Page 42 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

31
CULTIVATION
the press. In addition, the demand upon pack journalists to beat the competition
often outweighed their ability to give analysis to the stories they covered daily.
In Crouse's view, this phenomenon meant that the articles failed to enlighten
the American public about important information during the election process.

SOURCES: Steven d'Arazien, book review, The Progressive, February 1974; Frances
Carol Locher, ed., Contemporary Authors, Vols. 77-80, 1979.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

C-SPAN was the brainchild of Brian Lamb, Washington bureau chief for Ca-
blevision magazine in 1977, when, as a sidelight, he began taping 15-minute
interviews with members of Congress for broadcast by 15 capital-area cable
systems. In June of that year, House speaker Tip O'Neill had a fixed, black-
and-white camera begin broadcasting proceedings on a trial basis via cable to
Arlington, Virginia, where many members lived. Lamb raised $400,000 from
22 cable system operators to create C-SPAN, and regulatory approval was
quickly gained from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for broad-
cast of gavel-to-gavel coverage of House proceedings to 3 million households.
The first transmission was on March 19, 1979, and service was soon expanded
to include non-House programming, with student seminars, National Press Club
speeches, call-in shows, and federal agency hearings. In 1981 the first congres-
sional hearings were broadcast, and the following year C-SPAN began broad-
casting 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During the 1984 election campaign,
the network covered the national party conventions. In 1986 C-SPAN II was
created to carry Senate proceedings. By the mid-1990s, more than 60 million
households had access to C-SPAN. The network was credited with launching
the political rise of Newt Gingrich and the television career of talk-show host
Larry King, whose Mutual Radio call-in show was first simulcast in 1983.

SOURCE: Stephen Frantzich and John Sullivan, The C-SPAN Revolution, 1996.
Marc Edge

CULTIVATION is a theory developed by George Gerbner and his colleagues
about the effect of television. Research has shown that heavy viewers of tele-
vision are more likely than light viewers of television to perceive the world as
an unsafe, violent place. Yet, while television affects our perception of the
world, it is hardly the only influence. Heavy viewers of television differ from
light viewers in such things as age, education, gender, and use of news media.
Given the relation between extent of television viewing and perception of the
world as unsafe, which is cause, and which is effect? Does television watching
create the impression, or do people who view the world as unsafe have a ten-
dency to become heavy viewers?
More recent studies that have attempted to control other variables related to
television viewing find the cultivation effect less pronounced. Still, if there is