive, then the content is in fact going to feel edgier than the bland, banal, saccharine sitcoms,” Grushow said.

  Grushow later became the senior vice president of programming and scheduling, then president of the Fox Entertainment Division. Personally, Grushow was liberal when it came to programming standards—he considered the vulgar Married . . . with Children “bloody innocuous.”83 Grushow would later ridiculously claim that the seedy show Temptation Island was “not . . . about sex,” but rather a dissertation “exploring the dynamics of serious relationships.”84

  The rise of Fox and the cable networks had a huge impact on the nature of the business. In 1970, the FCC had installed the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (the so-called Fin-Syn rules). These rules accomplished two purposes: First, they prevented networks from owning an interest in any programs they put on the air beyond the original airing. Second, they stopped networks from creating syndication companies designed to sell their series. (These processes are often referred to as “vertical integration.”) This limited the possibility of network profit from producing programming, creating an enormous market for independent production companies.

  In 1991, as a result of Fox’s rise and the growing success of cable, the FCC decided that the rules were no longer relevant—the networks were being penalized despite their decreasing market share. By November 1995, the rules were completely gone.85

  The predictable result was the production of edgier programming on network television again. The networks could pursue the dual strategy of cutting off the cable networks’ “edge” advantage by programming more radical material—at the very worst, their programming might fail, then be sold to cable networks. At the same time, the networks could produce programming independently for the cables, meaning they could now make money from their former competitors.

  THE NEW GOLDEN AGE OF POLITICAL TELEVISION

  The networks took full advantage. In the latter days of the Tartikoff regime (and as the Reagan era drew to a close), NBC picked up controversial series like L.A. Law, a Steven Bochco production. ABC, now under the full control of Brandon Stoddard, picked up thirtysomething and Roseanne, both pushing liberal social values under a patina of family wholesomeness. CBS, which was now being run by Bill Paley friend and investor extraordinaire Laurence Tisch, picked up Picket Fences (by a young writer named David E. Kelley) and Murphy Brown, which as Dan Quayle famously pointed out, stood in favor of liberal social policies, including championing the virtue of single motherhood.

  The trend toward more liberal programming disguised as conservative family-friendly fare continued throughout the decade. Warren Littlefield took over from Tartikoff at NBC, and he built the famed NBC “Must-See TV” lineup, which included a little show called Friends, as well as ER and Seinfeld. Littlefield also picked up Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Mad About You, Caroline in the City, and many other hits with liberal orientations. He had an uncanny ability to pick hits—during the 1996–1997 season, NBC had the top six shows on television.

  Littlefield was a committed liberal and a television addict. He had helped develop Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Golden Girls before supplanting Tartikoff. After seeing Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, he called Moore in for a meeting to pitch a TV show titled TV Nation. Moore told Littlefield and his underlings that “it would be a cross between 60 Minutes and Fidel Castro on laughing gas. . . . The show would be the most liberal thing ever seen on TV. In fact, it would go beyond ‘liberals’ because liberals are a bunch of wimps and haven’t gotten us anything. This show would go boldly where no one has gone before.” NBC greenlit the pilot at a cost of $1 million.86 The show flopped and was cancelled after one season (Fox picked it up for a second season), but not before Democrats in Congress introduced a resolution declaring August 16, 1994, TV Nation Day.87

  At CBS, Lawrence Tisch’s tenure had brought trouble. In 1986, Tisch bought 24.9 percent of CBS at the behest of Bill Paley, who hoped to save the company from hostile takeover bids (one bidder was a consortium led by Jesse Helms, who hoped to turn CBS conservative again). Tisch was a lifelong liberal who supported Democratic politicians ranging from Carter and Mondale to Chuck Schumer and Bill Bradley. Tisch’s friends insisted it was “a mistake to think that he’d apply his personal views to anything as visible as his CBS position,” but he did just that.88 To run the programming side of the business, he brought in former Dan Rather–producer Howard Stringer as president of th
e CBS Broadcast Group. The first two people Stringer called after getting the job? Norman Lear and Grant Tinker.89

