Inside Prime Time

Rating:
Summary: Dated but still interesting
Review: Written in the early '80s, Inside Prime Time was long considered to be one of the quissential books to be written about the business about how a small group of insiders shaped American culture through television. The book has since become quite dated. Author Gitlin, best known as a former '60s radical and a co-founded of the SDS, is highly complimentary of what -- at that time -- was then the dominating creative forces on television, the socially relavent comedies of Norman Lear and the humanistic dramas -- like Lou Grant and the White Shadow -- that came out of MTM productions. As such, many of his predictions for the future of television would be blown out of the water by the advent of such comedies as Seinfeld and, to a lesser extent, less topical dramas like ER and the rise of HBO programming like the Sopranos, OZ, and Larry Sanders Show. That being said, the book still remains an interesting look at how television shows were sold and produced during the '70s and '80s and his argument that television is essentially controlled by a network of "insiders" and "social friends" who go out of their way to prevent any outsiders from getting a hold in their industry (and therefore prevent anything new or unusual from reaching the screen) remains relavent and, probably, accurate. Less succesful are Gitlin's attempts to argue that the entertainment industry, despite all appearances to the contrary, is actually a right-wing institution with a strong Republican bias. In these chapters, it appears that Gitlin allows his own political feelings to get in the way of serious scholarship and his own rather paranoid prediction that the then-recent election of Ronald Reagan would somehow lead to an artistic wasteland on television have since been descredited. (For all the dark portense that entertainment folks seem to use when talking about how Republicans equal censorship, it was during the Reagan/Bush administration that networks were actually willing to risk airing quality but hardly widely popular TV shows like St. Elsewhere, thirtysomething, Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, Moonlighting, and Twin Peaks.)

However, its perhaps unfair to condemn this book for making a few incorrect predictions. Afterall, hindsight is 20/20 and certainly, its easy to forget just how much of a mystery Reagan and conservatives in general were back when the '80s were just beginning. The book's true value remains in its two most interesting chapters. Since these chapters are both histories as opposed to analysis, one can simply focus on Gitlin's lively and witty writing style and enjoy the way he makes even the most mundane details seem like pivotal moments of human drama. The first of these chapters tells the story of American Dream, a forgotten, one-hour drama that lasted for only a few episodes in the late '70s. American Dream, produced by future Cagney and Lacey producer Barney Rosenzweig (who is widely quoted in the chapter and becomes a vivid character as a result; one is torn between sympathy for his obviously sincere artistic intentions and disgust by his banal attempts at self-promotion), was the story of a white man who decides to move his family to a widely black section of Chicago in order to teach his kids what real life is like. It sounds like a typical '70s television show and, despite Gitlin's claims to the contrary, it also sounds like a rather annoying, typically elitist example of '70s liberal chic (while many people are quoted in the chapter saying that the show had to be toned down to appeal to the widest possible audience, nobody seems to wonder what the point is of making a "realistic" television show about life in a black ghetto where all the main characters are white). Anyway, what were told about the show and the scripts make it all sound terribly banal and the chapter, despite Gitlin's intentions, becomes a rather compelling look at how entertainment insiders often delude themselves about the value of their product. Beyond that, however, the detailed stories of the conflicts that doomed the show (from the miscasting of Ned Beatty as the lead to the firing of the head writer and the eventual forcing out of producer Rosenzweig) make for interesting reading and should serve as a strong cautionary tale for anyone who wants to make it in the industry.

The other chapter deals with the creation of Hill Street Blues and remains the most important and detailed analysis of what made that show ground breaking television. Drawing from revealing interviews with men like Steven Bochco and Brandon Tartikoff (at the time, neither was as well known as they'd become), Gitlin reveals how sometimes the insider politics of the tv industry somehow conspire to create something special and groundbreaking and its rather inspiring. After the discouraging portrait painted by the failure of American Dream, Gitlin's analyis of Hill Street Blues is a nice reminder that sometimes, somehow, things actually do work the way they should. Though Gitlin admits that he felt Hill Street Blues eventually sold itself out in the name of ratings, he still shows why the success of that show proves that television actually can play an important and positive role in the American culture it has so often been accused of corrupting.

Inside Prime Time isn't perfect but its must reading for anyone planning on pursuing a career behind-the-scenes entertainment or who occasionally watches the flicking onscreen images and wonders what chaos raged behind-the-scenes to create the slick world they're now viewing.