New Media and Popular Imagination places the current technological upheaval in audio-visual culture in the context of previous periods of twentieth-century media innovation. Examining popular and industry responses to the introduction of radio, television, and digital media into the home, the book underscores the continuities and disjunctions in the ways in which electronic media have been anticipated, promoted, and resisted in twentieth-century America.

New Media and Popular Imagination places the current technological upheaval in audio-visual culture in the context of previous periods of twentieth-century media innovation. Examining popular and industry responses to the introduction of radio, television, and digital media into the home, the book underscores the continuities and disjunctions in the ways in which electronic media have been anticipated, promoted, and resisted in twentieth-century America.

In a wide-ranging, rigorous analysis of the fledling American television industry--during the period of its greatest economic growth, programming changes, and critical controversy--Boddy traces the medium's development from the experimental era through the regulatory battles of the 1940s and the network programming wars of the 1950s.