TV documentaries, as explained by A. William Bluem in the classic Documentary in American Television, evolved from the late 1920s and 1930s works of photojournalists and film documentarians, such as Roy Stryker, John Grierson, and Pare Lorents. Bluem writes, “They wished that viewers might share the adventure and despair of other men’s lives, and commiserate with the downtrodden and underprivileged.” The rise of radio in World War II advanced the documentary idea, especially through the distinguished works of writer Norman Corwin of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the reporting of Edward R. Murrow. In 1946, Murrow created the CBS documentary unit, which linked documentary journalism with the idea that broadcasters owed the public a news service in exchange for lucrative station licenses.

Technology has also been a force in the documentary’s evolution. The editing of audiotape on the 1949 CBS record I Can Hear It Now facilitated the origin of the radio documentary. On National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio, the Living series (1949-51) used taped interviews and helped move the form away from dramatizations and towards actualities. 

The genesis of the American TV documentary tradition is attributed to the CBS series See It Now, started in 1951 by the legendary team of Murrow and Fred Friendly. See It Now set the model for future documentary series. Producers shot their own film rather than cannibalize other material, worked without a prepared script and allowed a story to emerge, avoided using actors, and produced unrehearsed interviews. This independence contributed to the credibility of See It Now’s voice, as did Murrow and Friendly’s courage in confronting controversy.

The most notable of the See It Now programs include several reports on McCarthyism, an episode that illustrates the uneasy association that exists between controversial documentaries, politics, and industry economics. The Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) sought to sponsor See It Now, which featured the esteemed Murrow, to improve its image following antimonopoly decisions by the courts. 

As McCarthyism increasingly damaged innocent reputations, Murrow and Friendly used their series to expose the groundless attacks. “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy” in 1954 employed the senator’s own words to discredit his false claims. Such programs made CBS and Alcoa uneasy. Alcoa refused to publicize or pay for some of the productions. Changing market conditions forced the company to withdraw sponsorship at the end of the 1955 season, and the program lost its weekly time period. 

In June 1955, CBS began airing The $64,000 Question, which greatly increased revenues for its time slot as well as for adjacent periods. In a climate that included political pressure on the network and its sponsor, coupled with economic pressures that favored revenues over prestige, support for See It Now waned, and the program was scaled back to the occasional broadcasts that lasted until the summer of 1958.

Other notable series of the 1950s include television’s first major project in the compilation tradition, Victory at Sea (1952-53). Produced by Henry Solomon, this popular NBC series detailed World War II sea battles culled from 60 million feet of combat film footage. It was a paean to freedom and the overthrow of tyranny. Another popular series ran on CBS from 1957 to 1966. The Twentieth Century was a history class for millions of American TV viewers, produced throughout its entire run by Burton (Bud) Benjamin.

The absence of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a major presence in the documentary field in the 1950s is a telling indicator of television history. ABC was the weak, third network, lacking the resources, affiliate strength, and audience of its rivals. Since CBS and NBC dominated the airwaves, each could counterprogram the other’s entertainment hits with documentaries. The more the industry tended toward monopoly, the better the climate for documentaries. 

Documentaries soared in quality and quantity during the early 1960s, as a result of multiple factors. In The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years, Mary Ann Watson articulates how the confluence of technology with social dynamics energized the television documentary movement. Following the quiz show scandals, pressure on the industry to restore network reputations spurred the output of high-quality nonfiction programming.

The May 1961 “Vast Wasteland” speech by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow and the “raised eyebrow” of the government further motivated the networks to accelerate their documentary efforts as a way of protecting broadcast-station licenses and stalling FCC hints that the networks themselves should be licensed. President John F. Kennedy was also an advocate of documentaries, which he felt were important in revealing the inner workings of democracy.

The availability of lightweight 16-millimeter film equipment enabled producers to get closer to stories and record eyewitness observations through a technique known as cinéma vérité, or direct cinema. A significant development was the wireless synchronizing system, which facilitated untethered, synchronized sound-film recordings, pioneered by the Drew Associates. 

Primary (1960) was a breakthrough documentary. Produced by Robert Drew and shot by Richard Leacock, the film featured the contest between Senators John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Wisconsin primary. For the first time, viewers of Time-Life’s four television stations followed candidates through crowds and into hotel rooms, where they awaited polling results. Through the mobile-camera technique, Primary achieved an intimacy technique never before seen and established the basic electronic news-gathering shooting style. In Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Drew Associates producer Gregory Shuker took cameras into the Oval Office to observe presidential meetings over the crisis precipitated by Alabama Governor George Wallace, who authorized the use of physical force to block the entry of two African-American students to the University of Alabama. The program aired in October 1963 on ABC and triggered a storm of protests over the admission of cameras into the White House.

The peak for TV documentary production was the 1961-62 season, when the three networks aired more than 250 hours of programming. Each network carried a prestige documentary series. CBS Reports, produced by Friendly, premiered in 1959 and became a weekly documentary series in the 1961-62 season.  NBC White Paper, produced by Irving Gitlin, first aired in November 1960 and immediately thrust  itself into hotly contested issues, such as the U-2 spy mission and the Nashville, Tennessee, lunch-counter sit-ins. The White Paper approach featured meticulous research and analysis.

