The Entertainment Functions of Television

P. H. Tannenbaum

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317770381
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1980. This volume is an indirect product of the activities of the Committee on Television and Social Behavior of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). This is a collection of essays looking at the entertainment function of television in the United States.

1	An Unstructured Introduction to an Amorphous Area

Percy H. Tannenbaum

University of California, Berkeley

While most of the research dealing with the mass media generally, and television in particular, has focused on direct or mediated learning from communications messages—from factual materials as such, or lessons and generalizations derived from fictional presentations—one of the more salient facts of media consumption has been overlooked. Most of the deliberate exposure of most people to TV is motivated less to seek information, as such, but in search of something generally referred to as “entertainment.” This cardinal fact is reflected with great consistency in audience ratings in the United States, in similar data from other countries, and in the perennial popularity of certain American and British programs across diverse foreign cultures. It is also reflected in some of the data contained in the “uses and gratifications” type of research wherein respondents are asked to reflect on why they use the medium. Although there is reason to suspect some of the data collected in the latter type of research—if anything they probably inflate the actual incidence of active information seeking and deflate the entertainment function—there is still abundant support for a significant incentive to be “entertained.”

There has, nevertheless, been very little research on the entertainment functions of the media—indeed, a paucity of research on the significance of entertainment in everyday life, quite apart from the media per se. It is one of those phenomena that is around us all the time, a kind of activity shared by most individuals on almost a universal basis, and yet it continues to be neglected. Scholars of television, particularly, avoid this phenomenon at their own peril—in terms of understanding why so many people use television to such a great extent and what some of the main influences of the medium are on vast numbers of individuals.

This volume is an indirect product of the activities of the Committee on Television and Social Behavior of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Although its main activities were directed elsewhere, the Committee recognized fairly early in its deliberations that among the neglected items on the communication research agenda was the great appeal of the public media in general and television in particular as means of disseminating entertainment fare on a broad basis. In focusing on TV as a socializing device forging attitudes and behavior patterns (see, for example, the companion volume edited by Withey and Abeles, 1980), the Committee did not completely forget the entertainment content of the medium, but the nature and form of that content, its apparent appeal, its antecedents and its consequences—in short, the entertainment function of television—was hardly touched on.

The Committee collectively realized that if we are to more fully understand and appreciate the television medium and its functions in our contemporary society, a more systematic study of its role as a popular entertainment device is called for. Indeed, one wonders how it has been so neglected for so long, especially considering how dominant sheer entertainment is on television and that, one way or another, the effect of television has probably been among the most researched social science phenomena to date. The time had clearly come, to use the phrase of Elihu Katz (1977), “to take entertainment seriously.”

It is not the practice of the SSRC to undertake and conduct research. Rather, its main role is as a mediator, initiator, and broker. It functions through its constituent committees to foster and promote established and potential new areas of social research, primarily by assembling involved scholars with mutual interests at conferences and through the publication of appropriate books—conference reports, research compendia, theoretical speculations, etc.—for dissemination to the social research community at large.

That was the pattern followed in the present case as well. The Committee first convened a small conference of interested researchers. This volume is a direct development of that conference.

BACKGROUND TO THE CONFERENCE

As with most other such gatherings, there were two issues that had to be addressed early in our planning for the conference: an appropriate agenda and who to invite. Clearly the two are not independent.

Participation

Regarding the composition, we opted for a relatively small group made up primarily of social psychologists who had demonstrated an interest in and/or had conducted research on some aspect of entertainment in the media. We had earlier discussed the desirability of a more broadly based collection of scholars who would address the issue of entertainment from the perspectives of a wider variety of disciplines. However, the judgment was that a more narrowly focused collectivity of psychologists and sociologists—reflecting the composition of the SSRC Committee and, in fact, substantially overlapping with it—was more appropriate for such an initial undertaking. As is often the case with such events, not everyone invited could attend—most unfortunately, perhaps the two foremost workers in this fledgling area were prohibited from participating due to illness—and we ended up with a group of 14 participants almost equally divided between those invited from the outside and Committee members.¹

Agenda

Given the amorphous nature of the concept to begin with, it was apparent that even a relatively homogeneous group of scholars reflected a substantial diversity of interests and approaches. This made setting a formal agenda somewhat questionable. Accordingly, we settled for a relatively loose procedure aiming at modest goals. We sought to get the “lay of the land,” so to speak, by attempting to address the following issues which I, at least, thought to be of sufficient general concern:

1. There was, first of all, the perennial definition issue. What do we mean by “entertainment”? What is to be included and what excluded under this rubric?

2. The motivational issue could not be overlooked. What is it about entertaining materials that provides positive incentives for people to seek it out, often at the expense of other desired or more preferred activities? What “rewards” does it provide for individuals in different settings (e.g., the isolated)? Is there anything special about television that enhances these positive functions (other than the obvious fact that it provides a less costly—in terms of time and energy as well as money—means of access)?

3. The nature of the experience: What are the by-products of “being entertained,” particularly of its emotional components? Is the experience a set of conditioned responses such that we react in predictable emotional ways to certain patterns of stimuli, or is it something more intrinsic? Is it merely a question (as if that were not enough) of affect, or are other experiential phenomena involved?

4. The question of consequences, perhaps most important: What are its immediate and long-term effects? Is it something that is experienced and labeled for the moment and then promptly set aside, or do its effects tend to linger on and influence us later? Can the positive emotional responses associated with certain entertaining materials be stored in memory so that some of its excitatory and pleasing components can be experienced upon retrieval?

