Gary Edgerton: Book Traces Influence Of TV

By Michelle M. Falck

Pick almost any major historical event during the past half-century and chances are you or your parents witnessed it on television. April 3, 1956: a young man who looked and sounded like the wave of the future, Elvis Presley, makes his first television appearance on “The Milton Berle Show.” November 22, 1963: Walter Cronkite announces to Americans that their young president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. February 9, 1964: a British pop band called The Beatles appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong steps on the moon’s surface. August 18, 1974: President Richard Nixon announces his intention to resign from office.

Aside from their historical significance, these events were memorable because they represented a significant development in the cultural landscape of the time – the ability of Americans across the country to participate collectively in a singular event in real time. The television set, which has become a ubiquitous fixture in most every American household today, had generated a shared consciousness that transcended economic and social strata.

Recognizing the important influence of television on American culture, media historian Gary R. Edgerton, professor and chair of the communication and theatre arts department, has written “The Columbia History of American Television,” which was published by Columbia University Press in September. His book traces the technological developments of television and its growing cultural relevance in our society from the 1930s and ’40s through present day, concluding with a look at the new forms of instantaneous communication and the ways in which they shape our social, political and economic landscape.

Listening to Edgerton discuss television, it is clear he is passionate about his subject and quick to defend the medium against the hackneyed complaint that there is “nothing but garbage” to watch.

“Descriptions of television run the gamut, and a lot of them are pejorative – terms like ‘boob tube’ and ‘chewing gum for the mind’ and that we’re wasting our time watching TV. When you’re talking about programming 24/7, 52 weeks a year, then obviously there’s a lot of dross on TV,” Edgerton concedes. “On the other hand, there are wonderful things on television all the time, too. So if you watch proactively and you schedule what you watch ... you can get a lot out of it.”

His book examines “how television programming has evolved, how it has become more sophisticated, more challenging as an art form,” Edgerton adds. “I would pose it [television] as being as accomplished as the best movies you see. Some of the best television programs – ‘The Wire,’ for example – are as good as the best novels that are out now.”

In the preface to his book, Edgerton reflects on the historical significance of television in America: “No technology before TV ever integrated faster into American life. Television took only 10 years to reach a penetration of 35 million households, while the telephone required 80 years; the automobile 50; and even radio needed 25. By 1983, moreover, the representative U.S. household was then keeping the TV set turned on for more than seven hours a day on average; two decades later this mean was up to eight hours a day and counting.”

Despite television’s prevalence in our lives, few of us stop to consider the influence it has on how we think and perceive the world around us. “The central paradox of the last 60 years is that the flow of television images and sounds has been torrential, while our historical-critical understanding of TV as a technology, an industry, an art form, and an institutional force has largely been a peripheral concern for most people,” Edgerton contends.

Despite having to address a multitude of historical events, Edgerton manages to present the material in an intelligent and engaging manner. Ken Burns, producer and director of the recent PBS documentary “The War,” describes “The Columbia History of American Television” as “an accessible and compelling narrative of the complicated forces that went into creating our most enigmatic of mediums.”

The book begins with a look at television’s prehistory and the laying of the first telegraph line, which gave rise to the idea that images and sounds could be transmitted over long distances, and concludes with a discerning look at the current Digital Era (1995-present).