Critics often claim that prime-time television seemed immune—or even willfully blind—to the landmark upheavals rocking American society during the 1960s. Groove Tube is Aniko Bodroghkozy’s rebuttal of this claim. Filled with entertaining and enlightening discussions of popular shows of the time—such as The Monkees, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Mod Squad— this book challenges the assumption that TV programming failed to consider or engage with the decade’s youth-lead societal changes. Bodroghkozy argues that, in order to woo an increasingly lucrative baby boomer audience, television had to appeal to the social and political values of a generation of young people who were enmeshed in the hippie counterculture, the antiwar movement, campus protests, urban guerilla action—in general, a culture of rebellion. She takes a close look at the compromises and negotiations that were involved in determining TV content, as well as the ideological difficulties producers and networks faced in attempting to appeal to a youthful cohort so disaffected from dominant institutions. While programs that featured narratives about hippies, draft resisters, or revolutionaries are examined under this lens, Groove Tube doesn’t stop there: it also examines how the nation’s rebellious youth responded to these representations. Bodroghkozy explains how, as members of the first “TV generation,” some made sense of their societal disaffection in part through their childhood experience with this powerful new medium. Groove Tube will interest sociologists, American historians, students and scholars of television and media studies, and others who want to know more about the 1960s. In the 1960s, a handful of primetime television series tried to present the reality of youth culture and rebellion to America via the small screen. This attempt generated controversy, and the resulting media uproar sparked a significant change in the nature of TV entertainment. Did specific Sixties programming promote contentiousness among American youth? Bodroghkozy (film and media studies, Univ. of Alberta) investigates this question, focusing on two particularly socially relevant Sixties TV series, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Mod Squad. The author, who had input from the Smothers Brothers in her discussion of their CBS TV series and its controversial cancellation, includes several photos from their archives. She also offers a noteworthy chronology of social and media events that characterize the era covered in the book (1966-71). Recommended for academic library communications and television media collections. David M. Lisa, Wayne P.L., NJ Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. “ Groove Tube offers the first comprehensive account of the representation of the youth rebellions in television and of the sparky reception of those representations in the underground press. Bodroghkozy is the model of a new kind of media historian, one who has produced a book that will attract and hold the interest of Generation X undergrads and old hippies alike.”—Henry Jenkins, author of From Barbie to Mortal Combat “Bodroghkozy is right-on when it comes to the details of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, CBS’s firing of us, and the surrounding controversy. Her observations are certainly worth taking the time to read.”—Tom Smothers "Bodroghkozy is right-on when it comes to the details of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, " CBS's firing of us, and the surrounding controversy. Her observations are certainly worth taking the time to read."--Tom Smothers Aniko Bodroghkozy is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Alberta. GROOVE TUBE Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion By Aniko Bodroghkozy Duke University Press Copyright © 2001 Duke University Press All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-2645-8 Contents Acknowledgments.....................................................................................................................ixIntroduction: Turning on the Groove Tube............................................................................................11 "Clarabell Was the First Yippie": The Television Generation from Howdy Doody to McLuhan...........................................212 Plastic Hippies: The Counterculture on TV.........................................................................................613 "Every Revolutionary Needs a Color TV": The Yippies, Media Manipulation, and Talk Shows...........................................984 Smothering Dissent: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and the Crisis of Authority in Entertainment Television.....................1235 Negotiating the Mod: How The Mod Squad Played the Ideological Balancing Act in Prime Time.........................................1646 Make It Relevant: How Youth Rebellion Captured Prime Time in 1970 and 1971........................................................1997 Conclusion: Legacies............