From my list on what TV is and how best to enjoy it.
Why are we passionate about this?
For almost fifty years, we have been chronicling American television, tracking its history, and following its transformation from the era of three networks to the cornucopia of choices now available through streaming. Along the way, we have appreciated and learned much from other TV books that look at the industry from multiple angles. When we started, there were precious few on this topic. Now, there is a surplus. These are the ones we treasure for their well-told stories.
Harry and Walter's book list on what TV is and how best to enjoy it
Why did Harry and Walter love this book?
When we set out to start writing our TV history book, we didn’t know what we didn’t know about the topic. Fortunately, we found the first edition of this book. It was invaluable to us to describe and explain where radio and television came from and how they came to be as we knew them.
This one-volume book distills the author’s masterful earlier three-volume set on this topic. Barnouw blazed the trail for us by treating broadcasting as worthy of serious historical research and analysis while never failing to make the oft-complex tales engrossing and entertaining reading. The updated second revised edition (from 1990) brings the story up to the era of cable.
1 author picked Tube of Plenty as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Tube of Plenty is an abridgement of Erik Barnouw's classic 3-volume History of Broadcasting in the United States. The paperback edition was first published in 1976 and a second edition in 1982.
Much has happened in television in the 1980s; the decline of the three major networks, the expansion of cable and satellite television, film channels like Home Box Office, the success of ESPN (sports), and MTV (pop music), and the increased way in which the White House in Washington has managed and controlled national news and its contents. Barnouw has added an extensive chapter dealing with the changes of…