Glued to the set: the 60 television shows and events that made us who we are today

1. What's so funny about Milton Berle? : the unacceptable ethnicity of the Texaco Star Theater

2. Howdy Doody and the debate over children's programming

3. Meet the Press : television's anachronism

4. I Love Lucy : the woman as TV superstar

5. Dragnet and the policeman as hero

6. Bishop Sheen's Life is Worth Living and the new American religion of television

7. Resistance to reality : Why Edward R. Murrow's See It Now didn't change television more

8. Today, Barbara Walters, and TV's definition of news

9. Disneyland and the creation of the seamless entertainment web

10. The secret of the Lawrence Welk Show

11. The Ed Sullivan Show and the era of big government

12. Gunsmoke and television's lost wave of westerns

13. American Bandstand and the clash of rock and TV

14. Twenty-One, the quiz scandal, and the decline of public trust

15. Leave it to Beaver and the politics of nostalgia

16. The Twilight Zone : science fiction as realism

17. The rise and fall of the televised presidential press conference

18. Perry Mason and the criminal lawyer as brief television hero

19. The Dick Van Dyke Show and the rise of upscale television

20. Space television

21. The Beverly Hillbillies and the rise of populist television

22. Assassination television

23. Mister Ed : how real were TV's escapist comedies?

24. The Dating Game, game shows, and the rise of tabloid TV

25. Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News, and the rise of news on television

26. The Monkees and TV's subversion of the 1960s

27. Mission: Impossible and Its cold war fight to save America

28. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and the fate of controversy on TV

29. Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and acceleration as a TV style.

30. Sesame Street : the last temnant of the counterculture

31. TV's biggest show : The Super Bowl

32. The Brady Bunch as television icon

33. All in the Family and the sitcom "revolution"

34. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and America's newest "families"

35. Masterpiece Theatre and the failure of PBS

36. Television's biggest scandal : the local news

37. The Tonight Show and its hold on America

38. 60 Minutes and the evolution of news to entertainment

39. TV's most self-congratulatory hit : Saturday Night Live

40. The miniseries as history : did Roots change America?

41. All My Children, soaps, and the feminization of America

42. The oddly winning dark sensibility of M*A*S*H

43. The hostage crisis as metaphor

44. Dallas and the rise of Republican mythology

45. Debating our politics : the Ronald Reagan show

46. CNN and the changing definition of news

47. Hill Street Blues and TV's new elite style

48. What MTV hath wrought

49. Bob Newhart as the embodiment of TV culture

50. Entertainment Tonight and the expansion of the tabloid, celebrity culture

51. The rorgotten promise of The Cosby Show

52. The Star Trek galaxy and its glimpse of TV's future

53. How Roseanne made trash TV respectable

54. How America's Funniest Home Videos tore down our wall

55. Hill-Thomas and the congressional hearing as miniseries

56. The Oprah Winfrey Show and the talk-show furor

57. A tale of two sitcoms

58. Home Shopping : commercialism as salvation

59. The innovations of ER and the fight for health-care reform

60. How Wheel of Fortune won the cold war

Appendix : How I came up with the 60 shows.