Chapter 2: Television: Its Past, Present, and Future

I. Television Is a Unique Medium

• Since the 1950s, television has been recognized as the primary global catalyst for social and political dialogue; its convergence with the Internet and other venues compounds its potential as an agent for change

• Virtually every American home has at least one TV set, and more than 40% of Americans own three or more

• Now, people can also “watch TV” on their laptops, mobile phones, and other gadgets. This transfer of delivery systems on which we can watch TV is referred to as “place shifting”

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II. How Television Works

• Television content - what is seen on our sets - comes into our TV set via broadcast signals
• There are four broadcast signals
• Broadcast signals are transmitted through virtually the same radio waves that deliver a radio show

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^^Broadcast signals hold data, which includes:^^

• Images
• Sounds
• Graphic art
• Electronic lettering

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^^Broadcast signals control the:^^

• Brightness of the image

• Color of the image

• Audio from the image

• Synchronization of the transmitter and the receiver (a TV set)

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III. The Impact of Human Vision on Television

^^Watching TV involves several steps:^^

1. We look at an image on the screen
2. That picture stays imprinted on our retina for just a fraction of a second
3. This phenomenon is known as the persistence of vision; as we watch a sequence of rapid images at the right speed, an illusion is created of a complete and uninterrupted picture

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^^Lines and Pixels^^

• In early television, scanning wheels created a picture by scanning an image slowly, line by line
• The blurry images on the earliest sets were comprised of only 48 scanned lines. Now, modern color sets reflect a picture made from several hundred scanned lines
• These lines contain over 100,000 rectangular or square picture elements known as pixels, a short version of “picture elements”
• Our TV screen is coated with fluorescent compounds consisting of millions of minuscule dots that give off light as they’re hit by electrons at high speed
• For an image to be transmitted and broadcast by electronic impulses, this image is first broken down into tiny pixels using a scanning process. Thousands of these pixels form lines that are rapidly transmitted, one line at a time
• Each of these tiny pixels is made from three colors: red, green, and blue (RGB)
• The pixels are combined on a phosphor screen, close enough together that they appear to be just one color

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^^NTSC, PAL, or SECAM?^^

• The American broadcast standard is a 525-line, 30-frames-per-second picture called the NTSC format
• When a video camera is pointed at an image, the camera’s shutter opens and allows that image to enter the camera, just like a film camera. But the way TV captures that image is different than film; here, images are captured on film stock coated with an emulsion that’s chemically treated to be sensitive to light. It must be developed in a film lab before it can be viewed
• In television, the image is transposed electronically— either to videotape or to digital storage—and can be viewed immediately

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^^Aspect Ratios: 4:3 versus 16:9^^

• Since 1941, standard American TV sets were designed to display an aspect ratio of 4:3
• An HDTV set has a larger aspect ratio of 16:9 that better accommodates the way our eyes naturally see an image. With HDTV, we see more of what is in our field of vision. It gives the image a finer resolution, with more clarity of detail and about twice as many pixels and lines (1080) than traditional NTSC images

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IV. The Creators of Television

^^The Battle over Television’s Paternity:^^

• Paul Nipkow:
  • German engineer
  • In 1884 he designed the primary component of early mechanical television systems called the scanning disk He called his early conceptual design an “electric telescope,” although he never actually built the device itself
• Karl Braun:
  • German physicist
  • In 1897 he invented the first cathode-ray tube, which forms the basis of most modern TV sets
• Boris Rosing:
  • He was exploring the cathode-ray tube by 1906 He has been credited with discovering the theory for electronic television via wireless transmission in 1911 by using the Braun tube and the research of other scientists and engineers
  • One of Rosing’s students was Vladimir Zworykin, with whom Rosing created “very crude images” and whose work would be integral to the advancement of television
• John Logie Baird:
  • Scottish entrepreneur
  • Had an engineering background
  • Often called the pioneer of mechanical television
  • He was the first to transmit a moving image using a mechanical television system in 1925 By 1930, the British public could either buy Baird kits or readymade TV sets to receive the broadcasts
• Philo T. Farnsworth:
  • Mormon teenager who conceptualized the technology of television while plowing his rural fields
  • He had designed the first all-electronic television system, patenting it in 1927 and holding its public premiere in 1928 Farnsworth’s invention in tandem with Zworykin’s “Iconoscope” combined to create all-electronic broadcasting in 1939
• Charles Francis Jenkins:
  • He developed “radio movies to be broadcast for entertainment in the home.”
  • In 1925, he broadcast a toy windmill as a moving silhouette over a five-mile distance to Washington, D.C.
• Vladimir Zworykin:
  • Russian immigrant
  • His research contributed to RCA’s domination of the infant television market by first manufacturing TV sets, then setting up the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
  • His efforts resulted in the Iconoscope, an early electronic camera tube that he patented in 1923, as well as an all-electronic TV receiver that utilized a picture tube, called a kinescope

