T104 | The Television Canon of Norman Lear | Tuesdays - 1:30 - 3:00 p.m. Zoom |
In a television career that spanned 70 years, producer Norman Lear shaped and then re-shaped the American prime-time landscape, first with the sitcom All in the Family in 1971 and then with a string of era-defining hit series that followed. In this course, we explore how it all happened, dating back to the start of TV itself, given that Lear's involvement with the medium began as it did, in and around 1950. With discussions and memories-sharing and especially with video clips both familiar and rare, we'll track his work both before and after All in the Family, up to and including his output in the streaming space as he neared his (wait for it) 100th birthday. Key battles, lesser hits, sizable misses, headline-making controversies, the laughs and sobs -- it's all here for the viewing and the sharing and the discussing. And it all serves to underscore Norman Lear's status as one of the most important media people of the 20th century. We all watched. Now we can all remember together.
Jim McKairnes is a former journalist and longtime LA-based CBS Television executive who publishes and teaches and guest-lectures about TV history. Since leaving CBS, he has served on the faculties of DePaul University, Temple University, and Middle Tennessee State University. He’s also taught at other OLLIs, among them Vanderbilt University, UCLA, and Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fresno. In 2021, he was one of the featured on-screen commentators for CNN's eight-part History of the Sitcom documentary series -- thus proving to his once-concerned parents once and for all that all that time in front of the TV as a child wasn't for naught. |
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