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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Introduction | |
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| What's So Funny About Milton Berle? The Unacceptable Ethnicity of The Texaco Star Theater | |
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| Howdy Doody and the Debate Over Children's Programming | |
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| Meet the Press: Television's Anachronism | |
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| I Love Lucy: The Woman as TV Superstar | |
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| Dragnet and the Policeman as Hero | |
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| Bishop Sheen's Life Is Worth Living and the New American Religion of Television | |
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| Resistance to Reality: Why Edward R. Murrow's See It Now Didn't Change Television More | |
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| Today, Barbara Walters, and TV's Definition of News | |
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| Disneyland and the Creation of the Seamless Entertainment Web | |
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| The Secret of The Lawrence Welk Show | |
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| The Ed Sullivan Show and the Era of Big Government | |
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| Gunsmoke and Television's Lost Wave of Westerns | |
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| American Bandstand and the Clash of Rock and TV | |
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| Twenty-One, the Quiz Scandal, and the Decline of Public Trust | |
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| Leave It to Beaver and the Politics of Nostalgia | |
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| The Twilight Zone: Science Fiction as Realism | |
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| The Rise and Fall of the Televised Presidential Press Conference | |
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| Perry Mason and the Criminal Lawyer as Brief Television Hero | |
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| The Dick Van Dyke Show and the Rise of Upscale Television | |
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| Space Television | |
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| The Beverly Hillbillies and the Rise of Populist Television | |
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| Assassination Television | |
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| Mister Ed: How Real Were TV's Escapist Comedies? | |
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| The Dating Game, Game Shows, and the Rise of Tabloid TV | |
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| Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News, and the Rise of News on Television | |
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| The Monkees and TV's Subversion of the 1960s | |
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| Mission: Impossible and Its Cold War Fight to Save America | |
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| The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and the Fate of Controversy on TV | |
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| Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and Acceleration as a TV Style | |
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| Sesame Street: The Last Remnant of the Counterculture | |
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| TV's Biggest Show: The Super Bowl | |
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| The Brady Bunch as Television Icon | |
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| All in the Family and the Sitcom "Revolution" | |
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| The Mary Tyler Moore Show and America's Newest "Families" | |
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| Masterpiece Theatre and the Failure of PBS | |
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| Television's Biggest Scandal: The Local News | |
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| The Tonight Show and Its Hold on America | |
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| 60 Minutes and the Evolution of News to Entertainment | |
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| TV's Most Self-Congratulatory Hit: Saturday Night Live | |
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| The Miniseries as History: Did Roots Change America? | |
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| All My Children, Soaps, and the Feminization of America | |
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| The Oddly Winning Dark Sensibility of M*A*S*H | |
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| The Hostage Crisis as Metaphor | |
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| Dallas and the Rise of Republican Mythology | |
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| Debating Our Politics: The Ronald Reagan Show | |
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| CNN and the Changing Definition of News | |
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| Hill Street Blues and TV's New Elite Style | |
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| What MTV Hath Wrought | |
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| Bob Newhart as the Embodiment of TV Culture | |
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| Entertainment Tonight and the Expansion of the Tabloid, Celebrity Culture | |
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| The Forgotten Promise of The Cosby Show | |
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| The Star Trek Galaxy and Its Glimpse of TV's Future | |
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| How Roseanne Made Trash TV Respectable | |
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| How America's Funniest Home Videos Tore Down Our Wall | |
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| Hill-Thomas and the Congressional Hearing as Miniseries | |
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| The Oprah Winfrey Show and the Talk-Show Furor | |
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| A Tale of Two Sitcoms | |
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| Home Shopping: Commercialism as Salvation | |
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| The Innovations of ER and the Fight for Health-Care Reform | |
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| How Wheel of Fortune Won the Cold War | |
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| How I Came Up With the 60 Shows | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |