Television: The Mass Tasteland

Evening. A darkened room. Figures huddle close together. There is a sudden flash, a great white ball of light. Then a wavy line. Then a dot. Then nothing.

“I feel like someone is dead.”

The occasion is not an atomic disaster, but the breakdown of the family television set in prime time. The pitiful line about someone being dead was actually spoken to an interviewer on television viewing habits, along with such others as, “I nearly lost my mind. The days were so long,” and “It was terrible. We did nothing. My husband and I talked.”

Americans take their viewing so seriously that more than one-fourth have their set repaired or replaced within four hours; about half get it going again within a day; and almost no one can bear to miss Mister Ed for more than a week.

Jusl-Like a Woman. So says a new book, The People Look at Television, by Gary Steiner (Knopf: $7.95). The findings are based on two surveys financed by CBS, TV’s most prosperous network (its 1962 profit was equal to that of NBC and ABC combined). The people interviewed (2,500 in the U.S. at large, 300 in Manhattan) somehow seem to show a three-to-one preference for CBS shows.

Some of the book’s more intriguing findings concern the “average” American viewer. He has no more than a high-school education, an annual income of less than $8,000, and accounts for more than three-quarters of all television homes. His opinion of TV ranges from “extreme, unqualified” positive (“I love it—it moves me just like a woman”) to “extreme, unqualified” negative (“It comes from the devil”). On the whole, though, he thinks it’s just fine, at least as Psychologist Steiner interprets him.

Moreover, the highly educated seem to share this glad acceptance to a remarkable degree. But the better-educated viewer says he likes serious programs much more often than the grade-school group. Those with seven to eight years of school never watch heavy drama, while 11% of the most educated go for the Ibsen-substitutes when available. While only 5% of the grade-school audience are interested in information and public affairs, 13% of the college group and 23% of postgraduates declare that they like it best.

To Tell the Truth. Can the testimony of these college types be trusted? Not according to Steiner. He is convinced that what they say they see is very different from what, behind closed doors and with interviewers out of the living room, they actually watch. Checking their viewing records in an ARB rating, he discovers that the only kind of program they choose considerably more often than the average man is heavy drama. During the evening hours, they spend only 4% less time watching “light entertainment” shows than grade-school addicts, only 2% more time watching news, only 1% more time watching public affairs shows. To Steiner, the difference among educational groups lies “not in what they do, but how they feel about it.” Essentially, the Harvard lawyer, or FCC Chairman Newt Minow, selects the same programs and spends as much prime time in front of his set as the kids from Kenosha, Wis. But Newton Minow—or so this survey implies—feels worse about it.

In the end, Dr. Steiner maintains that television is a “mass tasteland” rather than a “vast wasteland.” It is clear, at least to him, “that most of today’s entertainment programs are designed to please most of the people,” and it is clear—if only to him and CBS—that “our study indicates that they usually succeed.”