Caricatures of sixties television--called a "vast wasteland" by the FCC president in the early sixties--continue to dominate our perceptions of the era and cloud popular understanding of the relationship between pop culture and larger social forces. Opposed to these conceptions, The Revolution Wasn't Televised explores the ways in which prime-time television was centrally involved in the social conflicts of the 1960s. It was then that television became a ubiquitous element in American homes. The contributors in this volume argue that due to TV's...

In an age of proliferating choices, television nevertheless remains the most popular medium in the United States.Americans spend more time with TV than ever before, and many 'new media' forms, such as blu-ray movies, Hulu videos, and Internet widgets, are produced and delivered by the world s most lucrative and powerful television industry. Yet that industry has undergone profound changes since the 1980s, moving from a three-network oligopoly to a sprawling range of channels and services dominated by a handful of major conglomerates. Viewers cannow accesshundreds of channels at all hours of...