Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today

by Steven D. Stark

How did Dallas pave the way for the Reagan era?

Would Oswald have been assassinated if the cameras weren't rolling?

Who really loved Lucy more--Ricky or Ethel?...and what does that say about relationships?

You may think you know television--but when NPR commentator Steven Stark is finished pushing your buttons with fighting words and brilliant insights, you'll see in a whole new way what television has done to us as a nation.  From Beaver to Roseanne, Ed Sullivan to Oprah, Monday Night Football to MTV, Stark takes us on a guided tour of the tube, providing startling revelations about the power of its sixty most important shows and events in the history of television.  He catches in bright focus a hilarious, strange, and compelling image of ourselves as reflected on the small screen, and he shows us, with striking logic, the awesome power of television over our future and our fate.



The most revealing and significant leading man on TV...Bob Newhart

Bill Cosby as racial trailblazer...and failure

Why The Beverly Hillbillies was the watershed program that kicked off the ongoing values debate--and the rise of the Christian Coalition

How Wheel of Fortune helped bring down communism and end the Cold War

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Tv

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 1997

About the author

Steven D. Stark, a former world sports columnist for the Montreal Gazette and the author of four books and one e-book, has been a commentator for CNN, National Public Radio, and the Voice of America, where his role was to try to interpret American culture to the rest of the world. He has written frequently for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Boston Globe where he was an op-ed columnist."

Reviews

[Joanna Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that every pop culture junkie and TV writer needs to have read. The author, Steven D. Stark, selects sixty television shows and puts them in a cultural and political context. His chapters on shows like 'Dragnet,' 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' place these hit shows squarely in a time and place in American culture that make more sense. I wasn't even born yet when these shows were made and Stark's explanations are invaluable. However, Stark's keen sense and articulations will add clarity to anyone's understanding of television and the culture that made these shows a part of it. Although I recommend reading all the chapters, my favorite chapters include: Dragnet, Disneyland, Mister Ed, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show, and his comparison between Seinfeld and Home Improvement. I'm not just a passive TV watcher, I look to make sense of what my entertainment means and how it effects my world view. This book helps me address this.

[Aimeslee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's pub date is 1997, and so by virtue of that alone it is amusingly very dated. The author injects quite a lot of his own personal theories and opinions, and probably about half of them have been proven wrong since he wrote this. It does make for amusing and frustrating reading, but he does have some great points to make and it was fun to reminisce about my entire life on the tube. My bottom line two cents is to read it with a grain of salt and remember how old the book is, but I'd recommend trying if your childhood included Beavers, Bradys or Big Birds....

[Brooke Preston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a textbook for my Television Genres class in college. Incidentally, Lionel Richie's cousin was my professor.

While I really like the overall set-up and aim of the book, and some of the entries are fairly insightful, the choices of which shows to include as being the most influential are incomplete at best, and fail to include many shows more important than some they list. It's also somewhat outdated and needs updating.

Still, pop culture heads like myself will find it worth a read...just be prepared to take issue with some of the list.

[Wesley Hyatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Glued to the Set came out nearly a quarter century ago, I considered getting it but decided against after skimming through it. My observations against doing so then remain the same as now for 2 reasons.

1. The criteria for inclusion was too broad and frankly just wrong. When I think of TV shows, I don't think of things like networks such as CNN or MTV. Or special events either. I'm thinking of series that had a big impact. Yet 8 listings are in this category, and their selection confuses me. No specific listing for such major events as Army-McCarthy hearing, the Vietnam War or Watergate in favor of such things as Assassination Television (an offensive chapter title if there ever was one)? Why?
2. The write-ups were often making statements about the series that while original often didn't square with what I thought about the shows (I guess you could call those "hot takes" now). And I felt like buying the book would validate those statements, some of which have worsened over time. The author thought that Home Improvement would last longer than Seinfeld because it was a more traditional sitcom, for one thing. And he believed that The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson left nothing of permanence during its 30-year run. The popularity of its clips on YouTube prove that otherwise. Finally, some big shows that do get mentioned are only briefly referenced and often in a disparaging way, such as with The Golden Girls.

Here's what I would have done in replacing the events and networks entries with series that had more impact in the medium if I did this book (and yes, I know the phrase about hindsight, but even in the 1990s, I would've made most of these changes):
1. Remove Local News, Space Television, Assassination Television, Hostage Crisis, The Ronald Reagan Show, CNN, MTV and Home Shopping. Replace them with The Fugitive (a precursor to serialized adventure drama and an influential chase story), Jeopardy! (classic long-running intelligent game show), Mister Rogers Neighborhood (iconic children's show), Columbo (the only successful example of long-form TV, meaning 2-hour series, on the networks despite numerous efforts since the 1960s), Charlie’s Angels (the standout among Aaron Spelling productions, which incredibly have no entry despite the producer's huge success from the 1970s though 1990s), The Simpsons (the leader among cartoons directed to adults since the 1990s), Law and Order (the dominant drama format on NBC since the 1990s) and Friends (an enduring sitcom that influenced NBC's Must-See Thursdays lineup).
2. Replace the 5 weakest entries with better ones in their same categories. Billy Graham had a much more influential and longer-lasting TV career than Bishop Sheen. The Price is Right is a much more established and emulated game show than The Dating Game. As the World Turns had a much bigger audience than All My Children ever did and ran longer than it plus was the first 30-minute soap opera. And Mr. Ed and The Monkees are largely Baby Boomer favorites that have had less success in reruns than The Andy Griffith Show and Bewitched, the latter a leader in fantasy sitcoms.

