TV’s American Dream

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.

As Americans navigated the trauma of the economic meltdown, new program distribution and viewing methods, increasingly fragmented audiences, shifts in methods of advertising, and regulatory changes increased pressure on program distributors and producers to cut through the clutter of television content to reach valuable younger audiences. 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, including The Office, Friends, Atlanta, Daredevil, Arrow, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 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.