  Stringer then brought in a like-minded second as head of programming, Jeff Sagansky, a former Tinker protégé. He refused to program anything that even hinted at religion. “The first thing you learn as a program executive,” he said in 1994, “is never program anything whose content has to do with religion and God. It isn’t hip.”90 Pretending to be apolitical, Sagansky told Time magazine, “It’s the responsibility of good television to be topical, but it should not espouse any political candidacy. . . . The viewers vote for Murphy Brown every week, and only vote for Dan Quayle every four years.”91

  By 1992, Sagansky had brought CBS to the forefront of the ratings. But the combination of cost cutting on Tisch’s part and liberal programming on Stringer’s part didn’t end well. By 1995, Tisch was ready to sell CBS and be done with it. He found his buyer in Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Their new man was Les Moonves, then president of Warner Brothers Television. Moonves was a programming genius, a man who greenlit both Friends and ER (both were picked up by NBC). At CBS, he grabbed graphic shows like CSI and family-friendly fare like Everybody Loves Raymond.

  Moonves was a liberal, just like his predecessors. But he was old-school in that he programmed first, last, and always with the ratings and the advertisers.92 “Earnings is what I’m judged on,” Moonves said.93

  At ABC, Brandon Stoddard’s departure made way for the entry of Bob Iger. Like the other executives, Iger was a liberal—but unlike Moonves, he allowed it to influence his judgment. The first two shows Iger greenlit were the David Lynch bizarro-world Twin Peaks, which titillated elites but fell flat with audiences, and Steven Bochco’s Cop Rock, which was a disaster for the network. Later, Iger greenlit Ellen and backed the show when Ellen decided to come out of the closet. (He’d have to backtrack in the end, canceling the show because of its constant focus on homosexuality, even as he claimed that it lost audience “primarily because of sameness. Not gayness.”)94

  But Iger’s genius for cable was better than his programming selection (although he did greenlight the hits Family Matters, Full House, and America’s Funniest Home Videos). Iger was one of the biggest proponents of changing the Fin-Syn rules, which had barred vertical integration in the industry, promising that the rules would help diversify programming.95 Naturally, that wasn’t what happened—once Fin-Syn was gone, the big-studio system reasserted itself. Iger led the way, championing the acquisition of A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime, and most profitably ESPN.96 And once ABC was sold to Disney, that consolidation only accelerated.

  The rise of Fox, cable, and the death of the Fin-Syn rules led to a new wave of liberal creators finding their way in Hollywood. Liberals largely hired liberals, and all of them worked together to create new and envelope-pushing content for both broadcast television and cable. It was a golden age of political television.

  What nobody knew at the time is that the golden age of political television was also the beginning of the end.

  THE DEATH OF THE NETWORKS

  The profit-making capabilities of the networks skyrocketed during the 1990s with the consolidation of the industry under major corporate auspices. But with the vertical integration of the networks—networks now owned the production companies, the distribution mechanisms, and the exhibition channels—came an unexpected challenge. Now cable networks could have all the production values of the Big Four, and they could program without regard to FCC rules and regulations. The cable channels narrowcast, so they appealed to particular viewers, which advertisers found valuable. As Warren Littlefield, former head of NBC, said, “There’s no concept of a network versus any other channel. Comedy Central’s a channel; NBC or CBS is a channel. That’s all. There’s no prestige to one versus another.”97

  At this point, the networks are on their way out. And that is a problem for the political advocates in the television industry. The big money is still in network TV (aside from pay-per-view channels like HBO)—cable series pay less because they make less for the corporate behemoths—but because the networks are losing market share, they play it safer and safer on political topics for the benefit of advertisers. Not only that—reality television has supplanted scripted TV as a safer and cheaper means of drawing audiences, and the creators of reality TV are less politically driven, in general, than their writer compatriots. Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor and The Apprentice, among many other enormous hits, summed up his view of programming to me in pure and innocent terms: “Understand that the gift you’re given with network television is a huge gift, and you can reach millions of people, and you have an obligation to use that gift. . . . I’m trying to do aspirational shows that are positive and that raise people up. I don’t want to do shows that tear people down.”98

  Surely the post–September 11 climate has something to do with the apolitical programming shift as well. Audiences wanted less controversial fare—or if the fare was going to be controversial, it had to be promilitary and antiterror rather than domestic policy–centric, like 24. The changing political climate combined with the changing television business model—and the synthesis became a subtler form of bias in programming. Shows like House, Law & Order, and even Desperate Housewives insert politics in more or less minor ways into their storylines but remain essentially crime procedurals or basic soap operas. Marc Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives, sees himself as a conservative who attempts to uphold certain traditional social values (he is a Republican).99 Political sitcoms have largely fallen by the wayside. It is now left to shows like Family Guy—a cartoon!—to pick up the All in the Family torch.

