ABSTRACT
The advertising agency executive who recommends programs and time-slots in terms of audience size and demographic targets is likewise doing his job. The network sales executive who favors programs that advertising agencies will recommend to sponsors is performing his task. The government-sponsored, war-related beginnings of the electronics industry were almost forgotten during the Depression. The early New Deal years were marked by hostility between big business and government. But war rumblings in Europe, Africa, and Asia brought a new surge of military contracts, and began to foster a closely knit military-industrial-political complex. Military dependence on electronics and its offshoot the computer, and subsequently on atomic energy, increased the power of the alignment and its influence over legislators and regulators. Many of the countries had dictatorial regimes, which needed circuses. In much of the world, American-style television became a way of life.
