At the same time that the show struggled with
controversial story lines, it also struggled to stay on
the air. In 1983, CBS canceled the series because of
poor ratings. After fans responded with a massive
letter-writing campaign, the network brought the
detective series back for a second season. During the
show’s six-year run, its popularity continued to grow.
In total, the drama earned thirty-six Emmy nomina-
tions and won fourteen of the awards, including four
Emmy Awards for Daly and two for Gless.
Impact Cagney and Laceymade television history in
the 1980’s as one of the first television shows to fea-
ture women in a predominantly male occupation.
Just as controversial were the weekly story lines. For
women in the 1980’s,Cagney and Laceyreflected
the rapidly changing roles of women in American
society.
Further Reading
D’Acci, Julie.Defining Women: Television and the Case
of Cagney and Lacey. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1994.
Thompson, Robert J.Television’s Second Golden Age.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Bernadette Zbicki Heiney
See also Television; Women in the workforce; Wom-
en’s rights.
Camcorders
Definition Portable camera and videocassette
recorders
Camcorders changed the nature of filming and provided
other professionals and consumers with a handy video de-
vice.
Before the 1980’s, portable videotaping equipment,
such as the Portapac, had reel-to-reel tapes and was
very bulky. The videocassette recorder (VCR), intro-
duced in the Betamax format by Sony in 1975 and in
the Video Home System (VHS) format by Radio Cor-
poration of America (RCA) in 1977, was promoted
for taping television programs. In the early 1980’s,
electronics companies produced models for video
cameras that contained videocassette recorders—
for both television production and for home use.
The first camcorders were developed for television
filming. At the 1981 and 1982 conventions of the
National Association of Broadcasters, a number of
leading manufacturers, including RCA, Panasonic,
Sony, and Bosch, displayed new portable television
camcorders, which weighed between thirteen and
twenty-three pounds. Many improved models fol-
lowed. Technical issues to be resolved included size
and weight, quality of the images, and standardiza-
tion of tape formats.
The earliest professional camcorders used pickup
tubes to translate light into electrical energy. In 1984,
solid-state cameras in which charged-coupled devices
(CCD) replaced tubes appeared. These CCD micro-
chips allowed for improvements in image clarity and
the size and weight of the camcorder and permitted
taping in low light. By the mid-1980’s, Sony had tri-
umphed in the competitive market with its Betacam—
released in 1982—which used cassettes the same size as
its Betamax. The Betacam employed a component sys-
tem that recorded chrominance (color) and lumi-
nance (brightness) signals separately to produce a
high-quality picture. Sony continued to make techni-
cal improvements in the Betacam and in 1986 devel-
oped the metallic SP (“superior performance”) tape
with 340 lines of resolution.Consumer Camcorders In the early 1980’s, both
JVC and Sony marketed cameras that attached to a
portable VCR unit. In 1982, JVC introduced a small
camcorder with the compact VHS-C cassette, which
fit into an adapter for playback in a VHS VCR. A
few months later, Sony introduced the Betamovie
(model BMC-110), in Beta format. The Sony camera
allowed only recording, with neither an electronic
viewfinder nor a playback feature. These early per-
sonal camcorders typically rested on the shoulder, as
they could not be held by one hand.
Engineers responded to technical issues with the
consumer camcorders as they had with professional
camcorders. Though much smaller than the broad-
cast camcorders, the early personal camcorders were
unwieldy. Manufacturers, beginning with Kodak in
1984, developed smaller camcorders that recorded
on 8mm, in contrast to the 12mm tape of both Beta
and VHS. In 1986, Sony introduced the 1.74-pound
Handycam. The camera had to be connected di-
rectly to a television for playback, as neither VHS nor
Betamax recorders accepted 8mm tapes.
Technical improvements throughout the decade
followed, and by the end of the 1980’s, consumers
had a choice between two types of camcorders: low-172 Camcorders The Eighties in America