I was lucky. My early formative years were guided not only by two previous generations of immediate family and relatives but by an old Philco black and white television set, channels few, reception hardly optimal. Squinting at the screen, it connected me to the Golden Age of American Television, a period I consider beginning the late 1940s and terminating the late Sixties, about the time expanding formats and advertising started dominating. Until that phase of the Network era, television's great potential as educator and community service, promise once envisioned by Edward R. Morrow and pretty much limited to PBS nowadays, had a chance to be realized. Amidst live performances, anthologies, literary adaptations and romanticized slice-of-life dramas, many adapted from successful radio shows and movies, writers like Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, Paddy Chayefsky and Gore Vidal received critical acclaim for their teleplays. In front of cameras, braving Playhouse 90...