As TheHistoryOfTelevision. Black and white television was thought of as old and it was time to do something new. This is when color television systems first began to be considered seriously. CBS was the first company to create a color television set. Thus, it was not compatible with black and white TV sets in use across America.
Unfazed, RCA continued to develop their own color television system that would be compatible with its customers RCA sets. Few people owned color TV sets between and However, starting in , color TV programming was broadcast across America, leading to a surge in sales of color television sets.
Between the s and s, television turned from a niche technology into a critical form of communication found in living rooms across the nation. A vast number of changes and improvements took place in the second half of the 20th century to make the television into what it is today. Today, online television and other broadcasting technologies have changed the future of traditional TV.
Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Home » History » History of the Television. History of the Television Televisions can be found in billions of homes around the world. Mechanical Televisions in the s and Early s Prior to electric televisions, we had mechanical televisions.
How Did Early Televisions Work? Mechanical Televisions Mechanical televisions relied on rotating disks to transmit images from a transmitter to the receiver. Color Television in America Color television traces its roots as far back as , when a German inventor received a patent for color television. Timeline of TV History Between the s and s Between the s and s, television turned from a niche technology into a critical form of communication found in living rooms across the nation.
This act was a supplement to the Communications Act of , which required broadcasters to give equal airtime to candidates running in elections. The half-hour sitcom ranked as the number one program in the nation for four of its first six full seasons. Only 12 customers across America could see the first color TV broadcast. Kennedy and Richard Nixon were broadcast throughout the year across the country, forever changing the way presidents would campaign.
This meant 30 minutes of programming each night were given back to local stations in the top 50 markets, encouraging the production of local programming. ESPN would go on to become the largest and most successful basic cable channel.
Johnson Hur. After having graduated with a degree in Finance and working for a Fortune company for several years, Johnson decided to follow his passion by embarking on a path to the digital world. He has over 8 years of experience with large companies setting marketing strategy. One comment. Mary October 24, at pm. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. All Right Reserved. PBS comprises more than stations, more than any commercial network.
Some of the most praised programs on PBS, such as the dramatic series Upstairs, Downstairs , have been imports from Britain, which has long had a reputation for producing high-quality television. Among the many special series produced for public broadcasting, The Civil War , a five-part historical documentary, was particularly successful and won some of the largest audiences ever achieved by public TV.
PBS funds come from three major sources: congressional appropriations which suffered substantial cuts beginning in , viewer donations, and private corporate underwriters. None of these types of contributions are problem-free.
Government funding brings the possibility of government interference. Conservatives, dating back to the Nixon administration, have pressured PBS to make its programming less liberal. The search for viewer donations has led to long on-air fundraising campaigns. And some critics contend that the need to win corporate support discourages programming that might challenge corporate values. Large antennas erected in high places gave everyone connected the chance to receive all the channels available in the nearest city.
It soon became apparent, however, that the "television deprived" were not the only viewers who might want access to additional channels and additional programming.
In New York City, cable operators contracted to broadcast the home games of the local basketball and hockey teams. By cable had more than 80, subscribers in New York. Then networks specifically designed to be distributed by the cable system began to appear: Time Inc.
Television's development followed different patterns in other countries. Often government, not private corporations, owned some, most, or all of the major networks. In Great Britain the British Broadcasting Corporation, the country's dominant radio broadcaster, established and retained dominance over television.
The BBC, funded by a tax on the sale of television sets, established a worldwide reputation for producing quality programming. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also freed by government support from many commercial pressures, was praised by some observers for the seriousness of much of its news and public-affairs programming.
France's major television networks were also supported by the government; however, in France that support was seen as encouraging a tilt in news coverage toward the side of whatever party happened to be in power.
By the late s and s, as cable and direct-satellite television systems increased the number of channels, the hold of these government-funded networks began to weaken. Most countries around the world began moving more toward the U. By the s politicians and government leaders were familiar enough with the workings of television to be able to exploit the medium to their own ends.
