Jeff Kisseloff

In his three-hour interview, Jeff Kisseloff talks about his early years, and the fact that his family were early adopters of television, color television, and cable television. He describes doing the research and conducting the interviews for his book The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1929-1961, which included speaking to Elma Farnsworth, Frank Stanton, Bob Keeshan, Dominick Dunne, and many others. Kisseloff chronicles the various narratives that emerged during his interviews for the book, including the Quiz Show Scandals, the Hollywood Blacklist, and the decline of the medium into what Newton N. Minow called “a vast wasteland.” He discusses his early involvement with the Archive of American Television, and where he hopes The Interviews: An Oral History of Television will go in the future. He speaks of his then-current project on Alger Hiss, who Kisseloff determined through research and interviews was innocent of spying. He details the challenge of maintaining historical data in the digital age and proposes a solution to this problem. Adrienne Faillace conducted the interview on December 12, 2018 in Saugerties, NY.