Table of Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1. The Beginning of Everything
• Television's Debut
• The Jenkins Television System
• RCA Television
• Television's First Season
• Test-Marketing in Newburgh
• The FCC's First Report on TV
• The Amber Light
• Hearings in Washington
• Chapter 2. A Torch of Hope
• The Future Appears in Newburgh
• The War in Europe
• The 1940 Republican Convention
• A Disappointing Fall
• Debating TV's Future in 1941
• Chapter 3. In a Troubled World
• The 1941 FCC Hearings
• The Beginning of Commercial TV
• The Summer of 1941
• The Buildup to War
• Wartime Television
• Schenectady's WRGB
• Plans for Postwar TV
• Television As a War Weapon
• The Studios Reopen
• TV's First Censored Program
• Chapter 4. The Winds of Postwar
• The Homefront TV War
• The 1944 Conventions
• TV Programs Blossom Again
• Docket No. 6651
• TV and the End of the War
• Chapter 5. Turning the Corner
• The Camera with the Eyes of a Cat
• TV Begins in Washington
• The Louis-Conn Fight
• Hour Glass
• The New Postwar Sets
• The Bikini Bomb Explosion
• Surveying the TV Viewer
• The Emerging Genres
• Drama in Washington
• The First Color Telecasts
• Integration on TV
• The Second Wave of TV Stations
• The Split TV Audience
• Television and Women
• Middlebrow Television
• Chapter 6. From Boom to Berle
• The 1947 World Series
• Puppet Playhouse
• The Expanding Network
• The Original Amateur Network
• Miss Television of 1948
• Mr. Television
• The 1948 Conventions
• The Cold War on Television
• CBS's Revival
• The Big Freeze
• The 1948 Election
• Selling Sugar and Tobacco
• Radio Takes Notice
• Chapter 7. Conflicts in the Air
• Kukla, Fran and Ollie
• The Cultural Backlash Begins
• Censoring TV's Contents
• The Golden Hope and The Goldbergs
• The Admiral Broadway Revue
• The Berle Phenomenon
• A Midseason Slump
• Wrestling and Roller Derby
• The 1949 World Series
• The Chicago School of Television
• Cavalcade of Stars
• Hopalong Cassidy
• The New Bomb and the Red Scare
• Faye Emerson
• TV's Effects on Children
• Chapter 8. Comics and Communists
• Your Show of Shows
• The Bandit Raid on Korea
• Red Channels
• The Invasion of Comics
• Jack Benny and Fred Allen
• Groucho Marx and Martin and Lewis
• Jackie Gleason and the Cavalcade of Stars
• Truman and MacArthur
• Expanding the Daily Schedule
• Chapter 9. Linking Coast to Coast
• Color TV Begins
• The Crime Commission Hearings
• Amos 'n' Andy
• Hollywood and the Coast-to-Coast Link
• The Birth of I Love Lucy
• The Hollywood Boom Begins
• The Today Show
• New Hampshire and Ike
• The Freeze Is Lifted
• Lucy Takes Over
• The 1952 Conventions
• Congress and the Code
• The FCC and Blacklisting
• Dragnet
• Live Drama from New York
• Chapter 10. Liking Ike and Loving Lucy
• The Checkers Speech
• Lucy is Pregnant
• Ozzie and Harriet
• See It Now
• The Birth and the Inauguration
• The ABC-Paramount Merger
• The End of the Du Mont Network
• The End of the Beginning
• Notes
• Index
• Reference Notes Included

About the Author

Jim Von Schilling