Free at last.
Free from three guys at ABC, CBS and NBC deciding what you see on TV.
Free from having to watch shows only at their scheduled times.
Free from the shopworn, burned-out mentality of most network shows.
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TV And Radio in the Eighties : Cable Channels, VCR Lead TV Revolution for Viewer Independence
That's what the 1980s really were about for TV viewers.
The new way that people started watching TV was as important as the shows themselves.
Call it the zap decade.
With a vast array of cable channels and hand-held remote controls, viewers began zapping from one station to another, challenging programmers to stop them and hold their attention.
It was a nightmare for professional programmers.
Public-access shows that cost amateurs $50 a half hour were suddenly just as easy to tune in as $400,000 network sitcoms.
But for viewers, the sudden change was heaven.
For the first time, viewers became their own programmers, selecting at random anything they wanted from the cornucopia of shows on what now were 30, 40, 50 or more channels.
David Letterman had it right. "TV is becoming like radio," he said, referring to the multiplicity of choices that could be likened to the FM revolution.
Choice was the magic word.
Producer Fred Silverman also saw parallels with radio.
"Television is getting just as loose and informal on the new outlets," he said.
Revolution, pure and simple.
In past decades, what you saw mostly were TV shows of that particular time.
But the explosion of new channels in the 1980s meant a need for programs to fill them. Many of the programs were movies and TV shows of the past, providing an instant sweep of U.S. social history never before available on the tube in such detail.
The established Big Three networks tried to pooh-pooh the new program choice, saying much of it was simply reruns.
True. But they missed the big picture--the new perspective of past and present not only for the older generation, but younger viewers as well.
No longer was it necessary to go to museums and art houses to catch "Citizen Kane" and "It's a Wonderful Life" and find out what all the shouting was about. Not when they became repeatedly accessible on cable.
Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs and Milton Berle no longer were simply revered TV memories. Not when they popped up with frequency on the new channels.
There were also, of course, the countless silly old movies and silly--but loved--old television shows, like "Mr. Ed" and "Leave It to Beaver."
And combined with such new TV riches as "Hill Street Blues," "Cheers," "L.A. Law" and "Cagney & Lacey," there was a wealth of material all over the dial for selective viewers.
In many ways, it was the beginning of TV's most significant Golden Age.
For the total TV experience--not merely individual shows--was becoming the quintessential trip for viewers.
No longer was network prime time the only big picture on TV.
Free at last.
And nothing freed viewers more than VCRs.
Now you could tape a show and watch it any time you wanted.
Now you could rent or buy a movie and watch it instead of TV, at your leisure.
Without commercials.
And now it was a sponsor's nightmare as well as a programmer's.
Free at last.
Under the assault of VCRs and cable, networks began to shrivel. Viewers defected in huge numbers.
Many went to the growing number of independent stations. Many went to the new Fox TV network, with its flashy lineup of such series as "America's Most Wanted" and "Married . . . With Children."
At the start of the decade, ABC, CBS and NBC shared 85% of the national TV audience. By the end of the '80s, they were down to 67%.
Only occasional huge programming events, like the finale of "MASH," "The Winds of War," a Super Bowl game--or a rare series like "The Cosby Show"--could temporarily win back network viewers in major fashion.
The figures were devastating. Take cable. In 1980, only 22% of TV homes had it. Now the total is 57%.
That's more than 52 million homes--and rising. There are 92 million TV homes in America.
But no figures are more devastating than the ones for VCRs. Almost invisible at the start of the decade, VCRs now are in 66% of American homes.
And while VCR viewing has had an enormous effect on the film business, its damage has been mostly to TV, says media analyst Tom Adams of Kagan Associates in Carmel.
"Cassette-renting is an activity more like watching TV than going to a movie," he says. "So it replaces TV time. It doesn't replace the movie experience."
The network viewing experience, meanwhile, was getting whacked on another critical front. Kids, a bulwark of profits for the Big Three, were especially being lured away.
A new generation of youngsters was growing up not caring about ABC, CBS or NBC any more than it did MTV, HBO or VH-1. Channels 2, 4 and 7 no longer seemed terribly different from Channels 42, 44 or 47.
And kids took to VCR home viewing of films in a tremendous way.
"The movie experience thrives on the teen-age audience, which grew up in the video age," says Adams. "They could watch their favorite movies over and over again at home."
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