LOP: Least Objectionable Programming
Pre-1970s American network designation for a
television program capable of retaining a viewer’s
apathetic attention; televsion not likely to provoke
a pre-RCD viewers to rise from the sofa to change
the channel.
Characteristics of Quality
Television (1996)
“Preface”--“The Golden Age of
Television" to "Quality TV”
(Robert J. Thompson, Television’s
Second Golden Age: From Hill
Street Blues to ER. New York:
Continuum, 1996)
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
1. Quality TV is best defined by what it is not. It is
not "regular" TV. The worst insult you could give to
Barney Rosenzweig, the executive producer of Cagney &
Lacey, was to tell him that his work was "too TV.” Twin
Peaks was universally praised by critics for being "unlike
anything we'd ever seen on television." In a medium long
considered artless, the only artful TV is that which isn't
like all the rest of it. Quality TV breaks rules. It may do
this by taking a traditional genre and transforming it, as
Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and Moonlighting did to
the cop show, the doctor show, and the detective show,
respectively. Or it may defy standard generic parameters
and define new narrative territory heretofore unexplored
by television, as did thirtysomething and Twin Peaks.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
2. Quality TV usually has a quality pedigree. Shows
made by artists whose reputations were made in
other, classier media, like film, are prime
candidates. Furthermore, directors of small art films have
a better chance of making quality TV than directors of
blockbuster movies. John Sayles's Shannon's Deal and
David Lynch's Twin Peaks both got the quality nod by most
critics; Steven Spielberg's SeaQuest DSV did not. As the
genre developed through the 1980s, a few creators who'd
worked exclusively in TV also became associated with this
designer label television. Since Hill Street Blues, for
example, any show with Steven Bochco's name on it is
presumed quality (NYPD Blue) until proven otherwise
(Capitol Critters). In all of these cases, the creators
usually insist upon and get a much greater degree of
independence from network influence than is typical in the
production process of commercial TV.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
3. Quality TV attracts an audience with blue chip
demographics. The upscale, well-educated, urbandwelling, young viewers advertisers so desire to reach
tend to make up a much larger percentage of the audience
of these shows than of other kinds of programs.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
4. Desirable demographics notwithstanding, quality shows must often
undergo a noble struggle against profit-mongering networks and
non-appreciative audiences. The hottest battles between Art and
Commerce, between creative writer-producers and bottom-lineconscious executives are often played out during the runs of these
series. With some obvious exceptions, these shows seldom become
blockbusters and their survival is often tenuous, at least at the
beginning. Their futures often hang in the balance between network
noblesse oblige (the renewing and promoting of a low-rated show)
and network stupidity (scheduling it in a deadly time slot). When a
quality show does become a hit, it is often after a long struggle and
some unusual circumstances. Hill Street Blues reached the top
twenty-five only after it won a record-breaking batch of Emmy
Awards; Cagney & Lacey was canceled three times on the way to
ratings respectability; NYPD Blue debuted strongly after its forbidden
language and nudity were reported in nearly every paper in America
and a handful of stations refused to air the show.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
5. Quality TV tends to have a large ensemble cast.
The variety of characters allows for a variety of vlewpoints.
Since multiple plots must usually be employed to
accommodate all of the characters.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
6. Quality TV has a memory. Though it may or may not
be serialized in continuing story lines, these shows tend to
refer back to previous episodes. Characters develop and
change as the series goes on. Events and details from
previous episodes are often used or referred to in
subsequent episodes.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
7. Quality TV creates a new genre by mixing old
ones. When describing Northern Exposure's creolized
generic heritage, for example, Betsy Williams says that
while the show "is usually billed as a drama ... it functions
more as an hour-long ensemble comedy with a slight nod
to the medical franchise, another to primetime
melodrama, another to the fish-out-of-water sitcom, and
still another to the sixties' “magicom.” All quality shows
integrate comedy and tragedy in a way Aristotle would
never have approved.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
8. Quality TV tends to be literary and writer-based.
The writing is usually more complex than in other types of
programming.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
9. Quality TV is self-conscious. Oblique allusions are
made to both high and popular culture, but mostly to TV
itself: Moonlighting, for example, could bury an obscure
reference to a play by Eugene O'Neill right alongside a
direct address to the camera about the fact that
Moonlighting had been airing a lot of reruns lately. Both
the classier cultural references and the sly, knowing jabs
at TV serve to distance these programs from the
stigmatized medium and to announce that they are far
superior to the typical trash available on television.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
10. The subject matter of quality TV tends toward
the controversial. St. Elsewhere presented the first
prime-time series story about AIDS, and other quality
series frequently included some of television's earliest
treatments of subjects like abortion, homosexuals, racism,
and religion, to name a few. The overall message almost
always tends toward liberal humanism. So consistent have
these shows been in this regard that it is hard to imagine
a right-wing "quality TV" series. "Quality TV is liberal TV,"
Jane Feuer making no bones about it, wrote in MTM:
Quality Television.
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
11. Quality TV aspires toward "realism."
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
12. Series which exhibit the eleven characteristics
listed above are usually enthusiastically showered
with awards and critical acclaim. Since the 1980-1981
season, shows of the type described in this list have
dominated the best drama category for most major
entertainment awards. Emmy Awards for best drama went
to Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law four times each, Cagney
& Lacey and Picket Fences twice, and thirtysomething and
Northern Exposure once each. Best Drama Golden Globes
for the same period went to Hill Street twice, L.A. Law
twice, Northern Exposure twice, and thirtysomething,
China Beach, and Twin Peaks once each. Peabody Awards
went to Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law,
thirtysomething, China Beach, Twin Peaks, and Northern
Exposure. The award for best dramatic episode was given
Robert J. Thompson’s Characteristics of Quality Television (1996)
12.
by the Writers' Guild of America three times to Hill Street
Blues and Moonlighting, twice to Cagney & Lacey and
China Beach, and once each to Miami Vice, St. Elsewhere,
and thirtysomething. A survey of college professors and TV
critics con-[16] ducted by the Siena Research Institute in
1990 named Hill Street Blues the best television drama
ever, and when the editors of TV Guide compiled an "All
Time Best TV" list in 1993, the all-time best drama went
to St. Elsewhere and the all-time best cop show to Hill
Street Blues." When this author asked TV critics from the
388 largest circulation daily newspapers to name the best
prime-time TV shows of all time, Hill Street Blues came
out on top.
Characteristics of Quality
Television Revisited (2007)
Robert J. Thompson, “Preface” to
Quality TV (edited by Janet McCabe
and Kim Akass [London: Tauris,
2007]).
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
Quality shows are no longer
“specialized offerings of the
network”
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
The “quality TV aesthetic” has
spread “like a virus”
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
Quality TV is now part of a
“massive repackaging strategy
across generic lines,” a “retooling
comparable to the switchover to
colour three decades earlier.”
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
Quality TV is now “a supergenre, a formula unto itself”
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
Although cable television is now
seen as the “test kitchen” for Quality
TV, it followed the lead of more
experimental network television in
the 1990s.
Characteristics of Quality Television Revisited (2007)
“The precise definition of ‘quality TV’ was
elusive right from the start, though we knew
it when we saw it. These shows were generic
mongrels, often scrambling and recombining
traditional TV formulas in unexpected ways;
they had literary and cinematic ambitions
beyond what we had seen before, and they
employed complex and sophisticated
serialized narratives and inter-series
‘mythologies.’ Back in the 1980s we
breathlessly celebrated these new aesthetic
approaches and challenges being taken on by
a medium that had changed very little since
the 1950s. But by the century’s end, these
innovations had become formulas.”