History of TV
- long and terrifying and disturbing record of the events that have led to you being so easily distracted
Where did TV come from?
- a fifteen year old boy named Phil T. Farnsworth is the inventor of the most common type of TV
- he was working on the idea that radio could be done with images
- radio was already invented in the early part of the 20th Century by a guy named Marconi
- signals go through the air and take a “message” that could be a voice
- these signals get encoded and decoded at the source and at the end point
- the interesting idea behind radio that we will carry on (aside from the science which led to TV) was the idea of PROGRAMMING
- David Sarnoff – came up with the idea of using a radio as entertainment, with “shows” that come on at specific times and people would tune in and listen
- He worked for a company that made and sold millions of radios and also made and gave out broadcasting (shows) – they paid for these shows with advertising
- He thought if they could do the same thing with images, there would be a whole new business, a whole new thing to sell and a whole new place for selling ads
- He had a team working on making TV as well (the company was RCA)
- The boy genius came up with a few ideas at a one room school and his teacher sent the ideas to a university and Philo was off
- He came up with some cool ideas, Sarnoff heard about him, he tried to buy him out, and Philo said no – Sarnoff’s head scientist (Vladimir Zworkin) visited Philo, saw his stuff and guess what? – he took the info and went ahead and invented his own TV
- By the time WWII starts, TV is already invented, but there’s nothing on yet
- The Depression and the war stop all forward progress
- However, after the war, things go crazy
- PAUSE FOR BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE CHECK
- The Great Depression (1930s) – people had no jobs, no money, no food, tough times, difficult living NO LEISURE THAT COST MONEY – no new development of tech and entertainment
- World War II (1939 – 1945)
- Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan) VS Allies (France, UK, Canada) and then later, the US
- The US got attacked by the Japanese in 1941 and went ballistic – they turned their whole country into a war factory, pounding out tanks, guns, planes, everything – they made more stuff that every other country put together – giant war factories full of women, black men and others who wouldn’t have been able to get such good jobs before the war
- The factories started hiring like crazy, started making big money and the Depression was all gone and suddenly, technology was back in the picture
- After the way is over in 1945, those factories and those companies don’t want to stop working at that high level – they want to keep making the big money – so the 1950s had a HUGE tech and economic boom
- After the war, people start getting pulled into shopping like crazy and one of the KEY items everybody buys is a TV
- And TV becomes a HUGE important part of American culture
The TV of the 1950s
- the patterns and structures we have in TV now were started then
- types of shows
- 1. Soap Operas –
- called this because they were shows about high emotion, aimed at women, aired in the day and sponsored by soap companies
- are these gone? No – still happening
2. News
- news was one of the first and most obvious kinds of shows
- had been on radio and even at the movies – they just combined newsreels with radio style super serious tone of voice and a very serious looking man sitting at a desk to impress us – very serious in every way – pure information
- nowadays – TOTALLY different – eg Fox News – all opinion, big emotion, very little info and fact – it’s all about entertainment and feeling and passion and inspiring ratings and rage in equal measure
3. Cartoons
- cartoons actually have been around since film was invented
- TV was a good place for cartoons – because of the Baby Boomers – the number of kids was at an all time high – a certain few companies JUMPED on this
- Warner Bros (Bugs Bunny), and mostly Disney –
- tons of cheap cartoons came out to sell junk to these kids
- a weird trend – cartoons aimed at adults – especially into the 60s
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