TELEVISION Television has replaced the popular novel-and the movies-as Ameri-ca's chief medium of entertainment, and scores of scholars and journalists have attempted to explain this phenomenon. The Library of Con- gress card catalog contains entries for more than 6,000 works on televi- sion. Yet, among them, truly il- luminating studies are few. The best one-volume history is Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (Oxford, 1975, cloth; 1977, paper) Erik Barnouw, a former Columbia...