The American Forces Korea Network

With television’s ascendancy as the dominant mass medium in postwar America, there was much experimentation with its programming as a platform for communicating and shaping socio-cultural and political views. The rapid rise of television’s popularity between the years of 1948 and 1955, to claim nearly two-thirds of the nation’s homes, drew focused attention from powerful corporations and cultural institutions who would become its new sponsors based on their faith in it as a tool for indoctrinating the masses. ¹ According to Anna McCarthy, DuPont, the Advertising Council, and The Ford Foundation, among others, turned to television to redefine American “citizenship” by promoting neoliberal “concepts of self-regulation, voluntarism, and entrepreneurial initiative” as the requisite “rights and responsibilities of both individual and corporate citizenship” in a democratic government. ² Not to be outdone by civilian institutions, the US military also adopted the new medium as a governing tool.