By Mark Lloyd / Original to ScheerPost
For a brief decade and a half the U.S. government gave the Archie Bunkers of America the power to have a real say, to have their voices heard. No one advanced this federal project more than Norman Lear.
As Lear would put it in his testimony before a Senate committee in 1983, while he did not become a giant like the broadcast networks, he became “a very large person” able to stand up to the giants. He used his “very large person” status not just to make money, but to advance the public interest. Few of the many accolades that have come with the news of his death acknowledge what Lear acknowledged, that a substantial element of his success was due to government policy set in America’s too brief Public Interest Moment.
In a Senate hearing to discuss the impact of the Reagan FCC TV “deregulation” efforts, Lear would testify: “I might still be a midget, but for the financial interest and syndication rule.”
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Let me back up: In the 1960s the Federal Communications Commission began to take seriously its duty to make sure that the communications industry (telephone and radio and TV broadcasters) operates in the public interest. Few government officials exemplified this change better than President Kennedy’s appointed FCC Chairman, Newton Minow. Shortly after his appointment Minow called TV “a vast wasteland” and vowed to hold broadcasters accountable to the duty to serve the public interest.
It is important to note that the broadcast networks are not licensed by the government. The FCC gives local broadcasters a free license to use the public airways in exchange for a promise to operate in the local public interest. But in the 1960s, the FCC found that “(t)he networks have gradually — since about 1957 — increased their economic and creative control of the entire television program process.”
In 1965, the FCC determined that the networks refused to put a program on the air if they did not have a substantial financial interest in those same programs, locking out most independent producers. This limited the diversity of network TV content made available to local stations.
The late 60s was a time the FCC was convinced that diversity would serve the local public interest. And so the FCC proposed the rule, now known as FinSyn. The rule Lear credited with making him a success.
It would not be until 1971 that FinSyn would take effect, though this was too late to benefit his negotiation with CBS over All in the Family, it would help his company later on. As Lear put it:
The deal with CBS for All in the Family was made just before the Rule came into place. Our representatives negotiated long and hard for the right to retain syndication. But the network demanded syndication and negotiated for a substantial financial interest. We didn’t appreciate Family‘s value in syndication because syndication hadn’t yet become a business … and so, we capitulated and gave them the syndication rights. On financial interest, we held firm.
It wasn’t until the new shows came along – Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, One Day at a Time, and others – that the Rule was operative and Embassy, then Tandem, finally in control of its own destiny, was on its way to becoming a very large person indeed.
Norman Lear brought not only Archie Bunker, but a variety of voices previously unheard to American living rooms. Those voices were upper and working-class Americans of all colors. Lear made sure Congress understood that the FinSyn rules empowered not only his company, they also empowered the independent production company Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises, and in his words: “Cheers, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Family Ties, all of which are also produced by independent creative forces protected by the financial interest and syndication rule.”
The first time I met Mr. Lear was in 1979. Because of another FCC rule, the Prime Time Access Rule (PTAR), I was privileged to produce and occasionally host the WTOL-TV (Toledo, Ohio CBS affiliate) version of Lear’s show, The Baxters.
There were dozens of local public affairs and community affairs directors crowding around Mr. Lear and the creator of the program, Hubert Jessup, making sure we understood how this strange combination of polished family drama and local interview show was supposed to work. Sparked by a roughly 15-minute Baxter family drama, we aired discussion with local audiences on issues ranging from nuclear power to drug abuse and rape.
The FCC’s PTAR rules set aside an early evening time period for syndicated programs they hoped would increase diversity and focus on local issues. Lear’s family drama helped to bring our local neighbors together discussing important issues, and put those sometimes heated discussions right into our living rooms.
Mr. Lear never lost his belief in the power of television to bring Americans into dialogue. In addition to his work in TV, he would go on to establish People for The American Way to fight the far-right evangelicals tearing at the wall separating church and state. And he would provide great support to the Norman Lear Center at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, as it measures the impact of media on democracy and helps the entertainment industry with useful information about health, safety and national security.
Mr. Lear understood that his success was not simply because he was a creative genius. He understood he was empowered by rules established by the FCC. He testified before Congress to plead that those rules be kept to empower other writers.
The FCC in the Reagan years would go on to kill FinSyn, PTAR, along with the Fairness Doctrine and ascertainment requirements and local broadcast license challenges, ending the Public Interest Moment.
What followed very shortly was a wave of media consolidation, the gutting of our local communication environment, and the hollowing out of the FCC’s duty to make certain the communications industry operates in the public interest.
In his 1983 testimony before Congress Norman Lear warned us:
It is regrettable that the Chairman of the FCC should think of service to the community as a myth…
No one will disagree with Chairman Fowler that network television is a business — and so the network program executive has every right to inveigh upon the writer, the director, and the producer, to make the product appeal to a vast enough audience that will insure the ratings for which the network is in business. But what I am most hopeful this audience will understand, is the need for this battle to continue.
Mark Lloyd
Mark Lloyd is a communication lawyer and a journalist. From 2009-2012 he served as an associate general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, advising the Commission on how to promote diverse participation in the communications field with a focus on research into critical information needs and broadband adoption by low-income populations. He now teaches at McGill University.