Television in the 1980s

About this course:

For the TV business, the 1980s marked a ten-year span of paradigm shifts both in what we watched and how we watched it. FOX arrived as a direct broadcast competitor; USA, ESPN, and BET joined a growing list of basic-cable alternatives; movie outlets HBO and Showtime began offering original series programming; single-word phenom Oprah arrived to reinvent daytime television; local stations discovered first-run syndication; and CNN and MTV arrived a year apart to transform the medium as a whole into a 24/7 drop-in experience. This course offers a fun and video-heavy look of television in the 80s—how and why it changed; including the creative, financial, political and regulatory shifts behind those changes; and the beginning of the end of network television. We also look back on some of our favorite hits, including Dallas, Dynasty, Cheers, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls. This course will be recorded. Students will have access to videos for the duration of the course.