Least objectionable program
Encyclopedia
The theory of the Least Objectionable Program (LOP) is a mediological
theory explaining TV audience behavior. It was developed in 1960s by then executive of audience measurement at NBC
, Paul L. Klein, who was greatly influenced by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan
's Understanding Media
.
in 1971), Klein explained that viewers consume the medium of television
rather than television shows
, treating the medium as the end of their consumption itself rather than using the set as a means to access specific programs they like the way they might choose a book from a shelf to access the story within. Since the introduction of television, the same percentage of sets are in use on, say, a Thursday evening at a certain hour, year after year, regardless of what content is broadcast. This is because unlike the way people use books, museums, or the cinema as means of consuming desired content, audiences consume television, the medium, as the desired object. TV viewers turn the set on, deciding to "watch television", and then seek out something to watch from what is available, flipping around, not until they find "something they like" - because television programming is in fact very rarely satisfying, and viewers rarely watch anything they actually like - but until they find something that doesn't offend them enough to make them flip to the next channel. (Viewers almost never turn off the set as a result of finding nothing tolerable and judging every program available boring or otherwise objectionable. Viewers commonly watch programs they describe later as unbearable, everything else on being even more intolerable. A more common response to a whole spectrum of equally unendurable choices than choosing to abandon the medium is to continue to flip frequently until new choices become available.) Thus, for programmers of television channels, Klein recommended understanding that audience attraction was a matter not of pleasing the greatest number of viewers but of offending the fewest (driving the fewest away to the competitors who may repulse them less). The television audience is in a kind of partial trance. A network will do better worrying less about not giving an audience enough to like, to be surprised and delighted by, and to engage their attention, than about avoiding, as Klein said, "disturbing their reverie" with something that causes them to change the channel. Thus, even as channel choices proliferate alongside numerous easily accessed out-of-schedule viewing options, successful television programs remain, as they have always been, formulaic, cliché, "instantly familiar", predictable, and monotonous in tone.
, satellite
, and now digital terrestrial
and IPTV
) means the offering is so diverse and the means of access so flexible that the LOP theory no longer applies. Certainly the rules of thumb the theory once offered to programmers of a three, four or five major channel dial have become obsolete. However, the undisturbed regularity of television consumption in markets with advanced technologies, and the audience slice garnered by such choices as the electronic program guide (EPG) itself on multichannel platforms, suggests that the core theory explains the behaviour of today's advanced-market audience offered scores of channel choices just as it did audiences of the past.
Mediology
Mediology , broadly indicates a wide-ranging method for the analysis of cultural transmission in society and across societies, a method which challenges the conventional idea that 'technology is not culture'...
theory explaining TV audience behavior. It was developed in 1960s by then executive of audience measurement at NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, Paul L. Klein, who was greatly influenced by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
's Understanding Media
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a pioneering study in media theory written by Marshall McLuhan. In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study...
.
Why You Watch What You Watch When You Watch
In an article "Why you watch what you watch when you watch" (published in TV GuideTV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
in 1971), Klein explained that viewers consume the medium of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
rather than television shows
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
, treating the medium as the end of their consumption itself rather than using the set as a means to access specific programs they like the way they might choose a book from a shelf to access the story within. Since the introduction of television, the same percentage of sets are in use on, say, a Thursday evening at a certain hour, year after year, regardless of what content is broadcast. This is because unlike the way people use books, museums, or the cinema as means of consuming desired content, audiences consume television, the medium, as the desired object. TV viewers turn the set on, deciding to "watch television", and then seek out something to watch from what is available, flipping around, not until they find "something they like" - because television programming is in fact very rarely satisfying, and viewers rarely watch anything they actually like - but until they find something that doesn't offend them enough to make them flip to the next channel. (Viewers almost never turn off the set as a result of finding nothing tolerable and judging every program available boring or otherwise objectionable. Viewers commonly watch programs they describe later as unbearable, everything else on being even more intolerable. A more common response to a whole spectrum of equally unendurable choices than choosing to abandon the medium is to continue to flip frequently until new choices become available.) Thus, for programmers of television channels, Klein recommended understanding that audience attraction was a matter not of pleasing the greatest number of viewers but of offending the fewest (driving the fewest away to the competitors who may repulse them less). The television audience is in a kind of partial trance. A network will do better worrying less about not giving an audience enough to like, to be surprised and delighted by, and to engage their attention, than about avoiding, as Klein said, "disturbing their reverie" with something that causes them to change the channel. Thus, even as channel choices proliferate alongside numerous easily accessed out-of-schedule viewing options, successful television programs remain, as they have always been, formulaic, cliché, "instantly familiar", predictable, and monotonous in tone.
Obsolescence of the Theory
It has been widely suggested, by such slogans as "appointment television", that the proliferation of channel choices since the introduction of new platforms beginning in the 1980s (cableCable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
, satellite
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
, and now digital terrestrial
Digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television is the technological evolution of broadcast television and advance from analog television, which broadcasts land-based signals...
and IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...
) means the offering is so diverse and the means of access so flexible that the LOP theory no longer applies. Certainly the rules of thumb the theory once offered to programmers of a three, four or five major channel dial have become obsolete. However, the undisturbed regularity of television consumption in markets with advanced technologies, and the audience slice garnered by such choices as the electronic program guide (EPG) itself on multichannel platforms, suggests that the core theory explains the behaviour of today's advanced-market audience offered scores of channel choices just as it did audiences of the past.
Further Reading
- Lorrie Faith Cranor, Shane M. Greenstein: Communications policy and information technology: promises, problems, prospects.