According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, TV networks during the 50's and 60's lumped together all viewers, and targeted the programming towards the values of white, middle-class Americans. This lead to television being used as a tool to bring American families together. That being said, it seems logical that censorship in the 50's and 60's was required to ensure that content was appropriate for all age groups, including children. Thus, topics like racism and sexuality, which had little to do with the typical American family, were excluded from content, creating an unbalanced programming set, for sure. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, "ethnic minorities were excluded, for the most part, from the television screen because they did not fit into the networks' assumptions about the viewing audience." Sexuality, too, was avoided in TV content because of the lack of equality for homosexuals, and the fact that TV was a familial tool; the topic of sex, be it heterosexual relations or homosexual relations was just too "taboo" to include in programming. For example, "The sexual relationship between Rob and Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show during the mid-1960s could only be implied. When the couple's bedroom was shown, twin beds diffused any explicit connotation that they had a physical relationship," according to the Museum of Broadcasting Communications.
Nowadays, there are ways to censor certain TV channels for children, and there are many more options. Back in the 50's and 60's, because the TV was still so new, they just did not have the same capabilities. However, the 1970's brought major changes to the rules of TV censorship, which I will explore in my next post.
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