Television programming with business themes

From the beginning, narrative fiction television tended to portray and reinforce the division between the private domestic sphere and the public workplace. Most fiction programming either deals with a specific workplace or occupation or deploys the workplace as the "other" space defining the limits of home and family. Television has thus had a significant influence on the understanding of the relationship between family and work in American culture. Business themes are also represented more directly on television through reality shows and documentary-style programming.

The great diversity of television programming means that virtually every subject has reached television screens in some form, and business themes are no exception. While many viewers watch television as a means of entertainment away from the workplace, even the most fictional shows frequently reference businesses, businesspeople, and other aspects of business, whether as incidental details or as significant plot points. More realistic (though still typically dramatized) depictions of actual businesses have also proven popular, as have all manner of competitions involving entrepreneurs. Indeed, the cultural ubiquity of both television and business concerns has meant that the two often inform and reflect each other. In general, television programming with business themes can be divided into several broad categories, including fictional depictions of the workplace, fictional depictions of businesspeople, docudramas and documentaries, and reality television.

The Workplace

During the so-called Golden Age of Television, domestic comedies such as Father Knows Best (1954–1963) and Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963) featured nuclear families in which the father had a steady job and the mother stayed at home. Rarely, if ever, did the father's job have a connection with the story. One of those rarities was the episode of All in the Family (1971-1983) "The Insurance Is Canceled," in which the father, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), worked as the foreman of a factory's loading dock. In a cost-cutting move, Archie's bosses ordered him to select one of his subordinates to be laid off. A bigot, Archie made his decision based on race rather than merit. He chose to lay off a highly productive Puerto Rican rather than a lazy white man.

In The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), Van Dyke's character, Rob Petrie, had a wife and son and worked as head writer of a popular television variety show. The creator, Carl Reiner, based the show on his own life as a writer for the famous comedian Sid Caesar. The story lines were split between conflicts involving Petrie's office and his family.

Petrie's wife, Laura, was portrayed by Mary Tyler Moore, who went on to star in her own show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), which was mostly set in the newsroom of WJM, a Minneapolis television station. Mary Richards, Moore's character, was hired as associate producer (later producer) of the Six O'Clock News, although one of the jokes in the first episode was that the position initially paid slightly less than a secretary and considerably less than when a man held the job. However, as the character grew, she took on more and more responsibility. In the final episode, "The Last Show," the entire news staff was laid off, with the exception of one person, because of poor ratings. The joke was that management kept the incompetent news anchor, Ted Baxter (portrayed by Ted Knight).

Fictional depictions of workplaces continued to evolve over the decades. WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982) was critically acclaimed for its accurate portrayal of life at a radio station. One of its best-known and most acclaimed episodes, "Turkeys Away," concerned a promotion that became a public relations disaster. Based on an actual incident at an Atlanta radio station, the station dropped live turkeys out of a helicopter over a shopping center as a Thanksgiving Day giveaway, unaware that turkeys cannot fly. The turkeys were killed, and the shoppers were endangered. In some episodes, the characters faced issues that real businesspeople face, including the need for profits in "Mama's Review," market share in "Baby, If You've Ever Wondered," and unions in "The Union."

The sitcom Cheers (1982–1993) was set in a Boston bar based on the Bull and Finch Pub in that city. It portrayed the relationship between a business and its customers. Sam Malone (portrayed by Ted Danson) was the owner during the first five seasons. Between the fifth and sixth seasons, the bar was acquired by a large corporation, Malone was demoted to bartender (although he was eventually promoted to manager), and the plots of several shows were driven by the culture shock of the transition from a small business to a corporate environment. Tom Skerritt had a recurring role in the sixth season as Evan Drake, CEO of the corporation. In the eighth and ninth seasons, Roger Rees had a recurring role as Robin Colcord, a millionaire who was eventually arrested for insider trading. During those seasons, Rebecca Howe (played by Kirstie Alley) was an ambitious businesswoman who dated only men who could advance her career. After losing her job as the bar's manager, she became a cocktail waitress and in the last season married a plumber.

Many other popular sitcoms displayed a similar tendency to include glimpses into characters' working lives, generally for comedic effect. For example, Seinfeld (1989–98) often dedicated plotlines to the business schemes of characters George Costanza (who worked in the New York Yankees organization, among other places; portrayed by Jason Alexander) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards), as well as the office life of Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Friends (1994–2004) likewise used the six main characters' professional lives for plot material, often lampooning business stereotypes and tropes. In addition to comedies, television dramas also often centered around workplaces, to the extent that critics often categorized them as medical dramas, police dramas, and so on based on the profession of the main characters. While not explicitly focused on business issues, such shows often featured subplots related, for example, to the business operations of a hospital or an individual under police scrutiny.

