The big breakthrough in technology was the ability to send sound and pictures over the air. People started experimenting with television during the 19th century. When you ask the question--who invented television, you may get a few different answers.
In England in , John Loggie Baird, a Scottish amateur scientist, successfully transmitted the first TV picture, after years of work, in , with his mechanical system. This old mechanical technology was quickly replaced by superior electronic television. Philo Farnsworth successfully demonstrated electronic television in San Francisco, in Farnsworth, at the age of fifteen, began imagining ways that electronic television could work.
One day while working in the fields among rows of vegetables, he was inspired. Viewers apparently preferred dramas or comedies that, while perhaps less literary, at least had the virtue of sustaining a familiar set of characters week after week. I Love Lucy , the hugely successful situation comedy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, had been recorded on film since it debuted in lasting until It had many imitators.
The Honeymooners , starring Jackie Gleason, was first broadcast, also via film, in lasting until with the original cast. The first videotape recorder was invented by Ampex in see video; video recording; video technology.
Another format introduced in the mids was the big-money quiz show. Cowan, by that time president of CBS television, was forced to resign from the network amid revelations of widespread fixing of game shows see Van Doren, Charles.
Television news first covered the presidential nominating conventions of the two major parties, events then still at the heart of America politics, in The term "anchorman" was used, probably for the first time, to describe Walter Cronkite's central role in CBS's convention coverage that year. In succeeding decades these conventions would become so concerned with looking good on television that they would lose their spontaneity and eventually their news value.
The networks had begun producing their own news film. Increasingly, they began to compete with newspapers as the country's primary source of news see journalism.
The election of a young and vital president in , John F. Kennedy, seemed to provide evidence of how profoundly television would change politics. Commentators pointed to the first televised debate that fall between Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, and Vice-President Richard M.
Nixon, the Republican's nominee. A survey of those who listened to the debate on radio indicated that Nixon had won; however, those who watched on television, and were able to contrast Nixon's poor posture and poorly shaven face with Kennedy's poise and grace, were more likely to think Kennedy had won the debate. Television's coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. Most Americans joined in watching coverage of the shocking and tragic events, not as crowds in the streets, but from their own living rooms.
By the end of the decade Cronkite had become not just a highly respected journalist but, according to public opinion surveys, "the most trusted man in America. While the overwhelming majority of television news reports on the Vietnam War were supportive of U.
Many believed it contributed to growing public dissatisfaction with the war. And some of the anger of those defending U. Marines on a "search and destroy" mission to a complex of hamlets called Cam Ne. The Marines faced no enemy resistance, yet they held cigarette lighters to the thatched roofs and proceeded to "waste" Cam Ne. After much debate, Safer's filmed report on the incident was shown on CBS. Johnson, accusing the network of a lack of patriotism.
During the Tet offensive in , Cronkite went to Vietnam to report a documentary on the state of the war. That documentary, broadcast on Feb.
President Johnson was watching Cronkite's report. In color broadcasting began on prime-time television. During the s and s a country increasingly fascinated with television was limited to watching almost exclusively what appeared on the three major networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC.
In the larger cities, there might also be a few independent stations mostly playing reruns of old network shows and perhaps a fledgling public broadcasting channel. Programming on each of the three networks was designed to grab a mass audience. Network shows therefore catered, as critics put it, to the lowest common denominator. Daytime television programming consisted primarily of soap operas and quiz shows until the s, when talk shows discussing subjects that were formerly taboo, such as sexuality, became popular.
The three major networks have always been in a continual race for ratings and advertising dollars. CBS and NBC dominated through the mids, when ABC, traditionally regarded as a poor third, rose to the top of the ratings, largely because of shrewd scheduling. A Carnegie Commission report in recommended the creation of a fourth, noncommercial, public television network built around the educational nonprofit stations already in operation throughout the United States see television, noncommercial.
Congress created the Public Broadcasting System that year. Unlike commercial networks, which are centered in New York and Los Angeles, PBS's key stations, many of which produce programs that are shown throughout the network, are spread across the country. 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.
Ninety years since the very first demonstration of television has been celebrated by today's Google Doodle. However, the device in question was not known as the television in , rather it was the "the televisor" or mechanical television, in which a rotating mechanism generated an image.
Its creator was John Logie Baird, a Scot born in , who wanted to be a soldier in the First World War but whose poor health forced him into long hours in his workshop instead. Here are five facts you might not know about the man in Google's Doodle, who helped bring you the moving image. Born on the west coast of Scotland and the son of a clergyman, life was not exactly at the cutting-edge for the young Baird. But while still a boy he rigged up a telephone exchange to connect his bedroom to his friend's across the street.
And although his later engineering degree was interrupted by the war, he kept experimenting with new ideas. Baird moved to Hastings on the south coast of England in due to poor health, yet was determined to realise the dream of transferring a moving image to a screen. His first television set used an old hat box, a pair of scissors, some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, and sealing wax and glue.
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