The 1990s: The Loss Of Shared Experience
In the 60 years between 1929, when radio became the dominant conveyor of the prevailing mass culture in the United States, and 1989, when cable television became a truly mature industry, broadcasting provided something that was unique in human history. During that period, nearly the entire country—young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated—was feeding, at least occasionally, from the same cultural trough. Radio and television provided a kind of cultural glue; their programs penetrated nearly every segment of the national population to a degree that even the church in medieval Europe had not achieved. The control of the television industry by only three companies had produced, among other things, a unified mass culture, the products of which were experienced by nearly everyone. That era ended, in effect, in the 1990s.
The number of cable services aimed at specific audiences with specialized interests grew at its greatest pace ever during this period, dividing the audience into smaller and smaller segments. Inevitably, the share of that audience held by each of the major networks continued to decline, although each network was still attracting many more viewers than any of the cable channels. Besides the familiar cable services dedicated to news, sports, movies, shopping, and music, entire cable channels were devoted to cooking (Food Network), cartoons (Cartoon Network), old television (Nick at Nite, TV Land), old movies (American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies), home improvement and gardening (Home and Garden Television [HGTV]), comedy (Comedy Central), documentaries (Discovery Channel), animals (Animal Planet), and a host of other interests. The Golf Channel and the Game Show Network were perhaps the most emblematic of how far target programming could go during this era. By the end of the decade, almost 80 percent of American households had access to cable programming through cable hookups or direct delivery by satellite.
Actor Alec Baldwin (left) and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne.
PRNewsFoto/Turner Classic Movies/AP Images
Many had predicted that cable would reduce the number of broadcast networks or put them out of business entirely. On the contrary, broadcast networks proliferated as well during this period, doubling in number from three to six. The Fox network began operation in 1985 with a limited evening schedule, and the repeal of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1993 set the stage for other production companies to enter the market. Since their inception in 1971, the fin-syn rules had substantially limited the amount of programming that networks could produce or own and therefore sell to local stations for syndicated reruns. As a result, networks would license or “rent” programs from studios and production companies, paying for the right to air the episode twice during the season, after which all rights would revert to the production company, which would in turn sell reruns of the series to individual stations. Once this regulation was eliminated, networks began participating in the production and ownership of programs (as they had before 1971), and, in turn, production companies began forming their own networks. In 1995 two networks were formed that would remain in operation for a decade (ending in 2006, when they would merge into a single network, the CW): the WB, premiered by Warner Bros., and UPN (the United Paramount Network), premiered by Paramount.
Demographic divergence
The programming of the 1990s is not easily categorized. Many complained about the increasing amount of violence, sex, and profane language on television during the decade. Few would argue the point, but there were also more documentaries, instructional shows, news, and religious programs on TV than ever before. In short, there was more of everything, including reruns of old shows from all eras of network TV history. The family sitcom provides a telling example. Traditional family comedies such as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and Growing Pains (ABC, 1985–92) remained on the air into the 1990s, while at the same time more “realistic” shows featuring lower-middle-class families such as Roseanne (ABC, 1988–97), The Simpsons (Fox, begun 1989), Married…with Children (Fox, 1987–97), and Grace Under Fire (ABC, 1993–98) introduced a completely different vision of the American family. The cultural consensus that had united so much of television during the network era had been obliterated. Audiences were no longer watching the same things at the same time, and the choices they had were the greatest ever and continuing to multiply.
Urban humour
Of the programming on network TV that in the 1990s continued to attract the largest audiences, the most popular new entries were Seinfeld (1990–98), Friends (1994–2004), and ER (1994–2009), all part of NBC’s celebrated Thursday night lineup. Like so many of the situation comedies from the 1980s and ’90s (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Home Improvement), Seinfeld was based upon the act of a standup comic, in this case the observational, “everyday life” humour of Jerry Seinfeld. Other shows had begun to explore this dramatic territory a few years earlier, including The Wonder Years (ABC, 1988–93), a comedy-drama that celebrated the minutiae of suburban life in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and thirtysomething, a drama that analyzed the psychic details of the lives of a group of young professionals. Seinfeld, however, was able to identify a new form for the traditional sitcom. It featured entire episodes about waiting in line at a restaurant, losing a car in a multilevel parking garage, and, in a notorious and surprisingly tasteful episode, the personal and social dimensions of masturbation. Self-declared to be “a show about nothing,” Seinfeld for five years was rated among the top three programs and spent two of those years as number one. The extent of the show’s cultural power became evident when Seinfeld announced that he would end the show after the close of the 1997–98 season. The countdown to the final episode and the airing of the episode itself became the biggest story of the season in American popular culture.