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^^Making a TV program relies on a complex system of factors:^^

• A good story
• Producers, writers, directors, actors, and a complete crew
• Money to finance it
• Time to complete it
• A guarantee that it will air or reach the desired end-user
• Camera and audio equipment to videotape the image and record the audio
• Technology to transmit pictures and sound
• Satellites, cable, and electricity

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V. Television’s Evolution

^^Guglielmo Marconi:^^

• Played a key role in the invention of the television
• Italian inventor
• Discovered a method of transmitting
• Morse code over limited distances by using electromagnetic waves In 1896 his “wireless” telegraph crossed the globe
• He claimed responsibility for the broadcast—a transmission of sound waves that could move in all directions, follow the earth’s curvature, and be picked up by a receiver on the other end

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^^David Sarnoff:^^

• Young Russian immigrant
• Worked as an office boy at Marconi’s company
• He realized the potential of Marconi’s growing company
• He is now known as one of the founding fathers of NBC

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^^Constantin Perskyi:^^

• He was the first person known to bring the word “television” into the public’s consciousness, during the First International Congress of Electricity

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^^Early Television and Commerce:^^

• @@1925@@ John Logie Baird in London and American Charles Jenkins held public demonstrations of television
• @@1926@@ The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) became a wholly-owned subsidiary of RCA
• In America, the television industry began with the radio
• RCA controlled the talent contracts of the most popular radio stars, writers, and producers of the era
• As NBC gained supremacy, Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System (CBS) was formed. Now NBC and CBS were rivals, and the concept of network competition was born
• By 1929, Baird Television Ltd. (via the BBC) transmitted primitive images through mechanical television

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VI. Television’s Transitions: From the 1920s to the

Present

%%Television’s Early Systems: Mechanical versus Electronic Television (the 1920s)%%

==Television: Greek (tele, far) and Latin (video, videre, I see) = Far I see==

• @@1941@@ A commercial licensing system began, all television stations in America were no longer called experimental

• @@1929@@ The crash of Wall Street devastated the country and most research into television came to a dead halt

• @@1938@@ DuMont manufactured the first all-electronic TV set that had a 14-inch tube and was called “The Clifton”

• @@1928@@ NBC’s experimental TV station—W2XBS later became WNBC—debuted with its broadcast of a blurred image of Felix the Cat, made of paper-mâché, rotating on a slow turntable

• Early television had limited audio and an image that was small and blurred

• It was based on a mechanical system with a rotating scanning disk as its basis

• By the end of the 1920s, there were at least 15 experimental television stations in America that transmitted limited programming via the mechanical television system

• Ultimately, it was Philo T. Farnsworth’s extensive work with his Image Dissector, along with Vladimir Zworykin’s Iconoscope, that converged as the genesis of modern television

• By the late 1930s, both the camera and the receiving TV set were electronic, making mechanical television a thing of the past

• Live radio shows and their beloved stars were wildly popular. Television was still considered a speculative venture.

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^^Paul Nipkow:^^

• He invented the design for the scanning disk

• It became the foundation for other mechanical television systems

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^^Charles Francis Jenkins:^^

• @@1925@@ Successfully transmitted an image that was mechanically scanned
• The same year John Logie Baird transmitted pictures in his lab

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^^Dr. Herbert Ives of Bell Telephone Labs:^^

• @@1927@@ Introduced his television research program, by transmitting an image of a tap dancer on top of a New York skyscraper, which was carried through phone wires

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^^Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson:^^

• @@1928@@ His first regular broadcasts on W2XB began in Schenectady, New York
• An engineer
• He demonstrated a television system that operated on revolving mirrors
• Unfortunately, very few people owned the Alexanderson TV sets that were necessary to watch the telecasts

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^^Baird Television:^^

• @@1928@@ They proclaimed the first all-mechanical television system, in color
• This system appeared to be satisfactory at the time; it would be several years before investors would fund research for a better way to capture, transmit, and receive an image by using electronics and moving away from the cumbersome mechanical system

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%%Television’s Experimental Steps (the 1930s)%%

