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Mar 26, 2016 · One of the most popular products in the 1950s was the TV. At the start of the decade, there were about 3 million TV owners; by the end of it, there were 55 million, watching shows from 530 stations. The average price of TV sets dropped from about $500 in 1949 to $200 in 1953. Credit: © Frank Martin/ Getty Images.
The period is generally recognized as beginning in 1947 with the first episode of the drama anthology Kraft Television Theater [2] and ending in 1960 with the final episode of Playhouse 90 [3] (although a few Golden Age shows and stars continued into the 1960s).
In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, the broadcast networks tried to create programs that would attract a wide audience. Before research tools became available to gather information about the race and gender of people watching, network programmers assumed that the audience was made up mostly of white viewers.
American viewers old enough to remember TV in the ’50s may fondly recall the shows of Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Lucille Ball, but such high-quality programs were the exception; most of television during its formative years could be aptly described, as it was by one Broadway playwright, as “amateurs playing at home movies.”
Jul 16, 2021 · Between 1948 and 1959, years now considered the “Golden Age of Television,” a mix of pioneering shows, from "Howdy Doody" to “I Love Lucy” to “Dragnet,” began shaping and redefining TV—and...
In the 1950s, the relatively new technology of television began to compete with motion pictures as a major form of popular entertainment. The postwar boom and popular culture. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as the world's leading industrial power.
Jan 25, 2019 · By the 1950s, black and white television sets had been on the market since the mid-1940s and were now affordable to most Americans. Even without vivid color, they had become deeply entwined...
