When television was young . . . Legendary movie producer Darryl Zanuck declared, "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Before 5:30, there were only test patterns. Howdy Doody was the first show of the day. CBS agreed to put I Love Lucy on film only if Desi and Lucy paid part of the production fee. In return, CBS gave them ownership of the shows, including the right to rerun it forever. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was the...

James Poniewozik shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the twentieth century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, Internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique...

Anchored in fact and sprinkled with anecdotes, this volume chronicles the early years in the development of television drama, prior to the emergence of television networks. Between the years 1928 -- the year of the first television drama -- and 1947 -- the year of the first dramatic anthology series--hundreds of television dramas were produced. Hawes focuses on the administrative, artistic, and technological concerns that arose at the National Broadcasting...

Collection of one-hour dramas from the fifties series.