Reagan's skilled advisors were masters of the art of arranging flags and releasing balloons to place him in the most attractive settings. They also knew how to craft and release messages to maximize positive coverage on television newscasts. The Persian Gulf War in provided further proof of the power of television, with pictures of U. Both Iraqi and U. However, the U. Defense Department, armed with lessons learned in Vietnam, succeeded in keeping most reporters well away from the action and the bloodshed.
Instead, pictures were provided to television by the military of "smart" bombs deftly hitting their targets. In the s, home videocassette recorders became widely available.
Viewers gained the ability to record and replay programs and, more significantly, to rent and watch movies at times of their own choosing in their own homes.
Video games also became popular during this decade, particularly with the young, and the television, formally just the site of passive entertainment, became an intricate, moving, computerized game board.
The number of cable networks grew throughout the s and then exploded in the s as improved cable technology and direct-broadcast satellite television multiplied the channels available to viewers.
The number of broadcast networks increased also, with the success of the Fox network and then the arrival of the UPN and WB networks. The share the broadcast networks attracted continued to erode, from well over 90 percent in the early s to under 50 percent by Although the population of the United States has continued to grow, the Nielson Media Research company estimated that fewer people watched the highly publicized final episode of Seinfeld in first aired in ; see Seinfeld, Jerry than watched the final episode of MASH in first aired in The trial of former football star O.
Simpson in for the murder of his wife he was acquitted further demonstrated the hold that cable networks had on American audiences. Some stations carried almost every minute of the lengthy trial live and then filled the evening with talk shows dissecting that day's developments. The effects of television on children, particularly through its emphasis on violence and sex, has long been an issue for social scientists, parents, and politicians see children's television.
In the late s and s, with increased competition brought on by the proliferation of cable networks, talk shows and "tabloid" news shows seemed to broaden further frank or sensational on-air discussion of sex.
In response to government pressure, the television industry decided to display ratings of its programs in The ratings were designed to indicate the age groups for which the programs might be suitable: TV-G for general audiences , TV-PG parental guidance suggested , TV unsuitable for children under 14 , and TV-MA for mature audiences only.
In response to additional complaints, all the networks except NBC agreed the next year to add V for violence , S for sex , L for course language and D for suggestive dialogue to those ratings. Also, the "V-chip" imbedded in new television sets, in accordance with a provision of a telecommunications bill passed in , gave parents the power to automatically prevent their children from watching television programs with inappropriate ratings.
Critics of the ratings saw them as a step toward censorship and questioned whether a TV rating would make a program seem more, not less, attractive to an inquisitive child. In the federal government gave each U. Initial transmissions of this high-resolution form of television, in which images appear much sharper and clearer, began in Standard television sets cannot pick up HDTV and will presumably have to be replaced or modified by , when traditional, low-definition television broadcasts are scheduled to end and broadcasters are scheduled to return their original, non-HDTV channel to the government.
They were also screened on a daily, rather than weekly, basis, drastically increasing advertising costs. As a result, the networks began to sell spot advertisements that ran for 30 or 60 seconds. Similarly, the television spectacular now known as the television special featured lengthy music-variety shows that were sponsored by multiple advertisers. In the mids, the networks brought back the radio quiz-show genre. Shorter than some of the new types of programs, quiz shows enabled single corporate sponsors to have their names displayed on the set throughout the show.
The popularity of the quiz-show genre plunged at the end of the decade, however, when it was discovered that most of the shows were rigged. Producers provided some contestants with the answers to the questions in order to pick and choose the most likable or controversial candidates. When a slew of contestants accused the show Dotto of being fixed in , the networks rapidly dropped 20 quiz shows.
A New York grand jury probe and a congressional investigation effectively ended prime-time quiz shows for 40 years, until ABC revived the genre with its launch of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in Boddy, Formerly known as Community Antenna Television, or CATV, cable television was originally developed in the s in remote or mountainous areas, including in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, to enhance poor reception of regular television signals.
