Abstract
This essay examines the introduction of public affairs programming to the gendered space of US daytime television at the end of the 1950s. The two series I analyse, Woman! and Purex Specials for Women, addressed their audiences as a collective of ‘trapped housewives’, conflating isolation and depression and offering the medium of television as solace for both. I argue that the primetime news and public affairs' imperative to inform and educate became, by virtue of being transplanted to daytime, a commitment to cure and comfort.
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