Get Smart wasn’t solidly stupid.
At least part of the anti-TV movement was due to the (perceived) effect it had on children. Kids were drawn to TV like nothing before, and the stuff on at the time was, like everyone above pointed out, pretty empty. Attempts were made to make TV educational, but in the late 50s and early 60s they were incredibly dull affairs, pretty much a teacher in front of a blackboard, so viewership was quite low. By 1969, Congress planned to cut funding from public non-commercial television and held hearings on the subject. Fred Rogers gave a passionate speech to the committee and basically single-handedly secured an extra $11 million in funds for PBS.
Dick Van Dyke was also my first thought on reading the criticism of pre-MTM shows.
For a thoughtful, lengthy essay on the negative effects of television, check out Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander. It was written in in 1978.
There’s a Wikipedia entry here.
The four arguments are:
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While television may seem useful, interesting, and worthwhile, at the same time it further boxes people into a physical and mental condition appropriate for the emergence of autocratic control.
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It is inevitable that the present powers-that-be (or controllers) use and expand using television so that no other controllers are permitted.
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Television affects individual human bodies and minds in a manner which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium.
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Television has no democratic potential. The technology itself places absolute limits on what may pass through it. The medium, in effect, chooses its own content from a very narrow field of possibilities. The effect is to drastically confine all human understanding within a rigid channel.
In the UK we had Steptoe and Son, and various permutations of Hancock’s Half-Hour, which were both praised as comedy and as quasi-drama (Steptoe was frequently compared to the works of Samuel Beckett). And they weren’t underground shows, they were massive hits with audiences in the tens of millions (28 million per episode, apparently, for Steptoe and Son). Til Death us Do Part was also aimed at an adult audience, albeit that it’s a lot harder to defend nowadays. Until the 1980s there was a perception that US sitcoms were trivial, sponsor-led, full of well-scrubbed white people and their zany adventures, whereas British TV comedy was grittier and more down-to-earth.
I have the impression - I wasn’t alive then - that television in Britain was initially viewed as being ignorable simply because it was new, but by the 1960s it was fashionable to praise it, what with That Was the Week That Was, Quatermass, The Great War, Civilisation all being undeniably quality TV. As a consequence Ray Bradbury’s anti-TV views seemed odd to me; he came across as the kind of person who, if he was British, would probably have been all for television, or at the very least his criticism would have been more sophisticated. There has always been a worry that mass media manufacturers a certain worldview and can be used to propagate lies faster and harder than newspapers, but that’s smarter than simply arguing that television is stupid and rots people’s brains.
There’s always been perception in the UK that US television was glitzy and insubstantial, which persists today although it’s increasingly impossible to justify. We have Doctor Who and some influential sitcoms, they have or had Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Shield, The Sopranos, Carnivale, Pushing Daisies, Deadwood, the list goes on.
No matter how culture or technology progresses, there will always be some who think it is a bad thing.
There are some people who feel that classical music, opera and folk music are the only good entertainment. These people are snobs.
The general public likes Lucy, Broadway musicals, and Elvis a lot better.
So the snobs will protest, and the public will ignore 'em. It’s the way it was meant to be.
Green Acres was actually a clever and surrealy absurdist show.
Who co-starred in that again? I forget.
And the newsmen thought newspapers were the only proper means of conveying news and information. Television news was, and continues to be, soundbites.
I once read a book called The Plug-In Drug and I remember one of the points was not so much the content of TV - violent! stupid! whatever - but the sheer number of hours kids (especially) watch really cuts back on the time they (we!) could be doing a lot of other things, for example
reading
being active
interacting with real people
I know a lot of my childhood - and this was the 60s & 70s - was wasted parked in front of a TV and I think it hurt me.
I think his name was Penis Van Lesbian.
Those who do not remember history are condemned to post about it on the Dope.
Newton Minnow was years before hippies - and I (who lived through that time) don’t remember hippies or the New Left singling out TV very much.
Sure it was a part of straight consumer culture, but nothing special.
Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953, at the beginning of the Golden Age, so it is hardly an example of '60s criticism. Bradbury perceptively gave those who rejected books something else to do.
Burns and Allen, to give a much earlier example, was pretty good also, as an extension of their act.
I think you have it. Filmed plays were fairly cheap, within the limits of technology, and appealed to the tastes of those who could afford TVs. They were also incentive for real stars to appear on TV. There is equally good stuff on now, but they are swamped by the mass of junk.
I don’t think TV competed with newspapers. Radio definitely and movies also. I delivered mail in the summer of 1970 and I delivered a lot of Lifes. The specialization of the market is the thing that killed the general circulation magazines.
I’ve endured this long enough. Friends, the dude’s name is Newton Minow. He may be an idiot, but he is not a small fish.
When Newton Minow made his “vast wasteland” speech in 1961, television had already passed the experimental, novelty phase. It had only taken a few years for executives to figure out the most successful formats were 30 minute situation comedies and 60 minute dramas with a continuing cast of characters. From there it was a short jump to the concept of “lowest common denominator” programming where the object was to not offend anyone who might be watching.
The DuMont Network had already folded, and ABC was barely hanging on. Groundbreaking shows like Playhouse 90 had either left the air or were on their last legs. The evening newscasts were 15 minutes long and Edward R. Murrow had left CBS because of what he felt was a lack of support for documentaries. Technical limitations kept sports programming mostly confined to arena events like boxing.
In short, TV sucked pretty badly in the early 1960’s. It would get better, but not for awhile.
Bingo. It was cleverly written and still manages to be funny today.
Good lord, don’t let Equipoise hear this!
FWIW Both Steptoe & Son and Till Death Do Us Part were remade into American shows, Sanford & Son and All in the Family respectively. Sanford was your standard goofy 70s comedy (I enjoyed it because I was only 7 or 8), All in the Family of course was a fairly groundbreaking early dramedy, but it’s pretty dated if you watch it today. Never having seen the original British shows they’re based on I can’t compare them (though Steptoe sounds **nothing **like Sanford!)