Sergeant Bilko, the television programme mentioned in Source E (from an American television and radio magazine) was a very popular comedy about army life. Source E shows that its ratings were topped by Milton Berle’s show for the first time that season. The reason this show’s ratings increased was that Elvis was making his first television appearance on that show. Ratings were important for television programmes as all TV channels relied on advertising revenue to pay for their programmes. Source E is therefore saying that Elvis is making a huge impact, as he is already well known enough (this was only his first television appearance) to draw much higher numbers of viewers than the show would usually expect (people wanted to watch him). This supports the evidence Source B gives that Elvis is already making a big impact. The newspaper extracts in B were aimed at the older generation, so it is possible that Source E only partly supports B in that it is adults who have a negative view of Elvis. The increase in ratings may have been caused by more young people tuning in than usual, as this was the age group who found Elvis most attractive. Source E opposes the views given in Source B that Elvis should not have been allowed to perform on TV, as his appearance in fact got many more people to watch the Milton Berle Show than usual, showing that people did want to see him.
Source F, a photograph of Elvis performing, was produced in 1956, the same year as his controversial appearance on the Milton Berle Show. Elvis is therefore still at the beginning of his career. Despite this, Elvis is pictured performing to a crowd of excited, screaming teenage girls, supporting the evidence given by Source B that he was having a big impact. Because the crowd seems to consist of young girls, the photograph supports the information from B that Elvis was popular with the younger generation. Source B shows he is extremely unpopular with the adult generation, and Source F would seem to support this as it is teenagers who have gone to see Elvis. One of the reasons why adults (and parents in particular) disliked Elvis so much, capitalized on by the newspapers as shown in Source B, was that they were worried about his influence on their children. After his first major TV appearance the world-famous evangelist Billy Graham was quoted as saying, “Elvis isn’t the kind of boy I’d like my children to see”. Source F supports the suggestions made in Source B that Elvis could be bad news for the morality of the youth (“he gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar”) that would definitely cause parents to despise him, as it appears to show teenagers out of control, screaming and going wild over Elvis. Nice young girls (often dressed in starched cottons and white gloves) were not ‘supposed’ to heave and scream at the sight of a man dancing like an animal.
Source F is not necessarily a reliable source as it only captures one moment in time (only a few girls are actually shown, and only one of his movements), though Source B does suggest that the suggestive dancing is a normal part of his concerts. Also it is impossible to be sure if the girls are actually screaming about Elvis and because of his dancing, and whether the girls are actually out of control or not.
All of these sources show that Elvis did make an impact whether he was liked or disliked. The age group he had a positive impact on (though not from the adult point of view as shown in B) were the teenagers. This was because they liked his music and also his animalistic movement and rebellious style, as shown in Source F, which appears to show young girls going wild as Elvis performs one of his famous ‘primitive’ movements.