Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Television: The New Season: Perspiring with Relevance
What did the Manhattan moguls of prime-time television do with the new season? To hear them talk, they discovered America. Blurb writers who could not spell "relevant" collected severance. Faster than a speeding memo, the West Coast got the word that the medium must have a message: entertainment TV could be cool no more but must be aflame, or at least perspiring, with social consciousness.
The premieres of NBC's and CBS's new shows last week (ABC held its fire until this week) suggest that life in televisionland is no more real this season than...
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