• @@1930@@ John Logie Baird installed a television set in the Prime Minister’s official residence to premiere The Man with a Flower in His Mouth, Britain’s first TV drama

• @@1932@@ TV in the United Kingdom had its official launch, with the beginning of BBC One

• @@1933@@ A television revue called Looking In was broadcast by the BBC

• @@1936@@ Regularly scheduled programs were being transmitted from Alexandra Palace in London to less than a thousand people in the immediate vicinity

• @@1939@@ The escalation of World War II forced broadcasters to shut down operations for several years

• @@1937@@ Poland was still convinced that mechanical television was the route to take. A year later, the Soviet Union began limited transmissions

• @@1939@@ Japan, Italy, and Poland were broadcasting primitive pictures using the all-electronic system

• @@1934@@ Congress established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whose purpose was to patrol the airwaves

• @@1939@@ The theme of the World’s Fair in New York City was “The World of Tomorrow,” and it was an ideal forum for NBC to be the first network to broadcast a head of state, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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^^German Television:^^

• @@1929@@ They began as electromechanical broadcasts

• Transmitted without sound for five more years

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^^Canadian Television:^^

• @@1936@@ The Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) was formalized

• @@1952@@ The CBC began television broadcasting

• Eventually, it adopted the NTSC 525-line standard of its American neighbors

• The Montreal station is transmitted in both French and English, and its Toronto flagship station is in English

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^^French television:^^

• @@1935@@ Their first official channel debuted at a primitive 60 lines

• @@1935@@ By the end of the year, the channel was broadcasting from the Eiffel Tower on 180 lines

• @@1937@@ They had switched over to an electronic system

• @@1940@@ The tower’s transmitter was sabotaged, and French television was subsequently seized by the German occupying forces

• @@1944@@ Paris and its television channel were liberated by the Americans

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^^National Television System Committee^^^^:^^

• @@1936@@ A landmark breakthrough came with the introduction of coaxial cable
• @@1941@@ Comprised primarily of engineers, the NTSC researched and recommended a comprehensive set of standards for electronic television that was adopted
• This prompted the FCC to create the NTSC (the National Television System Committee)
• The majority of these original guidelines are still in effect today

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%%Television in the Trenches (the 1940s)%%

• @@1941@@ The Federal Communications Commission sanctioned the broadcast of commercials on television but soon was forced to reduce commercial TV’s air time from 15 hours a week to four hours
• @@1941@@ CBS and NBC officially became what we now call “commercial television,” replacing their former titles of “experimental” stations and allowing the broadcast of TV commercials
• @@1942-1945@@ The manufacture of TV and radio sets was halted
• Increased war efforts forced TV stations to make cutbacks in spite of early hopes for television’s advancement
• At the time, stations primarily transmitted sports events, news, and live theatre, as well as war-related information and training
• There were fewer broadcasts as employees went to fight in the war, and available programming was reduced drastically; many stations stopped transmission altogether
• Television advertising was born when Bulova watches produced the first TV commercial

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^^NBC:^^

• They had become so popular that the company was forced by the FCC to divide its extensive radio shows into two networks, the Blue and the Red:

  • The Blue network transmitted programs that were more cultural in content like drama, music, and thoughtful commentary
  • The Red network favored entertainment and comedy

• @@1943@@ RCA was forced to sell its Blue network and shortly after its sale, it was renamed the Blue Network Inc.

• @@1944@@ Blue Network Inc. became the American Broadcast Company (ABC) but would not be seen as a viable television network until the late 40s

• Eventually, almost 250 stations across the country received programs on NBC’s two networks

• Fearing the possibility of a monopoly, the FCC ruled that one company could no longer own more than one network

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^^DuMont Television Network:^^

• @@1939@@ Dr. Allen B. DuMont, one of the original pioneers in electronic television premiered his innovative and high-quality TV set at the World’s Fair
• @@1942@@ It was one of the few sources for TV programming as the Big Three (RCA, ABC, and CBS) cut back
• @@1946@@ DuMont Television Network formalized as a network
• @@1956@@ The network had been forced to broadcast on a lower UHF frequency than the standard VHF, the growing popularity of the other three networks finally forced the DuMont Network off the air after 10 memorable years
• They had begun limited broadcasting
• DuMont was equally as creative in his programming directions as he was in his technological advancement of television sets
• The DuMont Network was determined to provide comedy and entertainment for Americans that could help to combat the stress of war by introducing many of early television’s legends, including the brilliant comedian Ernie Kovacs, ventriloquist Paul Winchell with his dummy/sidekick Jerry Mahoney, and Fred Waring’s famous Glee Club

