A Brief History of the TV Dinner
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According to the most widely accepted account, a Swanson salesman
named Gerry Thomas conceived the company's frozen dinners in late 1953
when he saw that the company had 260 tons of frozen turkey left over
after Thanksgiving, sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars. (The
train's refrigeration worked only when the cars were moving, so
Swanson had the trains travel back and forth between its Nebraska
headquarters and the East Coast "until panicked executives could
figure out what to do," according to Adweek.) Thomas had the idea to
add other holiday staples such as cornbread stuffing and sweet
potatoes, and to serve them alongside the bird in frozen, partitioned
aluminum trays designed to be heated in the oven. Betty Cronin,
Swanson's bacteriologist, helped the meals succeed with her research
into how to heat the meat and vegetables at the same time while
killing food-borne germs.
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As millions of white women entered the workforce in the early 1950s,
Mom was no longer always at home to cook elaborate meals--but now the
question of what to eat for dinner had a prepared answer. Some men
wrote angry letters to the Swanson company complaining about the loss
of home-cooked meals. For many families, though, TV dinners were just
the ticket. Pop them in the oven, and 25 minutes later, you could have
a full supper while enjoying the new national pastime: television.
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In 1950, only 9 percent of U.S. households had television sets--but by
1955, the number had risen to more than 64 percent, and by 1960, to
more than 87 percent. Swanson took full advantage of this trend, with
TV advertisements that depicted elegant, modern women serving these
novel meals to their families, or enjoying one themselves. "The best
fried chicken I know comes with a TV dinner," Barbra Streisand told
the New Yorker in 1962.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-tv-dinner-180976039/
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