In British commercial television there was a specificand formal undertaking that ‘programmes’ should not be inter-rupted by advertising; this could take place only in ‘naturalbreaks’:

Analysis of a distribution of interest or categories in abroadcast-ing programme, while in its own terms significant, isnecessarily abstract and static. In all developed broadcastingsystems the characteristic organisation, and therefore thecharacteristic experience, is one of sequence or flow.

Given the expansion and fragmentation of television,and the rise of digital media (both offline and online),since the 1970s, it is more than appropriate to revisit andreengage with the concept of flow.

Focusing on theoutput of five television channels (from Britain and theUnited States) over several hours, Williams deconstructsprogramming into discrete segments, and then explainshow these segments, as delivered in a succession ofsounds and images, become more than the sum of theirparts. In doing so, he expands the scope and vocabularyof textual analysis by showing how the overall flowof the broadcast schedule, with its constant breakupand reassembly constitutes “perhaps the definingcharacteristic of broadcasting” (86).

we already have cultural preconceptions as to the "sameness" of televisionprogramming-that is, "if you've seen one sitcom, you've seen them all;'The impression of continuity over difference intensifies when television isevaluated according to literary conceptions of genre, with their centuriesof evolution, or even according to the half-century span of such film genresas the Western

Thus all TV genres in some sense remainhistorical genres, those defined by a consensus between the industry, TVGuide, and the viewing audience.

It is due to their nature as artifacts of popular culture that films andtelevision programs have been treated in a specific way in genre studies.Genre study in film has had a historically and culturally specific meaning.

. Instead of employing a broad category such as "comedy," we need to activatespecific genres such as the "screwball comedy" (film) or the "situation

Drawing on Aristotle, the literary critic Northrop Frye attempted inthe 1950s to further develop the idea of classifying literature into typesand categories that he called genres and modes.

Aristotle implied, tragedy could then haveits ideal impact on an audience. (In a similar way, although Hollywood filmgenres are constructed from actual films, the genre itself is frequentlyspoken of as an ideal set of traits that inform individual films. Thus, although many individual Westerns do not feature Indians, Indians remaina crucial generic element.)

As one literary critic hasremarked, "biological classification is itself an explanatory system, whichhas been devised primarily to make sense of an otherwise disparate groupof individuals and which is changed primarily in order to improve thatsense

e 1950 publication Red Channels: The Report on theCommunist Influence in Radio and Television, consisting largely of a list ofover 150 actors and other television personnel with purported le-wing ties,quily led to a decade-long pervasive political blalist in networktelevision.

Despite its wealth and political confidence, U.S. commercial television didnot immediately take off at the end of the war. ere existed a bier disputebetween groups aligned with NBCRCA who favoured immediatedevelopment on the VHF spectrum and those aligned with CBS, whiwanted a delay in order to establish colour TV service on the wider ultra-high frequency (UHF) band

Emerging from thelate 1930s and World War II, radio broadcasting found itself in a curiouslyambivalent position of strength and defensiveness. Network economicstrength derived from a decade of rising profits from network radio,reflected in advertising billings, sto prices, and ambitious plans for postwar spending in multi million dollar broadcast talent contracts, facsimilebroadcasting, international commercial radio networks, and in televisionitself. Simultaneously with the first round of the Justice Department’s effortsto divest the Hollywood studios of their theatre ains and outlawestablished distribution practices in 1938, the two broadcast networks faceda period of unseling antitrust and regulatory scrutiny. An NBC executivein 1940 worried that “the New Deal at last has come to the world of radiocommunications,” and warned that the network was vulnerable to the sameantitrust arges and legal remedies of dismemberment that the beleagueredHollywood studios were currently undergoing. A new reform-minded FCCin Roosevelt’s second term did allenge network radio practices, forcingNBC to divest itself of its smaller network (thereby creating ABC) andproducing the infamous “Blue Book” outlining the public serviceresponsibilities of broadcast licensees.

