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| Tube of Plenty : The Evolution of American Television
ISBN: 9780199770595
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Business/ Management;
Based on the classic History of Broadcasting in the United States, Tube of Plenty represents the fruit of several decades' labor. When Erik Barnouw--premier chronicler of American broadcasting and a participant in the industry for fifty years--first undertook the project of recording its history, many viewed it as a light-weight literary task concerned mainly with "entertainment" trivia. Indeed, trivia such as that found in quiz programs do appear in the book, but Barnouw views them as part of a complex social tapestry that increasingly defines our era. To understand our century, we must fully comprehend the evolution of television and its newest extraordinary offshoots. With this fact in mind, Barnouw's new edition of Tube of Plenty explores the development and impact of the latest dramatic phases of the communications revolution. Since the first publication of this invaluable history of television and how it has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture and society, many significant changes have occurred. Assessing the importance of these developments in a new chapter, Barnouw specifically covers the decline of the three major networks, the expansion of cable and satellite television and film channels such as HBO (Home Box Office), the success of channels catering to special audiences such as ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) and MTV (Music Television), and the arrival of VCRs in America's living rooms. He also includes an appendix entitled "questions for a new millennium," which will challenge readers not only to examine the shape of television today, but also to envision its future.
Erik Barnouw, 1908 - 2001 Erik Barnouw was born in 1908 and came from the Netherlands to the United States at the age of 11. He attended Princeton University and after graduating, went on to become a radio writer and a producer. Barnouw began teaching radio writing at Columbia University in 1937. By 1947, he had founded the division of film, radio and television in the University's Arts Program. He worked for CBS for one year beginning in 1939, writing and editing, and editing for NBC from 1942 to 1944. He served as chairman of the division he had created at Columbia until 1968, retiring from the University in 1973. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America and served as it's chair from 1957 to 1959. In 1978, Barnouw went to work for the Library of Congress as a film and television expert, and created it's broadcasting and motion picture division, becoming it's first chief. In 1970, he produced a documentary entitled, "Hiroshima-Nagasaki, August, 1945" about the atomic bombs set off there. He was then commissioned to write a complete history of broadcasting by the Oxford University Press, and it was this masterpiece, consisting of three volumes, "A Tower of Babel," "The Golden Web" and "The Image Empire," which named him an expert in the field of broadcasting. Barnouw retired from the Library of Congress in 1978, yet continued to write, publishing his last volume, "Media Lost and Found" in the January before he died. Erik Barnouw died on July 19, 2001 at the age of 93 |