(from left) Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and Jerry Seinfeld
Scene from the television series Seinfeld, with actors (from left) Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and Jerry Seinfeld.
© Castle Rock Entertainment; all rights reserved
Seinfeld, which focused on four unmarried friends living in New York City, inspired a virtual subgenre. The generically named Friends, also on NBC’s Thursday schedule, was the only one of the imitators to approach the success of Seinfeld. Another of the imitations, however, was historically significant. Ellen (ABC, 1994–98), originally titled These Friends of Mine, also featured a standup comic (Ellen DeGeneres) and an ensemble of unmarried friends in the big city (in this case Los Angeles). The show was only a modest hit with both critics and audiences until DeGeneres decided that her character would openly acknowledge her lesbianism at the end of the 1996–97 season. When she did, after half a season of thinly disguised foreshadowing double-entendres, Ellen became the first broadcast television series to feature an openly gay leading character. While some saw such series as Ellen as an important breakthrough, others saw it as another example of the collapse of standards on television.
The 1990s did see the fulfillment of many of the trends that had begun in the 1980s. NYPD Blue, for example, introduced stronger language and more explicit nudity than any network television series to date when it debuted in 1993. Several affiliate stations refused to air the show, but when it became a hit, most of them quietly reversed their decisions. Complaints by parent, teacher, and religious groups that network television was no longer appropriate for family viewing became a major ongoing refrain in the 1990s.
The newsmagazines
The 1990s also saw the steady growth of the newsmagazine. The prototype of the genre was Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now (CBS, 1951–58), and 60 Minutes, which had been on since 1968, set the standard. ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20 was introduced in 1978. With production costs for traditional prime-time programming rising to nearly prohibitive heights at the same time that ratings were plummeting because of cable competition, network executives in the 1990s sought an inexpensive way to fill prime-time hours with popular programming. The long-term success of 60 Minutes suggested that the newsmagazine might be the perfect solution. Newsmagazines were inexpensive compared with sitcoms and dramas, and they had the potential to draw very large audiences. All three networks introduced new newsmagazines during the 1990s, and fierce competition for both audiences and stories resulted, especially since the 24-hour news channels on cable were competing in a similar arena. Some of the series became very successful, including Dateline (NBC, begun 1992), which, by 1999, was being aired five nights per week. 20/20 was extended to two nights weekly in 1997 and again to four in 1998 when it absorbed another ailing newsmagazine, Primetime Live (ABC, 1989–98; it emerged again in 2000 as Primetime Thursday and returned to its original name in 2004). Even 60 Minutes added a second weekly edition, 60 Minutes II (1999–2005). Several newsmagazines presented stories of a scandalous, sexual, or otherwise spectacular nature, and media critics attacked such shows for their tabloidlike approach to presenting news stories and accused them of playing a major role in the degrading of American journalism.
Teen dramas and adult cartoons
Many of the decade’s most innovative programs came from cable and the three new networks. Early in its history, the Fox network had established a distinct identity by airing programs that would probably not have found a place on the schedules of ABC, CBS, or NBC. The Simpsons (begun 1989), the first animated prime-time series since The Flintstones (ABC, 1960–66) to succeed in prime time, was Fox’s biggest and longest-running hit and became the longest-running animated program in television history. With its densely packed social satire and self-reflexive references to American popular culture, The Simpsons set a new standard for television comedy, and, by the end of the 1990s, many critics were calling it the best TV comedy in history. The Fox network focused on young audiences, as ABC had done in the late 1970s, with such teen-oriented series as 21 Jump Street (1987–91), the story of youthful cops working undercover in Los Angeles high schools, which introduced Johnny Depp, and Beverly Hills 90210 (1990–2000), a prime-time soap opera set in the fictional West Beverly Hills High School. The latter inspired an entire new genre of “teensploitation” series, many of which became the anchors of the WB network a few years later. Among these WB teen series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), and Felicity (1998–2002) met with surprising critical acclaim. Professional wrestling, which had been a staple genre in the earliest days of television, made a major comeback in the 1990s in syndication and was later picked up by UPN as the first hit for that new network. All three of the newly formed broadcast networks—Fox, the WB, and UPN—depended on these signature shows to differentiate themselves for younger viewers from the old, established networks.
Simpsons, The
The Simpsons—(from left) Lisa, Maggie, Marge, Homer, and Bart—fleeing Springfield in the dark of night; from The Simpsons Movie (2007).
The Simpsons TM and © 2007 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
Throughout the 1990s, television content continued to move into areas that made many viewers and special interest groups uncomfortable. Strong language and explicit sexual topics became common both on cable and on broadcast TV, even in the early evening hours. Two of the more controversial series of the decade were cable products: MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head (1993–97, 2011) and Comedy Central’s South Park (begun 1997). Both animated series that challenged traditional notions of taste, and both part of a new wave of adult cartoons inspired by the success of The Simpsons, these programs demonstrated that the bulk of the experimentation on television was taking place off the major networks. This was especially true of premium channels such as HBO, to which viewers could subscribe for an additional fee. As a pay service, HBO had considerably more latitude with regard to content than commercially supported cable channels and broadcast television. HBO and other pay services do not use the public airwaves, nor do they come into the home unbidden, and they need not worry about advertisers skittish about offending viewers. Furthermore, pay channels are not concerned with ratings. As long as viewers like the service well enough not to cancel their subscriptions, pay cable channels will thrive.
New boundaries: the growth of cable
Premiering in 1972, HBO, as its full name, Home Box Office, implied, originally presented uncut and commercial-free movies as its exclusive offering. In the 1980s, however, HBO began to experiment with the original series format. Some of these series, such as the suspense anthology The Hitchhiker (1983–91) and the sports sitcom 1st & Ten (1984–90), were of little note save for their adult language and some nudity. Others, such as Tanner ’88 (1988), hinted at the high levels of quality that could be achieved on pay services. Created and produced by comic-strip artist Garry Trudeau and film director Robert Altman, Tanner ’88 satirically followed, documentary-style, a fictional candidate for president. Some of the show was shot on the campaign trail itself, and several real political figures made cameo appearances.
HBO moved even farther into its own TV productions in the 1990s. The Larry Sanders Show (1992–98), starring comedian Garry Shandling, did to late-night talk shows what Tanner ’88 had done to political campaigns, to great critical acclaim. Throughout the decade and into the next, HBO presented a range of such adult-oriented, conceptually groundbreaking, and critically well-received series as Oz (1997–2003); The Sopranos (1999–2007); Sex and the City (1998–2004), an adult romantic comedy focused on four women friends in New York City; Six Feet Under (2001–05), the saga of a dysfunctional-family-run mortuary business; Deadwood (2004–06), a hard-edged western; and Curb Your Enthusiasm (begun 2000), an improvisation-based comedy inspired by the real life of its star, Larry David, cocreator of Seinfeld. Ambitious miniseries and made-for-TV movies also became an important part of HBO’s programming mix.
Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in the television series Sex and the City.
© Home Box Office
It is worth noting that HBO was not the only cable service to begin with a very specific product only to later diversify its offerings. This practice, in fact, became the norm for specialized cable channels. For example, as mentioned earlier, MTV, which started out as a 24-hour-a-day music video provider, would eventually introduce specials, documentary series, comedies, game shows, and a wide variety of other program types. Court TV, which was designed as a venue for coverage of significant trials, very early in its history added reruns of crime-oriented movies and old TV series to its schedule. By the end of the 1990s, very few cable channels were still based on the original notion of providing a single type of programming around the clock.
Conglomerates and codes
Network ownership changed again in the 1990s. The Walt Disney Company announced its plans to acquire Capital Cities/ABC in 1995 just one day before CBS accepted an offer to be purchased by the Westinghouse Corporation. Both deals created enormous media conglomerates that included production facilities, broadcast stations, cable channels, and an assortment of other major media venues. In 2000 CBS and Viacom joined together, creating a company that owned, among other things, two broadcast networks, CBS and UPN.
