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Baby Boom Suburbanization

Decent Essays

First, social changes swept all of the country at the end of World War II, as the country started to see the start of the Baby Boom and suburbanization, and television was able to compliment this transition in the county by proving itself to be a centerpiece of family togetherness. A large number of people returned from the war and they established families and produce children at greater rates than ever before. These families would purchase single family homes and the suburban housing divisions, which created the opening for television to grow. Media Historian Douglas Gomery notes that with the demographic, economic, and social factors created a change from of middle-class and working class families to step away from the attractions of the cities for entertainment, for they rather choose the amusement televise can offer in the privacy in their own homes. There was a desire to invest in a family-focused lifestyle, yet for family to …show more content…

Stronger bonds of affection and shared interests would form whenever the family gathered around the television sets. Media Historian Lynn Spigel states that,” Not only was it shown to restore faith in family togetherness,” Spigel notes, but TV did it “in splendors of consumer capitalism.” (Edgerton, p. 92) Postwar television promoters pushed the new “family togetherness” that TV viewing would generate within the family. The era of viewing TV in public setting did influence stations' early programming decisions and civic discourse about the new medium and its audience but it was brief. As stated by Edgerton, “By 1950, 45 percent of families who lived in those areas in which TV was available had purchased television sets. The camaraderie of watching in a bar was outweighed for many men by the convenience of watching it at home.” (Edgerton, p. 97) This supplements the social change of family togetherness in the early period of

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