Television & New Media
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Who Shot J.R.'s Ratings? The Rise and Fall of the 1980s Prime-Time
Soap Opera
Chris Jordan
Television New Media 2007; 8; 68
DOI: 10.1177/1527476406296443
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Who Shot J.R.’s Ratings?
The Rise and Fall of the 1980s Prime-Time Soap Opera
Chris Jordan
St. Cloud State University
Prime-time soap operas of the 1980s arose from an intensification of television production’s historically oligopsonistic structure under Reaganomics and deregulation. Whereas
regulatory reforms undertaken on behalf of the public interest broadened access to primetime television for independent producers during the 1970s, Reagan’s implementation of
tax reforms and deregulatory initiatives concentrated control over prime-time television in
the hands of Hollywood’s largest producers and syndicators during the 1980s. The onehour evening soap opera facilitated these companies’ domination of prime-time network
access and foreign syndication sales by allowing them to use access to a nationwide audience to engage economies of scale in television production.
Keywords:
Reagan; Dallas; soap opera; political economy; Lorimar
In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, a journalist asked actor Larry
Hagman (Dallas’s villainous J.R. Ewing) if he would vote for U.S. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. The Texas-raised Hagman wasted no
words in his reply: “Back somebody else besides myself for President?
Surely you jest! Christ, I’m probably the best bet everybody’s got right
now in this country” (p. 94). Indeed, oilman J.R. Ewing’s Darwinian
style of entrepreneurial savvy proved to be an apt strategy for a decade
of free-market media industry reform that paralleled the rise and fall of
the one-hour, network prime-time soap operas Dallas (CBS, 1978-1991),
Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981-1990), Dynasty (ABC, 1981-1989), and Knots Landing
(CBS, 1979-1993).
In drawing on interrelated strands of critical political economic theory,
this article analyzes how prime-time1 soap operas of the 1980s arose in
part from the impact of President Ronald Reagan’s free-market economic
and deregulatory policies on the television industry. It argues that despite
TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA
Vol. 8 No. 1, February 2007 68–87
DOI: 10.1177/1527476406296443
© 2007 Sage Publications
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
the dramatic maturation of cable television during the 1980s, the big three
networks remained dominant forces in prime-time TV because of their
access to a nationwide mass audience of more than 80 million homes
(Gomery 1984, 62). In turn, it contends that access to a prime-time network audience enabled the largest producers and distributors of television programming to achieve hegemony during the 1980s in an emerging
global marketplace for American television shows. The absorption of
Spelling/Goldberg Productions and Lorimar into television distributors
Worldvision and Telepictures during a period of rising production costs
enabled the former companies to offset the financial risk incurred by their
production of lavish prime-time soap operas in an era of diminishing network investment in television production. However, independent producers who lacked a track record of successful prime-time television
production found it increasingly difficult to muster the considerable capital necessary to finance a prime-time television program.
The Political Economy of Network Television
The proliferation of television in developing countries in the last three
decades makes the medium both a worldwide economic export and a
form of cultural production that circulates within and between countries,
mediating relations between them. Critical political economy provides a
framework for analyzing the influence of media structures and performance on the television industry by shedding light on the role of politics
in shaping these forces. This school of theory focuses on three distinct
areas: the relation between the capitalist class and the state; the relationship between the logic of capital and state policies; and the state as a mediator of public and private interests in the media industry (Bettig 1999).
Critical political economic theory focuses on ownership and control to
explore how a class that owns and controls most of America’s productive
capital exercises a disproportionate influence on government policy planning and implementation. Unlike economists, who relegate politics to the
periphery of their paradigm, political economists make politics a central
focus of their analysis. The questions “Who owns the media?” and “Who
rules the state?” provide a starting point for this investigation. Logic of
capital theory maintains that a mode of production based on the multiplication of capital through the ceaseless cultivation of new markets is
prone to concentration of ownership because of its relentless drive for
profit, and that state intervention is necessary to counter this tendency. In
this role, the government serves as a mediator of public and private interests by breaking up monopolies, oligopolies, or trusts.
From this examination, it follows that the logic of capital, if unchecked by
government intervention, results in the gravitation of the communications
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industry toward the economics of cost efficiencies, product differentiation, and vertical integration2, resulting in a reduction of independent
media sources, concentration on the largest markets, and the neglect of
smaller, poorer sectors (Litman 1990). Critical political economy thus
argues that the media marketplace is prone to failure because the constant
drive for profit that defines the logic of capital results in a restricted range
of media output.
Critics of the capital logic theory of the state argue that it is too essentialist in its tautological assertion that the interests of capital always prevail in class struggle because business simply uses the state as an instrument
to advance its interests (Jessop 1990). In response, critical political economists argue that class forces struggling in and through the state determine
policies and action. Various sectors of industry and the public insert
themselves into relevant policy-making arenas and exert pressure on the
various departments of the state system to advance their interests. The
state takes on the role of the “ideal collective capitalist” by promoting
the long-term interests of capital as a whole through discriminatory management of monopolistic competition. The interaction of these institutional forces, through the individuals, groups, and organizations that
constitute them, helps to shape the general political economic framework
within which television production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption take place. However, while mediating the process of compromise, the
state is also ultimately beholden to the private sector because of the state’s
dependence on the capital accumulation process for tax revenue. This
makes the state particularly sensitive to the threat of a capital “investment
strike” (Bettig 1999, 130).
The dependence of the state on capital investment for economic
growth has increased with the maturation of a global economy of goods
production, distribution, and consumption. As Herbert Schiller (1989)
observes, the advent of technologies that are capable of overcoming spatial and temporal constraints, such as the computer, the communications
satellite, and cable television, has established an agenda of global market
imperatives that transnational corporations must follow. Furthermore,
the military and economic power of the U.S. government provides the
United States with a degree of exception from the general condition of
weakened national sovereignty that accompanies the growing power of
the transnational corporation to dictate the global flow of capital investment. The role of the United States as a key mediator of transnational corporate and nation-state relations, combined with the rise to power of the
corporate sector in America, has resulted in the privatization of formerly
public broadcasting systems in Western Europe, Asia, and other regions.
Although the most obvious economic contribution of new communications technologies lies in their capability to allow companies engaged in
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
goods production on a global basis to make important resource allocation
decisions, they also strengthen the ability of media corporations to penetrate old and new territories with movies, television programs, and
advertising messages (Schiller 1989, 329).
In light of the threat of cultural homogenization implicit in this global
infrastructure of communications technology, it must be acknowledged
that globalization provokes localization, multiplying histories through
migration and diaspora and eroding a sense of nationalism built around
the interests of dominant groups. Post-Fordism represents capitalism’s
response to this trend. The Fordist system of manufacturing and marketing strove to maximize profits by making one commodity appeal to as
many consumers as possible for as long as possible. Under post-Fordism,
capitalism responds to the global flow of labor and consumption markets
within and between nation-states by transforming local and regional cultures into market segments and mobilizing citizens as consumers. By
implementing a post-Fordist strategy of diversifying its products and
their marketing in order to incorporate diverse locales, capitalism transforms a problem into an opportunity as it markets products for both
global markets and niche segments to take advantage of the countervailing flows of localism and globalism (Fiske 1997).
Cultural studies theorists such as Stuart Hall contend that semiotics,
structuralism, and poststructuralism, with their concern for language and
representation, thus challenge Marxism’s deterministic correlation of
political and economic forces. Hall (1991, 62) argues that “although individuals are not the ‘authors’ of ideology, in the sense of producing it out
of nothing from inside our heads, ideologies must work on and through
the subject” to produce a “deep democratization of culture.” The advancement of the soap opera narrative, in terms of a “real time” structure that
mirrors the rhythm of daily life, makes it far more amenable to consumption through means of displaced gossip than other television genres.
Various scholars (Ang, 1985; Fiske, 1987; Feuer, 1995; Olson, 1999) thus
celebrate the prime-time soap opera as an open text from which active
audiences derive meaningful interpretations.
Still, American shows have steadily declined in global popularity as
producers and distributors tailor shows to the tastes of foreign audiences
(Gabler 2003). The decline of the one-hour, prime-time soap opera of the
1980s is traceable in part to this trend. With the integration of television
production and distribution in 1995 and the maturation of a global marketplace for television, American media giants struck partnerships with
overseas nations. The formation of production partnerships between
American and foreign media producers promoted greater cost efficiency
by enabling producers and distributors to tailor programs to individual markets. Because cultural aspects of television programming do not
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necessarily translate well across borders, genres are selectively marketed
to specific regions; producers and syndicators often allow buyers to control editing and other modifications in their markets; and producers
sometimes avoid certain themes and language in anticipation of the gatekeepers in foreign markets (Bielby and Harrington 2002).
Thus, American prime-time shows can no longer be expected to win a
prime-time slot in foreign markets. Instead, the prevalence on prime time
of “reality” shows such as Survivor suggests that foreign producers and
broadcasters prefer shows they can re-create within their specific cultural
contexts. The following section explores how government policy, the logic
of capital, and the economic influence of dominant firms in the broadcasting industry shaped ownership of and access to the television airwaves in the post–World War II era.
History of Network Television Regulation and the Soap Opera
The soap opera has served since its inception as a radio genre during
the 1930s as a vehicle for delivering audience to advertisers. Although
commercial radio broadcasting was still a new industry in 1927, it had
already acquired most of the structural, economic, and regulatory features that were to characterize the broadcast industry for the next fifty
years, most notably advertiser-based commercial programming. During
the 1930s, domestic radio serials about prominent female protagonists
coping with Depression-era woes became advertising vehicles for health
and beauty products, giving rise to the term soap opera. The success of the
soap opera in attracting and retaining a female audience long recognized
as primary purchasers of household products made the genre a staple of
radio programming.
The advent of television introduced a competing medium that
siphoned off radio’s advertising sponsors while transferring few of its
serials. Like radio, television quickly matured into an advertising-driven
medium because of its formation by an oligopsony of corporate interests
under the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 1952 Sixth
Report and Order (Owen, Beebe, and Manning 1974, 16). The networks
lowered transaction costs between affiliates, advertisers, and production
companies by negotiating relations between those with airtime to sell,
those who wished to purchase time, and those who wished to program
time (Litman 1990).
Access to a national audience played a key role in advancing the networks’ goal of enclosing new markets in the United States by facilitating
economies of scale in television production that made the medium cost efficient for advertisers. By handling a large number of programs simultaneously, networks are able to spread the costs of running a large distribution
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
network across a large number and variety of shows. If a network can
handle a lineup of daytime, nighttime, and fringe time programs at the
same time, its sales force will be better utilized and achieve greater efficiency, and it will better be able to spread the financial risk of production
(Litman 1990).
The network demand for high-volume, cost efficient programming
resulted during the 1950s in a shift from an author-based to a producerbased mode of television production. While based in New York during its
infancy, network television aired live teleplays that were often at odds
with the interests of sponsors because they were written by playwrights
trained in codes of theatrical naturalism. Programs that clashed with the
interests of sponsors proved problematic for a medium that depended
on advertising revenue and expedient production for its profitability.
Organized around the conventions of formula, accountable to advertisers, and standardized in a form that could be flexibly marketed and
broadcast across time zones, this producer-based method made television
production more efficient and realigned network and sponsor interests
(Browne 1987).
The soap opera thrived in this environment because it fit the needs of
a market economy based on the cultivation of viewers as consumers of
advertised products, was sufficiently developed as a commercial medium
to meet the needs of cost-conscious advertisers and networks, and was
defined by its serial narrative design as a commodity that successfully
cultivated audience anticipation for new episodes (Hagedorn 1995). The
soap opera expanded the market for television by building and maintaining a nationwide audience of female viewers targeted by consumer
goods companies. Broadcast five days a week, the daytime soap opera
controlled costs through an emphasis on dialogue rather than action that
facilitated an assembly-line method of mass production in which episodes
were quickly and inexpensively shot on studio sound stages, leading the
television industry to consolidate production arrangements with producers and advertisers. The economies of scale and minimization of risk made
possible by a more efficient, producer-based mode of television production that favored genres like the soap opera eliminated producers who
could not produce shows quickly and inexpensively enough to satisfy
network demand (Browne 1987).
The practice of deficit financing, under which the networks advanced
only a percentage of the total cost of production to an independent producer, became during the 1950s an additional means of consolidating network control with respect to program suppliers (Litman 1990). Under this
practice, the networks leveraged producers into forfeiting up to 50 percent of the profits earned by a program or series from its network run in
exchange for initial financing and eventual broadcast of it, as well as
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other rights, including the right to distribute the program in domestic and
foreign markets and share in the profit from syndication sales in these
markets. With this financial control came network influence over creative
considerations, reinforcing the gravitation toward regular series formats,
program formulas, and advertiser-friendly themes engendered by the
shift from an author-based to a producer-based mode of television production (Browne 1987). The television industry thus became an oligopsonistic structure in which three networks used their exclusive access to
the broadcast spectrum to maintain the upper hand in their dealings with
producers.
During the 1960s, concern over the domination of the television broadcast spectrum by three networks led the federal government to challenge
ABC, NBC, and CBS’s control of access to the prime-time schedule. Much
of this concern stemmed from the fact that the networks’ governance of
access to the broadcast spectrum facilitated their domination of relations
with affiliate stations, advertisers, and producers. Encouraged by liberal
public interest groups and feeling retaliatory toward the networks because
of their news divisions’ negative coverage of his administration, the
Nixon FCC implemented the Financial Interest Rule and the Syndication
Rule. Together, these initiatives became known as the Financial-Syndication
Rules (FISRs) (Balio 1990).
According to Tino Balio (1990), the implementation of the FISRs meant
that producers could develop programs without competing with the
largest buyers, the networks. However, the stranglehold over the broadcast airwaves maintained by the big three networks still meant that there
were only three buyers for the programming made and sold by independent producers. The Prime-Time Access Rule (PTAR), introduced in 1970,
complemented the FISRs by providing independent producers with greater
access to the top network affiliate stations (Balio 1990).
The networks remained extremely profitable despite the implementation of the FISRs and the PTAR. In fact, the networks actually saw their
prime-time revenues increase 50 percent, from $3 billion to $4.5 billion,
between 1982 and 1985 (Balio 1990, 284). The networks remained profitable in large part because their assimilation into tightly diversified multinational conglomerates stabilized them financially. The acquisition of
more affiliate stations under the Reagan FCC’s relaxation of ownership
limits also enabled the networks to offer advertisers access to a mass audience unmatchable by cable television stations. Even though the networks’
share of the prime-time national television audience shrank from 90 percent in 1980 to about 60 percent in 1990, the Reagan FCC’s relaxation of
limits on the maximum amount of advertising permissible each hour on
television led to the proliferation of commercials on prime-time television
and an upsurge in network advertising revenue (Balio 1990, 284).
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
The need for programming created by the explosive growth of independent stations, network affiliates, and cable superstations during the
1980s also reduced the number of independent producers with access to
prime time by concentrating prime-time production and distribution in
the hands of Hollywood’s major studios, largest production companies,
and biggest distributors. A key reason for this trend was the demand of
independent stations, affiliates, and superstations for low-cost programming such as game shows and talk shows that only the best-capitalized
production companies could deliver on a cost-effective basis. The following
section explores the role of Reaganomics and deregulation in facilitating
the concentration of television production in the hands of Hollywood’s
largest companies.
Prime-Time Network Production and Distribution during the 1980s
The communications industry has long enjoyed access to Washington,
D.C., power circles. The late Lew Wasserman, former chairman of MCA/
Universal, led the major studios’ campaign for the FISRs throughout the
1960s. Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America,
has also been successful since his appointment as president of the organization by President Lyndon Johnson in lobbying for preferential treatment of Hollywood by Washington. If media reform efforts undertaken
by liberal activists provided the momentum for passage of the FISRs and
the PTAR, the deregulatory agenda pursued by the Reagan FCC enabled
the networks to stabilize themselves despite the loss of revenue engendered by the new laws.
Political action committees, particularly ones organized by businesses
to complement their lobbying activities, played a key role in Reagan’s
1980 presidential campaign and in introducing a climate of businessfriendly government reform (Barnouw, 1990). The business community’s
effectiveness in helping elect Reagan president, along with the sweeping
reforms he enacted once in office, exemplified big business’s strategy of
acting as a class by submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint,
cooperation action in political reform. Once elected, Reagan pushed
through Congress a series of tax cuts and administrative appointments
that further tilted patterns of ownership and control within the communications industry in favor of multinational media conglomerates. The
appointment of U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese (1985-1988), for
example, resulted in a lax climate of antitrust law enforcement that
greatly abetted Hollywood’s return to a studio system of vertically integrated film and television production, distribution, and exhibition.
Although the market economy has shaped television since its inception, the Reagan administration intensified the medium’s market-driven
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orientation by implementing tax cuts for business investors that engendered the assimilation of ABC, NBC, and CBS into well-financed communications conglomerates seeking media cross-ownership (Kellner
1990, 66). Under this arrangement, transnational conglomerates absorbed
the networks into hierarchical structures that aggressively acquired affiliate stations amid the FCC’s relaxation of the maximum number of television stations that a single network could own. Between affiliates it
leased and those it owned and operated, each of the three major networks
had roughly 205 stations in 1990 (Kellner 1990, 274). The profitability of
the three major networks greatly increased as they derived large revenues
from owning affiliate stations. While the networks spent roughly $450
million a year on the compensation they paid affiliates for broadcasting
their programs in 1989, their advertising revenues approached $10 billion,
a twelve-fold increase since 1960 (Kellner 1990, 74).
The networks’ purchase of affiliates created a need for vast amounts of
programming that encouraged the networks to deal with program suppliers capable of producing shows in sufficient volume and variety to meet
the daytime, nighttime, and fringe programming requirements of their stations. Moreover, the proliferation of independent television stations that
occurred with the FCC’s formulation of Must-Carry rules resulted in the
revival of cancelled network series and the production of first-run syndicated series on cable TV as independent stations tried to rein in the cost of
off-network situation comedies (Horowitz 1989; Dempsey 1984). Between
1980 and 1989, UHF superstations such as Ted Turner’s WTBS grew into
powerhouses that helped boost the number of basic cable subscribers from
15 million to more than 50 million of the nation’s 80 million TV homes
(Balio 1990, 285).
Although the number of channels for television programming increased,
the amount each network was willing to advance in deficit financing for
program production shrank. A-Team (ABC, 1983-1987) producer Stephen J.
Cannell observed in 1988 that “the marketplace is fragmenting, network
shares are being cut up by cable. On the one hand, there’s more potential
outlets for a supplier to sell his wares to, but on the other hand, all of those
outlets seem to have less money, and the cost of production has not gone
down” (quoted in McClellan and Coe 1988). Amid Reagan’s refusal to
repeal the FISRs and the PTAR, ABC, NBC, and CBS refused to offer deficit
financing for shows in which they had no ownership or financial stake.
The three networks’ refusal to finance shows provides an example of how
big business uses an investment strike to protest unfavorable government
regulations. In this case, boutique companies such as MTM Productions
suffered the brunt of the networks’ punitive measure. One of the leading
producers of “quality”3 television programming during the 1980s, MTM
assumed greater financial risk for the deficits incurred in shooting its
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
shows, paying $865,000 to produce each hour-long episode of Hill Street
Blues (NBC, 1981-1987) for the 1982-1983 season and receiving only
$800,000 for two network runs, leaving it with a $65,000 deficit per episode
(Bettig 1999, 143).
The absorption of large independent production companies such as
Lorimar and Spelling/Goldberg Productions into well-capitalized distribution companies maximized cost efficiency, enabling them to more effectively compete in an industry climate of escalating production costs and
tightening network budgets. Thus, the production companies that best
weathered the networks’ withdrawal of deficit financing did so by
merging with a well-capitalized distributor of television programming.
Worldvision, syndicator of the prime-time network soap opera Dynasty,
handled game shows, cartoons, situation comedies, and other forms of
daytime and prime-time programming, making it an attractive program
supplier because of its ability to efficiently produce a large volume of different program genres. The merger in 1986 between Spelling/Goldberg
Productions, creator of Dynasty and The Colbys, and Worldvision provided each company with reciprocal strengths. Whereas Spelling/
Goldberg Productions benefited from Worldvision’s vast reach as a distributor of syndicated programming to independent stations and overseas markets, the latter also gained from its new subsidiary’s status as one
of network television’s largest program suppliers (Gitlin 1983).
A merger in 1986 between Lorimar and Telepictures, Inc. provided similar benefits. Whereas Lorimar produced Dallas, Knots Landing, and Falcon
Crest for broadcast television, Telepictures specialized in first-run syndication of shows for independent television stations and network affiliates
(Galbraith 1986). The acquisition of Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986 by Warner
Communications in turn made Warner the largest producer of television
programs at the time. Lorimar-Telepictures’ purchase of the MGM studio
lot from Ted Turner in 1986 enabled the company to raise the number of
prime-time shows it produced from four to seven (Variety 1986a).
Hollywood’s major studios (MCA/Universal, MGM/UA, Twentieth
Century–Fox, Columbia, Paramount, and Warner Brothers) also markedly
increased their share of network television programming production from
39 percent in 1970 to 70 percent in 1990 (Bettig 1999, 148).
The Soap Opera and 1980s Prime-Time Television Programming
Despite their success in maintaining profitability, the networks faced
multiple challenges during the 1980s. Pressures on network profitability
emanated from cable television, inflation, labor demands, production
requirements, and stars of overnight prime-time hits. Larry Hagman, for
example, J.R. Ewing on Dallas, demanded and received approximately
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$75,000 per episode in the wake of the record-setting ratings of the 1980
“Who Shot J.R.?” season finale (Playboy 1980, 98). The practice of using
pilots as test balloons for weekly series also drove up network costs.
According to Broadcasting (1988), the three networks paid $40 million for
prime-time program production costs in 1980, 40 percent more than in
1978. Shrinking network ratings paralleled rising production costs and
financial risk. The average network prime-time rating of 56.5 and a 90 share
during the 1979-80 season fell precipitously to 48.5/77 for 1984-85 and to
41.5/67 for 1988-89—a ratings drop-off of 26.5 percent and a share loss of
25.5 percent in less than a decade (MacDonald 1990, 230). According to
Variety, the attrition of network audiences to cable television accelerated
from 2 to 4 percent annually between 1980 and 1984 (Knight 1985).
The design of cable as a narrowcast medium capable of delivering specific
audiences to advertisers made it an attractive alternative to network television. Compared with ABC, NBC, and CBS, cable could target specific audiences and deliver them to advertisers at a lower cost. A sales brochure for
FCB/Telecom, advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding Communications’
television programming arm, explained to advertisers, “We offer the creative resources to develop television programming suitable to an advertiser’s special marketing needs in today’s dynamic communications
environment” (quoted in Daniels 1985, 68). As Variety described it, “FCB will
go to work developing [a show] that may not draw a network-sized audience, but one that reaches the desired demographic group well enough to
make the money invested in the project well spent” (Daniels 1985, 68). Given
the size of their operations, cable networks and superstations can draw relatively modest ratings yet still achieve profitability because they can supplement advertising revenue with subscription fees. In contrast, the big three
networks need substantially higher numbers to be profitable (Balio 1990).
Dallas thus became a bonanza for CBS during its second season of 1979
by erupting into a smash hit, which Variety defined as “a series that viewers deliberately calculate into their week’s plans, a show that they specifically turn the set on to see” and around which a network could “build a
night, giving the hit value far beyond its ratings strength” (Knight 1985,
148). As Todd Gitlin (1983, 77-85) observes, hits are so rare on network
television that network executives think that a blatant imitation stands a
better chance of getting ratings than a show that stands alone. This results
in the repackaging of old forms in slightly different permutations. In
1984-85, the networks thus introduced four evening serials—Dynasty
(first), Dallas (second), Knots Landing (ninth), and Falcon Crest (tenth)—
that ended the season among the top ten, making the prime-time soap
opera a hot commodity among advertisers (MacDonald 1990, 55).
To comprehend the effects of advertising on the prime-time soap
opera, it is necessary to understand the relationship between advertising
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
and television programming. At least three considerations structure the
content of television programs. First, the program must be able to attract
large numbers of people. Second, it has to attract the “right” kinds of
people. Not all parts of the audience are of equal value to the networks.
The content of programs will also have to reflect this targeting, excluding
demographic groups that lack the spending power to satisfy advertisers.
Third, the programs not only have to be able to deliver large numbers of
the correct people to advertisers, but they also have to deliver them in the
right frame of mind. Programs should be designed to enhance the effectiveness of the ads in them (Jhally 1989).
The prime-time soap opera fulfilled all of these advertising objectives.
The proliferation of women with full-time jobs during the 1970s meant that
television could no longer count on them as a daytime audience. Around
1980, a working father and an at-home mother with two school-age children
composed only 7 percent of all U.S. households (Gripsrud 1995, 59). Dallas
targeted a nighttime audience of women with full-time jobs by reviving the
soap opera as a prime-time genre. As Ien Ang (1985) observes, however, the
show also attracted men by presenting the masculine sphere of business
from the perspective of the personal and domestic. While attracting a mass
audience, Dallas simultaneously drew the 18- to 54-year-old adult female
demographic sought by household goods companies such as Proctor &
Gamble, and a well-educated audience of light television watchers drawn
by the campy irony of its melodramatic stories and self-consciously overwrought settings. The focus on lavish production values in the prime-time
soap opera contributed to the genre’s success by luring large audiences
away from miniseries such as Lace and Scruples. Beginning with Dallas in
1978, the prime-time soap opera offered viewers the same production values, glamorous stars, and scandalous behavior that had made the miniseries
a viable prime-time form. The narrative complexity of the prime-time soap
opera and its focus on the class politics of big business also accounted for its
popularity with viewers (Hagedorn 1995).
On the basis of their lavishly constructed costumes and settings, Dallas
and Dynasty also established a mood of consumption that seamlessly
dovetailed with surrounding advertisements (Gripsrud 1995). This last
objective—making viewers more accepting of persuasive messages—
gained additional significance when the Reagan FCC relaxed restrictions
on the number of advertising minutes permissible during each hour of
television programming in 1984. As standard 30-second commercials gave
way to a proliferation of shorter 10- and 15-second spots, the number of
spots appearing weekly on network TV tripled to nearly 5,000 in 1989
(Andersen 1995, 20).
The design of the prime-time soap opera served to affirm consumption
as a way of life by both attracting advertising and enabling its producers
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to develop lucrative licensing deals that would extend its shelf life. By
organizing leisure time around the consumption of both these programs
and pricey ancillary merchandise, Dynasty encouraged viewers to participate in a commodified system of exchange. As Todd Gitlin (1987) observes,
the regularity of the television schedule links standardization and obsolescence as last season’s offerings drop from sight only to be supplanted
by this year’s attractions, seemingly affirming the sovereignty of the audience while keeping alternatives off the agenda. In this way, leisure time
becomes industrialized into time units, like the workday. Similarly, television’s organization of the audience into consumers socializes the public
into behaving like a market and as consumers rather than citizens. The
New York Times conflated notions of consumerism and citizenship by
observing in 1984 that “large numbers of viewers of [Dynasty and Dallas]
own a piece of these fantasies. Dynasty is merchandising clothes and sheets
and perfume with the program’s name on them, a dream of wealth accessible to whoever wants to buy it” (Kaplan 1985, H1).
Although expensive to produce,4 prime-time soap operas traveled well
across geographical borders because they offered a stereotypical construction of U.S. national history and cultural identity rooted in the selfconsciously campy, melodramatic theme of the corrupting effect of
wealth on American family morality (Ang 1985). The overseas popularity
of Dallas and Dynasty proved integral to the efforts of advertisers and
program distributors to cultivate new consumption markets, an effort
greatly aided by Reagan’s intensification of the Cold War.
Penetration and Saturation of Overseas Territories
The ability of large distributors to “dump” programming on foreign markets, the lavish production values of the prime-time soap opera, and the serial form of the genre greatly increased its overseas popularity and made it
an excellent vehicle for advertisers attempting to penetrate and cultivate
new markets abroad. The size of the American television market is pivotal
in enabling producers and studios to undercut the cost of programming
made by and within other countries for broadcast over their own networks
by allowing them to recover production costs in the domestic market.
The Reagan administration played an integral role in this campaign of
overseas expansion by encouraging commercial television systems throughout the world to be open to U.S. programming and advertising (Kellner
1990). The president’s aggressive defense program facilitated American
television’s global domination by helping topple the Soviet Union as a
superpower, which in turn initiated the privatization of formerly public
communications infrastructures in former Communist countries and
developing nations.
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
The incorporation of the major American TV networks into media conglomerates with global distribution capabilities integrated television to
an unprecedented extent into a worldwide economic power structure,
strengthening the medium’s ability to penetrate old and new territories
and enabling commercial messages to circumvent national barriers and
saturate the information and cultural space of newly penetrated regions
(Schiller 1989). The financial risk of prime-time production during a period
of shrinking network deficit financing in turn promoted the cultivation of
overseas audiences in countries targeted by transnational capital flow
(North America, Europe, Australia, the Pacific Rim) and the exclusion of
nations that lacked the political and economic stability to prove sufficiently profitable (Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and Communist
China).
Certainly, overseas audiences often may prefer indigenously produced
programming to imported American shows, where available. For
example, so popular were serial melodramas produced in England during the 1980s that in May, 1983, Dallas placed only eleventh in the fifty
highest rated shows of the month. Of the 50 shows, twenty-four were
domestic melodramas, of which twenty-two were British and two were of
U.S. origin. Moreover, there was considerable fluctuation from year to
year in the television trade balance between England and the United
States (Collins 1988, 86). Thus, while Worldvision and Telepictures successfully secured overseas markets for Dynasty and Dallas through hegemonic pricing, tight government control of the television distribution/
exhibition sector in England through importation quotas permitted the
growth of a production sector where the quality and quantity of domestically produced programs strengthened the bargaining position of British
broadcasters in their negotiations for the purchase of foreign programming (Collins 1988).
Nonetheless, the sheer size of the American domestic market enabled
producers and studios that sold their shows to the networks to recover
most if not all of their costs through prime-time broadcast. The largest
distributors of American television thus used economic hegemony to
penetrate and saturate new territories around the world during the 1980s.
In doing so, syndicators of prime-time soap operas concentrated on the
largest markets, avoided financial risk by using the size of the American
television market to recover the costs of dumping programs overseas, and
neglected less profitable markets.
The maturation of satellite broadcast as a mode of television transmission greatly increased the feasibility of networks with worldwide reach,
although opponents warned that supply-side economics and deregulation would create an “orbital OPEC” in which the power to buy a satellite or lease transmission time would be limited to a handful of large
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companies (Bierbaum 1982, 36). Called “the prototypical worldwide
media empire” by the Washington Post (Farhi 1988, H1), News Corporation
included during the mid-1980s the Twentieth Century Fox film and television studio, a chain of independent TV stations, various print publications, and a satellite channel that boasted 500,000 subscribers in Norway,
Finland, Switzerland, France, West Germany, and Austria upon its launch
in 1984 (Pitman 1984, 1). Variety observed that the Sky Channel’s subscriber base a year later totaled 2,400,000, “with the numbers sometimes jumping abruptly when a new country’s cable system signs on”
(Variety 1985).
The profits generated by Hollywood’s consolidation of its global reach
were enormous. Hollywood-produced television programs accounted for
75 percent of the $400 million generated in the international marketplace
in 1984. By 1989, U.S. television program distributors earned more than
$1.3 billion annually from program sales. The major networks’ overseas
expansion also resulted in their investment in foreign television systems
and the launch of foreign coproductions between the networks and other
TV systems (Kellner 1990, 82).
The economies of scale made possible by the size of the American television audience enabled television distributors to sell broadcast rights on
a country-by-country basis and undercut the cost of indigenously produced programming. The price European countries pay for U.S. productions varied in proportion to the size of their audiences. This meant that
the smaller the country, the more attractive imported U.S. programming could be. In 1986, Lorimar-Telepictures orchestrated a huge umbrella
deal with Berlusconi television networks in France, Italy, and Spain that
included the $7 million sale of Knots Landing to France’s TF-1 network
(Dempsey 1984, 1). Noting that England-based Thames TV paid only
$60,000 per episode for two seasons of Dallas, Variety added that the broadcaster “would have been happy to air the program in its London region
alone, so favorably did the purchase price compare with the cost of making its own programs” (Variety 1986b, 90). Observing that the price
nonetheless represented a substantial increase from the $43,000 that
Worldvision had charged the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) only
one year earlier, Variety observed that Worldvision secured the sum by pitting the government-owned BBC in a bidding war against the privately
owned Thames TV (Variety 1986b, 90).
The economic hegemony enjoyed by American distributors led U.S.
media companies to base financial support for foreign coproductions on
their potential marketability to American audiences. British producers
looking to export their programs to American shores avoided “kitchen
sink” dramas derived from British documentary tradition, such as the BBCproduced Coronation Street, because their focus on English working-class
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
family life limited their appeal to U.S. advertisers. “Tired of the Yanks’
lock on glitz and glamour,” according to Variety, the British producers of
the Dallas- and Dynasty-inspired shows Wellford and Legacy focused instead
on wealthy and corrupt English aristocrats to attract financial backing
from U.S. production companies and networks (Karlin 1986, 49).
The formation of huge advertising agencies with global reach provided
further evidence of the role of advertising in propagating the overseas
proliferation of American television programming. In 1986, Saatchi &
Saatchi, a British advertising agency, purchased the Ted Bates Worldwide
agency in a merger that created the world’s largest advertising firm. Saatchi
had previously been the world’s fourth largest firm, while Bates had been
the third largest. The announcement of a merger between the firms occurred
a month after Doyle Dane Bernbach Group, BBDO International, and
Needham Harper Worldwide agreed to merge into the world’s second
largest agency (Richter 1986). The rise of transnational advertising agencies enabled sponsors such as Proctor & Gamble to penetrate developing
countries with the offer of “free” programming, through which advertisers underwrote programming of general appeal and provided it free of
charge to financially struggling broadcasters (Schiller 1989).
