Glued to the Set

A fascinating look at sixty seminal television programs and key media events from the last fifty years argues that television shows from I Love Lucy to Meet the Press and Dragnet have all influenced the national consciousness as well as governmental policy. 20,000 first printing.

From Uncle Miltie to the moon launches to Wheel of Fortune, a briskly intelligent decade-by-decade analysis of the TV programs that have indelibly shaped American culture. Now that cable television is in a majority of American homes and 500 channels are in the offing, the once unassailable cultural hegemony of the three networks is rapidly disappearing. Will 7 out of 10 TV sets, for example, ever again be tuned to the same miniseries, as happened with Roots? As Stark, a writing instructor at Harvard Law School and pop-culture commentator for NPR and CNN, makes clear, television has played an enormous but subtle role in molding our perceptions and attitudes, often in unexpected ways: ``Television's ubiquity makes it a pop-culture version of the air we breathe.'' Comedies have been particularly influential. Making up more than a third of his list, they have dealt with everything from women's entry into the workforce (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) to prejudice (All In the Family) to multiculturalism (The Cosby Show). As Stark notes, ``By packaging troubling cultural shifts in the guise of comic fantasy, these shows made it easier for Americans to come to grips with rapid social change.'' While one could quibble with a few of his omissions (Soap, The Simpsons, Cops, any of Aaron Spelling's oeuvre), Stark has done a remarkable job of compilation, sifting the millions of hours of fluff and dreck to find what really mattered. This is also some of the best and most informed writing on television around. Stark is always looking for explanations beyond the usual explanations. For example, TV is frequently criticized for its violence, yet Stark believes that shows like Dragnet helped shape overly positive and uncritical attitudes about the legal system. A vital and engaging analysis of the television ``canon.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Imagine using a remote control to zap through television history, surfing from program to news event, catching provocative glimpses of American society over the past five decades. Journalist and pop-culture commentator for NPR, Stark provides such an experience in this collection of 60 essays on seminal television moments. He supplies a wealth of behind-the-scenes details and offers incisive commentary on topics as diverse as "Space Television" in the Sixties, "Masterpiece Theatre and the Failure of PBS" in the Seventies, "Dallas and the Rise of Republican Mythology" in the Eighties, and "How Wheel of Fortune Won the Cold War" in the Nineties. Stark demonstrates how each program or event influenced America in fundamental ways. His elegant prose is laced with wit and supplemented by a bibliography of sources for each essay, making this a sterling purchase for any library.?Neal Baker, Dickinson Coll. Lib., Carlisle, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Maintaining that understanding TV is a matter of understanding "its key shows," Stark understands 60 of them. For example, America's Funniest Home Videos, he opines, is "the most democratic show on television--a populist rebellion packaged as programming" because it makes "the audience at home the stars" while "giving the studio audience the power to decide the best video of the show"; furthermore, it was most popular when the Berlin Wall was torn down and when a "virtually unprecedented number of voters" went for H. Ross Perot! Coincidence or sign o' the times? Analyzing the implications of stuff like Howdy Doody and The Beverly Hillbillies is always fun, and Stark does it deftly and impudently. Oh, his take on how Milton Berle clips fail to amuse today, though making some good, mildly cruel points, can recall the sage who loved Abbott and Costello but felt the Three Stooges were undignified. Yet his effort is always great browsing, even (especially?) when he shows his radical stripes--he disses Ed Murrow! Mike Tribby