How luck, television, and a saintly lurker on the Internet combined to let the author visit 1953 for half an hour.
IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL OUR NATIONAL STORY ON TELEVISION, EVEN IF YOU’VE GOT 13 HOURS AT YOUR DISPOSAL. THREE PEOPLE WHO DID IT EXPLAIN HOW—AND WHY.
What you don’t remember about the day JFK was shot
THE IMPERIUM OF modern television advertising was born in desperate improvisation
An Interview With Walter Cronkite
In the infancy of television (but not of American royalty-worship) the networks fought their first all-out battle for supremacy over who would get to show Queen Elizabeth II being crowned
The maker of a fine new documentary on the Civil War tells how the medium of film can evoke the emotional reality of history
Stempel’s winning technique was simplicity itself: He got all the questions in advance.
The early critics of television predicted the new medium would make Americans passively obedient to the powers that be. But they badly underestimated us.
The dour radio comedian regarded his work as totally ephemeral, but a new generation of comics has built upon his foundations
Robert Benchley, a woebegone chronicler of his own inadequacies, was the humorist’s humorist, a man beloved by practically everyone but himself
A little-known ancestor of the nightly news comes to light
A noted historian argues that television, a relative newcomer, has nearly destroyed old—and valuable—political traditions