page_title: Rod Serling
section_title: Television
hierarchical_section_title: Rod Serling / Legacy / Television
caption_attribution_description: English: Publicity photograph taken on the production set of The Sad and Lonely Sundays, a second unsold pilot of the abandoned medical drama television project The Oath. Pictured were Sam Jaffe (left) and Jack Albertson, who appeared in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In the press release information, this presentation was supposed to air on Thursday, August 26, 1976, and Albertson's name was circled.
context_page_description: Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and war.
context_section_description: Serling began his career when television was a new medium. The first public viewing of an all-electronic television was presented by inventor Philo Farnsworth at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934, when Serling was nine years old. Commercial television officially started on July 1, 1941. At the time, there were fewer than seven thousand television sets in the United States, and very few of those were in private homes. Only five months later, the U.S. entered World War II, and the television business was put on hold until the war's end, as many of the sets were confiscated by the government and repurposed to train air-raid wardens. After World War II ended, money began flowing toward the new medium of television, coinciding with the beginning of Serling's writing career. Early programming consisted of newsreels, sporting events and what would be called public-access television today. It was not until 1948 that filmed dramas were first shown, beginning with a show called Public Prosecutor. Serling began having serious dramas produced in 1950 and is given credit as one of the first to write scripts specifically for television. As such, he is said to have helped legitimize television drama.
  Serling worried that television was on the verge of suffering the same decline as radio. He encouraged sponsors to see television as a platform for the kind of dramatic entertainment that could address important social matters through subtle meanings, instead of being "an animated billboard."
  The format of writing for television was changing rapidly in the early years, but eventually, it settled into a pattern of commercial breaks on each quarter-hour. Writers were forced to work these breaks into their scripts. Serling's response to this convention was, "How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form." Throughout his career Serling helped to mold the future of television.
caption: Sam Jaffe and Jack Albertson in Serling's 1976 posthumous television special "The Sad and Lonely Sundays", an episode of the abandoned series The Oath
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