In short, it had become mindless content for consumption. And news programs, rather than taking the government to task for the drawn-out wars and scandals of the era, seemed to pivot into news magazines like 20/20 and 60 Minutes, aimed at enthralling and sometimes titillating the public. By the '70s, television turned from a predominantly live and informative medium into a wasteland of game shows and mindless procedurals.
Murrow and Walter Cronkite, as bastions of fairness and morality. A few decades later, what couldn't be fully appreciated was how prescient the screenplay was about conglomerates, capitalism and news as infotainment.Ĭhayefsky and director Sidney Lumet had a background in the so-called Golden Era of TV: the 1950s when most television was live and an era from which we now lionize the news and its presenters, including Edward R.
#INFAMOUS SECOND SON SONGS TV#
The dark comedy was written as a satire that, at the time, annoyed legions of TV news anchors and personalities. In the 45 years since its release, it's clear that both the populace and TV news have only gotten madder. People were yelling, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more.'"
On the occasion of Network getting its first airing on a network, (CBS in 1978), screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky told the Washington Post, "I get letters about it happening all the time - after Proposition 13, or during the New York blackout.
Recitations of the iconic line aren't just in songs and movies.