Lecture: "1970s Television"

I. Quality Television

In 1972, the three networks sign consent decrees in response to an anti-trust suit filed by the Justice Department. These consent decrees become known collectively as the SYN/FIN rules. The rise to dominance of independent producers such as the MTM production house was enabled by the SYN/FIN Rules.

Tenets of the SYN/FIN Rules

1. The Prime Time Access Rule: helps independent producers because the affiliates now need 3 ½ hours more programming that they need to get from somewhere else besides the networks.

2. The Financial Interest Rule

Pt 1: Restricts the number of hours per week that the network can self-produce. What results: networks now produce their news shows, but not much else.

Pt 2: Prohibits the networks from having a financial interest in the syndication of programming. Thus, independent producers now can get vastly rich off of syndicating shows after their at least three year run on the networks.

Features of Quality Television

1. Ensemble cast. Example: Northern Exposure

2. Domesticated workplace. Example: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

3. Multiple plots in a semi-serial format. Example: NYPD Blue

4. Aggressive cinematic technique. Example: Hill St. Blues

5. Quality viewer demographics. Example: St. Elsewhere

Historical Development of Quality Television

1. mid-1970s: workplace family lifestyle sitcoms

Examples: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Phyllis, Taxi

2. late 1970s: branching out into hour-long dramas

CLIP #1: Lou Grant (CBS, 1977-1982)

spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show

3. Hour-long drama production organized around traditional TV genres: cop show and medical show (Cops and Docs franchises).

a. Cop Show

CLIP #2: Hill Street Blues ("Freedom’s Last Stand", NBC, 1/28/82): end

b. Doc Show

CLIP #3: St. Elsewhere (The Final Episode, NBC, 8/10/88): end

4. Quality Television in the 1990s: The case of Northern Exposure

a. Using backstory to structure individual episodes

CLIP #4: Northern Exposure ("Cicely", CBS, 5/18/92): founding of the town by lesbians

b. Self-conscious "bardic" nature

II. 1970s intertextuality: fanning shows out across the schedule

1. The case of Norman Lear: All in the Family to Maude and The Jeffersons to Good Times

2. Fred Silverman’s world at ABC

CLIP #6: Happy Days ("My Favorite Orkan", ABC, 1978): Mork vs. Fonzie

Laverne and Shirley

III. Fred Silverman’s "tits and zits" strategy at ABC in the late 1970s

The case of Charlie’s Angels:

Badly plotted and executed telefilm detective show

CLIP #8: Charlie’s Angels ("Angels in Chains", ABC, 1976-77): resolution

vs.

Feminist show because it shows women entering into male dominated spheres of power

Dallas’ shift from series-format telefilm Western (Example: "Lessons", 2nd show of the series)

to

serial-format soap opera

CLIP #11: Dallas ("Ewing Rise", CBS, 9/25/87): Results of the accident

Click Here to Return to the MTA 400 ("The History of Television") Syllabus

This page was last updated on January 8, 2001

Questions or comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman