Year: 1951-52
A Year in Television
During the first week of the semester I will assign to you a year. You will investigate one year of television. Historically speaking, a television year/season generally lasted from September until May.
You will examine the year assigned, looking at the prime time television schedule. Pay particular attention to the following questions:
What programs did each network offer?
How did networks counterprogram?
How many programs were new that season? How many were returning offerings?
How well did individual programs do?
Can you spot trends in programming?
Which genres were popular?
In general, how would you characterize that year in television?
In constructing a profile of that year in television, pay particular attention to developments in the industry itself, technological advances, and programming. Make sure to consult your text as you work through this project.
In addition to text material, the information you’ll need in terms of programming can be found online. Wikipedia is a good starting point as it contains the “United States Network Television Schedule.” In addition, many websites provide year by year analyses of programs themselves. They both include year by year programming grids, descriptions of programs, awards won by programs, highest rated programs each year, etc.
You will present your findings in essay form. Each profile should be approximately 2000 words in length (approximately 8 double spaced pages). In addition, you should provide a grid of how the networks programmed prime time each day for your year. You can find several such grids on the web. You may use those in your submission. However, it is not sufficient to simply copy and submit a URL.
