6. The Electoral College & You

In this episode of the TV Room podcast, with the shadow of the 2016 Presidential election looming large, we ask and attempt to answer:
What’s up with the Electoral College System anyway, and why do we still use it?
When did “these United States” become “the United States”?
How is this nation different from other nations?

5. Trump. A TV Antihero is President

On this episode of the TV ROOM PODCAST: Donald Trump takes the White House…What started with JFK looking more presidential during a televised debate with Richard Nixon in 1960 has led 56 years later to a TV personality shattering the glass screen to become Commander-in-Chief. Is this the moment everybody who described television as a ‘vast wasteland’ was afraid of?

4. The Summer of Love (Part I)

In this episode of the TV Room:
The Jefferson Airplane visit American Bandstand…..The Beatles turn on…..San Francisco talent + L.A. marketing = Monterey Pop…..Rolling Stone turns pro…..Bewitched goes hippie…..And the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour boldly goes where no show has gone before.

3. The Turbulence of 1968: RFK, MLK, Vietnam, LBJ

Lyndon Johnson won the 1964 Election in a landslide, and managed to get landmark legislation passed early in his term. Yet, by early 1968, the Vietnam War had become so unpopular that Johnson decided not to run for a second term as President. Four days after he shocked the country by pulling out of the race, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was gunned down, and the Democratic Party limped into their Chicago convention, where open rebellion and brutal suppression broke out. It was the Year that Everything Changed.

2. Did TV Invent the Rock Star?

On the second episode of the TV ROOM PODCAST, we notice that the phenomenon of the rock star came about just when the television was arriving en masse in American living rooms, and we wonder if this was mere coincidence or something more?

1. The Age of Television (1948-??)

On the very first episode of the TV ROOM podcast, we discuss: What exactly is the Age of Television? What are its origins? How did it change us? When will we know it’s over?