ABSTRACT
At first glance, the U.S. television industry’s position of prosperity and secu
rity by the early 1960s seems unassailable. By 1963, 91 percent of U.S. house
holds owned at least one television set, and network television had achieved
unprecedented audience levels and advertising revenues within commercial
and regulatory structures that would remain generally stable for most of the
two subsequent decades.1 The early 1960s also witnessed the confident march
of American television program exporters into a booming international mar
ket and saw new demonstrations o f the powerful role of television in U.S.
dom estic political life in the famous N ixon-Kennedy 1960 Presidential
debates.
