Broadcast television uniquely allowed serious class drama to reach a cross-class national audience
Evidence
There is no other medium which could virtually guarantee an audience of millions with a full quota of manual workers and stockbrokers for a “serious” play about class. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 336
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: how TV’s shared mass audience enabled a kind of public conversation that streaming fragmentation has dissolved.
- ADDENDUM: Relates to the recurring lament (ch20 book_so_far) of TV shifting from authorial vision to actor vehicles — this is the historical high-water mark that loss is measured against.
- XREF: connects to: Television’s arrival raised the question of a shift from class culture to mass culture; Television has fragmented from a shared national culture into segmented audiences — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 846; Mid-1950s television achieved the largest simultaneous shared attention in history — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 453 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Television’s arrival raised the question of a shift from class culture to mass culture
#expands(0.82) - TV dramas helped constitute a public that could debate the War on Terror
#expands(0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 281 - Simultaneous mass attention on the same show created shared national identity
#corroborates(0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 331 - Television has fragmented from a shared national culture into segmented audiences
#qualifies(0.75) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 846 - One regular program once commanded a quarter of the entire national audience daily
#exemplifies(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 318 - Mid-1950s television achieved the largest simultaneous shared attention in history
#corroborates(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 453 - Serial dramas serve as deliberate vehicles for promoting personal and social change
#expands(0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2806