The Golden Age of Television

We think of [that period] as the Golden Age of television, both in culture, which is something you become interested in later, but also in news. What is distinctive about that period, in comparison to the later phases? Is it that so many of these dominant personalities that you just mentioned were real journalists in a traditional sense?

No, ironically, I don't think that was the reason. I mean, that's the conventional wisdom, but Ed Murrow had never been in journalism before. He was in charge of sort of educational speeches at Columbia Broadcasting. But then when World War II broke out, he was in Europe, and he started broadcasting on radio, and proved to be one of the all-time great figures in journalism. That was true of most of the great broadcasters.

In the sense that they just fell into it, you mean?

They fell into it, they had an interest in it. Many of them, of course, did come, like Walter Cronkite, from newspaper or wire services, but many did not. And in those days, I think the chief differences were two. One was that there only three networks -- actually, two networks, CBS and NBC -- and in the early days of television, it was not such a mass medium, and there was a sense because it was new that it had high ideals and high aspirations. There was also a government policy that required a certain amount of public service in order to hold station licenses, and that was seriously felt -- perhaps not as serious as it should have been, but nonetheless, still that way. And because it was a new medium, and because of the concern about holding on to licenses, there was a very strong feeling that broadcasters, commercial broadcasters, were public trustees, and they had to honor the requirement to provide news. CBS, particularly, had that mission. And then they also had a certain sense, because it was new and it was live, the natural thing was for television to provide drama, in addition to the quiz shows and the sit-coms and so on.

And here you're talking about things like Studio One and Playhouse 90.

They had hours and hours of live drama -- Playhouse 90, Studio One, a series called Climax that produced some wonderful, wonderful, and very serious and quite fascinating material. And that's what gave it the Golden Age, that and news gave it the Golden Age.

And also, they were able to draw on the resources of New York, all of the young acting and directorial talent.

That's true. In the early days, all of the programming, pretty much, came out of New York. Playhouse 90 was the first major production to emerge from the West Coast. But it was kind of a New York/Broadway mentality and tradition. That gave it a sense of the importance of drama. Of course, news, also, was focused totally [on New York], as it still is, really, [and] originated from New York.

Could one establish a historical rule here, that in the early days of a medium, the opportunity is for creativity, experimentation for culture, and serious reporting, that because the money men haven't figured out where the money is to be made yet, that you get this kind of renaissance in a way?

That's partly true. It's paradoxical because television, after all, came from radio, basically. So you had radio with pictures in many of the shows. But then because it was new and nobody had any rules, you did get some of that creativity, and, as you say, initial renaissance. It also was before television penetrated through the whole society, so that you had not the need to appeal to quite as mass an audience as you did. In the early days, only the middle class and the upper class had television, and, therefore, you were programming to their sensibilities, more than now.

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