Exam 3 Book Outline Chapter 8, 10, 9I. Chapter 8: Television, Cable, and Mobile VideoA. Introduction & A Short History of Television1. Nonlinear television: watching television on our own schedules, not on some cable or broadcast programmer’s2. Television is the second most important invention after the printing press3. Paul Nipkow: Russian scientist who, in 1884, developed the first workable device for generating electric signals suitable for the transmission of a scene that people could seea) This device was called the Nipkow disc, which consisted of a rotating scanning disc spinning in front of a photoelectric cell and produced 4000 pixels (picture dots) per second, producing a picture composed of 18 parallel lines4. It is debatable as to where electronic scanning came froma) Vladimir Workin, a Russian immigrant, demonstrated his iconoscope tube, the first practical television camera tube, in 1923; in 1929, he developed the kinescope, an improved picture tubeb) At the same time, American Philo Farnsworth perfected his electronic television system and made its first public appearance in 1927c) After years of patent battles, in 1939 the RCA paid royalties to Farnsworth for his patents5. During the 1939 World’s Fair, the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) made its first official public demonstration of television in the form of regularly scheduled 2-hour NBC broadcasts6. By 1952, 108 stations were broadcasting to 17 million television homes; by the end of the decade, nearly 90% of households in the US had televisions7. Character and content of television as a medium were set during the 1950s decade:a) Carried over from radio networks, television genres included variety shows, situation comedies, dramas, soap operas, and quiz showsb) Two new formats appeared: feature films and talk showsc) Television news and documentary remade broadcast journalism as a powerful force in its own rightd) AT&T completed its national coaxial cable and microwave relay network for distribution of television programming during the summer of 1951, putting the entire US within reach of major television networks and allowing them to dominate the medium1) Coaxial cable: copper-clad aluminum wire encased in plastic foam insulation, covered by an aluminum outer conductor, and then sheathed in plastic2) Microwave relay: audio and visual transmitting system in which super-high-frequency signals are sent from land-base point to land-base point8. In the 1950s, networks served primarily as time brokers, offering airtime and distribution and accepting payments for both a) Aside from their own news and sports, networks relied on outside agencies to provide programs; the client would then be the show’s sponsor – such as The Kraft Television Theatre and Westing-house Studio One; the agency would then pay a network to air the program over its national collection of stations 9. 1959 quiz show scandal: when it was that popular shows like The $64,000 Question had been fixed by advertisers and producers to ensure desired outcomes, the networks were determined to take control of their schedules; now, instead of selling blocks of time to advertisers and sponsors, networks paid for content aired through spot commercial sales (selling individual 60-second spots on a given program to a wide variety of advertisers) a) as a result, the content of television was altered; because individual sponsors were not identified with the given show, they had no stake in how well the show was made – only in how many viewers it attracted 10. Ways in which I Love Lucy changed television:a) Filmed reruns were now available due to the new use of film cameras and created the off-network syndication industryb) Television industry moved from New York, with it’s stage-drama orientation, to Hollywood, with its entertainment film mindset; this brought more flash and action to the small screenc) Weekly series could now be produced quickly and inexpensively, saving money on actors, crew, equipment, and facilities11. Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television: this is the 1950 work of former FBI agents; 200 pages detailing pro-Communist sympathies of 151 broadcast personalities; encouraged advertisers to avoid buying from broadcasters who employed these “Red sympathizers”; networks employed security checks, refused suspect talent, and demanded loyalty oaths from performers12. McCarthyism: led by Joseph McCarthy, a Republican junior senator; broadcasted his investigation of Reds in the US army onall networks for 36 days in 1954, causing daytime ratings to increase by 50%a) Edward R. Murrow used See It Now to expose the senator’s lies and hypocrisy, ultimately ruining McCarthy b) Gave the people eyes, ears, and power where they had little before13. A.C. Nielsen Company: began in 1923 as a product-testing company, but soon branched out to market research; in 1936, Nielsen started reporting radio rankings and did the same for television in 1950a) To produce ratings, Nielsen selected 37,000 households thought to be representative of the entire US population; to record data on what people in those TV households were watching, Nielsen employed its version of a peoplemeter which required each member of the television home to press buttons to record his or her individual viewing; the information recorded is sent to Nielsen through telephone lines, and the company can determine the program watched, who was watching it, and amount of time each viewer spent with itb) The company now reports Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMi), a measure of all the viewing of a single television episode across all platforms – television, DVR, Internet, and mobile video14. Methods of measuring television audience:a) Sweep periods: diary surveys of the viewing patterns four times a year (February, May, July, November); during sweeps, diaries are distributed to thousands of sample households selected in markets and viewers are asked to write down what they are watching and who is watching it; diary data is then combined with peoplemeter data to help stations set their advertising rates for the next three months1) Sweeps may stop because increased competition has networks releasing new content year round, not just in these “seasons”; also, personal peoplemeter data delivers detailed viewing and demographic data everyday of the year, making 4-times-a-year ratings unnecessaryb) Ratings: the amount of people who watch a television
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