Question

Television changed the culture of the United States and later the world. Americans began buying televisions in the 1950s, and by the end of the decade, 90% of families owned one.

In the early 1960s Newton Minow served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Later, he was chairman of the board of PBS. He once described television as a “vast wasteland.” He also said, “When television is good, nothing is better. When it's bad, nothing is worse.”

Reflect on this idea as you describe the changes television brought to America during the 1950s, how TV influenced society, and the implications TV would have for the future.

Answer 1

Maybe there was no further trend in American culture than Television in the 1950s. TV was a novelty for just a few thousand wealthy Americans at the close of World War II. Just ten years later, nearly two-thirds of American families had a TV.

Explanation:

• TV was the most important invention of the 1950s, and television ads proved viable. After the 1940s, television has been popular in American society. Between 1949 and 1969, the number of families with at least 1 TV set increased from 1 million to 44 million. A shared national coverage of presidential and sporting elections linked America and created national discourse between coast to coast. Many variety show formats and situation comedies were borrowed from radio.
• TV had changed politics forever. Harry Truman was the first president to be on TV. The Tennessee Senator became a national hero and a Vice President, after Estes Kefauver prosecuted the mob boss Frank Costello  on TV. The influence of the new medium was not long until political advertisers realized it. Campaign personnel from Dwight Eisenhower provided several sound bites - short, powerful statements from a candidate — rather than air an entire speech.
• Commercial TV had a profound and diverse influence on American society and culture from the 1940s to the 2000s. This shaped how people think about social problems such as race, gender and class. In particular, it played a major role in influencing national election campaigning in the democratic sphere. The key factors leading to increased American materialism have been stated in the television programs and advertising (a view that places greater emphasis on obtaining material goods than on evolving in other ways).
• Company advertising deeply affected American society and popular culture. Global advertisers and marketers were going to buy time on TV to advertise goods and services. The viewers were able to view them and their roles in the commercials. the television programming was mainly designed to build an audience for product advertising. Finally, TV contributed to the dissemination of American culture worldwide.
• The Federal Commission on Television and Public Interest gave an address on the conference of the National Association of Broadcasting, organized by Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Chairman Newton N. Minow on 9 May 1961. Minow's discourse was his first major speech since being named Chairman of the FCC by President John F. Kennedy.
• Minow referred to US commercial TV as a "vast wasteland" in the speech and proposed services for the good of the public. In the background, this talk marked the end of the Golden TV Era that went down to the 1950s, in comparison to what occurred on American TV in 1960 and 1961.
• Minow said that television needed to be better than movies. Throughout the Cold War, the strategic power of TV had to be used to encourage the defeat of communism by democracy. He said in that era, that the  old complacent, unbalanced fare of  and action-adventure and situation comedies is simply not good enough