Primetime Politics: The Truth about Conservative Lies, Corporate Control, and Television Culture

by Philip Green

The average American watches over 25 hours of television each week. Ninety-nine percent of U.S. households have at least one TV set, and 66% own three or more. Over the course of a year, Americans will watch 250 billion hours of television, but what, actually, are they watching? In this insightful new book, media critic Philip Green explores the true nature of television and the effect this TV addiction has on American democracy. He argues that mainstream shows are little more than extended commercials, dominated by advertising interests and designed to be as habit-forming as possible. Programming is controlled by conglomerates afraid of losing market share or upsetting advertisers, leading to television news, dramas, and sitcoms that uphold conservative values at the expense of controversial opinions. The result is a system that stifles debate, isolates viewers, and favors right-wing agendas. To make the system serve a true democracy, Green proposes ending the private monopoly of public airspace and making the television market a true free market. With its hard-hitting critiques and innovative solutions, Primetime Politics is essential reading for everyone who asks 'What's on the tube tonight?'

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT ANALYSIS OF THE "MAINSTREAM" MEDIA

Philip Green was a professor of Government at Smith College and is a visiting professor of graduate political science at The New School; he has also written 'Equality and Democracy: A New Press Back-To-Basics Book,' 'Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood,' etc.

He says in the first chapter of this 2005 book, "the American television system is a system of (1) publicly licensed private monopolies (2) controlling a public good in what is supposed to be a democratically constituted polity, for (3) their own purposes and the purposes of corporate advertisers. This is the system that I propose should be abolished." (Pg. 3)

He asserts, "Even so-called public television is simply a set of channels funded mostly by the same corporations that fund programs on network television for distributing programs that do not fit into the networks' program mix... public television... is not allowed to produce or show competitive types of programming. Its role is defined by the private networks: it can only be what they are not; it is part... of the commercial system." (Pg. 6) He suggests that television "colonizes public space and discourse... television, as an imperial system, tends to subsume them all. Public discourse becomes unreal unless it can be reproduced on TV..." (Pg. 12-13)

He argues, "The only innovation in American newscasting since its origins was the introduction of 24/7 cable television... (But) Nothing has changed in the fundamental relationship of news to audience or audience to advertising. With cable news, the audience is now talked at around the clock... instead of only for an hour a day." (Pg. 39) He notes, "What is surprising... is not that Hollywood produces so many anticapitalist film or television scripts but that it produces virtually none; it is not too surprising, though, because regardless of who writes or directs them, all Hollywood films and television episodes are produced by capitalists." (Pg. 134)

He concludes, "My ideological critique is not that programming is procapitalist, or materialist, or religious, or irreligious, or socialistic; but that it is exclusionary rather than pluralistic; and my ideological standpoint is that pluralism is always preferable to conformity, and any increment to pluralism is for the better." (Pg. 159)

Although not widely known, this book is an incisive political critique of the effect of mass media on television and related media.