In the arena of regulation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed as the most comprehensive communications policy since 1934. Described as “deregulatory and re-regulatory,” it continued to encourage free-market competition by eliminating or weakening the industry restraints that were still intact, but it also instituted new rules covering children’s programming and programming with violent and sexually explicit material. The deregulatory aspects of the act included yet another extension of the term of a broadcast license, this time to eight years. Single owners, who had been restricted to 7 TV stations until 1980, 12 in 1985, and 20 in 1994, were now allowed to own an unlimited number of stations as long as the total coverage of those stations did not exceed 35 percent of the total U.S. population. The “duopoly rule,” which forbade any company to own more than one station of its kind (TV, AM radio, FM radio) per market until 1992, was eliminated and replaced by a formula based on the population of the market. The act also allowed networks to own cable companies, and telephone companies could own cable systems in their local service regions, neither of which had been permitted before 1996. The Prime Time Access Rule, which had limited networks to three hours of programming between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, was also dropped.
Increased sensitivity toward program content, however, resulted in some new regulations. One of these required that stations air at least three hours of children’s educational programming per week. A heightened emphasis on “family values” and a widely held belief that social violence was to some degree being generated by violent content on TV were addressed by the new policy with the introduction of a program ratings code and a requirement that all new television sets be equipped with a violent-program-blocking device known as a V-chip. Ratings codes were required to appear on the screen for 15 seconds at the beginning of each show: TV-Y designated appropriateness for all children; TV-Y7 meant that the show was designed for children age 7 and older; TV-G indicated appropriateness for all audiences; TV-PG suggested parental guidance—that the program contained material that could be considered unsuitable for younger children; TV-14 suggested that many parents might find the program inappropriate for anyone under age 14; and TV-MA warned that the program was designed for adults over age 17. Beyond the first two categories, the ratings measured violence, sexual content, and coarse language. The ratings system is flawed at best: the age designations—especially those at 14 and 17—seemed to many arbitrary and insensitive to the variation in development between teenagers. Moreover, the application of the system depended entirely upon the sensibilities of those doing the rating, as did the singling out of language, sex, and violence as the categories for judgment. Some complained that only entertainment programs were rated, when in fact many news shows were becoming increasingly violent and sexually explicit. Some producers, of course, claimed that the ratings system was a form of censorship.
A key factor in the operation of the ratings system was the V-chip, which enabled parents to block out individual programs or entire ratings categories, making them accessible only by a secret code. At the turn of the 21st century, the effectiveness of the V-chip remained in question. Many older children have in fact used the adult ratings as an indicator of programs they may be more interested in watching, and many children are more likely to have the technical skills to engage and disengage the V-chip than their parents. It might also be noted that the ratings system actually increased the number of programs with explicit sexual content, violence, or strong language. In the movie industry, content was originally voluntarily regulated by the Hays Production Code (see Will H. Hays), which limited the kind of language and subject matter (especially that of a sexual or violent nature) allowed in a film. The Hays code was superseded by a ratings system in 1966, from which time “adult” content in movies has been more and more common. One might expect that the television ratings system could also produce the opposite of the desired effect. Once a rating is available for adult programming, there is a sense in which that programming has institutionalized permission to exist. As long as a program carries a TV-MA rating, one might argue, then it is free to present content that may have been discouraged before a ratings system was in place. Indeed, many language and sexual barriers have been broken on both cable and broadcast TV since the introduction of the ratings system in 1996.
The 21st Century
Breaking news
The biggest spectacle in television history began on the morning of September 11, 2001. For days the networks and cable news channels suspended all regularly scheduled programming and showed nothing but round-the-clock images, interviews, and reporting about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Saturation coverage of a single news story went back to the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy in November 1963, when networks presented nearly continuous coverage over four days. Since the introduction of 24-hour news channels, many other stories had received this intensive treatment as well. When the Persian Gulf War began in September 1991, for example, CNN essentially emerged as a 24-hour war channel. To a lesser but still significant extent, the car chase and subsequent murder trial involving former football star O.J. Simpson, the Columbine High School shootings, and the 2000 presidential election were among the succession of stories to receive what came to be known as “wall-to-wall coverage.”
