This is interesting but incorrect if the thesis is that suddenly people spent a lot of time from the '50s on watching television (or the sitcom). Before TV people spent a ton of time watching movies. The 1940s was the peak years of movie watching in the US. When you went to a movie in those days you saw two and the numbers that Americans watched was much, much higher than today (or the late 50's), particularly per capita.

Then also before the rise of television there was enormously popular radio dramas that probably took up about the same amount of the average American's time as TV in the 30's and the 40's. So if this all represents an explosion of social surplus, I would argue that surplus existed in the US way before TV.