By Dom Serafini
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal made me wonder: Is it the U.S. TV audience whose tastes change over the years, or are TV programmers the ones who, with a magic wand, decide what the public should or should not watch?
The Journal‘s story was about the trend of viewers preferring to watch solo comic acts over duos and groups. According to the article, from the 1920s to 1973, the comedic entertainment sector was populated by popular duos and even quartets. Take for example Laurel and Hardy (starting in 1926), George Burns and Gracie Allen (starting in 1929), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (starting in 1940), Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (starting in 1946), Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (starting in 1951), Dan Rowan and Dick Martin (starting in 1952), Sonny and Cher (starting in 1965), and the long-lasting Marx Brothers quartet (who performed together since 1923).
They were all successful TV personalities and starred in popular U.S. TV shows that were considered “appointment television.” Then, in 1973, poof, their magic disappeared from the TV screens, highlighted by the cancellation of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin’s Laugh-In. What happened? Did people’s tastes change en masse? Is it possible that fewer people tuned in because the acts became stale, the material wasn’t interesting any longer, and viewers preferred to watch older episodes? Is it possible that that is why those canceled shows were successful in syndication?
But what about the role of the programmers in all of that? Were TV programmers responsible for changing people’s tastes or was it what audiences wanted and Hollywood delivered? Or perhaps it is still the case of the example from WWII where Hollywood force fed a diet of war stories to American filmgoers in order for the U.S. government to sell war bonds.
Plus, there was likely an effort to make only a handful of American film stars into TV personalities, such as Dick Van Dyke and Groucho Marx. TV personalities rarely became film favorites, including Sid Caesar, Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, Lucille Ball, and Jerry Seinfeld. Like there was a Rubicon between film and TV programmers.
A former U.S. broadcaster admitted that programmers can indeed get rid of what audiences like because of higher production costs. He also acknowledged that programmers can also decide what to greenlight from the creative pools.
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