Television’s role on September 11, however, was like nothing that had been seen before. Hundreds of cameras were focused on one burning tower in Manhattan when a second tower was hit by a jet aircraft. That crash, along with the subsequent collapse of both buildings, was broadcast live to millions of stunned viewers, then replayed countless times throughout the following hours and days.
Regular programming began to return in the following weeks, but with noticeable tenuousness. Every one of the late-night comedians—Letterman, Leno, Kilborn, O’Brien, and the ensemble of Saturday Night Live—felt obliged to spend several minutes of their first episode back discussing the difficulty of performing comedy under the circumstances of such a profound national tragedy. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart fought back tears while adding his thoughts to the discussion. After an awkward few weeks, however, the late-night comedies, and American popular culture in general, had returned to business as usual.
Cable news as entertainment
During important breaking news stories, ratings for cable news channels always go up. The problem is how to keep them up even when there are not big stories being reported. One way is to present personalities that audiences would want to watch every day, regardless of what is happening. This model, designed after the opinionated shows on talk radio, was employed with great success by the Fox News Channel, which was launched in 1996 and before long was outperforming both CNN and MSNBC in the ratings. Two conservative personalities, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, emerged as stars of Fox in the late 1990s. MSNBC tried to counter Fox’s prime-time strategy with a liberal personality, Phil Donahue, in 2002, with considerably less success: O’Reilly was regularly outperforming Donahue by a factor of six. In 2003 MSNBC introduced Countdown with Keith Olbermann and then, in 2008, The Rachel Maddow Show. Although these prime-time opinion shows did not earn audience numbers as high as their counterparts on Fox, MSNBC’s ratings did climb considerably. Opinion shows became the norm during prime time. Even CNN, on its Headline News Channel, abandoned its usual repetition of 30-minute headline reports during prime time in favour of personality-driven shows featuring the likes of Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck (who moved to Fox in 2009).
The return of the game show
The biggest prime-time story of the brand-new century was a surprising one. After a decades-long absence from the network prime-time schedules, an evening game show was introduced in August 1999 on ABC with astonishing results. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, hosted by TV talk-show veteran Regis Philbin, began as a series of limited runs, functioning as a game show miniseries of sorts. In August, November, and January the show aired on consecutive nights—as many as 18 in a row. By January it was not uncommon to see the seven daily installments of the show holding all seven of the top slots in the Nielsen ratings for the week. The show’s ratings continued to climb, and by the time it was finally given a regular place in the schedule—three times per week starting in February 2000—it had become a cultural phenomenon, reaching an audience of more than 30 million per episode. Based on a British series of the same title, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire had a simple premise: contestants, selected by phone-in competitions open to the public, were asked 15 questions of increasing value if answered correctly, the last of which was worth a million dollars. During the process, a contestant who was stumped for an answer was allowed three assists: phoning a friend, polling the audience, or having the four multiple-choice answers reduced by half.
The idea to bring game shows back to prime-time television was a natural one. The game show had been a viable genre twice before: once on radio and again on television in the 1950s. In daytime programming and syndication the genre had never gone away, and shows such as Wheel of Fortune (NBC, 1975–89; syndication, 1983– ) and Jeopardy! (NBC, 1964–75; 1978–79; syndication, 1984– ) were among the best syndicated performers throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Any negative associations left over from the quiz show scandals had dissipated, and, more important, the shows were inexpensive—a crucial factor at the turn of the 21st century, when budgets for other prime-time shows were spinning out of control. Although audiences responded enthusiastically to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the other three game shows introduced by Fox, NBC, and CBS on the heels of Millionaire’s success did not even make it to the next season.
