1970s Gender Roles

During the early years of television broadcasting, programming was designed to fit around day to day life, rather than disrupting or altering the lives of early television viewers, anymore than radio would have disrupted its listeners previously. This resulted in the formation of televisions largest primary audience, women, and this is how it's remained throughout most of the 1950s to the 1970s. The establishment of this mass female audience for television was primarily due to the social climate and lifestyles of the early television audiences and women were usually the only audience available for most of the day, with most adult women remaining home to manage the household, finance, and other family matters. however, in the 1970s the

Lucille Ball, co-creator and star of ‘I Love Lucy’ was tasked with bringing the popular radio show 'my favourite husband', which she also starred in, to television, and early on in this process adapted and changed the idea eventually creating her own show, alongside her husband Desi Arnaz, who Lucille insisted would take on the role of the titular characters husband. While the show was not solely down to Lucille Ball, she took a massive role within the production throughout I Love Lucy's running time, something that began to open up more roles for women within the television industry. “Despite the show’s outward adherence to some of the patriarchal ideology of the times, I Love Lucy was a vehicle for Lucille Ball to empower women, both within and outside the world of the show.“ the show itself was incredibly popular amongst the American audience throughout most of its run, ''I love Lucy was the top-rated network show four of its six seasons... [the] episode, 'Lucy goes to hospital' which aired January 19, 1953, is the third highest-rated network telecast ever,” (Landay: 2010, 74) and according to Nielsen Co. The episode reached 71.7% of households, getting 44 million viewers overall, “more than one quarter of the entire US population.” (Landay: 2010,