Television in the 1950s: Impact on America
Holly Tran
October 11th, 2012
History of Television
Professor Celli
Critical Analysis Paper
Television in the 1950’s: The Impact on America Television. Such a simple nine letter word but this word alone is most likely to be one of the most well known words in the universe. According to the latest Nielson report, on the consumption of television, the average American watches a minimum of five hours of television per day. If we were to estimate that the average American does get at least the recommended 9 hours of sleep then we can conclude that it is about 1/3 of their day being spent glued to the tube. Also if we continue to estimate that the average American lives to be 78. Then that is about 142,350 hours of television or tallied up to be a whopping 16 years of being a couch potato. That accounts up to about 20.5% of their life. Yet this percentage has yet to even include the online and mobile consumption that the average American has each day. Whether we would like to admit this or not, clicking on the TV remote has become second nature to many Americans today. So much that television itself has become a staple in our daily lives (Jason). Regardless of where we may try to go, there is virtually no escape from it.
It is with these statistics that help support the idea that it seems almost impossible to even try to fathom a period of time when there were no such things as television sets in the American household, let alone there being no such thing as television. This time period seems to be primitive. Yet the issue at hand is that we fail to realize that television was not always around. Instead it was only first presented to the public less than 73 years ago in 1939. In fact to some, it is extremely surprising that television was not even popular among Americans until the 1950's. It was with this popularity that helped turn the spark, the effect that television had on Americans, into a wildfire that spread all over America. This very effect is one of the most
October 11th, 2012
History of Television
Professor Celli
Critical Analysis Paper
Television in the 1950’s: The Impact on America Television. Such a simple nine letter word but this word alone is most likely to be one of the most well known words in the universe. According to the latest Nielson report, on the consumption of television, the average American watches a minimum of five hours of television per day. If we were to estimate that the average American does get at least the recommended 9 hours of sleep then we can conclude that it is about 1/3 of their day being spent glued to the tube. Also if we continue to estimate that the average American lives to be 78. Then that is about 142,350 hours of television or tallied up to be a whopping 16 years of being a couch potato. That accounts up to about 20.5% of their life. Yet this percentage has yet to even include the online and mobile consumption that the average American has each day. Whether we would like to admit this or not, clicking on the TV remote has become second nature to many Americans today. So much that television itself has become a staple in our daily lives (Jason). Regardless of where we may try to go, there is virtually no escape from it.
It is with these statistics that help support the idea that it seems almost impossible to even try to fathom a period of time when there were no such things as television sets in the American household, let alone there being no such thing as television. This time period seems to be primitive. Yet the issue at hand is that we fail to realize that television was not always around. Instead it was only first presented to the public less than 73 years ago in 1939. In fact to some, it is extremely surprising that television was not even popular among Americans until the 1950's. It was with this popularity that helped turn the spark, the effect that television had on Americans, into a wildfire that spread all over America. This very effect is one of the most
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