In the age of target marketing, demographically sensitive programming strategies, and proliferating programming options, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire seemed to be able to attract almost everyone. The first questions asked of each contestant were extraordinarily simple, aimed at the very young. From there, questions appealed to the cultural memories of every generation. Just as the network era was coming to a close—just as the memory of everyone watching the same thing at the same time was fading—Who Wants to Be a Millionaire reminded viewers what the experience of network TV used to be like all the time. The template of the show proved adaptable to local versions around the globe, one of which was featured in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The show evoked the 1950s, not only because it was a prime-time quiz show but because it attracted an audience that was as wide and diverse as the TV audience had been in the past. Cable, direct satellite, the VCR, and the Internet had shattered that audience into fragments during the 1980s and ’90s, but in 2000 this modest game show reminded viewers of what had been one of television’s greatest appeals.
“Reality TV” was one of the most significant new program developments of the new century, though the genre is in fact nearly as old as the medium itself. Live variety shows had taken cameras into the streets in the 1950s, and Candid Camera, which surreptitiously filmed people responding to elaborate practical jokes, debuted on ABC in 1948 (with stints on all three networks until 1967, its longest tenure coming on CBS [1960–67], before it was revived in 1989–90 and again in 1998). With the appearance of Real People (NBC, 1979–84), however, the genre began to thrive. Called “infotainment” by some critics and “schlockumentary” by others, Real People presented several short documentaries per episode featuring “real people” who did unusual things: one man ate dirt, for example, and another walked only backward. The program’s imitators included That’s Incredible! (ABC, 1980–84) and Those Amazing Animals (ABC, 1980–81). As home-video technology spread in the 1980s and ’90s, entire shows were designed around content produced by amateurs. ABC introduced America’s Funniest Home Videos (ABC, begun 1990), featuring tapes sent in by home viewers hoping to win prize money. When that show immediately reached the Nielsen top 10, it was followed by America’s Funniest People (ABC, 1990–94), a sort of updated version of Real People that mixed professional and amateur video productions.
Reality shows began taking on other forms as well. America’s Most Wanted (Fox/Lifetime, 1988–2012) and Unsolved Mysteries (NBC/CBS, 1988–99; Lifetime, 2001–02) used actors to dramatize stories about crimes for which the suspects were still at large. Traditional journalists decried the use of these reenactments, but hundreds of criminals were apprehended as a result of viewers’ calling the station in response to photographs of the suspects that were shown at the end of each episode. In Cops (Fox, 1989–2013; Spike, begun 2013), a camera crew rode along with the police as they patrolled various urban settings. Episodes of Cops had been taped in more than 100 cities by the end of the century. The reality genre owed much to An American Family, a 12-part documentary series that aired on PBS from January to March in 1973. In the making of this series, camera crews followed the Louds, a Santa Barbara, Calif., family, for seven months, revealing, among other things, the breakup of the parents’ marriage and the openly gay lifestyle of son Lance, a first for a television series.
At century’s end, however, the reality genre was tending more toward voyeurism and less toward reality. In spite of its title, MTV’s The Real World (begun 1992) was much more contrived than An American Family, and it set the style for future series of its kind. The Louds, after all, were a real family, as were the officers that were portrayed in Cops. For each new season of The Real World, however, seven young adults who had never met before were selected from thousands of applicants to live together for several months in a large MTV-supplied apartment or house in a major city. Cameras recorded them both inside and outside their home, and the footage was then edited into 13 half-hour episodes per year. It was, in effect, a documentary about a totally contrived and artificial situation. Eight years after the debut of The Real World, CBS picked up on the idea, introducing two series, both based on similar European shows, that brought the voyeuristic genre to a much larger audience than ever before. For Survivor (CBS, begun 2000), 16 applicants were selected to spend some 39 days on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea under the scrutiny of a hundred cameras. Taped footage was edited into 13 episodes. Although the “survivors” were forced to cooperate with each other for their daily needs and in competitive events that were set up by the producers, conflict was injected by forcing the group to vote one of their fellow castaways off the island at three-day intervals. The ultimate survivor at the end of the series won a million dollars. A month later, CBS debuted a variant of the genre, Big Brother, which featured 10 people locked in a house for the summer. Contestants on Big Brother were also voted out until one winner remained. It aired on consecutive nights during the week and included one episode per week that was broadcast live; there was also an Internet component, which allowed online viewers to access four cameras in the house 24 hours per day. In subsequent seasons the premium cable channel Showtime offered an “after-hours” version of the show.