Tv’s American Dream: U.S. Television After the Great Recession

TV’s American Dream examines how the U.S. television industry in the 2010s pursued audiences whose ideas about hope, fairness, work, and economic class were shaped by the Great Recession.

While Americans navigated the trauma of the economic meltdown, the television industry faced growing pressure stemming from new program distribution and viewing methods, increasingly fragmented audiences, shifts in methods of advertising, and regulatory changes. To cut through the clutter of television content to appeal to elusive viewers, television programming reimagined some of the traditional representations of the American Dream and continued to bolster others.

Exploring shows on different platforms from legacy networks to Netflix, Selznick takes a deep dive into representations of the American Dream on television. Each chapter of this book focuses on a particular strategy mobilized in the second decade of the new century to speak to audiences about their expectations for and concerns about the Dream. Bringing together research on industrial practices with an examination of sociocultural context, TV’s American Dream demonstrates how interconnected forces give rise to the television programs that reinforce and redefine audiences’ ideas about the world in which they live.

Barbara Selznick is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Arizona, USA. She is the author of Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema (2001) and Global Television: Co-Producing Culture (2008). Her research has also appeared in edited book collections and journals.