The West Wing

1. Politics of Quality Primetime TV: Network Politics and Broadcasting Context

Chapter 1 Politics of Quality Primetime TV Network Politics and Broadcasting Context 9 NBC always seemed quietly confident that The West Wing represented the best of what was possible on the network. With its big cast, big ideas, big investment, and big profits, the series soon proved a powerful asset to its broadcaster as well as the company that produced it, Warner Bros. Television. This chapter addresses institutional importance and how the primetime , Washington-based drama legitimized TV fiction and its trading, both at home and abroad. It explains why the U.S. network invested substantial monies in licensing and marketing the show, how it scheduled it, and how, in turn, demographics and industry awards as well as international broadcast territories contributed to sustaining an institutional idea about The West Wing as important quality TV. Studying the media history reveals that the multi-Emmy-award-winning political primetime series mattered because it mattered to those who mattered . What sustained the network’s eagerness to keep The West Wing in its schedules (even as ratings plummeted), how NBC and Warner Bros. Television managed and institutionalized the show as about prestigious quality TV drama, has something important to tell us about broadcasting politics in the age of TVIII1 —an era driven by, among other things, brand equity and 01 McCabe text.indd 9 9/12/12 9:22 AM 10 Chapter 1 customer choice, locating “quality” demographics, and defining niche television markets. NBC, Democracy, and the Politics of U.S. Network Broadcasting The West Wing may have ushered in new ways of representing politics in television drama, but its language for doing so remained deeply implicated in ideas about broadcasting philosophy and corporate identity. Milestone TV programs promise to somehow liberate television from what went before, but, to borrow from Todd Gitlin, “In network television, even the exceptions reveal the rules” (1994, 273). In comprehending how NBC institutionalized markers of quality in and through its broadcast agenda and company values is crucial to understanding , in part, what made The West Wing stand out in a competitive television landscape. The West Wing circulated free-to-air on the NBC network. The series thus belongs to a longer tradition of U.S. public broadcasting that stretches as far back as 1926 with its origins in radio. Toby, in fact, reminds network news directors of that history—of how the federal government gave the publicly owned airways to the networks for free seventy years earlier and how they, in return, had an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) obligation to legally serve the public (“The Black Vera Wang,” 3:20). Michele Hilmes writes that NBC positioned itself as “America’s network” hinged on principles of “social diversity and cultural standardization, . . . national integration and local independence, and . . . First Amendment–protected freedoms and the need for regulatory control” (2007, 8). These tensions between competing ideologies, in turn, subtly shape the decision-making broadcast philosophy governing the network , a central conflict between “public service responsibilities and . . . [its] commercial economic base” (ibid.). From lessons on the planet Mars (“Galileo,” 2:9) to identi01 McCabe text.indd 10 9/12/12 9:22 AM 11 Politics of Quality Primetime TV fying the only three words in the English language beginning with the letters “dw” (“Mr. Willis of Ohio,” 1:6), The West Wing had a predisposition to the conditions of public service broadcasting . It was a philosophy embedded in the dramatic conversational forms, as well as explicitly referenced as a theme or plotline. Asked by the president to free up five appointments to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Toby, as the voice of uncompromising social liberal idealism, sees it almost as a personal crusade to protect PBS (“Take Out the Trash Day,” 1:13). Toby: I was raised on Sesame Street, I was raised on Julia Child, I was raised on Brideshead Revisited. Their legacies are safe in my hands. C. J. unable to curb a snigger. Toby (to C. J.): You got a problem? C. J.: You watched cooking shows? Toby: I watched Julia Child. Audiences expect nothing less from Toby. But he is not alone in acting as a guardian of public service values. C. J. accepts the challenge to debate on live television with conservative talkshow host Taylor Reid (Jay Mohr), as she is keen to put forward an opposing argument and restore political balance (“An Khe,” 5:14). Later C. J. crusades for the independence of...