5. Not least, in what way, if any, does the purely entertaining function help or hinder the mediation of other effects of the message and other subsequent behavior?

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

If the main purpose of the gathering was to assess “the lay of the land,” we found a rather littered landscape. We could not quite come to mutually agreed terms with the various questions posed but did manage to generate a considerable variety of assorted terminology, approaches, concepts, and methods for a conference lasting a day and a half. There certainly was little evidence of any integrating theory or consensus—not an unexpected occurrence at this stage of the game, even if it were considered desirable.

It was, of course, no accident that the relative emphases and different foci appeared to be so diverse among the participants. As noted earlier, there were fundamental differences in how the assembled individuals addressed the subject matter and agenda questions. But just as social scientists have learned to extract some conceptual order out of the relative chaos of assorted data arrays through multivariate techniques, it was possible to extract some degree of latent organization from the relatively unstructured nature of our proceedings.² Our limited sample probably reflects a similar distribution of these underlying factors in the profession at large—in kind, if not necessarily in relative degree—so they are worth considering in some detail.

Conceptual Approaches

There are basically three dimensions that distinguish the conceptual space defined by the “television and entertainment” rubric, when considered in terms of the motives of the investigator. One emphasizes the television medium and is thus more independent-variable oriented. A second is preoccupied with entertainment as a behavioral phenomenon and can be considered to be more dependent-variable oriented. The third focuses on some other social psychological phenomenon (e.g., fantasy), which has some relationship to both TV and entertainment.

TV Focus. Some investigators are primarily interested in the topic at hand as part of their preoccupation with the effects of television, only one of which is entertainment. They usually are concerned with other potential TV effects such as violence, prosocial behavior, political socialization, etc., and somewhere along the line became aware that a main social function of television and keystone of its economic basis lies in its contribution to human entertainment. But such a mediacentric focus is not without its costs, and those with primary interest in the television medium, as such, begin to get uncomfortable when their more dependent-variable-oriented colleagues start talking about the appeals of the ballet, or of participation in sports, or what makes for a popular novel, etc., on the grounds that these other topics distract them from their central point of departure: the impact of television and not of entertainment more generally.

Entertainment Focus. The opposite holds true for those who are attracted to the area via its dependent variable. Such individuals are more preoccupied with what constitutes entertainment and its motivational properties. Obviously, television as a major source of entertainment in our society comes in for some share of attention, but those social scientists with this primary interest tend to feel constrained by confining their thoughts only to those forms of entertainment which are possible through that medium. They roam readily and easily to other forms of entertainment, such as participation in or direct observation of sports, outdoor recreation, music, literature, etc. They avoid addressing other effects of television (e.g., violence, socialization, stimulation of cognitive development, etc.) which have little to do with entertainment per se. They would prefer to grapple with the complexities of entertainment as a common, if not universal, behavioral phenomenon.

Focus on Related Phenomena. The third dimension is represented by scholars with primary concerns in topics and concepts other than TV or entertainment (e.g., the development and function of fantasy, humor, arousal, recreation, aesthetics, sex, and other prime motives). Any one such emphasis may eventually lead toward a consideration of TV and/or entertainment. For some, the dominant paradigm is one where the focal phenomenon mediates between TV and entertainment. For others, it is seen as the primary motive system behind entertainment behavior, or of TV viewing. At times, the phenomenon becomes the main dependent variable and TV and/or entertainment are merely part of an array of antecedent conditions. Either way, such individuals tend to shun considerations of other possible effects of TV which do not particularly involve their central concern, and the same applies to discussions of entertainment where other processes are the main object of interest.

Conceptual Mapping

Given these three main avenues of approach, the conference participants also engaged in identifying constructive means of filling in the defined conceptual space. Although the discussion vacillated between the ponderous and the flippant—as much akin to a parlor game as to an academic committee meeting—we can again discern three underlying directions.

Subdividing the Field. All agreed the “Television and Entertainment” topic was vast and complex. To avoid being overwhelmed it is useful to break down the field into manageable size by sorting and classifying the various entertainment materials available on television into a convenient taxonomy. The relevant questions generated by this activity include:

1. What are the main types of entertainment programs and what are the variants within these typologies?

2. Do the conventional categories of the TV trade (soap opera, adventure story, situation comedy, sports, etc.) serve for the audience as well, and do they match the kind of entertainment experienced?

3. Instead of a content point of view, would it be better to approach the topic of types of television entertainment from the perspective of the different wants and needs which might be met and gratified?

4. How would one go about cataloguing type of television entertainment so as to have the divisions be optimally useful for suggesting novel research problems?

Provocative Contrasts. It is often a useful activity in itself and provocative to further conceptualization to search out the seeming contradictions in the current intellectual ferment of a given area. There was no shortage of such paradoxes in our relatively short meeting. The following represents a variety of such heuristically provocative dialectics that emerged and that are probably quite common in this area. The questions are obviously raised not for an answer in favor of one or the other alternative but to stimul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. An Unstructured Introduction to an Amorphous Area
• 2. Entertainment as a Sociological Enterprise
• 3. The Power and Limitations of Television: A Cognitive-Affective Analysis
• 4. The Audience as Critic: A Conceptual Analysis of Television Entertainment
• 5. Entertainment as Vicarious Emotional Experience
• 6. Anatomy of Suspense
• 7. Humor and Catharsis: The Effect of Comedy on Audiences
• 8. Toward the Integration of Entertainment and Educational Functions of Television: The Role of Humor
• 9. Television News as Entertainment
• Author Index
• Subject Index