  The new demand for political blandness is reflected in the executive management. Moonves still presides over CBS, and he demands high audience numbers—but the audiences Moonves demands are, as mentioned, older. And older viewers aren’t as interested in lesbian weddings or diatribes about the evils of American xenophobia. At ABC, the rigid hierarchy of Disney wants politics inserted into programming less and less. Even Jeff Zucker, the wildly liberal former head of NBC,100 didn’t do much with NBC’s programming, other than inserting relatively innocuous “green” messages into all of the primetime programming and helping out motivated liberals like Tina Fey (whom he calls the “queen of comedy” due to her snarky impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live).

  Politics is now relegated largely to cable. Bravo is similarly left-wing, programming gay-centric shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Workout, and Blueprint. Showtime is known in town as the gay channel (sorry, Logo). CW tries to suck in teenage girls with sex-first programming like Gossip Girl and the new Melrose Place. Viacom has maintained MTV’s and Comedy Central’s liberal reputation, and pushed Nickelodeon’s children’s programming toward social liberalism as well. Even Disney has joined the fun, using ABC Family to promote single motherhood (see The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Greek).

  The division between cable programming and network programming has become more and more pronounced in terms of politics. Of the top twenty rated shows on network television during the 2009–2010 season, eleven were reality shows, documentaries, or sports; only two, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, could be said to have any deep political content. On cable, shows like AMC’s Breaking Bad and Mad Men, HBO’s Big Love and True Blood (earlier, Sex and the City), and Showtime’s Weeds were garnering most of the media attention—and were making most of the political points. Needless to say, they weren’t garnering most of the viewers—Weeds, on a fantastic night, might attract 1.7 million viewers; Chuck, an NBC midlevel show, might grab 5.8 million viewers on a terrible night. But the media attention is enough to grab advertisers, who could make those audience numbers and cheaper rates work for them.

  Perhaps television’s politics will change in the near future. Even cable is having trouble these days keeping up with the Internet and TiVo; Hollywood is in serious trouble, becaus
e advertisers have lost their ability to hold audiences still to watch their spots. Simultaneously, the costs of production have dropped dramatically, and the Internet makes it possible for anyone—to put a show up at any time with worldwide distribution.

  Still, despite predictions of its imminent decline, television remains intensely powerful, the single largest generator of quality entertainment on the face of the planet. And it’s essentially a closed circle. An in-group. A clique.

  The Clique

  How Television Stays Liberal

  On March 3, 1991, an African-American man with a rap sheet longer than his arm sped through Los Angeles’ residential neighborhoods in excess of 115 mph. The police pulled him over and asked him to exit the vehicle. When he resisted arrest, several Los Angeles Police Department officers, believing him to be high on PCP, proceeded to beat him with their batons. The whole incident was captured on tape. Before anyone knew what was happening, Rodney King was a worldwide celebrity.

  But the real action didn’t start until a few months later, on April 29, 1992, when the LAPD officers were acquitted by an all-white jury for their excessive use of force. That’s when the entire South Central area of Los Angeles burst into flame, figuratively and literally. African-American and Hispanic residents of the gang-infested area rioted and looted in retaliation for the acquittal, causing billions of dollars in damage.

  What did the Hollywood glitterati, those who fight human rights abuses around the globe and insist that minority populations are victims of a racist society, do as the city burned?

  They sat and drank at the Beverly Hills Hotel, one of the most exclusive and swankiest resorts in the country. “When I got there, much to my shock, the whole town picture business people had decided to do the same thing!” real estate agent Elaine Young later told playwright Anna Deavere Smith. “So basically, what happened the three or four days of the heavy rioting, people were going to the hotel. And I mean it was mobbed. . . .