The fourth network

the long version

"Daniel M. Kimmel's lively account of the FOX story carries the reader from the launch of the ill-fated Joan Rivers Show in 1986 to the challenging media environment of the twenty-first century - an environment FOX helped create. The Fourth Network is filled with behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, outsized personalities, improbable risk-takers, and the triumphs and disasters that led to such signature television series as The Simpsons, Beverly Hills 90210, The X-Files, and America's Most Wanted. For better or worse - or perhaps a bit of both - the story of the rise of FOX is the story of contemporary American television."--BOOK JACKET.