At ABC, the job of developing a documentary unit fell to John Secondari. Since sponsor Bell and Howell produced film cameras and projectors, the artistic quality of the filmed presentation was important and engendered an attention to aesthetics that carried over in later years on ABC News documentaries. Like others of the period, the Bell and Howell Close-Up! Series, which also aired productions by Drew Associates, dealt with race relations (“Cast the Fire Stone” and “Walk in My Shows”) and Cold War themes (“90 Miles to Communism” and “Behind the Wall”).

Minow’s emphasis on the public service obligations of broadcast licensees also spurred network affiliates to increase documentary broadcasts. Clearances for CBS Reports jumped from 115 to 140 stations. The production of local documentaries surged, creating a favorable environment for independent producers. David Wolper, whose Wolper Productions enjoyed a growth spurt in 1961, said, “Maybe we should thank Newton Minow for a fine publicity job on our behalf.” Wolper’s unique contributions to syndicated TV documentaries include “The Race for Space” (1958) and the series Biography, the National Geographic Society Special, and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

The favorable climate for TV documentaries in the Kennedy era also nurtured an international collaboration that began in late 1960. Intertel came into being when five groups of broadcasters in the four major English-speaking nations formed the International Television Federation. The participants were Associated Rediffusion, Ltd, of Great Britain, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and, in the United States, the National Educational Television (NET) and Radio Center and the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company. In the United States, Intertel was piloted by NET’s John F. White and Robert Hudson and by the Westinghouse Group W executives Donald McGannon and Richard M. Pack. Intertel sought to foster compassion for the human problems of member nations–to teach countries how to live together as neighbors in a world community, which Bluem characterized as “the greatest service which the television documentary can extend.”

In a speech reported in Television Quarterly, historian Erik Barnouw characterized the documentary as a “necessary kind of subversion” that “focuses on unwelcomed facts, which may be the very facts and ideas that the culture needs for its survival.” Throughout the turbulent 1960s, documentaries regularly presented “unwelcomed facts.” ABC offered a weekly series beginning in 1964 called ABC Scope. As the Vietnam War escalated, the series became “Vietnam Report” from 1966 to 1968. NBC aired Vietnam Weekly Review. CBS launched an ambitious seven-part documentary in 1968 called Of Black America.

The year 1968 also marked a change in the influence of network news and a drop in TV documentary production. Affiliate stations bristled over network reports on urban violence, the Vietnam War, and the anti-war protests. The Nixon administration launched an assault on the media and encouraged station owners to complain about news coverage in exchange for deregulation. TV coverage of the Democratic National Convention triggered protests against network news. 

During this social, political and economic revolution, network management experimented with less controversial programs. Each network introduced a newsmagazine to complement evening news and documentaries. Ray Carroll reports that the newsmagazine became a substitute for documentaries in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and that the number of long-form reports dropped. 60 Minutes on CBS premiered in 1968, and, after a slow start for several years, it achieved unparalleled success. NBC followed in 1969 with First Tuesday. 

ABC’s answer was The Reasoner Report, launched in 1973, the same year the network resurrected the CloseUp! documentary series. In the 1970s, ABC’s entertainment programs began to attract large audiences. To establish itself as a full-fledged network, ABC strengthened its news division and added prestige documentary series ABC CloseUp!, produced by Av Westin, William Peters, Richard Richter, and Pam Hill. Under Hill’s guidance, the CloseUp! Unit excelled in documentary craft, featuring artfully rendered film, poetic language, and thoughtful music tracks.

The three-way competition for prime-time audiences reduced airtime for documentaries. However, ABC’s reentry into the documentary field forced competitors to extend their documentary commitment, a rivalry that carried into the Reagan years. Pressure continued to mount against documentaries, however, in the 1970s. In the most celebrated case, the 1971 documentary The Selling of the Pentagon resulted in a congressional investigation into charges of unethical journalism. 

Network documentaries virtually disappeared during the Reagan years; in 1984, there were 11. Under Mark Fowler, the FCC eliminated requirements for public service programming. Competition from cable, independents, and videocassettes eroded network audiences. The Reagan administration advocated a society based on individualism; economics became paramount, while support for social programs declined. 

Documentaries also suffered from controversies over the CB programs The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception and People Like Us, from an increase in libel suit, and from deregulation, which offered financial incentives to broadcasters in lieu of public service programming. In this environment, the network documentary, which was rooted in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era and frequently endorsed collective social programs, became an anachronism. The documentary’s decline in the Reagan years is one indicator of the ebbing of the New Deal influence on American culture. 

