Television – March 18, 2014- Television works through the idea of persistence of vision, just like film – it takes brain 1/24 of a second to process an image, so if you see 24 images in one second, it looks like they are moving. - Because television is transmitted through the air, unlike movies, television content producers had to figure out how to send the pictures – break them up into tiny pixels and then reassemble them. - History of Television o Early pioneers (early 20th century) Paul Nipkow, Russian physicist, produced the Nipkow disc in 1884. As the disc rotated slowly, it allowed people to take large pictures and break them into smaller, component parts and play them back. The first technology to demonstrate this reality. He only used still pictures, however, to send and receive. John Bard (1925), a British scientist working for BBC. In the early 1920s, he used a technology similar to the Nipkow disk and figured out how to transmit moving pictures (film) using a technology similar to the one Nipkow used, a rotating disk. People wanted to move from the rotating disk to a self-contained device that could transmit images electronically rather than mechanically. Vladimir Zworykin worked at Westinghouse. He was attempting to develop an electronic device (aka a vacuum tube) that could do the exact same thing that Bard was doing with the spinning disk. David took Zworykin away from Westinghouse and hired him for RCA. In 1929, Zworykin’s kinescope, a highly developed television tube, was developed.This was going on on the East Coast. On the West Coast, Philo Farnsworth, a 12-year-old kid, was reading science journals and developed a model for the television tube. He presented it at a science fair, and his teacher sent him to Brigham Young to work on it. By age 15 in 1929, Farnsworth had developed an early television model. RCA and Farnsworth battled over patents until the late ‘30s, when Farnsworth’s patents expired. RCA bought all of his patents for 1 million dollars and erased his name from television history, even though all he had really wanted was credit, to be called “the father of television.” In April 1939, RCA gave the first true public demonstration of television at the New York World’s Fair. Beginning in 1939, RCA broadcast a two-hour variety show once a week to the few people who had purchased televisions (not many – they were very expensive and came with only 3 and 5 inch screens).- Television evolves (late 1940s to present) Two licenses for broadcast television stations were given out in 1941. Because WWII started this year, the further development of television slowed down during the ‘40s.- The FCC governs broadcast television for the same reason it governs radio – there is spectrum scarcity. The public owns the air waves, and the government leases them to stations. When WWII ended, there were nine stations with broadcast licenses, and only six of them actually broadcast on air. Immediately after WWII, there was a huge flood of applications to the FCC to open stations. After it distributed these licenses, it realized that there were a lot of problems and specifics in the television industry that had not been fixed. So, it imposed what is known as the FCC Television Freeze. It was supposed to be only six months, but it lasted from 1948 to 1952. - The big issues that needed to be resolved were interference, assigning channels (frequency allocation, how much signal powereach station was allowed to have, who should have what channels, how many stations could be in each area), color TV standards (introduced in 1954), and educational television guaranteed.o RCA developed an electronic technology that allowed colorto be viewed. o CBS developed a technology of little spinning wheels that would work mechanically inside the television box and allow color to be added. o The FCC originally decided that all TVs would have to conform to the CBS model, but then it changed its mind and said that all color TVs had to go by the RCA model. o Color television wasn’t adopted en masse until the 1960s and 1970s, because they were much more expensive, and you could still receive the signal in black and white with a regular TV. Black and white televisions were completely out by the early 1980s in the U.S. o People (especially teachers, religious groups, parents, somecongressmen) worried that television wasn’t working in thepublic’s interest, convenience, and necessity, so just like in radio, the FCC began allocating what were noncommercial,educational channels. They were called public television – today, this is like PBS (Public Broadcasting Services) and others. These types of stations address current events, public affairs, art, music, etc. Still today, for every four commercial stations allocated, one public station must be allocated. In the 1980s, stations like Disney and Nickelodeon developed and took some of the market of educational TV for children away from public television, but for a long time, public television wasthe only place educational programming could be found. - There was originally space for only 12 broadcast channels (2-13) on the VHF, but the FCC quickly realized that this was not enough room for all the people who wanted to broadcast, so it asked the government if it could have more of the electromagnetic waves. The government said yes and let it have the UHMF, which provided about 70 more broadcast channels. (The actual channels the signals are broadcast on as assigned by the government, not thechannels that people access that are assigned randomly by television networks.)- There was a big push for early networks to have their affiliates on very low channels (not broadcast ones, but the assigned ones) because early televisions could only receive channels 2-13. - In 1952, there were 108 stations; in 1959, 559 stations. - By 1960, 90% of American homes had a TV. By 1965, 95%. This had a lot to do with the previous bullet point – the increasing number of stations. - Television stole a lot of radio’s talent – asked stars from radio to develop their shows for television. So, early on, TV content was similar to the genres that were on radio – quiz shows, dramas, comedies, kids’ shows. - There were some new types of shows developed that hadn’t been on radio before – talk shows, made-for-TV movies. Eventually, made-for-the-big-screen movies were played on TV, too. - Growing
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