Retired San Diego State University (SDSU) Reference Librarian, Charles V. Dintrone, was inspired to prepare the first edition of the Television Program Master Index when a student came to him for research help regarding the programme 60 Minutes. Though since the dawn of the medium, there would appear to be loads of information about television and much criticism about individual programmes, there hadn’t yet been an effortless resource to which to turn where these criticisms were compiled. What began as a card file for serving SDSU students grew into now the third edition of the Television Program Master Index, indexing dialogue and criticisms of 2,273 television programmes.
The word index comes from a Latin word meaning to point to; the Television Program Master Index does precisely this. It points the reader to the literature that discusses the included television programmes. The author offers no personal commentary of the literature, beyond his stated appraisal techniques and approaches for inclusion in his volume. This third edition expands the original parameters of programme worthiness and inclusiveness. Indexed mentions of programmes originate from books on broad topics or the show itself, dissertations and journal articles. Simply put, Dintrone assessed inclusion in the volume against three criteria: the source, the nature of the programme and the value of the reference; though these criteria necessarily require the editor’s subjectivity for source and programme selection.
The author claims that television programmes are included only if they appeared originally on one of the following networks: ABC, CBS, Dumont, Fox, NBC, UPN or WB, though I also see some PBS and AMC programmes. Shows included are mainly primetime; however, daytime and late-night shows make some appearances, such as Sesame Street and David Letterman. The earliest television programme included is Kraft Television Theatre (premiered in 1947) and the most recent is The Walking Dead (premiered in 2010). Some popular yet in syndication programmes are represented, like Welcome Back, Kotter, Beverly Hills 90210, The Brady Bunch and The Andy Griffith Show, and so are programmes of less continuing acclaim, such as The Lucie Arnaz Show, The Ropers and Phenom.
The first section of the book, which Dintrone aptly calls The Index, provides an alphabetical list of programmes by title, each followed by one or more citations to books, dissertations or journal articles that reference the programme. Some entries index a single literary referral, such as The Steve Harvey Show’s mention in Crouteau & Hoynes, 2000, p. 220 and Breaking Bad’s mention in Koepsell & Arp, 2012. Other entries index much more, such as Hill Street Blues’ full page of references and The Beverly Hillbillies’ half-page list. All referenced literary mentions are listed in The Index with author, date and page numbers. In the last 120 pages of the resource, every citation is provided in full and presented alphabetically by author. The Crouteau & Hoynes citation above, for example, refers to the book Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences by Pine Forge Press. Sources included in the index seem to range from 1960 to 2012. The onus of locating the actual book, dissertation or journal article is on the researcher.
In the event the researcher does not know the precise programme titles, Dintrone additionally supplies readers with two lists that point us to the literature from different perspectives. The Index to Groups or Classes of People lists references to the literature under headings such as African Americans, Aged, Clergy and Rural and Small Town Dwellers. The other tool is the appendix of Programs Listed by Genre, where one can quickly go to search under Cartoons, Comedies, Miniseries, Quiz Shows and others.
This resource would be a tremendously useful tool to carry in academic libraries where students might be researching critical and scholarly discourse around television programmes, perhaps in universities with courses in communications, media and popular culture. I might be more inclined to purchase the e-book version, which offers searching across the complete text. Two obvious limitations of the resource are the focus on television networks out of the USA and the omission of Internet-only programming, like Netflix’s House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, which are changing the way we watch programmes and likely to infiltrate new editions in the evolution of this resource.
