Discover how a documentary series became a media sensation 50 years ago and birthed a new television genre. AN AMERICAN FAMILY AT 50 revisits the original series, which chronicled seven months in the lives of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, and explores its enduring significance. Ten million viewers watched weekly, making the series watercooler conversation across the nation.
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An American Family at 50 is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
About The Show
Fifty years ago, PBS broadcast An American Family, a 12-week documentary series unlike any program that had been seen on broadcast television. Chronicling seven months in the lives of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, CA, it became a catalyst for a national conversation about American culture, society, and family. Ten million viewers a week watched, making the series watercooler conversation across the nation. AN AMERICAN FAMILY AT 50 revisits the series and explores its enduring significance
No one involved with the production anticipated the level of attention and commentary — both supportive and critical — that the series and the Loud family would receive. Newsweek Magazine put the series on its cover, TV appearances included “The Dick Cavett Show,” and even anthropologist Margaret Mead called it “as new and significant as the invention of drama or the novel.”
Opening the door to a new genre of television, An American Family birthed a category of nonfiction programming, first with MTV’s Real World and then the subsequent run of projects that purported to bring viewers authentic insights into real people’s lives. It continued to resonate, and in 2011, HBO made Cinema Verite, a fictional film about the making of the series. TV Guide has named An American Family among the 50 greatest shows of all time.
AN AMERICAN FAMILY AT 50 explores the breadth and depth of audience and critic’s reactions to the series and its impact on film and television going forward. It features interviews with Dick Cavett; Jonathan Murray, whose company produced the next phase of “reality television,” MTV’s Real World; Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the directors of Cinema Verite; and cast members Diane Lane, who played Pat Loud, the mother, and Thomas Decker, who played her son Lance.
An American Family both fascinated and troubled viewers as they realized that no American family conformed to the televised portrayals of fictional families like the Waltons and Ozzie and Harriet. In a time of changing values and questioning norms, the series was a bold initiative that gave Americans permission to be who they were and gave American television the opening to explore and celebrate a dramatically broader view of individuals, relationships, families and society.
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