In 1949, Rockwell created a picture reflecting one of the watershed moments in American history: the birth and spread of television. The vertical development of the image shows a young man climbing on a roof, intending to install the TV antenna at the house of a man far older than himself. The boy wears a baseball cap, holds the screwdriver in one hand, and stands astride the pointed roof, with the antenna cables rolled up to his chest and his mouth open, as if he were asking the owner of the house a question. The house is an old Victorian wooden building: under the cusp of the roof, there is a kind of rudder, which lacks rays. The covering of the house is made entirely of wood, and the man who lives there is dressed more classically, with a white shirt and suspenders, and is visibly happy for innovation.

With these details, Rockwell suggests the contrast between old and new. Observing the composition of the paintings, we can see how the TV antenna occupies the same position and has more or less the same form as the church steeples that are drawing in the landscape, on the right in the background. Rockwell is, ironically, and gently, saying that what we are witnessing is the beginning of a new religion, the transformation of time. From this moment, life will be 'before television' and 'after television'.