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- Author:
-
Center for History and New Media/American Social History Project
- Subject:
- Humanities
- Institution Name:
- American Social History Project/Center for History and New Media
- Collection:
-
Many Pasts (CHNM/ASHP)
- Grade Level:
- Secondary, Post-secondary
- Abstract:
Although experimental telecasts began in the 1920s and commercial broadcasting made a tentative start in 1939, the television industry first blossomed after World War II. In 1949, one million sets were in use, mostly in urban areas. By the end of the 1950s, Americans had purchased more than 50 million sets. As with earlier forms of mass culture--especially radio and movies--the advent of television on a national scale brought forth a debate in popular forums on its quality, societal effects, and potential. While writer Paddy Cheyevsky in 1953 characterized television as "the marvelous medium of the ordinary," Federal Communications Commission Director Newton Minow, eight years later, charged that broadcasters had created "a vast wasteland" inhabited predominately with "game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons." The following article shows how a popular magazine assessed television's past, present, and possible future in 1960.
- Languages:
- English
- Material Type:
- Primary Source
- Media Format:
- Text/HTML
- Conditions of Use:
-
Custom License
Fair Use for educational purposes
- Copyright Holder:
- Copyright 1998-2005 American Social History Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.
No restrictions on your remixing, redistributing, or making derivative works.
Give credit to the author, as required.
Your remixing, redistributing, or making derivatives works comes with some
restrictions, including how it is shared.
Your redistributing comes with some restrictions. Do not remix or make
derivative works.
Copyrighted materials, available under Fair Use and the TEACH Act for US-based
educators, or other custom arrangements. Go to the resource provider to see
their individual restrictions.
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