Two popular incarnations of the workplace theme in the early twenty-first century were The Office (2005–13) and Mad Men (2007–15). Based on a British sitcom of the same name, The Office is set in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, office of a paper company named Dunder Mifflin. Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) is the clueless manager. Story lines have included the issues of downsizing, health insurance, sexual harassment, performance reviews, e-mail monitoring, drug testing, and safety training. Set during the 1960s, Mad Men takes place in the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York. Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm) is the agency's creative director with a secret past. Several of the episodes involve dealing with the agency's clients, especially Richard M. Nixon's 1960 presidential campaign. Another recurring theme is the status of women in the workplace in that period.

Many critics considered the 2000s the dawning of a new golden age of television thanks to the proliferation of quality programming. Naturally, this included many series with business themes. Later television shows with significant focus on the workplace included 30 Rock (2006–13), about the workings of a TV sketch show, Halt and Catch Fire (2014–17), a fictionalized portrayal of the early personal computer industry, and the satirical Silicon Valley (2014– ), about the world of startup companies.

Businesspeople as Heroes and Villains

In many crime dramas, businesspeople, especially men, appear as the villains. In addition to the usual murders, rapes, assaults, and robberies, they are often shown to be guilty of rent gouging, toxic waste dumping, union busting, and manufacturing shoddy or even dangerous products. In the Lou Grant (1977–1982) episode "Goop," for instance, a reporter goes undercover to investigate a company suspected of the illegal dumping of chemicals. In The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985), the recurring villain was Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg, owner of the local bank.

The United States endured two energy crises during the 1970s, so the oil industry was much in the news at the time. On Dallas (1978–1991), the villain that the viewers loved to hate was J. R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman), a Texas oilman. He sought power, acted without scruples, and manipulated other people into doing his will. He was more a caricature than a true character. One of the story lines during the show's early years concerned offshore oil leases in Southeast Asia. Another ongoing story line throughout the show's entire run was the struggle to control the family company, Ewing Oil, and battles with another company called Westar were featured during the middle and late seasons. A merger with another oil company was the subject of the episode "Royal Marriage," and purchasing a refinery was the subject of "Taste of Success."

On Dynasty (1981–1989), Blake Carrington (portrayed by John Forsythe) was also an oilman, but he lived in Denver. Whereas J. R. did business in Southeast Asia, Blake did business in the Middle East and China. In the early episodes, he was just as ruthless and unscrupulous as J. R., but he softened as the years went by. The role of the villain was filled by his former wife, Alexis (played by Joan Collins), who was introduced in the second season. However, the soap opera aspects of both shows overwhelmed their business aspects. Dynasty in particular was known for its high campiness. The message, if there was one, was that while greed was not necessarily good, it was definitely glamorous.

One of the most sympathetic portrayals of a fictional businessperson on television took place on Rich Man, Poor Man (1976–1977), a miniseries based on the 1970 novel by Irwin Shaw. The parents of Rudy Jordache (played by Peter Strauss) owned a bakery, where Rudy worked after school and on weekends. He went to college and became a multimillionaire by the age of thirty-five by capitalizing on the middle-class flight to the suburbs during the 1950s.

The largely negative portrayal of business in television dramas stretched into the twenty-first century. In the long-running police procedural Law & Order (1990–2010), according to at least one analysis, half of the criminals were businesspeople. That show's various spinoffs continued the tradition of typically using business as shorthand for greed and corruption rather than any positive force. Programs that followed a similar thematic approach included Mad Men, Empire (2015– ), and Billions (2016– ).

Docudramas and Documentaries

Events in business history have been dramatized in television movies and miniseries. The anthology series The Great Adventure (1963–1965), for instance, consisted entirely of docudramas from American history. The episodes "Six Wagons to the Sea" concerned a railroad and financial scandal in the nineteenth century and "The Colonel from Connecticut" was about the drilling of the first oil well in 1854.

Many docudramas feature people suffering disasters. In Bitter Harvest (1981), Ron Howard played a farmer who discovered that his animal feed was contaminated by a chemical. Based on the 1978 book by Frederick Halbert and Sandra Halbert, the show was more critical of government health officials and regulators than of the manufacturer of the feed, although there was enough blame to go around. Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal (1982) had a similar theme, based on the real-life Love Canal scandal. Marsha Mason played the title character, a housewife who discovered that her house and those of seven hundred other people were built on a chemical waste disposal site.

In Damaged Care (2002), the target was the insurance industry, especially Health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Dr. Linda Peeno (Laura Dern) was a medical reviewer for an HMO who was under pressure from her superiors to deny legitimate claims, but she eventually became a whistle-blower.

One well-received docudrama about business was Barbarians at the Gate (1993), based on the 1990 book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. Written by Larry Gelbart, it concerned the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in 1988, which was the largest in history up until that time. Chief executive officer F. Ross Johnson (played by James Garner) wanted to take the company private and enlisted Shearson Lehman Hutton, then a division of American Express. However, Henry Kravis (played by Jonathan Pryce) of Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts also wanted a piece of the action, and their power struggle drove much of the plot.

