ABSTRACT
The first decade of commercial television in the United States set in place the major economic actors, programme forms, and regulatory structures of the vast American TV industry of the next thirty years. Moreover, the flood of exported American TV shows that began in the 1950s provided models of programme styles and popular taste for producers around the world. In 1954, the two major television networks and their twelve owned-and-operated stations took in over half of the total profits of a TV industry which included two other network operators and hundreds of local stations. Faced with possible New Deal–inspired antitrust and regulatory reforms aimed at the broadcast industry, the networks emerged from the war with a broad public relations strategy, emphasizing both their patriotic role in developing wartime military electronics and the philosophical defence of commercial broadcasting.
