This volume contains twenty critical essays of television during the 1980s. The author, a veteran media critic, offers his views on topics such as television consumption and other trends. He argues that children's shows are calculated to create future consumers; the spreading influence of USA Today-type news broadcasts that do not cover news, and only consist of headlines; and the unending procession of talk-show celebrities who have no claim to fame other than their celebrity. The author details how television altered itself during this decade details how this was accomplished, how the young mastermind of MTV changed the face of television, how television altered its own view of itself, how the audience became part of television in an interactive way, how television became the audience that became the transfer agent to a larger audience (reality programming), how television became an influential politician to be reckoned with.