When Television Brought Us Together, Take Two

You've probably already noticed the new book cover with a familiar title just a few inches to the right of what you’re reading now. What’s the story? Glad you asked.

When Television Brought Us Together was first published in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic. Some writers have reported that their book sales increased during a time when people were forced to stay inside and away from others. I was not one of those writers. Sales were slow, and with the passage of time I can see the blame for that largely falls on myself.

This was not my first book – there were 15 others that preceded it – so I have no excuse for not remembering that in many ways writing the book is the easy part, or at least the part that is most enjoyable. What follows is marketing, promotion, and begging for attention from anyone who will listen. 

I never liked that part of the job, but I did it, and in most cases received help from prominent publishers who set me up with radio and podcast interviews, and got those previous titles reviewed (favorably, I’m happy to say) in publications like Entertainment Weekly.

None of that happened this time. I was working with a smaller publisher that did its best, and I was also dealing with family health issues that pulled my focus away from the attention that every new book requires to be successful. By the following year I was ready to write the whole experience off as a missed opportunity and move on.

Thankfully, the publisher was not ready to give up. Last year they came back to me and said, “Let’s give this another try.” And by then I was eager to oblige. “And if we’re going to do it again,” I said, “This time we’re going to do it right.”

What does that mean – for starters, it’s not just the same book with a new cover. There are about 20 new chapters, and revisions and updates to previous ones. And this time there are lots of photos as well, which I think are essential in a book about a visual medium, and that also make the reading experience more enjoyable.

I’m also in a much different place than I was in my life back in 2020. Being semi-retired I now have the time and the motivation to give this work the support it deserves.

What’s the Book About?

Based on sales numbers it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that most of you who have visited this blog more than 2.6 million times didn’t buy the first edition. If enough of you had then you wouldn’t be reading this now, and I’d be on a beach in the Seychelles. So let me try to change your mind.

Start with the obvious – it’s about the classic television shows we both love: Ozzie & Harriet, Donna Reed, Patty Duke, Dragnet, Bewitched, Jeannie, The Fugitive, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Lucy, Father Knows Best, Bob Newhart, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, That Girl…more than 50 shows profiled, plus soaps, westerns, superheroes and Saturday morning cartoons. The book covers why they’re special and selects the best episodes.

But it’s more than that. It’s also about how they reflected everyday life in America 40, 50, 60 years ago. About what that meant at the time, and why we still carry some of what we experienced from those shows with us. And it’s about the things we watched in those series, that we no longer see when we step outside our front door. That last point is expanded upon in “How Times Have Changed” essays, covering everything from magazines and gas stations to healthcare and air travel.

If that sounds like this is a “woe is me” or “angry man shakes fist at clouds” book, it’s not. I wanted to reinvigorate happy memories. I want readers to be inspired to pull a series off the DVD shelf, or find it on a streaming service, and enjoy it again (or perhaps experience it for the first time). I think you’ll smile and laugh, and for those times when it might make you wistful for the better rudiments of our past, it will also make you grateful that you came of age at a time before the culture went stupid in the head.

It’s also undeniable that subsequent generations had and will have a much different perspective on television that we did. The TV screen is no longer the only one in the house, and it’s certainly not as interesting or important to them as TikTok and other social media channels. Countless new shows debut every year and disappear just as quickly, and even the best of them are noticed by a tiny fraction of our population. That’s not what television used to be – and perhaps this is a book to share with the teens and 20-somethings in your life, and to talk about why we bonded with our favorite shows back then and maybe introduce them to a few examples. I think they hold up pretty well after all these years.

I’m happy to report that since the official publication date of September 1, the new book is already doing better than it was the first time around. If you’d like to check it out just click on the link below the book cover – and if you enjoy it, please leave a review on amazon or barnesandnoble.com, as that provides algorithmic support and boosts core search rankings.

Thanks.