There are also a few other errors that crept in despite Stark's efforts, such as him claiming Art Linkletter hosted People Are Funny in daytime instead of Art Linkletter's House Party.

Having said all this, there is merit so much of what Stark says here, and he clearly researched most topics thoroughly. It's a worth a read, but don't be surprised if you object to or are disappointed with what he includes and discusses at the same time.

[Josh Avery · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written by an NPR commentator in 1997, and he describes 60 different television shows and/or events and their effect on modern culture broken down by decades from the 1940's through the 1990's.

The Good: Being when this was written, he seemed to be oddly prescient in his criticism of one William H. Cosby, whom he said: "His show, although entertaining, seems to be hiding something of his personality. Something darker and it is more visible to the people that are able to see through it." That seems to be pretty close to what has happened recently. He also mentions shows like Dallas being "The visual representation of 80's Reagan era excesses," as well as discussing how the sitcom dad (Ricky Ricardo, Archie Bunker, Dan Conner, Tim Taylor, Ray Barrone, etc.) were all the same formula, loveable, yet a bit dumb in the way they operated and were usually corrected by their much smarter wives. I thought was pretty much accurate.

The Bad: Somehow, he shoehorns the OJ Simpson case and trial into every decade and I can't fully understand why. He also seemed to have a fascination with Milton Berle and Johnny Carson, whom he mentions several times. He talks about the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting as made for TV, not sure I agree with that. He also only mentions Cheers one time while shows like Seinfeld and Friends, which were just hitting their grooves were mentioned a ton. I would be curious about how he viewed these more modern day with what has happened since.

I liked what he is saying on a lot of these matters, but I wasn't excited by any of them.

C

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Grade = 92% - A

Published 1997. 340 pages.

This fascinating book is replete with sixty chapters, each covering one aspect of television or a television show and how it affected others and the rest of the world from What’s so Funny about Milton Berle? (1948) to How Wheel of Fortune Won the Cold War (1997).

Not only do the chapters cover individual shows but other aspects such as MTV, CNN, Superbowls, Election Nights, Assassination, Game Shows, Local News, the Miniseries, Soap Operas, Masterpiece Theatre, and Spaceflights.

And, usually, they blend into other aspects of “like” shows. Leave it to Beaver then covers other aspects of the WASP-com, where upperclass white fathers went to their professional jobs in suits while the housewives breezed through their days in evening gowns and pearls and the kids never got into real trouble. See also the Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best, the Brady Bunch and many others of that ilk.

From my somewhat immature mind, other of my favorites include, The Twilight Zone, The Beverly Hillbillies, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moor Show, Saturday Night Live, Gunsmoke, Disneyland, American Bandstand, The Flintstones, Sesame Street, Sixty Minutes, Dallas, Hill Street Blues, Dr Kildare, and Mission Impossible.

This was a wealth of information and entertainment.

I would see a more modern version of this including aspects of the last quarter century aspects.....

[Kathy KS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly, an interesting collections of essays about specific TV shows and/or trends since television became a part of our world. I don't always agree with his choices, or sometimes his comments, but there is definitely food for thought. Since I've lived through the times covered (1950s-1990s), the book also served as a trip down memory lane. As a child of the '50s, our family did watch a lot of TV. Of course we lived in small towns in a rural state, so we often had only one channel that came in well; the other couple varied from fuzzy to OK or sometimes unwatchable. My children also grew up in a rural area where we again had mostly one channel (different network); thank goodness public TV came in well, too. Even though cable was the thing by then, we lived outside of town...

Of course, my parents' TV was also black and white until pretty much mid-70s or beyond.

The main problem with this book is that it wasn't published until about 1997, so much has happened in the viewing department since then; the world wide web changed many people's viewing fix, plus streaming. Some shows that seemed to be important in the '90s didn't have sustained impact.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really great book, particularly for its era. Each show, movie, or tv event had a great essay accompanying it about the historical context and the influence of the show. He does a great job at noticing whether a show was a critical or commercial success and even a random pick would make me say "well, he has a point there". I lurk over the air channel guides (ie- Antenna TV, Cozi, MeTV, Hereoes and Icons, etc) and can't tell apart all of the dramas from the 50's through 70's but the author helped me learn the impact of each one.

My one complaint was that it was a little too dry (and this is where a 4.5 would come in handy), perhaps because some of it was way before my time. I read the first 3 decades in spring 2020 and put the book down and only went back to the last 2 decades this autumn. This is definitely a book to take notes and highlight as you read it. I would love another one for the 2000's and 2010's. In a time where every magazine puts out a 100 greatest shows of all time list every 18 months for clickbait material, it was interesting reading something mellowed out but very well researched.

[Marianne Brodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The actual typesetting itself was too small, which took away from its enjoyment. Because the book came out in 1997, I questioned some of the value given towards topics, as it clearly predates the advent of key concepts that change how programs are popularized- such as DVRs. That having been said, this makes some of the foreshadowing of trends impressive. I love television- not having a big screen with a pixelized image, but actual television itself. I would like to to watch some of the programs mentioned that sparked me out of respect for the form.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1997, so it only begins to anticipate the changes brought about by cable television, much less streaming. Interesting reporting on the influence of early tv shows though.

[Gayle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book though it would be better if updated.