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%%Television after the War%%

• @@1946@@ The Soviet Union launched commercial television, and Nicaragua became the first country in South America to transmit television

• @@1947@@ ‘‘Howdy Doody’’ and ‘‘Meet the Press’’ —still broadcast today—debuted on NBC and the first televised World Series was broadcast on both NBC and the DuMont Television Network

• @@1948@@ Sales of TV sets had grown by over 500%

• @@1948-1949@@ BBC broadcast the Summer Olympics

• @@1949@@ Cuba became part of the global television broadcasting linkage

• @@1956@@ 85% of American homes had a TV set

• Research that had focused on television’s potential benefit to the war efforts ultimately thrust the United States into the forefront of technology and creative programming

• By the mid-1940s, the country’s nine original commercials (nonexperimental) TV stations had expanded to 48 stations

• The BBC resumed broadcasting and rather than becoming a commercial entity, chose to charge all owners of TV sets a licensing fee

• At the time, the average cost of a television set was $500, though an average annual salary was less than $3,000

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%%Television’s Golden Age (the 1950s)%%

• On the heels of Milton Berle’s show, which ran until 1956, came Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows, a 90-minute weekly comedy show that featured groundbreaking humor, clever writing, satire, sketches, and acting. Although its final episode was broadcast in 1954, its influence has rippled indelibly through eras of television humor in shows like Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live decades later
• Ed Sullivan was a rather stiff master of ceremonies with a dry delivery, yet his early show, Toast of the Town, and later, The Ed Sullivan Show, made entertainment legends of young talent such as Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley, Ingrid Bergman, and the Beatles

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^^The Birth of Madison Avenue:^^

• Advertisers recognized television’s value as a marketplace with which to sell products
• Television’s Golden Age had begun
• With the end of World War II, the economy essentially recovered and stabilized, and television became so popular that magazines regularly featured articles on home decorating with the TV set as the centerpiece

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^^The Era of Creative Drama and Breakthrough Comedy:^^

• TV producers and writers freely adapted their ideas from radio and traditional theater. For example, TV news consisted of the anchor simply reading the newspaper and news wire reports into the camera, with none of the visuals and sound effects in today’s news broadcasts
• CBS and NBC created legendary dramatic television with innovative anthology programmings
• By the mid-1950s, there were 14 live-drama series from which to choose
• Early television was transmitted life, broadcast from the studio directly to the viewer with all its visible glitches and mistakes—there was no censoring capacity of a 7-second delay or possibility of a second take
• The technical limitations of live broadcasts prevented the production and transmission of a show from any location other than television studios in New York City. This changed with the introduction of videotape in 1956; all programs were first to be taped, edited, then broadcast from a wider range of locations, and viewers experienced much clearer sound and picture
• Videotape made it possible to record and archive programs. Prior to videotape, the only way to record a broadcast had been to place a film camera in front of a television set and actually film the live broadcast
• The first broadcast use of videotape was a segment in color on the eccentric, taboo-breaking Jonathan Winters Show

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^^The Wide Reach of Cable:^^

• @@1951@@ Coaxial cable’s cross-country completion was celebrated. NBC could now broadcast coast-to-coast over its 61 stations
• The same year, the first experimental color TV transmissions were attempted but were a failure because black-and-white sets still couldn’t pick up shows that were transmitted in color
• ‘‘I Love Lucy’’ was the first show to have “repeats,” introducing the lucrative concept of syndication, where repeats of a program could be sold and rerun on various stations
• Quiz shows were another popular genre in the 1950s

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^^The FCC Steps In:^^

• @@1948@@ The government stopped issuing any additional broadcasting licenses. Instead, they focused their resources on harnessing the rapid expansion of television as a powerful business and cultural force to be reckoned with
• @@1950@@ Cable TV was launched as an effort to provide television to homes in rural areas that were unable to receive broadcast signals because of their distance from major transmission towers. And when cable TV finally provided the programming, television dealerships in these rural areas grew exponentially
• @@1952@@ TV’s political and electronic complexities were regulated by a set of guidelines that set new standards for flourishing areas of television, as well as for future media advances that then were only theoretical
• The FCC guidelines included the assignment of very high frequency (VHF) and ultra-high frequency (UHF) channels. These new standards for engineering and technology applications defined public service and educational programming and dedicated certain channels to be used only for educational and public access

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^^The Battle of the Big Three: NBC, CBS, and ABC:^^

