"Wives, he wrote, "have left the housework undone and husbands have slipped away from their jobs to watch." The subject of all this excitement was an unlikely one: Congressional hearings. Hours and hours of them. What made it all so fascinating was the topic: Organized crime. Gangsters. Or, as Americans were learning right there on TV, something called "the Mafia.""
"The star witness of the New York City hearings the week of March 12, 1951, was Frank Costello head of the Luciano crime family and the most powerful mobster in the United States. The televised hearings fueled an obsession in American popular culture with gangsters and the Mafia in the 1950s that continues today, and marked the emergence of television as a powerful force in American life."
""This was one of the first big moments of everybody watching the same thing at the same time, which would come to define so much of the second half of the 20th century," says Robert Thompson, a professor of television studies."
In March 1951, New York City experienced an unprecedented phenomenon when Congressional hearings investigating organized crime were broadcast live on television. The Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce examined widespread violent crime and political corruption linked to organized mobs, calling hundreds of witnesses including notorious figures like Joe Adonis, Mickey Cohen, and Frank Costello, head of the Luciano crime family. The hearings captivated the public, with citizens abandoning work and household duties to watch. Television critic Jack Gould described the city as being under a "hypnotic spell." These televised proceedings marked a watershed moment in American media history, representing one of the first instances of mass simultaneous viewership and establishing television as a powerful cultural force that would define the latter twentieth century.
Read at www.npr.org
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