How Sweet it was

Book excerpt: One can obtain as many opinions about television as there are people with eyes. No two people see it in exactly the same way. You may not be aware of it, but up there, in that compartment of your brain where memories are stored, all sorts of strange images are stockpiled. The purpose of this book is to coax those memories out of their hiding places and bring them front and center, where you can savor them anew. Although this book is intended to be a comprehensive review of television during the past twenty years-the two decades that have passed since the medium became a commercial reality- it is not to be just a scholarly history. The programs and people represented here were chosen not because they were "good" or "popular" or "successful," but because each contributed, in some large or small way, to the progress of television.