FTT 301: The History of Television
Fall 2004

Prof. Christine Becker
Office: 230D Performing Arts Center, 631-7592
Mailbox: 230 Performing Arts Center
Email: becker.34@nd.edu
Office Hours: TuTh 12:30-1:45 or by appointment

Class Meetings TuTh 2-3:15 118 DeBartolo
Screenings Wed 4-6 Performing Arts Center Cinema

Required Texts
• The Television History Book, Michele Hilmes ed., available at Hammes Bookstore (listed on the
syllabus as Textbook)
• Reading packet, available at ND Copy Shop in LaFortune (listed on the syllabus as Packet)

Grading Breakdown
15%: Participation, attendance & quizzes
15%: Oral history paper (due October 5)
15%: Episode analysis (due November 16)
15%: Reception analysis (due December 7)
20%: Midterm (October 14)
20%: Final (December 16)

A Few Important Details:
1) You are expected to attend all class meetings. I will, however, grant you two absences across the semester. For every absence in excess of the three, the class participation grade will be lowered by a grade level (e.g. A- to B+, B to B-, etc.). You are also expected to attend all screenings; if you need to miss one, you must let me know or else it will affect your attendance grade. Video copies of what we watch will be on reserve by Monday of each screening week in the Hesburgh Library audio-visual center (second floor) to be used for the occasional make-up or for re-viewing.

2) Participation is important to the success of this class. The more people we hear from on any given day, the more ideas we will be able to explore and the more we will all enjoy and benefit from the course. Just keep up with the readings and screenings, and you will have plenty to add to the class. I don’t mind class discussions that go in unexpected directions (in fact I encourage them), so speak your mind, ask questions and answer questions! Also keep in mind that my definition of participation is not isolated to only verbal participation. Anything that shows that you are engaged in the course and striving to engage with the material counts as participation. Thus, listening intently during class, coming to my office hours, and writing or e-mailing me questions outside of class also counts for participation, as by doing these things you are exhibiting your engagement with the course material.

3) There will be occasional pre-announced quizzes on the readings and screenings. At the end of the semester, I will drop your lowest quiz grade; because of this, I do not offer make-up quizzes.

4) All of the PowerPoint slides I use during class will be available to you on the course’s online webfile CourseWare space the after each class session (ask me if you don’t know where this is). Please note that the slides do not contain everything you need to know for the course. If fact, they don’t even contain half of what you need to know—I only use them when I have a bunch of info that easily lends itself to bullet-pointing. So don’t feel that you can nap through lectures since the PowerPoint slides will be available; they are merely there to facilitate your note-taking.

5) You will be assigned three papers, an oral history paper, an episode analysis, and a reception analysis. You will receive information about each of these assignments well before they are due. Late papers will lose a grade level for every late day; an A will be reduced to an A-, an A- to a B+, etc., for each late day, including weekends. If you hand in a paper to my mailbox or e-mail it to me, it is your responsibility to confirm that I received it on time. “You mean you didn’t get my paper? I e-mailed it to you but must have sent it to the wrong address” is not an acceptable reason for a late paper. Plagiarism, copying, and other forms of cheating will result in academic failure; check the student handbook for University policies.

COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1 Course Overview
August 24: Introduction to the course
NO SCREENING
August 26: What Was Television Predicted To Be? How Do We Look Back On It Now?
Textbook: pp. 1-3
Packet: Arnheim, “A Forecast of Television”
Koszarski, “Coming Next Week”

Week 2 Radio Roots I
August 31: The Invention of Radio
Textbook: pp. 4-7
SCREENING TBA
September 2: Creating Commercial Broadcasting
Textbook: pp. 26-30

Week 3 Radio Roots II
September 7: Radio Programming
**Listen to radio programs for today
Packet: Hilmes, “Popular Commercial Radio”
Douglas, “Radio Comedy and Linguistic Slapstick”
NO SCREENING
September 9: Creating Public Service Broadcasting
Textbook: pp. 22-26
Packet: Kaufman, “God Gets an Idea”
Hilmes, “Who We Are, Who We Are Not”

Week 4 The Beginnings of Television
September 14: Technological and Industrial Competition Over TV
Textbook: pp. 9-12
NO SCREENING
September 16: Early Television Programming
Packet: Lipsitz, “The Meaning of Memory”
Matthei, “Inventing the Commercial”

Week 5 The Rise of Network Television
September 21: The Networks and the BBC Move to TV
Textbook: pp. 30-32 (up to “The Beveridge Committee…”)
pp. 35-36 (up to “The lifting of the…”)
p. 38 (“The Other Networks”)
p. 71 (“The Coronation”)
SCREENING TBA
September 23: Golden Age Programming
Textbook: pp. 72-75
Packet: Spigel, “Installing the Television Set”

Week 6 Television Takes Hold
September 28: The Classic Network System
Textbook: pp. 36-39, 44-49
SCREENING TBA
September 30: Did Ozzie and Harriett Really Exist?
Packet: Douglas, “Mama Said”
Mellencamp, “Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud”

Week 7 Was It Really a Vast Wasteland?
October 5: Discussion of Oral History Assignments
****ORAL HISTORY ASSIGNMENTS DUE****
SCREENING TBA
October 7: Interrogating the “Vast Wasteland”
Packet: Minow, “The Vast Wasteland Speech”
Newcomb, “The Opening of America”

Week 8 Commercialism in Britain & Midterm
October 12: Commercial Competition Comes to British TV
Textbook: pp. 32-35, 40-44, 86-89
NO SCREENING
October 14: MIDTERM

SPRING BREAK

Week 9 1960s Television
October 26: Cold War Consensus
Packet: Watson, “The Kennedy-Television Alliance”
SCREENING TBA
October 28: Wars at Home and Abroad
Textbook: pp. 81-86
Packet: Pach, “And That’s the Way It Was”
Douglas, “Genies and Witches”

Week 10 Television in the 1970s
November 2: The Turn Toward Relevance
Textbook: pp. 55-59
Packet: Gitlin, “The Turn Toward Relevance”
SCREENING TBA
November 4: More Turns
Textbook: pp. 89-94

Week 11 The Networks Get Competition
November 9: The Arrival of Cable TV & Channel 4
Textbook: pp. 13-17, 50-55, 95-98
Packet: Streeter, “Blue Skies and Strange Bedfellows”
SCREENING TBA
November 11: Quality and Televisuality
Textbook: pp. 98-102
Packet: Gray, “Recodings”
Caldwell, “Excessive Style”

Week 12 Television in the 1990s I
November 16: New Networks
Textbook: pp. 107-112
*****EPISODE ANALYSIS DUE****
SCREENING TBA
November 18: New Representations
Textbook: pp. 122-125, 129-132
Packet: Becker, “Prime Time Television in the Gay Nineties”

Week 13 Television in the 1990s II
November 23: The 1996 Telecom Act & Conglomeration
Textbook: pp. 62-67
Packet: Turner, “My Beef With Big Media”
NO SCREENING

Week 14 Current Topics
November 30: Globalization
Textbook: pp. 59-62, 103-107, 112-121
Packet: Denton, “The BBC: Time to Go”
SCREENING TBA
December 2: Television Decency
Textbook: pp. 132-137
Packet: UK & US Decency Standards
Wilkens, “Some See Scandal’s Roots in TV, Movies”

Week 15 Predicting The Future
December 7: Digital TV and the Internet
Textbook: pp. 13, 19-21, 137-140
****RECEPTION ANALYSIS DUE****

****FINAL EXAM THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16 10:30am ****

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