In less than half a century, television has replaced the hearth as the focus point of America’s living rooms. Protestants, like the rest of Americans, have had to adapt to this new cultural reality. Most Americans in 1995 could list the names of famous televangelists, but would be hard pressed to think of one mainline preacher. By intention and definition, Mainline Protestantism is culturally adaptive, however, in the case of television it yielded to Evangelicalism. The consequence has been fateful for American culture. As TV emerged to be a dominant force in shaping American ethical, religious, and political values, Evangelicalism quickly adapted to the new reality, leaving Mainline Protestantism, the nominal faith of one quarter of Americans, on the sidelines. In this dissertation, I argue that preexistent cultural and theological assumptions largely shaped the different ways in which evangelical and mainline Protestants received television. In a sequence of chapters, I describe the state of American Protestantism in the post-W.W.II era and trace Evangelical and Mainline Protestant rhetorical and practical responses to early television (1945-1960). The final chapters bring the story to the days of the televangelist scandals. I conclude by analyzing the repercussions of these different Protestant responses to television.