Advertising sponsorship thus played a pivotal role during the 1980s
in determining the type of programming made and broadcast by foreign television producers in their native markets. CBS and the Hungarian
Television & Radio Company, for example, agreed in 1984 to discuss the
development of a partnership in which they would jointly produce programming and programs to be paid for in whole or in part by transnational or international advertisers (Loftus 1984). Herbert Schiller (1989,
130) warned of the encroachment of advertising into such spheres as
public television, the library, and nation-state relations, declaring that
“the ultimate sponsor of the world’s TV programming—the daily culture
of the late twentieth century—will be transnational corporate enterprise.”
To suggest that shows such as Dallas completely homogenized global
television would be to ignore the differences between the world’s cultures and to deny the role of viewer autonomy and agency in determining what gets aired on foreign television networks. Conversely, it is
impossible to ignore the role of economic hegemony in enabling producers and syndicators of the prime-time soap opera to dominate the
terms of their trade with overseas television networks during the 1980s.
Although British soap operas generated higher ratings than American
imports, as Ed Buscombe (1990) observes, American television’s combination of high production values and low cost made it an attractive
choice during the 1980s for European programmers attempting to create
a pan-European market.
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The Fate of the Prime-Time Soap Opera during the 1990s
This article has argued that the interaction between dominant communications industry interests and the state, the relationship between the
logic of capital and state policies, and the role of the state as a mediator of
public and private interest shaped the political economy of prime-time
television during the 1980s. It further contends that the dependence of
government on industry for the tax revenues necessary to operate makes
government especially sensitive to industry’s threat of an investment
strike. The years following Reagan’s departure from the presidency in
1989 provide further evidence of the influence of these interwoven factors
on the television industry during an age of increasing globalization.
Acting as ideal collective capitalist, the state repealed the FISRs in 1995
to enable the networks to further expand into the international marketplace. Repeal of the FISRs sanctioned the integration of television production and distribution, which permitted the networks to better compete on a
global basis by maximizing cost efficiency. The networks’ assertion that the
rules jeopardized their ongoing investment in high-priced programming
and the future of “free” broadcast television was a clear threat to state officials of an investment strike. Repeal of the FISRs in 1995 cleared the way
for further consolidation in the television industry as the owners of
Hollywood’s major studios purchased two of the big three networks. In
July 1995, Disney purchased ABC; a day later, Westinghouse acquired CBS.
Whereas the reintegration of television production and distribution
enabled multinational communications companies to compete more effectively in a global television market, the formation of production partnerships across nation-state boundaries also enabled them to circumvent
importation quotas in foreign television markets. When the European
Union decided not to remove trade barriers and tariffs on movies and
television programs in 1992, for example, Time Warner, Turner, Disney,
Viacom, and NBC responded by forming partnerships with European
television producers, broadcast stations, cable and satellite networks, and
telecommunications services. Rather than continuing to view European
markets as programming outlets, Time Warner invested in satellite broadcasting in Scandinavia, FM radio in England, and pay-TV in Germany
and Hungary. Conversely, because American television programs are
popular all over the world, foreign companies invested in American production companies during the 1990s.
The proliferation of international television partnerships in turn
hastened the demise of expensive one-hour soap operas as networks
sought program formulae that could be produced on a relatively
modest budget and adapted to multiple cultural contexts. A political
economic study of network television thus compels us to consider that
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Jordan / 1980s Prime-Time Soap Operas
technological determinism limits the possibilities of the medium’s potential for democratic communication.
Notes
1. Prime-time refers to a twenty-two-hour weekly period spanning 8 pm to 11
pm Monday through Saturday, with an extra hour on Sunday.
2. Vertical integration refers to a system of organization that allows a single company or group of closely meshed companies to control at least two functions
within the three principal activities of production, distribution, and exhibition.
3. Jane Feuer (1987) traces “quality” television to Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler
Moore’s independent production company, MTM Enterprises, Inc. To equate
quality demographics with quality programming connotes a set of assumptions
that links actively consuming urbanites to television programs that tackle issues
in an insightful manner. Surveying the use of the word quality in the popular
press, Feuer defines as its characteristics innovative visual style, the use of film
over video, actors with training in improvisational work rather than television,
and a high degree of creative freedom.
4. In 1983, Variety estimated the production cost of each episode of several
prime-time shows. They were Dynasty, $850,000; Dallas, $850,000; Falcon Crest,
$750,000; Knots Landing, $650,000; and St. Elsewhere, $750,000 (Collins 1988, 87).
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Chris Jordan is an assistant professor of film studies in the Department of Theatre,
Film Studies, and Dance at St. Cloud State University. He is the author of Movies
and the Reagan Presidency: Success and Ethics (Praeger, 2003) and essays and
articles in How Real is Reality TV? Essays on Truth and Representation
(McFarland, 2006), the Journal of Popular Film and Television, the Journal of
Communication Inquiry, the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, and
the Encyclopedia of Documentary Film.
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