Since it emerged from its disreputable romantic beginnings, the novel replaced history and poetry to become the most significant vehicle for storytelling and the transmission of cultural values. Readers were sent to the novel to cultivate their empathy, develop moral principles and explore ideas, and it survived the rise of film with its influence intact. But a new generation of television creators have taken our most popular medium and broken the shackles of format to create huge, rambling narratives that, by reaching millions of viewers, have become new cultural icons. Will this make novels a pastime for the intellectual one percent, or will it liberate their writers to find a new audience?Emily Nussbaum is the New Yorker's television critic. She has previously contributed essays and criticism to Slate, New York Magazine and the New York Times among others.Sir Salman Rushdie is one of the most celebrated novelists of our time and the author of the Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and most recently the memoir Joseph Anton.

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