Television During the '60s

While America burned, television played the fiddle. That is as simple a way to describe television drama and comedies during much of the 1960s as anything else. As America became embroiled in social unrest, primetime television became a relatively undisturbed universe, offering an increasingly world-weary country a chance to escape into the fantasy worlds of suburban witches (Bewitched) and hillbillies in LaLa Land (The Beverly Hillbillies), coddling audiences with comforting platitudes to their easily resolved dilemmas at the end of half-hour programs. These shows offered a sense of conformity and stability lacking in the United States which, through the migration of African Americans from the south to the north, resulting in what was called the White Flight to the suburbs, and the growing tensions resulting from the generation gap between adults and youth, saw a rise in civil unrest over racial segregation, the civil rights movement, and the war in Vietnam. Shows such as the Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction created a close-knit small-town reality that was a balm against the alienation many Americans were now experiencing in the cities and suburbs, with characters as colorful and friendly as they were familiar to audiences. Other shows, such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, Perry Mason, Lassie, My Favorite Martian, Batman, and My Three Sons likewise presented characters and ideas that were comforting to American audiences and rarely challenged or presented the problems afflicting the United States during this period.