HUMA 2740

Lecture 12

- Embodied in the Wagner Act of 1935

o Large employers appeased by the agreement of the Roosevelt
administration not to pursue prosecutions of violations of anti-
trust statutes
- Creation of CIO, umbrella group of industrial unions, came this period
- Encouraged by rise in unionization that new federal legislation
allowed, Hollywood soon had two new unions: The Screen Actors’
Guild (SAG) and the Screen Writers’ Guild (SWG), formed in 1933
and unlike the Academy, were not company unions
- SWG had most difficult time being recognized by the moguls quote
pg 47
The Early Studio System and Vertical Integration

- Early film production characterized by “cameramen system,” the

“producer system” replaced it
- In the shooting script (continuity script) system, employee salaries
accounted for the largest part of a film’s budget
- Followed by costs of set construction
- To control costs, most successful companies began to branch out
and some became vertically integrated
- One of the first was owned by Adolph Zukor, one of the independent
who successfully went up against the MPPC prior to its dissolution
o Wanted to control production and distribution of the films and
wanted to buy the theatres (theatre chains) so he could play his
movies first
 - Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky (later known as Paramount) produced
and distributed films and then expanded into exhibition
- Company’s innovation was to restrict availability of films upon initial
release
- First run of a film exclusively shown in theatres owned by the same
company and only later would it be released to other theatre owners
quote pg 48
o Time between first and second run opening date called
clearance and overall system given the name “protection”
Commodity Audience and Commodity Ratings

- TV industry comprises multiple markets

- National ratings describe commodity audience and guide networks’
and cable channels’ decisions abt the prices that they change
- Ratings also guide advertisers’ decisions regarding the purchase of
audience for exposure to commercials
- Networks and cable channels use ratings to select programs for
cancellation and to commission new programs
- Creative personnel model new programs on current hits
- Connection between the market for audiences and the market for
programs is the ratings
- Ratings still commodities and market for ratings is still characterized
by continuities in demand for measurements of consumers and
discontinuities in demand over the price that advertisers should pay
networks to get those consumers
- Values attached to types of consumers have changed
- 50s and 60s – advertisers attached most value to overall numbers of
viewers reported by Nielsen, which left CBS consistently ahead of
RCA’s NBC
- All TV viewers not in TV’s commodity audience and that some parts
of the commodity audience are more valuable than others
- Commodity audience different than the audience and programs that
are popular with its most valuable parts may not be popular with the
corresponding portion of television’s viewership
- Ratings governed by the market, not by social science
- While an unreliable indicator of popular tastes, commodity ratings are
a reasonable measure of commercial tastes, of the genres, narrative
forms, character types, and iconic elements that advertisers and
program providers identify as viable environments for advertisement
and as reliable bait for the most valuable subgroups in the commodity
audience