Francis Wheen

Throughout the 1950s, television's first decade, westerns were by far the most popular genre for TV adventure. In the 1960s, crime dramas began to dominate network schedules, and shows featuring police and private investigators remain a staple of TV programming today. In this excerpt from his book Television: A History, Francis Wheen, a columnist for British newspaper the Guardian, notes that as early as 1959, with ABC's Prohibition—era drama The Untouchables, crime series drew criticism for their violent content. The first outcry against TV violence culminated in 1961, when Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow called TV a "vast wasteland" and intimated that the FCC might intervene to monitor television content. Since then, TV violence has come in cycles, with the major networks periodically toning down their violent programming when public opinion demands it. Writing in 1985, Wheen notes...