• @@1951@@ The merger of ABC with United Paramount Theatres created a huge leap in creative programming that catapulted the young station into direct competition with NBC, CBS, and the renegade DuMont
• The Big Three networks battled for domination, which led to the development of the “network system” that included production services for writing and producing programs, sales and distribution of these programs to the network affiliates as well as to their Owned and Operated (O&O) stations, and generating advertising dollars with which to subsidize the network

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^^Television’s Early Influence on Politics:^^

• @@1947@@ TV bore witness to another breed of politics called McCarthyism. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had begun its investigation of the film industry as part of its sweep for “Communist infiltrators”
• @@1952@@ Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson bought 18 half-hour time slots, hoping to get his political message across to the American people. But a half-hour proved to be way too long and tedious for most people to watch, and viewers got angry when his speeches interrupted their favorite shows
• @@1952@@ During the political convention that the term “anchorman” was first used, describing Walter Cronkite’s convention coverage for CBS
• The first political TV ads had an explosive effect on television viewers, and could well have changed the outcome of a national election
• His rival, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, wisely made his TV ads short and sweet, brief 20-second spots that aired before or after popular shows like ‘‘I Love Lucy’’

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^^The Glitter of the Golden Age:^^

• @@1951@@ ‘‘I Love Lucy’’ was the first sitcom shot with the now-standard three-camera setup
• @@1952@@ Dave Garroway hosted the new Today Show, the first magazine-format program
• @@1955@@ Premiere of the country’s first “adult western,” Gunsmoke, which ran for 20 years
• @@1955@@ The Mickey Mouse Club put ABC on the map as a youth-oriented network
• CBS was the first network to introduce 30- minute soap operas rather than the traditional 15-minute dramas

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^^Television’s International Expansion:^^

• @@1950@@ The establishment of television stations in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina a year later, gave South America an international presence
• @@1951@@ European television expanded to Denmark and the Netherlands, and TV transmission returned to Poland
• @@1957@@ Portugal and Finland were transmitting programming, and by the end of the 1950s, more than 60 other countries would establish their own television broadcasting
• @@1952@@ Canadian television adopted several aspects of American television when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began its transmission
• @@1955@@ The establishment of ITV brought commercial television to the United Kingdom
• @@1953@@ Over 20 million viewers in England alone joined the rest of the world as they watched the coronation of a young Elizabeth II
• Globally, television gained real momentum during the 1950s

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%%The First Television Society (the 1960s)%%

• By the 1960s, Americans had become the first television society
• The three networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC— transmitted to around 200 affiliate stations, most in major metropolitan areas
• The network system included the program sponsor along with an advertising agency that created the commercials designed to sell these sponsors’ products
• By 1960, there were 640 community antenna television (CATV) systems that delivered all available channels from nearby metropolitan centers to more isolated areas

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^^An Era of Firsts:^^

• @@1962@@ The first television satellites to transmit transatlantic images were Relay and Telstar One
• @@1969@@ Over 600 million people around the globe saw the first TV transmission from the moon
• Because BBC2 was the first British channel to use UHF and 625-line pictures, its picture delivered a much higher picture resolution than the previous VHF 405-line system
• British programming in the 1960s was innovative and memorable, reinventing some genres and creating others

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^^Television as a New Business Model:^^

• @@1964@@ FCC finally approved RCA’s color system in America, opening the airwaves for broadcasting programs in bright, highly refined colors
• The television industry attracted producers, writers, directors, and actors who had previously worked only in film. There were many advantages to working in this medium: the exposure to TV was much wider than that of the average motion picture
• On Madison Avenue, advertising agencies had become a remarkable creative force, funneling huge sums into creating television campaigns, slogans, and commercials for television
• Although CBS had first originated the color system, RCA quickly flooded the market with black-and-white sets that could also receive programs that were broadcast in color
• By the mid-1960s, NBC was producing the majority of its prime-time programs on color film

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^^Television’s Technological Firsts:^^

The 1960s produced some technical elements that we now take for granted:

• Electronic character generator:
  • It could create opening and closing credits as well as superimpose words over a picture and lower thirds that can spell out the speaker’s name, occupation, and/or location under his or her picture on the screen
• Slo-mo:
  • The ability to first record a picture and then replay it in slow motion
• Other equipment and technology:
  • Color videotape machine
  • Videotape cartridge systems
  • Portable small cameras are known as “mini-cams”
  • Remote-controlled operation of radio and TV stations’ transmitters

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^^Television Shapes the Political Landscape:^^

