Countercultural music’s peak audiences came through mainstream broadcast television

Evidence

Consider that, over the 1960s, the countercultural Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Doors would all reach their largest audiences by appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ultimately, the habit of prime time proved more powerful than the forces arrayed against it. With their access to the public mind mostly intact, the industries of attention had the opportunity not just to survive but to prosper. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 569

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the counterculture-cooptation theme from the prior chapter and to broader works on the commodification of rebellion. — connects to: The counterculture was co-opted when networks traded relevant programming for viewer attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 584; Mainstream pop culture lost its countercultural edge by the late 1990s. — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 53; Commercial TV networks struggled to assimilate the avant-garde’s participatory performance — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 1918

Broader Connections

• Mainstream pop culture lost its countercultural edge by the late 1990s. #exemplifies (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 53
• Commercial TV networks struggled to assimilate the avant-garde’s participatory performance #complicates (0.72) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1918