Television in the Antenna Age A Concise History

by Marc, David; Thompson, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780631215431
• ISBN10: 0631215433
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-17
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Television in the Antenna Age is an accessible, engaging, and straightforward overview of the medium's history and development in the United States. Integrating three major concerns - television as technology, industry, and art - the book introduces the complex, fascinating, and often overlooked story of television and its impact on American life. It ends with a provocative meditation on the effect since the 1980s of competing technologies, the consolidation of media ownership, and the emerging aesthetics of twenty-first-century programming.Written by the two prominent experts on American television, this book includes several illustrative features on leading figures in TV's development. It is the most compact and authoritative history of the medium to date.

Author Biography

David Marc is a writer and editor who teaches at Syracuse University and Le Moyne College. He is the author of Demographic Vistas (1984; 1996), Comic Visions (1989; Blackwell, 1997) and Bonfire of the Humanities (1995).

Robert J. Thompson is a Professor at Syracuse University, where he heads the Center for the Study of Popular Television at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. His books include Adventures on Prime Time (1990) and Television’s Second Golden Age (1996).

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
1 No Small Potatoes	1	(20)
Communication and Transportation: The Divorce	1	(5)
Water, Water Everywhere	6	(3)
Electrical Bananas	9	(1)
Here Comes the Judge	10	(1)
Say What?	11	(10)
2 A Downstream Medium	21	(16)
The Show Business	22	(5)
Radical Consumerism Occupies the Middle	27	(4)
Networking	31	(3)
Quality Control	34	(3)
3 A Burning Bush?	37	(16)
Broadcasting: Love It or Need It?	38	(6)
A Vertical System of Culture	44	(2)
Compatible Software	46	(7)
4 Staging and Screening	53	(13)
Sets	53	(2)
Getting with the Program	55	(3)
The Origins of ABC	58	(8)
5 Corruption and Plateau	66	(10)
Technology	66	(1)
Industry	67	(1)
Art	67	(3)
Scandals and Shake-Outs	70	(6)
6 Dull as Paint and Just as Colorful	76	(13)
TV Rules	76	(8)
Just Plain Folks	84	(2)
Television Gothic	86	(3)
7 A Myth is as Good as a Smile	89	(22)
When No News Was Good News...in Prime Time	91	(3)
Shows Without Trees	94	(4)
As Real As It Got	98	(5)
Regulation and Social Effects	103	(5)
Programming and the Television Industry	108	(3)
8 Oligopoly Lost and Found	111	(20)
The Train and the Station	114	(7)
The Shock of the News	121	(5)
The Third Mask of Janus	126	(5)
Index	131