• When a charismatic, articulate John F. Kennedy debated an unshaven and shifty-eyed Richard Nixon on television in 1960 in the “Great Debates,” the disparity between the two men was obvious, magnified by a new special effect called a split screen used for the first time during the debates. Interestingly, audiences who only listened to the debates on the radio picked Nixon as the winner
• Television featured prominently in national tragedy as well. Almost every American, 96% of the population, and much of the world, mourned the death of JFK by watching his funeral on television after his assassination

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^^TV Reveals the Horrors of War:^^

• The Vietnam War was the first war we watched almost as it was being waged
• The first satellite link to Asia revealed the harsh truths of the front lines and fanned the flames of American and global dissension
• When CBS aired a report that exposed the cruelty of a group of U.S. Marines in a Vietnam village, President Lyndon Johnson angrily attacked the network as being unpatriotic

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^^TV Boldly Reaches Out:^^

• @@1964@@ The Beatles made their legendary first appearance on Ed Sullivan Show
• @@1966@@ NBC became the first all-color network
• @@1967@@ Congress created PBS (the Public Broadcasting System)
• @@1969@@ Television debuted the iconic Sesame Street for children
• The relevance of TV documentaries broke new ground in the 1960s
• Over the span of this decade, more than 70 countries established their own networks and transmission systems

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%%Television in Transition (the 1970s)%%

• @@1970@@ The networks canceled at least 30 series that had been hit in the 1960s and replaced them with a new approach to programming that was targeted directly to a younger audience
• @@1979@@ Knots Landing brought the steaming sex and ongoing intrigue of daytime soap drama into prime time
• In the wake of Woodstock and the Vietnam War, television grew bolder in the 1970s
• A new genre of programming emerged in prime-time drama, as viewers entered the professional and personal lives of doctors, lawyers, cops, and detectives
• The genre of the “superwoman” forged new icons in the 1970s with Charlie’s Angels, Police Woman, Wonder Woman, and The Bionic Woman. Their characters reflected the burgeoning woman’s movement
• Sony developed the Portapak video camera that revolutionized electronic news gathering (ENG) with its portability and low cost and combined with satellite relay and distribution systems to transmit footage directly to the news stations
• The FCC ruled that shows broadcast during the Family Hour (7 to 9 p.m.) must be “wholesome” for family viewing

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^^Technology Marches into the 1970s:^^

• @@1972@@ Advancing technology resulted in a consumer-friendly video cassette recorder, followed four years later by Sony’s Betamax VCR
• By the next year, RCA had introduced a competitive standard, VHS, which eventually would dominate the market and push Betamax into obscurity
• The improvements in fiber-optic cable in 1970—delivering 65,000 times more data than copper wire—vastly improved television delivery to American homes
• In Japan, the show Abarembo Shogun was launched, a series that would prove successful for 25 years

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%%Television Merges with Electronics (the 1980s)%%

• With the widespread popularity of VCRs, viewers could now buy and rent movies, or record their favorite program on VHS tape and watch it at their leisure
• Creatively, producers tuned into television’s potential to reach an audience with innovative programming that was enhanced by special video effects, sophisticated video editing systems, and eye-pleasing uses of texts and fonts, moving logos, digitized backgrounds, page turns, multiple pictures on one screen, and layering pictures on top of one another
• At first, the editing costs were high and time-consuming, but by the mid-1980s, these video effects became easier to produce and less costly

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^^The Impact on the Youth Market:^^

• @@1980@@ Ted Turner founded the Cable News Network (CNN), an all-news channel
• @@1981@@ MTV went on the air with the defiant logo, “I want my MTV!”
• Competition between the networks increased in the 1980s with the emergence of popular new cable outlets

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^^The Expansion of Social Issues in Television:^^

• @@1983@@ Vatican City, for example, started broadcasting the same year as Andorra, Nepal, and Seychelles
• @@1986@@ The Oprah Winfrey Show became the first major talk show to be hosted by an African-American woman
• Live Aid’s 16-hour global satellite broadcast of musical artists and cultural icons raised millions of dollars for famine relief.
• The theme of “independence” ran through the television industry in the 1980s
• The birth of a fourth network called Fox Broadcasting Company challenged the iconic Big Three
• Independent production companies on both U.S. coasts broke away from programming stereotypes and developed an episodic drama that was thought-provoking and examined real issues through dimensional characters and multilayered plotlines
• Television competition in the United Kingdom heated up in the 1980s when Channel 4, Sky Television, and S4C joined the solid ranks of BBC1, BBC2, and ITV

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%%Television Moves toward Digital Technology (the 1990s)%%