The origin of the personal computer industry was shown in The Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999). It starred Noah Wylie as Steve Jobs, Joey Slotnick as Steve Wozniak, Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates, and Josh Hopkins as Paul Allen. None of the principals cooperated, and the show was based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer (1984) by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. It was set beginning during the early 1970s and concluded with a birthday party for Jobs in 1985, just before he lost control of Apple for several years.

Docudramas, with their reenactments based on real events, often follow dramas in highlighting the negative aspects of business. More realistic and fair treatments of businesspeople have been few and far between, in part because a well-run business is probably not interesting enough to make good television. Unlike a police station or hospital, mundane businesses rarely deal in life-and-death situations. Television writers therefore often focus on notorious real-life examples of greed, infighting, and other characteristics that, in turn, have become heavily associated with business in the public consciousness.

Unlike acted docudramas, documentary-style television shows follow or investigate real-life people, and there are numerous examples focused on businesses or businesspeople. While these may follow the trend of emphasizing negative portrayals, some shows sympathize with, romanticize, or even glorify their subjects. Examples generally follow sensational careers, such as Dirty Jobs (2005–12), featuring host Mike Rowe participating in a variety of difficult or undesirable occupations; Deadliest Catch (2005– ), about crab fishing; and Ice Road Truckers (2007–17), about truck drivers on frozen Arctic lakes. Again, however, drama is typically artificially heightened for entertainment purposes, and writers may spice up the story lines by inserting conflicts that rarely happen in a normal business. In such cases, the lines between documentary and reality television often blur.

Reality Shows

Although there are antecedents, one of the great trends in television programming during the early twenty-first century was the proliferation of reality shows. Despite the terminology, most of these programs are actually highly produced and all but scripted. Before their broadcast, the shows are thoroughly edited, musically scored, and often have voiceover commentary by the participants after the fact. Reality shows can take many forms, and business themes have proven popular in several different formulations. One basic template, as in the example of Deadliest Catch and similar programs, is the documentary-style depiction of an unusual or particularly drama-filled occupation. While business concerns often take a backseat to action and other drama, they are often included in the daily lives of the subjects. (A number of shows that do feature business operations as a main focus are often considered in a subcategory built around financial transactions, such as in pawn shops, antiques hunting, and real estate.) Businesses that have had shows based around them include bounty hunters, tattoo parlors, and custom motorcycle manufacturers.

A perhaps less realistic form of business-oriented reality television is the range of game shows in which businesspeople compete for some reward. One of the earliest and most successful was The Apprentice. The scenario of this show, which began airing in 2004 and went on to various incarnations, is that a group of sixteen young men and women perform a series of business-related challenges conceived by celebrity entrepreneur Donald Trump and his associates. Every week, at least one of the competitors is eliminated, and Trump tells the person, "You're fired!" The winner receives a six-figure job with one of Trump's companies. (Trump himself left the show after the fourteenth season upon declaring his candidacy for the US presidency, but it continued with other hosts.)

Other business competition reality shows task entrepreneurs with convincing investors to buy into their venture. One of the best known examples of this format is Shark Tank, which premiered in 2009 as an American version of the Japanese/international show Dragon's Den that began in 2001. Similarly, Restaurant Startup (2014– ) focused the concept on the food industry in particular. Many other styles of business reality shows also exist, including programs in which bosses are placed in entry-level positions in their own companies and programs in which specialists are brought in to aid small businesses.

Bibliography

Bauer, Douglas, ed. Prime Times: Writers on Their Favorite TV Shows. New York: Crown, 2004. This collection includes essays on The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Bergh, Colin Tomkins. "A Reflection of Entrepreneurs in Pop Culture: The Celebritization of Entrepreneurs." Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 26 Feb. 2015, www.kauffman.org/currents/2015/02/the-celebritization-of-entrepreneurs

Bianculli, David. Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Critical defense of television with comments on several shows portraying business themes.

Gitlin, Todd. Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. Discusses the treatment of businesspeople in the chapter "The Temple Stands."

Lebowitz, Shana. "9 TV Dramas That Will Make You Smarter About Business." Business Insider, 22 July 2015, www.businessinsider.com/tv-shows-that-teach-you-about-business-2015-7. Accessed 18 Dec. 2018.

Medved, Michael. Hollywood vs. America. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. The subchapter "Evil Industrialists" argues that a disproportionate number of the villains on television are businesspeople.

Nathani, Komal. "6 Business TV Shows Every Entrepreneur Should Watch in 2018." Entrepreneur India, 26 Apr. 2018,www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/312150. Accessed 18 Dec. 2018.

Siegel, Lee. Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television. Philadelphia: Perseus Books Group, 2007. This collection of essays includes a review of The Apprentice.

Thompson, Robert L. Television's Second Golden Age: From "Hill Street Blues" to "ER." New York: Continuum, 1996. Discusses many of the major shows of the 1980s and 1990s that portray workplaces and business themes.