According to William F. Baker and George Dessart, coauthors of Down the Tube: An Inside Account of the Failure of American Television, American television is a commercial enterprise that fails to enrich or educate American viewers. Baker and Dessart claim the initial mistake was that the FCC, gave radio broadcasters the first television frequencies. The FCC assumed that radio broadcasters would carry their knowledge of radio broadcast to television broadcast, and the broadcasters embraced the new medium as an opportunity to gain larger audiences and profits. Just as in radio, television programming would be funded by corporate sponsorship. Baker and Dessart blame this system of corporate funding for problems in American television today.
Initially the sponsors simply lent their names to the programs, but
soon advertisers realized they could get their advertisements broadcast more frequently, if they interrupted programs with commercials. Broadcasters would learn to implement marketing and demographics to help them target their audiences. Then a system of measuring audiences, which we now know as ratings, would determine how much broadcasters could charge their sponsors for commercial time. The television for profit model means that American television programs survive not on their merits and quality, but on the advertising revenue it generates. Baker and Dessart describe the striking difference between the television model we know, and its British counterpart. Baker and Dessart credit the quality of British television, with the fact that funding comes in part from TV. licensing, government grants, and li
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