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When Women Invented Television
Book

When Women Invented Television

The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Harper, 2021

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Background
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

When you think of TV’s infancy, you may not think of Gertrude Berg, Irna Phillips, Hazel Scott or even Betty White though she enjoyed TV’s longest career. You might presume that 1950s “mad men” created today’s formats, from talk shows to news hours, but those came later, with less colorful, more patriarchal content. At first, no one knew what to do with the medium, but these women saw its potential and built their careers. They worked for local stations, national brands and upstart networks, creating soaps and sitcoms and ad-libbing for hours. Jennifer Keishin Armstrong weaves their stories together episodically, one cliff-hanger at a time, to portray the mostly unsung women who helped invent TV viewing as we know it.

Take-Aways

  • Gertrude Berg produced, wrote and starred in The Goldbergs, the template for the family sitcom.
  • Showrunner Irna Phillips pioneered radio soap operas and exported them to television.
  • With on-air charm and comedic ability, Betty White ad-libbed her path to a singular career as an actor and producer.

About the Author

A former staff journalist for Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong wrote Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything; Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic; and Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love.

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