- “THE #1-RATED TALK/EDUCATIONAL TV SERIES” (Nielsen Report, 1979)
- “The Most Complete And Thoughtful Record Of African-American Opinion”
- TONY BROWN’S JOURNAL’S NATIONAL TV SERIES (1968-2008) HAS BECOME “THE 1,000 MISSING PAGES OF HISTORY”
PART I of a 2-PART SERIES
THE "RIGHT STUFF" FOR ALL PEOPLE
The Emmy-nominated, award-winning television series Tony Brown’s Journal (TBJ), with its nearly 1,000 video titles broken down into divisions of home studies, is now Internet-ready as content because it still has “the right stuff” as a website launch (www.TonyBrownsJournal.com). Therefore, that means that subscribers will have unlimited access to the entire collection of iconoclastic video and film titles.
The hard-hitting TBJ documentary and talk TV series is authentically, as a leading archivist described it, “The Most Complete And Thoughtful Record Of African-American Opinion.” These missing pages of history attracted people of goodwill and an upwardly mobile, diverse audience -- “a spritely cross-section of Whites and Blacks who are very much at home with Tony Brown’s Journal” – as both astute guests and discerning viewers.
THE SECRET TO THIS UNCANNY SUCCESS
Indeed, as Judy Flander, the White television critic for The Washington Star in 1978, explained this Nielsen ratings-based fact to her readers: “Tony Brown’s Journal is skillfully edited with carefully chosen guests who reflect a spritely cross-section of Whites and Blacks who are very much at home in their fields and on Tony Brown’s Journal.” This is empirical proof that many in the overtly prejudiced broadcast establishment of the 1970s broke ranks with the industry leaders by declaring Tony Brown’s Journal to be objective, intelligent and rational.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer declared that Tony Brown’s Journal was “Fascinating in its content.” In fact, a consensus was reached among media industry leaders. “Sharp, fast paced and sophisticated…it is not biased and presents both sides of an issue intelligently and rationally,” exclaimed The Critic’s Place, Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting. The New York Times described Tony Brown’s Journal as “Consciously positive.”
The national TV audience, however, had the final and deciding vote. The comparative Nielsen ratings (a season average) for Black households in 1979 between Tony Brown’s Journal and the commercial networks’ premiere news shows acknowledged TBJ as a new force to be reckoned with on American TV, and the ratings confirm it.
- Tony Brown’s Journal 6.5 (100)
- Meet The Press (NBC) 4.0 ( 62)
- Face The Nation (CBS) 3.5 ( 54)
- Issues and Answers (ABC) 3.0 ( 46)
Tony Brown’s Journal out-performed all three networks’ news shows in Black homes while garnering a majority White demographic of its own.
Thus, in the true counter-intuitive logic of quantum theory and its newly discovered Higgs Boson sub-atomic particle, 60% of the total audience for TBJ, “a TV series about Black people for all people,” was White.
“THE 1,000 MISSING PAGES OF HISTORY"
With this almost universal acceptance by the media and by a loyal and racially diverse demographic bloc – that in 2012 uploaded one million views of pirated TBJ videos on the Internet – it is not difficult to understand why the widely-acclaimed Tony Brown’s Journal, in comparative ratings with the TV network powerhouse shows, demonstrated three times greater penetration in African-American households than White households despite the fact that nationwide there were nearly three times more White than Black viewers.
This winning tradition of viewer preference for the Tony Brown’s Journal series has been reported on the Internet. On June 19, 2014, Facebook honored TonyBrownsJournal as “one of the well-known public pages with a large following that has been verified as having an authentic identity.”
These ratings breakthroughs are remarkable crossover feats, especially for a syndicated “educational TV series.” Thus, not only did “The Premiere Public Affairs Show for Black America” for almost 40 years on PBS and commercial TV have a three times greater penetration in non-White households than White households when compared with the network shows, but the national Nielsen rating survey found there were nearly three times more White than non-White viewers in the Tony Brown’s Journal’s national audience itself. The stage had been set for a historic 40-year-run in an industry where the life of a series is typically measured in weeks.
By 1978, the only Black-affairs series ever on national television, had become so marketable and popular that it became the first PBS program in history to successfully make the risky leap from a non-profit public television system to a ratings-based competitive commercial free-market television industry.
According to A. C. Nielsen Company, the bible of TV ratings, in a special analysis report, the now commercially syndicated Tony Brown’s Journal, during a representative week of the 1979 season had a 6.5 rating nationwide in non-White homes. Not only did TBJ survive, but it has thrived in the most competitive Internet system on the planet.
Now is the time for you to visit www.TonyBrownsJournal.com and become an annual subscriber to “the most complete and thoughtful record of African-American opinion.”
