Being able to see these events of negligence on the television and in color disturbed many white American citizens and members of superior government stature. With the television advancement into color, the viewers grew into the masses which made the citizens of the United States more aware of the events surrounding and according in their nation. The epidemic of television helped to establish the American popular culture. Though many owned radio and read newspapers, nearly 90 percent of Americans owned at least one television in the 1950s. With the loyalty of a tuned in audience, provided the ability for marketers to dictate or educate them on the values of the society they lived in. In this essay, I will examine television programs, journal articles, historical documents and scholarly books. I will explore the part television played in shaping popular culture in the United States through the coverage of African-American protest, cigarette advertisements, television shows and government actions which occurred during the 1950s. In this essay, I argue that television was used as a platform to shape American culture through the display of radically revitalized events and the envisaged use of advertisements. From this research, I will conclude how television changed American popular culture during the …show more content…
Products such as refrigerators, automobiles and clothing were the main products advertised during the 1950s. With so many advertisements being shown Americans begin to measure success based upon material possessions. Many Americans had more money than their parents and seemed to be doing much better than the previous generation. The increase of a broad audience fascinated by the glamorized depictions on television lead to an outlook of the ideal American life. The Ohio Historical Center’s review on the 1950s exhibit defined the culture as “the era, including the threat (and promise) of nuclear energy, struggles for civil rights, fears of communism, daunting public health issues, and culturally enforced definition of gender roles” (Paschen, 2016, p.1). Many Americans begin to subject themselves to the images they viewed from the television set and established what they saw as the dream every American actually has. A study on 1950s television described television as the complete source of information, “Television programming has had a huge impact on American and world culture. Many critics have dubbed the 1950s as the Golden Age of Television. TV sets were expensive and so the audience was generally affluent”(Ganzel, 2007). From what the American women should look like to the car driven, the American lifestyle was adopted from the television. With this knowledge,