Comment Re:It's odd... (Score 1) 698
Good points... I am not sure, though, that the issues you mentioned necessarily reflect the cultural ideas. They represent issues that ended up changing the culture, but did that represent the culture at the time?
I would argue that because TV has to make a profit based on their viewing audience, they have to cater to said viewing audience, which means they typically have to provide shows that the viewing audience likes and/or identifies with. It's interesting to note when the shows you mentioned went off the air, presumably due to profitability. I don't remember seeing many of the happily-married-couple-with-2.5-kids-and-a-white-picket-fence TV shows after the 60s.
Of course, I'm not any sort of expert on this in the least. It's mostly just from watching and listening to (e.g., music or radio shows) media from those decades and observing how they changed throughout the decades. There WAS a big shift, as you say, in the 60s with regards to sexuality. And that, I think, was pretty clearly portrayed in er, consumer media (TV, music, movies). (Example: not being allowed to show a husband and wife in the same bed in TV shows, hence having separate twin/double beds