24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News
By (Author) Kathryn Cramer Brownell
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
2nd January 2024
United States
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Politics and government
Central / national / federal government
Political structures: democracy
Political science and theory
Social and cultural history
History
302.2345
Physical Properties
Hardback
424
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
Description
How cable television upended American political life in the pursuit of profits and influence
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainmentfrequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship.
In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for todays rampant polarization and scandal politicsthe intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovationsfrom C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTVs foray into presidential politics in the 1990stook on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval.
24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground.
Author Bio
Kathryn Cramer Brownell is associate professor of history at Purdue University and the author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life.