Cable antennas were erected on mountains or other high points, and homes connected to the towers would receive broadcast signals. In the late s, cable operators began to experiment with microwave to bring signals from distant cities. Taking advantage of their ability to receive long-distance broadcast signals, operators branched out from providing a local community service and began focusing on offering consumers more extensive programming choices.
Rural parts of Pennsylvania, which had only three channels one for each network , soon had more than double the original number of channels as operators began to import programs from independent stations in New York and Philadelphia. The wider variety of channels and clearer reception the service offered soon attracted viewers from urban areas.
By , nearly cable systems were operational, serving , subscribers. The FCC responded by placing restrictions on the ability of cable systems to import signals from distant stations, which froze the development of cable television in major markets until the early s. When gradual deregulation began to loosen the restrictions, cable operator Service Electric launched the service that would change the face of the cable television industry— pay TV.
This gave it an advantage over the microwave-distributed services, and other cable providers quickly followed suit. Further deregulation provided by the Cable Act enabled the industry to expand even further, and by the end of the s, nearly 53 million households subscribed to cable television see Section 6. In the s, cable operators upgraded their systems by building higher-capacity hybrid networks of fiber-optic and coaxial cable. These broadband networks provide a multichannel television service, along with telephone, high-speed Internet, and advanced digital video services, using a single wire.
Following the FCC standards set out during the early s, television sets received programs via analog signals made of radio waves. The analog signal reached TV sets through three different methods: over the airwaves, through a cable wire, or by satellite transmission. Although the system remained in place for more than 60 years, it had several disadvantages.
Analog systems were prone to static and distortion, resulting in a far poorer picture quality than films shown in movie theaters. As television sets grew increasingly larger, the limited resolution made scan lines painfully obvious, reducing the clarity of the image.
Companies around the world, most notably in Japan, began to develop technology that provided newer, better-quality television formats, and the broadcasting industry began to lobby the FCC to create a committee to study the desirability and impact of switching to digital television.
A more efficient and flexible form of broadcast technology, digital television uses signals that translate TV images and sounds into binary code, working in much the same way as a computer.
This means they require much less frequency space and also provide a far higher quality picture. The committee ultimately agreed to switch from analog to digital format in , allowing a transition period in which broadcasters could send their signal on both an analog and a digital channel.
Once the switch took place, many older analog TV sets were unusable without a cable or satellite service or a digital converter. These companies were eager to gain access to the analog spectrum for mobile broadband projects because this frequency band allows signals to travel greater distances and penetrate buildings more easily. Around the same time the U. High-definition television , or HDTV, attempts to create a heightened sense of realism by providing the viewer with an almost three-dimensional experience.
It has a much higher resolution than standard television systems, using around five times as many pixels per frame. However, as with most new technology, prices dropped considerably over the next few years, making HDTV affordable for mainstream shoppers. HDTV uses a wide-screen format with a different aspect ratio the ratio of the width of the image to its height than standard-definition TV. The wide-screen format of HDTV is similar to that of movies, allowing for a more authentic film-viewing experience at home.
As of , nearly half of American viewers are watching television in high definition, the fastest adoption of TV technology since the introduction of the VCR in the s Stelter, The new technology is attracting viewers to watch television for longer periods of time. According to the Nielsen Company, a company that measures TV viewership, households with HDTV watch 3 percent more prime-time television —programming screened between 7 and 11 p. The same report claims that the cinematic experience of HDTV is bringing families back together in the living room in front of the large wide-screen TV and out of the kitchen and bedroom, where individuals tend to watch television alone on smaller screens.
However, these viewing patterns may change again soon as the Internet plays an increasingly larger role in how people view TV programs. The impact of new technologies on television is discussed in much greater detail in Section 9. Since , the amount of time the average household spends watching television has almost doubled.
Please respond to the following writing prompts. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph. Boddy, William. Klooster, John.
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