About Television

Harper & Row, Publishers BOOK: Spine Bumped; Edges Lightly Soiled. DUST JACKET: Repaired; Lightly Creased; Moderately Chipped; Slight Yellowing Due to Age; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. SYNOPSIS: Television has been commented on, criticized, exhorted - even, occasionally, defended. About Television examines it, with the reportorial thoroughness and insight readers have come to expect from Martin Mayer. This is a big subject. No development since the mass production of the automobile in the 1920s has so greatly affected the daily lives of ordinary people. Yet there has been little exploration of how television happens, what the people who make the key decisions think about and why, who they are and how they work. About Television has gossip and theory; essential historical, geographic, technical and economic background; anecdote and personality; and even some suggestions about where we might go from here. There are set pieces on The Flip Wilson Show and The Selling of the Pentagon; a description in fascinating detail of how ABC covers Monday Night Football; the full story of Sesame Street; David Frost and Dick Cavett on how to run a talk show. Geographically, the range encompasses not only New York, Hollywood and London but also Vancouver, Hays (Kansas), the Channel Islands, Philadelphia, Paris and elsewhere. Explored here, too, are questions most of us are not likely to know enough to ask: why viewers of documentaries tend to be less well educated than viewers of most entertainment shows; how a French nightly news show is like and unlike its American counterparts; what changes audience research made in shows like All in the Family, Room 222 and The Odd Couple; how the rules for selling advertising helped network TV kill off the mass magazines - and why local television in the 1970s is endangering the economic survival of big-city newspapers; why the silent movies run fast on public television; why a Supreme Court interpretation of a law written in 1909 threatens to make cable television a disaster for American viewers. About Television is Martin Mayer's first major book since The Lawyers in 1967, and the latest in a series of remarkable reportorial studies dating back to 1955 and including The Schools; Madison Avenue, U.S.A.; and Wall Street: Men and Money, all of which are still in use. Martin Prager Mayer was born in New York in 1928; both his parents are lawyers. He was graduated in 1947 from Harvard, where he majored in economics and also studied philosophy and music. After working as a reporter and editor for several publications he became, in 1954, a free-lance writer. He is the author of two novels and five reportorial studies: Wall Street: Men and Money; Madison Avenue, U.S.A.; The Schools; The Lawyers; and About Television. Mr. Mayer's articles on education, business, television, music, law and other subjects have appeared in Esquire (for which he writes a monthly column about music), Harper's, Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, TV Guide, Better Homes & Gardens, Life, The New York Times Magazine, Horizon, Musical America, Commentary, Cosmopolitan and Redbook, among others. From 1961 to 1965 Mr. Mayer was a member of the Panel on Educational Research and Development in the Executive Office of the President, and from 1962 to 1967 he was chairman of a New York City local school board. His work has been supported at various times by the American Council of Learned Societies (Social Studies in American Schools), the Twentieth Century Fund (Diploma and Bricks, Mortar and the Performing Arts), and the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation (Economy Buckner).. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. Illus. by Bill Warnecke. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.