• @@1995@@ The popularity of cable had a direct impact on the major networks as Fox and two new stations—UPN and the WB—reached wider and younger audiences, using improved cable technology and direct-broadcast satellite (DBS)
• @@1996@@ In response to increased violence and sex on TV, the public and subsequently the government forced the broadcasting industry to adopt a rating system for every show:
  • TV-Y
  • TV-Y7
  • TV-G
  • TV-PG
• Cable and satellite gave people more access to global events happening in real-time
• As competition grew between cable and networks, the focus of television programming became increasingly unconventional and volatile
• Cable sex shows and adult cartoons were in sharp contrast to a more sophisticated crop of made-for-TV movies dealing with mature issues like changing family values, gender bias, AIDS, homosexuality, and domestic abuse

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^^The Potential of High Definition Television:^^

• @@1997@@ The inevitability of HDTV was confirmed when the U.S. government allotted $70 billion worth of broadcast spectrum to its TV broadcasters. The mandate also required that after this cutoff date, all broadcasters must give back their original channels (extra broadcast spectrum) to the government
• The emphasis on high definition television (HDTV) grew substantially in the 1990s
• The broadcasters saw that images transmitted in digital HDTV were sharper and clearer than traditional standard definition television (SDTV) transmitted by analog signals
• As personal computers became more user-friendly and less expensive in the 1990s, the popularity of the Internet illustrated the potential of interconnectivity between computers and TV

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^^The Big Three Continue to Dominate:^^

• In the 1990s, NBC dominated the ratings with shows such as ‘‘Seinfeld’’, ‘‘Friends’’ and ‘‘Golden Girls’’
• ABC aired Roseanne, which featured the first “gay kiss” on television
• Each major network had its own version of a news magazine
• ‘‘The X Files’’ and ‘‘Star Trek: Deep Space 9’’ brought hard-core sci-fi fans back to television
• British television in the 1990s added Channel 5 to the growing roster of stations
• Programs from the United Kingdom would eventually be adapted for the U.S. and other international audiences, with shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

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%%The Transformation of Television in the Twenty-First Century (the 2000s)%%

• Television reflected the unimaginable reality of terrorism with the attacks of September 11, 2001, and in the weeks and months following
• Cable and network news covered the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the increase of international debate on the rights of America’s involvement in world politics
• News broadcasts relied more heavily on graphic elements, and musical effects, and added a running “ticker tape” below the anchors to cover additional news not included in the broadcast itself

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^^TV Gets Smarter, Funnier, and More Cynical:^^

• Comedy is a welcome relief in times of political crisis
• Episodic series continued to broaden political and cultural themes and storylines
• HBO saw a dramatic increase in subscribers and in Emmy awards with The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and an impressive roster of quality documentaries
• Talk shows reached out to broader audiences and topics
• Roughly 25% of American viewers under the age of 24 got their primary news and information from the satirical “fake news” show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Children’s television targeted diverse audiences with dimensional writing and production value on Nickelodeon, Noggin, and PBS with shows like Zoboomafoo, Dora the Explorer, Zoom, and Sesame Street
• Advertisers were attracted to sponsor shows aimed at the growing market of “tweens,” teens, and young adults
• “Format” shows that started in other countries came to America, and reconfigured as American Idol, Survivor, and Big Brother

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^^The Onslaught of Reality Programming:^^

• Arguably, the most influential and contested genre in the 21st century has been reality shows, also called unscripted programming
• It has spawned several all-reality channels, and at least 250 reality shows have aired, are scheduled for air, or have left the airwaves in less than a decade
• The unparalleled success of the reality genre over the last few years once again illustrates the power of the consumer
• Networks give their shows only a limited time to succeed and cancel them if they don’t perform well in their first few airings

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^^The Surge of Delivery Systems:^^

• Almost 100% of American homes have at least one television set; most homes have two or more, and there are over two billion TV sets around the globe

• It’s estimated that the average American watches around 32 hours of TV a week

• Technology is increasing the ways in which a television image can be transmitted— although even in mid-2008, some 13% of American homes were still using rabbit ear antennas to receive their programming

• The traditional television business models of the movie studio system and the Top Three networks have essentially been replaced by consolidations between big business and film and television powerhouses, often called conglomerates

• The control by these few powerful conglomerates spreads over vast domains:

  • Television stations
  • Theme parks
  • Movie studios
  • Newspapers
  • Home video
  • Publishing
  • Motion simulator rides
  • Video games
  • Internet networks

• The transmission services include:

  • Broadcast towers:
  • The traditional methods of delivering analog, and now digital television signals
  • Satellite dishes:
  • Large dishes that pick up video signals and transmit them to receivers
  • The systems depend on frequency modulation (FM) to send the video
  • Direct satellite system (DSS):
  • Smaller dishes receiving transmissions operate at a higher frequency and whose signals are converted to digital data
  • Internet
  • Video, film, and graphic materials can be transmitted and viewed or downloaded online
  • Mobile phones
  • As with the Internet, video transmissions and user-generated content can be viewed, saved, and/or forwarded via mobile phone

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VII. Television Merges with New Media

• The future of television relies in part on emerging trends in technology, but the primary function of television always comes down to storytelling

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^^The Transformative Trends in Television:^^

• Digital TV (DTV):
  • One of the advantages of digital television is that, with the same amount of bandwidth, five times more information can move through a digital signal than an analog one
  • A digital signal can transmit more data than an analog signal and stays consistent over wide distances
  • Digital images, for the most part, are sharper, have a deeper color, and are more immediate than the analog
  • According to FCC regulations, all U.S. broadcasters must have made the transition from the traditional one-channel analog signal to digital signals by February 2009
  • Although it can be expensive and time-consuming to modify the technology and replace the equipment, the broadcasters, advertisers, and producers are convinced it will pay off over time
  • Digital transmission can deliver data that gives our TV sets the potential to be interactive so that we can:
  • Vote
  • Shop
  • Order specialized programs
  • Is transmitted via:
  • An aerial tower
  • Phone lines
  • Cable into either a box on top of the user’s TV
  • Decoder built into the set
• Interactive TV (ITV):
  • Involves a digital signal that can transmit a multitude of images and sound as well as graphics, games, forms of information, and whatever available data a broadcaster wants to add to its signal
  • Networks air their shows with an Internet component of “Enhanced TV” that encourages viewers to play along with game shows and to watch the short ads that either play in the shows or are embedded
  • It includes:
  • Downloading TV shows from networks, channels, and independent producers
  • Putting our own user-generated content (UGC) onto spaces like YouTube, MySpace, and video blogs
  • Using our gaming devices to play games and connect them to the Internet
• Multicasting:
  • Broadcasters who transmit their programming via digital signals can send out one high-quality, high-definition picture—or, by using the same amount of signal, they can multicast four regular, standard-definition pictures
• Video on Demand (VOD):
  • A system that gives its user a variety of ways in which to watch video, film, and user-generated content
  • It searches, selects, stores, and screens content
• Digital Video Recorder (DVR):
  • Also called personal video recorders
  • They can be programmed to record several programs, which are then stored on a hard drive so that the user can choose when to view them
  • DVR is generally combined with digital TV service and can be accessed, played, rewound, and paused at will
  • DVRs also provide menus and guides that tell the viewer how to access a program and usually supply specific facts about each show

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^^Television now is controlled by the consumer and can be:^^

• Totally flexible
• Searched
• Manipulated
• Stored
• Accessed at the viewer’s whim
• Multichoice
• Able to be customized
• Interactive
• Watched when and where the viewer chooses

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^^Can It Make Money?:^^

• The traditional advertiser-supported television business models are clamoring to keep up with the rapid changes in technology
• Networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW, as well as many cable networks, are all supported by commercial advertisers
• Viewers are using their DVRs to fast-forward through the commercials. This threatens advertisers and sponsors, who are all scrambling to monetize their Internet presence
• The role of the audience is vital; the viewer is the end user and essentially sponsors the TV and new media industries
• This era is one of genuine transition—many of the old rules no longer apply, but the new rules have yet to be established or formalized. Everyone in the television medium, and those in related new media industries, are scrambling to outthink their competitors

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Summary

@@Review Questions:@@

1. What do you consider to be the most pivotal events in television’s early
   experimental years?
2. Define persistence of vision and pixels. What is their connection?
3. Choose three of television’s creators and discuss their contributions to television.
4. Choose one decade in television history. In your own words, discuss its progress,
   the risks taken, and the technical and creative advances that specifically
   characterize that era.
5. Choose one highlight in TV history that you feel is significant.
6. What is the FCC? The NTSC? What roles do they play?
7. Compare the NTSC, PAL, and SECAM systems.
8. Pick one fact from each decade that may have contributed to your desire to be
   a TV producer.
9. Identify one of your favorite programs and trace its ancestry back to earlier television programs.
   10. What are your own speculations about the future of television technologically?
       Creatively? Economically?

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