[In the following review, Tuchman praises Inside Prime Time as cultural criticism, but suggests that analogies to similar corporate practices in other fields outside the television industry would have been helpful.]

Every now and again, a disgruntled Hollywood writer or producer, whose slightly unorthodox idea for a series has been “ruined” by the networks, bares his soul and tells all: TV chases after money. The television industry is an old boys' network of fellas out to earn the big buck by manufacturing kitsch. They use those shows to sell the largest possible audience to the advertisers who finance America's dominant and probably most profitable medium. “Nobody but me,” that bitter expatriate invariably complains, “cares about quality.”

Inside Prime Time presents the richest information ever collected on the inner workings of America's chief culture industry. Todd Gitlin interviewed roughly two hundred men and (a few) women who, with others, write, produce, direct, and manage network television, including its systematically associated production companies. Some are bitter, some resigned, some cautious, some just out for a buck. All seem to be filtered through the eyes of that disgruntled writer or producer. There are talented guys and bad guys. Supposedly, people with talent are serving their apprenticeship so they can move on to the big screen. (Muriel Cantor reported a similar phenomenon in her 1971 The Hollywood TV Producer, although she emphasized how a concern for perfecting cinematic skills leads some men to tolerate network interference rather than to seek professional autonomy elsewhere, as others do.) Everyone seems to be on the make or protecting the position they have already made. All seem intent on getting along and selling their ideas. In the lingo Gitlin occasionally adopts, they want to “give good meeting” in the innumerable conferences and conversations in which the creative folk and managers cooperate and spar.

Reasonably, Gitlin suggests that “the deal is the art form.” That observation makes sense. I wish Gitlin had used it to notice analogies between TV-work and other work. As sociologist Everett C. Hughes explained years ago, when people can't control the outcome of their work, they emphasize what they can control to show how hard they're trying. Unable to explain why Johnny can't read, teachers point to the thoroughness of their lesson plan. Psychiatrists can't prove they have helped their patients; so they construct intricate life histories. Unable to predict a show's ratings, people in the TV industry “give good meeting.”

Like that expatriate, though, Gitlin sees this emphasis on meetings as somehow inappropriate to art, or in his phrase “even entertainment.” Gitlin condemns the “attitudes” rampant in the industry. “Most network television is simply bad—inert, derivative, cardboard—because no one with clout cares enough to make it otherwise. It is good enough for its purposes.” For Gitlin, TV just won't do. As I read and reread Inside Prime Time, I increasingly felt that Gitlin, a published poet, mistakenly believes that art, “real art,” can emerge only from the unitary vision of a man who cares.

I write “man” consciously. Although Gitlin interviewed at least one woman who is a self-described member of the boys' network (and whose lover identifies her as a feminist), he seems oblivious to her analogues in other industries and singularly uncurious about these women. Even as Gitlin carefully details some men's passionate feelings about ideas they want to express but cannot get by the networks, he doesn't think to ask how these women feel when they attend meetings where the old boys discuss “T & A” shows. (The industry-coined initials stand for “tits and asses,” programs such as Three's Company or the now-defunct Charlie's Angels which were afflicted by the jigglies.)

Interwoven with this critical, literary, and often wittily written condemnation of kitsch is another more sophisticated analysis. In it, Gitlin details how the drive for corporate profit in today's culture industries militates against the production and acceptance, let alone celebration, of good shows. In our society, capital is rewarded when it is risked. Frequently using the words of those interviewed, Gitlin skillfully describes how in this capitalist business, all activity is geared toward minimizing the risk. “Safety first is the network rule.”

To obey that rule, people in the industry reproduce the formula of a genre until that genre is played out. They “create” spinoffs; hoping they have identified the key elements in the success of a program, they try to shape a clone. Most important, they seek to mold what Gitlin aptly terms “recombinants”—recombinations of elements from several proven successes brewed together with a pinch of hope. The search for recombinants so affects the industry that its men and women think in terms of what something's like, not what it is. “An ad agency referred to CBS's series Falcon Crest as ‘a taste of The Good Earth and a dash of Dallas in the middle of a California vineyard.’” When a program escapes “the industrialization of mannerism” identified as TV's dominant style, it may be undercut through scheduling; say, put to play “one on one” against a ratings hit or shuffled into a different time-slot each week. To flesh his portrait, Gitlin traces the rise, transmogrifications, and fall of some promising programs, paying special attention to the refreshingly honest and short-lived American Dream.

Ultimately, capitalism does not explain all. And so, Inside Prime Time contains a third theme. That one's about the politics of hermeneutics or how, when managers seek to explain why one program succeeded and another failed, they discredit liberalism, not to speak of radicalism; accede to conservativism, including the Moral Majority; misconstrue the “mood of the country” as more reactionary than it has actually been; and identify social problems with the little guy or gal overcoming death, disease, or disaster. Again Gitlin provides an extended example by focusing upon a show (Bitter Harvest, a “Movie of the Week” starring Ron Howard) whose radical potential was dissipated by everyone's implicit understanding of how TV gets done.

Gitlin's treatment of the industry's interpretation of programs is less satisfying than his other discussions. Thus, although his own discussions of plots and characters are frequently shrewd and insightful, I get queasy about his interpretations of others' interpretations of interpretations of a show. I wonder how he can announce that a show failed “because,” when he has been emphasizing how no one can either predict or even postdict success or failure. Dealing with Hollywood's “word” about shows, Gitlin writes as though the facts speak for themselves, even though his earlier The Whole World Is Watching, on the effects of news coverage on Students for a Democratic Society, clearly acknowledges how the facts never stand on their own.

Sometimes I wish that sociologist Gitlin were more sociologically systematic but he clearly had no intention of writing for that narrower audience. Sometimes I wish he had drawn the obvious analogies to other industries and spoken about risk-taking in the automobile industry or how Harvard M.B.A.'s are said to search for personal success and profit before success for their corporation. But Gitlin is writing about culture, not work. What Gitlin did do, he did very well. Inside Prime Time is superb cultural criticism: a radical expressing dismay at a nonpoliticized America and an audience which doesn't have politics in its soul; a radical discussing what he doesn't like in America by dissecting and condemning the consciousness industry that contributes so significantly to the state of that soul.