Total Television: Revised Edition (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're a fan or student of American TV, you must have this book, which provides descriptions of 5,400 series and their major participants from 1948 to 1995. The information is presented in alphabetical order in entries up to several pages long. Special broadcasts are also listed chronologically in an appendix. Thankfully, the index is comprehensive, so you can easily trace the mayfly-like flitting of stars, personalities, and lesser deities from show to show. And, I don't usually say this, but it's really a heck of a bargain.

Review

There are other guides to television, but nothing so vast, so thick, so comprehensive as this one. -- Los Angeles Times

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1254 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); 4 Sub edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140249168
• ISBN-13: 978-0140249163
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #635,578 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Total Television Total Success For TV Age At Any Page, September 20, 2000

By	Anthony G Pizza "trivialtony" (FL) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Like author/critics from Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael to Joel Whitburn and Fred Bronson, TV historian Alex McNeil has a fun but never-ending job. He charts the myriad of programs that have appeared on broadcast networks (including those, like Dumont, which no longer exist), cable, and in syndication. His fun comes in praising the praiseworthy, trashing the deserving, goreing sacred Hollywood cows and keeping a critical expert's eye on important pop culture strands and shifts.

"Total Television" is exhaustive, enjoyable, fun and fact-filled reading from any page it's read. McNeil generously shares facts, transporting you to time, channel, cast (sometimes literally in hundreds) and summaries of thousands of familiar and long-forgotten TV shows. TV's giants (from Walt Disney and Captain Kangaroo to Oprah Winfrey and "Monday Night Football") receive their fair space, while McNeil also chronicles changes in TV daytime dramas, game, talk, and sports shows.

McNeil's consistent irreverence and historical perspective is remarkable. He salutes Walt Disney for creating TV's first mini-series (the wildly popular "Davy Crockett") while also creating TV's first "synergy" (TV show promotes park and films, which promote movies and TV show).

McNeil also gives long-running, non-cult classics like "Gunsmoke," "Knots Landing," and "Wagon Train" their proper respect while chronicling the knotty, behind-the-scenes problems plaguing stars from Nat Cole to Judy Garland to Jerry Lewis to Sammy Davis, Jr., and the respective failures of their 50s-60s variety shows. (He recalls failed sitcoms like "Family Dog" and "The Waverly Wonders" with especially sweet relish). McNeil also features sections on landmark TV moments (which decrease in number and size from the mid-70s), full TV schedules, and Emmy winners.

This is NOT a book read cover to cover, even by diligent TV fans. Series' with same or similar titles, long paragraphs retelling old tales of Roseanne Barr and 1992's "Tonight Show" fiasco (in an otherwise fascinating entry on that TV staple) are redundant one after another. But in preferably small portions, "Total Television" is a refreshingly unobjective reference book of the best, worst, longest and least TV's omnipotentence has presented.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive panorama of the TV era, December 18, 2000

By	Michael J. Mazza (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Alex McNeill's "Total Television" is one of those reference works which is useful both for settling trivia arguments at parties and for helping those engaged in serious scholarly study of television programs and their impact upon popular culture. As of this review, "Total Television" is in its fourth edition.

The book is basically an alphabetical encyclopedia of thousands of television programs in every possible genre: dramas, sitcoms, game shows, cartoons, and more. Each entry lists the series' air dates, principal performers, and other relevant data.

In addition to the main body of encyclopedic entries, the book includes a wealth of supplemental features: lists of Emmy winners, a chronological gathering of one-shot specials, and more. Particularly interesting are the programming grids, which show the nightly lineups on each network for each night of the week. You can turn to a season (say, 1951-52) and see what choices the American TV viewer had each night! This feature is great for historians.

Although most of the entries on each series are brief, McNeill spends more time and space on certain series of outstanding impact. These extended articles on "All in the Family," "CBS Evening News," "Dallas," "The Ed Sullivan Show," and more are truly fascinating.

TV has been derided by many with such epithets as "the Boob Tube" and "The Idiot Box." On the other hand, it was praised in an episode of "The Simpsons" as "teacher, mother. . . secret lover." McNeill captures TV in all of its facets: from the depths of inanity to the heights of cultural significance. This book is a great achievement whose reputation, I believe, will increase with future editions.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate TV Reference, January 23, 2004

By	K. Munch "Wordman" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Alex McNeil's "Total Television" is the Mother of all TV reference volumes. If you can't find it here, it ain't worth knowin' about. How he was able to compile all this information covering 50+ years of TV is beyond me. Crack open this book at any page and you will be reading for hours, probably days.