After the three network sales in the mid-1980s, the new owners required news divisions to earn a profit. The most successful experiments were the 1987 NBC Connie Chung lifestyle documentaries, Scared Sexless and Life in the Fat Lane. These programs demonstrated that a combination of celebrity anchor, popular subjects, and updated visual treatments could appeal to larger audiences. In time, as entertainment costs rose and ratings fell, these “infotainment” programs evolved into a stream of popular newsmagazines, which became cost-effective replacements for entertainment shows. 

As the documentary presence continued to recede at the commercial networks, the best place for American viewers to find documentaries on free, over-the-air television was on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) as a new generation of producers committed themselves to prolonging long-form programs. As of 2002, NOVA, the science documentary series, was still on the air after more than 25 years. In 1983, PBS launched Frontline, an investigative series produced by David Fanning. Frontline is regarded as the flagship public affairs series for PBS and “the last best hope for broadcasting documentaries.” The American Experience first appeared in 1988, led by Judy Crichton and others, who created lush portrayals of memorable events and people in American history. P.O.V. gave opportunities to independent producers whose works did not fit into series’ themes. 

Several notable PBS documentary series examined specific periods in American history. The 13-hour Vietnam: A Television History aired in 1983. In 1987, the network broadcast Eyes on the Prize. Produced by Henry Hampton, this moving series chronicles the story of the modern civil rights movement from the beginnings of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The success of the first Eyes on the Prize series failed to translate into easier fund-raising for the second series, which was more controversial.

Whereas commercial broadcast documentaries were ephemeral, many of those appearing on PBS became available to viewers and scholars through postbroadcast products. One of the dominant figures using this technique in the 1990s was Ken Burns. Burns carved a niche as a filmmaker able to tackle large sweeps of history in multipart documentaries such as The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz. These programs also enjoyed commercial success through the scale of companion books, videotakes, and compact discs. Burns offered serious, in-depth research; careful use of expert consultants; and exquisite use of photography, sound, narration, fluid camera, and other techniques to make the past vivid. Programming of this style also benefited from enough historical distance to skirt controversy of the type raised by the Vietnam series or Hampton’s second series of Eyes on the Prize. His brother Ric Burns employed similar techniques in such PBS series as New York: A Documentary Film. Consequently, both Burns brothers were able to attract large corporate sponsors to support their work on public television. In the fall of 2002, many of Ken Burns’s documentaries were presented in a retrospective series devoted to his works. For this special presentation, the films were remastered and offered in superb visual quality not always available in the original airings. Michael Apted has also maintained a presence on PBS with projects such as 7 Up, in which he followed a group of individuals to document the progression in their lives at seven-year intervals. Another Apted series, Married in America, aired in 2002.

A leading documentary producer on cable television is Bill Kurtis. Kurtis, a former Chicago newsman and national correspondent for CBS News, founded Kurtis productions and began producing investigative, long-form series for the A&E cable television network, as well as PBS, in 1991. Home Box Office, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, the History Channel, and the Cable News Network (CNN) give cable viewers a wide selection of documentary programs and independent films, including extended series. CNN produced the 24-part Cold War in 1998, and the History Channel telecast series such as A History of Britain, with six parts in 2000 and another five installments in 2001. A recent development in documentary programming is access to information beyond the telecast on specially designed sites of the World Wide Web. 

During five decades of documentary television, some patterns have emerged. Documentary series have been used to give in-depth attention to major cultural issues but also as a publicity divide to raise the visibility of a network. Broadcast and cable networks have used documentary programming to raise their credibility. Certain individuals have become prominent within the industry because of their association with, or innovations in, documentaries. On public television, the popularity of documentary series has become a marketing tool for attracting contributions from viewers and corporate sponsors. 

Within this environment are two recurring tensions. One relates to economics. In the early times, documentaries were more expensive to produce than regular news programs, but the expense was outweighed by prestige and evidence of public service. In later years, documentaries continued to be more expensive than news but became less expensive than entertainment programs. This characteristic led to the development of a niche for news in prime time on commercial broadcast television as well as inexpensive programming for filling hours of cable network schedules. When a network cannot afford entertainment programming, cannot be without a visible public service commitment, or cannot lose its viewer base (as on PBS), it relies on documentary programming.

The other tension relates to controversy, politics, and timing. When controversial documentaries butted heads with declining powers, they were acclaimed. See It Now succeeded in its indictments of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCathy in part because McCarthy’s career was waning. CBS prevailed in the controversy over The Selling of the Pentagon in part because, by the 1970s, the Vietnam War had reduced the clout of the military in public affairs. In the 1980s, a shift in the political climate hindered government support for public television and for aggressive commercial network documentaries. Political conservatives objected to what was perceived as a liberal bias in the kind of programming. In the commercial arena, the threat or act of litigation, often supported by conservative interest groups, put pressure on executives responsible for documentary programming, which resulted in a lowering of the networks’ documentary voices. In the public television arena, attacks by conservative politicians on controversial documentaries created a disincentive to embrace the form.

The one sweeping change in documentary programming since its inception on American television is that it was once provided without regard for its profitability. However, that is no longer the norm. Documentaries produced today are, by and large, expected to attack money directly.