American Studies scholar George Lipsitz’s article The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television Programs (1986) examines how the “historical specificity of early network television programs led their creators into dangerous ideological terrain”.

“The presence of this subgenre of ethnic, working-class situation comedies on television network schedules seems to run contrary to the commercial and artistic properties of the medium. Television delivers audiences to advertisers by glorifying consumption, not only during commercial breaks but in the programs themselves.”

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