{"product_id":"the-jews-of-prime-time","title":"The Jews of Prime Time","description":"\u003cp\u003eHow did it happen that in a time when networks were run by Jewish men  and many television shows were written by Jewish writers  there were so few identifiably Jewish characters on television? In his provocative book  David Zurawik marshalls compelling evidence to suggest that  during televisions first thirty-five years  its primarily Jewish power brokers actively suppressed Jewish characters and Jewish themes from appearing on the small screen. Beginning his investigation in the early days of television with Gertrude Berg and The Goldbergs  Zurawik  an award-winning journalist  shows how the Jewish founders of the three major networksWilliam S. Paley (CBS)  David Sarnoff (NBC)  and Leonard Goldenson (ABC)dictated the kinds of shows Americans would watch from the late 1940s until they sold their broadcast empires in the mid-1980s. Under the auspices of these incredibly powerful men  the television industry either distorted or eliminated entirely images of Jews from prime time at the very moment when television came to hold center stage in mainstream American life. In fact  creating a cookie-cutter image of American life was so important to the top Jewish executives that they fabricated a brief  which circulated among the networks and became legendary in the industry. It claimed that CBS had research that indicated Americans were not interested in seeing Jews (or divorced people  people from New York  and men with mustaches) on the small screen. Zurawik convincingly argues that Paley and the others were ambivalent about their own Jewishness  and fearful  in the post-Holocaust  pro-assimilation  red-baiting 1950s  that their shows not appear too Jewish. The ironic result: with few exceptions  shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver came to represent American family life  while Jewish identity was presented as something that had to be obscured or hidden away. Only when the moguls sold their interest in the networks and moved on did things begin to change in a sustained way. Serious shows with leading Jewish characters began to appear in series like thirtysomething and Northern Exposure  which dealt with issues of tolerance  intermarriage  and assimilation. But in many of the programs that followed  particularly the sitcoms of the 1990s  Jewish men and especially Jewish women fell into stereotypical roles that Zurawik describes as nebbishy boyfriends lusting after non-Jewish women or Jewish-American princesses and smothering mothers. And  although Jewish characters are now plentiful on television  many are very nominally Jewish  or Jewish in name only. Despite the best efforts of the successors of Paley  Sarnoff  and Goldenson  the culture of Jewish self-consciousness and censorship lives on in network television today. Based on more than one hundred interviews gathered over ten years with network executives  producers  and actors  Zurawiks book gives voice to these insiderswho reveal  for the first time  how and why the depiction of Jews on television has followed such a strange  unpredictable course.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44949993422901,"sku":"ByrdShop_1584652349","price":59.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781584652342.jpg?v=1770091583","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-jews-of-prime-time","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}