[ecrea] New book: The Television Code

*The Television Code***

  Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry

*Deborah L. Jaramillo***

*_http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-television-code_**__*


The broadcasting industry’s trade association, the National Association 
of Broadcasters (NAB), sought to sanitize television content via its 
self-regulatory document, the Television Code. The Code covered 
everything from the stories, images, and sounds of TV programs (no 
profanity, illicit sex and drinking, negative portrayals of family life 
and law enforcement officials, or irreverence for God and religion) to 
the allowable number of commercial minutes per hour of programming. It 
mandated that broadcasters make time for religious programming and 
discouraged them from charging for it. And it called for tasteful and 
accurate coverage of news, public events, and controversial issues.

Using archival documents from the Federal Communications Commission, 
NBC, the NAB, and a television reformer, Senator William Benton, this 
book explores the run-up to the adoption of the 1952 Television Code 
from the perspectives of the government, TV viewers, local broadcasters, 
national networks, and the industry’s trade association. Deborah L. 
Jaramillo analyzes the competing motives and agendas of each of these 
groups as she builds a convincing case that the NAB actually developed 
the Television Code to protect commercial television from reformers who 
wanted more educational programming, as well as from advocates of 
subscription television, an alternative distribution model to the 
commercial system. By agreeing to self-censor content that viewers, 
local stations, and politicians found objectionable, Jaramillo 
concludes, the NAB helped to ensure that commercial broadcast television 
would remain the dominant model for decades to come.

Deborah L. Jaramillo is an associate professor of television studies at 
Boston University. She is the author of /Ugly War, Pretty Package: How 
CNN and FOX News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept./


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