Abstract
Future generations of media historians may come to know 1955 to 1985 as the era of the mass audience. The sheer size of television audiences since the mid1950s has fostered a shared national history in the form of riveting video images-Joseph Welch standing up to Joseph McCarthy, firehoses in Birmingham, the Kennedy funeral, Communists in the American embassy in Saigon, the first moonwalk, mobs in Teheran-not to mention Lucy, Johnny, and Cosby. In recent years, cable television and VCRs have eroded the unity of the television audience. As the network oligopoly deteriorates, three divergent works grapple with national television's impact on democratic life in the United States. They comprise a rudimentary historiography of network television and democracy, emphasizing in turn elite institutions, resistant audiences, and the interplay of media technologies and democratic practices. Robert J. Donovan and Ray Scherer both enjoyed illustrious careers in journalism. Donovan headed the Washington bureaus of the New York Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and has also written several works of history.
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