Sell-e-vision

American television was designed to serve as a medium for advertising. For decades broadcasters, advertisers, and especially advertising agencies debated with each other and among themselves how to maximize its effectiveness for that purpose. Based largely on primary archival and contemporaneous industry sources, Sell-e-vision reveals the conflicts behind the scenes within and between the broadcasting and advertising industries during the transitional period of the 1950s into the 1960s. Why were sponsored programs with integrated commercials, such as General Electric Theater,replaced by network-controlled seriesinterrupted by unrelated interstitial commercials, such as Bonanza? Why did commercials evolve from didactic demonstrations of product attributes to humorous, ironic, or emotionally touching vignettes featuring couples running in slow motion through golden meadows or swilling soft drinks to pop music? In Sell-e-vision, Cynthia B. Meyersargues that the dramatic changes in television programming and advertising during the 1950s and 1960s were largely the result of a changing consensus within the advertising industry about how to make television a more effective medium for driving economic growth. Ad executives realized that sponsorship was a less efficient format than interstitial commercials for influencing viewer spending habits and that entertaining consumers was more effective for gaining their attention than informing them.