Broadcast regulation in the United States has been founded upon twoopposing principles: that the federal licence confers a privilege, not a right,to the broadcaster to operate in “the public interest” using public airwaves,

, hadinfluenced the commercial structures and programme forms of the mediumin America, as well as the relation of U.S. television to the rest of the world.Broadcast regulation in the United States has been founded upon twoopposing principles: that the federal licence confers a privilege, not a right,to the broadcaster to operate in “the public interest” using public airwaves,and that the licence establishes and protects the broad de facto propertyrights of private operators of television and radio stations under restrictedoversight of network operations and programme content. Economic

Even families that were not welcomed into the middle-class melting potof postwar suburbia were promised that the dream of domestic bliss wouldcome true through the purase of a television set. Ebony continually ranadvertisements that displayed African-Americans in middle-class livingrooms, enjoying an evening of television. Many of these ads were strikinglysimilar to those used in white consumer magazines—although oen theadvertisers portrayed bla families wating programs that featured blaactors.25 Despite this iconographic substitution, the message was clearly onetransmied by a culture industry catering to the middle-class suburbanideal. Nuclear families living in single-family homes would engage inintensely private social relations through the luxury of television

The Lost Sex (1947) gave professional, psyological status to this housewifeimage, claiming that the essential function of woman was that of caretaker,mother, and sexual partner. ose women who took paid employment in theoutside world would defy the biological order of things and becomeneurotics.17 One postwar marriage guidebook even included a “Test ofNeurotic Tendencies” on whi women lost points for oosing an answerthat exhibited their desire for authority at work.18 e domestic womanneeded to save her energy for housekeeping, ildrearing, and an active(monogamous) sex life with her husband.19 e ways in whi peopleinterpreted and applied su messages to their own lives is difficult todiscern, but their constant repetition in popular media did provide a contextin whi women could find ample justification for their early marriages,ildcenteredness, reluctance to divorce, and tendency to use highereducation only as a stepping stone for marriage.2

the television was shown to replacethe fireplace altogether, as the magazines showed readers how televisioncould function as the center of family aention

At the simplest level, there was the question of the proper room fortelevision. In 1949, Better Homes and Gardens asked, “Where does thereceiver go?” It listed options including the living room, game room, or“some strategic spot where you can see it from the living room, dining roomand kiten.”1 At this point, however, the photographs of model roomsusually did not include television sets as part of the interior decor. On thefew occasions when sets did appear, they were placed either in the basementor in the living room.

Meanwhile, women were given a highly constraining solution to theanging roles of gender and sexual identity. Although middle- andworking-class women had been encouraged by popular media to entertraditionally male occupations during the war, they were now told to returnto their homes where they could have babies and make color-coordinatedmeals.16 Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg’s The Modern Woman:

More typically, the television set took the place of the piano.4 In AmericanHome, for instance, the appearance of the television set correlatessignificantly with the vanishing piano. While in 1948 the baby grand pianotypically held a dominant place in model living rooms, over the years itgradually receded to the point where it was usually shown to be an uprightmodel located in marginal areas su as basements. Meanwhile, thetelevision set moved into the primary living spaces of model rooms whereits stylish cabinets meshed with and enhanced the interior decor. e new“entertainment centers,” comprised of a radio, television, and phonograph,oen made the piano entirely obsolete. In 1953, Better Homes and Gardenssuggested as mu when it displayed a television set in a “built-in musiccorner” that “replaces the piano,” now moved into the basement.5 In that

Televisionwas the great family minstrel that promised to bring Mom, Dad, and thekids together; at the same time, it had to be carefully controlled so that itharmonized with the separate gender roles and social functions of individualfamily members.

e popular media published reports andadvice from social critics and social scientists who were studying the effectsof television on family relationships. e media also published pictorialrepresentations of domestic life that showed people how television might—or might not—fit into the dynamics of their own domestic lives. Mostsignificantly, like the scene from Rebel without a Cause, the mediadiscourses were organized around ideas of family harmony and discord.