Outstanding Academic Title for 2007, Choice Magazine
Ever wonder how American television came to be the much-derided, advertising-heavy home to reality programming, formulaic situation comedies, hapless men, and buxom, scantily clad women? Could it have been something different, focusing instead on culture, theater, and performing arts?
In Same Time, Same Station, historian James L. Baughman takes readers behind the scenes of early broadcasting, examining corporate machinations that determined the future of television. Split into two camps—those who thought TV could meet and possibly raise the expectations of wealthier, better-educated post-war consumers and those who believed success meant mimicking the products of movie houses and radio—decision makers fought a battle of ideas that peaked in the 1950s, just as TV became a central facet of daily life for most Americans.
Baughman’s engagingly written account of the brief but contentious debate shows how the inner workings and outward actions of the major networks, advertisers, producers, writers, and entertainers ultimately made TV the primary forum for entertainment and information. The tale of television's founding years reveals a series of decisions that favored commercial success over cultural aspiration.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Opening Number
2. "The Mother of Television"
3. The Marionette and the Cross-Dresser
4. The Regulators
5. "Mr. Spectacular"
6. Paley's Choice
7. "We Just See That It Isn't Lousy"
8. The Patrons
9. "Informed without Being Ponderous"
10. Shooting the Wounded
11. Signing Off
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
About the Author :
James L. Baughman is professor and director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941 and Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the American News Media, both published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Review :
Baughman's study is interesting from a policy point of view . . . it is also evocative as a spin through the index will show.
—History Wire
Baughman tells a familiar story—commerce crushes cultural aspiration—but he adds fresh and fascinating details from behind the scenes at the television networks. And he avoid nostalgia for a 'golden age' of television that never was.
—Philadelphia Inquirer
The period that Baughman covers is the 'golden age of television'—the much mourned era of dramas by Paddy Chayefsky and documentaries by Edward R. Murrow . . . Although Baughman is scrupulously respectful of the achievements of Weaver, Murrow, and other heroes of fifties television, he never misses a chance to offer up contrarian material.
—Nicholas Lemann, New Yorker
Though not the first study of this period, this is surely one of the more readable and insightful — and well documented.
—Chris Sterling, Communication Booknotes Quarterly
This book is full of interesting stories and facts. Summing Up: Essential.
—Choice
College-level collections strong in media history will find this an attractive addition . . . accessible even to lay readers.
—Midwest Book Review
The most thorough, well-researched, and broad-ranging history of television we have to date . . . Baughman's achievement is a major one.
—Business History Review
Readers of Journalism History . . . are urged to read this book.
—Alexander Russo, Journalism History
A thought-provoking book . . . Does a masterful job of engaging the academic discourse and media theory.
—Andrew J. Falk, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Same Time, Same Station is a scholarly pleasure to explore and should be in every university library where media studies are taken seriously.
—Peter C. Rollins, Journal of American History
