The Television Phenomenon

RCA TELEVISION

Decades after WWII, the television phenomenon had taken America by storm

becoming the main mean of mass media and changing the way peoplelived their lives. 

The first public demonstration of television took placein San Francisco on 

September 7, 1927 by the inventor Philo Farnsworth.

In the 1930's, his invention had become competition to the corporate 

giant RCA( the Radio Corporation of America). RCA wanted to buy 

Farnsworth's patent for his unique invention, however he refused the sell.

Philo Farnsworth, Inventor of first television in 1927

 THE FCC ROLE IN TELEVISION PHENOMENON 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions. (http://www.fcc.gov/aboutus.html)

The proceeded cautiously in its determination of technical and regulatory standards. Several television  proposals were placed before the FCC to consider, for example CBS wanted color television. However, the FCC did not act on television until 1941 after WWII.

EARLY TELEVISION CONTENT

Early Television content was influenced by the radio and movie industry. Radio had developed a full array of content  such as news, drama, comedy, music, and lectures. Also, early filming was done live so therefore if anything went wrong the audience would know for sure. For example, John Cameron Swayze was a radio journalist turned television pitch man for Timex watch commercials. In the live commercial he put the Timex through a series of rigorous test, he held the watch up the watch up to the camera and exclaim the slogan, "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!" Once though, a Timex was lashed to an outboard motor propeller and thrashed about in a barrel of water. When the propeller emerged from the water, the Timex had disappeared, leaving Swayze speechless. 

I Love Lucy 


I love Lucy was the first television series to be filmed a the same time it was being broadcasting. I Love Lucy debuted on CBS in October 1951, starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley and was an immediate sensation. It spent four of its six prime-time seasons as the highest-rated series on television and never finished lower than third place. Eisenhower's presidential inauguration in January 1953 drew twenty-nine million viewers, but when Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky in an episode broadcast the next day forty-four million viewers (72% of all U.S. homes with TV) tuned in to I Love Lucy.(http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=ilovelucy) 

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

Television popularity soon caused the advancement of technology. One example of this was the development of the 16mm film and the film chain device. Both changed the content of television. The Film Chain was a device that points a television camera at a movie projector and at slide projectors, putting the images from either on the television screen. No longer was live programming the only option.The 16mm film had quickly replaced the 35mm film that was at the time the motion picture standard. The smaller format became popular as an educational audio/visual tool because it was less bulky, less expensive and easier to handle. By the mid-1960's, videotape was replacing film. 

In the 1950's, cities were finally linked, and eventually coast to coast, by coaxial cable and later by microwave transmission had come about, which allowed instantaneous network broadcasting. Also, miniaturization of electronics and development of sophisticated rockets had allowed satellites to orbit the earth and bounce back television signals over large areas. The first trans-Atlantic live satellite transmission occurred in 1962 between Andover, Maine, and locations in Cornwall, England, and Brittany, France. 

EARLY TELEVISION NEWS

The news content on television began at the local level based on radio and newspaper practices. The sources that they used for news included wire services, local newspapers or from original reporting by bringing in news sources and interviewed them.

Edward R. Murrow 

Most distinguished early television journalist with a radio background. He had a broadcast for CBS from London and even from a British bomber over Berlin in the early days of WWII. 

He pioneered the television documentary looking at the darker side of American life such as Harvest of Shame, which was a reporting on the abysmal conditions of migrant workers. Also, a popular segment was his See it Now series. In 1953, Murrow spoke with American soldiers assigned to the United Nations combat forces as they were coming home for Christmas and entitled this installment "Christmas in Korea". 

Murrow's hard-hitting approach to the news eventually cost him influence in the world of television, although his celebrity talk show Person to Person remained a top-rated program with much better numbers than See It Now ever had. See It Now occasionally scored high ratings (usually when it was approaching a particularly controversial subject), but in general it did not score well on prime-time television.

QUIZ SHOW SCANDALS

Charles Van Doren

In the mid-1950's  there were more than a dozen quiz shows that came about and ruled network television. One of the most popular characters on a quiz show at the time was, Charles Van Doren. He appeared on the television show  "Twenty-One" and became an instant celebrity because of his mind. Due to quiz shows popularity this moved producers to manipulate contestants supplying them with questions and answers before the show. 

Soon however, complaints started trickling out about this scandal. One main source of this scandal was from a participant, Herb Stempel. Herb Stempel was a teacher before he became a quiz show regualar on the show "Twenty One". He was swayed by producer Dan Enright to go along with the scandal of fixed question and answers and was promised a subsequent television job if he would finish the performance they had started. However, Van Doren "defeated" him and later found that his promise was unfilled by Enright. This led to his leaking the scandal to the media. A grand jury investigation, congressional hearings and national publicity finally forced the shows and Van Doren eventually had to come clean. Van Doren was convicted for lying and yet he spent no time in jail.  He was fired from Columbia, moved on to working for Encyclopedia Britannica, and ultimately retired with his family in Connecticut. 

Richard N. Goodwin

Goodwin was involved in investigating the Twenty One quiz show scandal, which provided the story for the 1994 movie Quiz Show in which he is portrayed by actor Rob Murrow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_Show)

TELEVISION'S IMPACT ON OTHER 

MEDIA

Television in turn had an impact on print and radio media. Radio networks specialized in news and sports providing segments of local stations' programming.  Most of  the bulging, high-circulation weekly national magazines disappeared. 

            Magazines like Life appeared in a new, expensive, skinny monthly edition. The news weeklies did the same such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News, by making their publications more slimmed down and had to raise their prices to stay afloat. Magazine publishers sought out consumer niches that the networks could not serve to compete and the number of titles increased as mass circulations declined.  

            

            Newspapers found that television was also in competition for the advertisement revenue and also took over the time that their audience could be reading. Editors soon realized that they could not compete with the fascination of television however they also realized that the print medium could inform readers in a way that television could not. The newspaper was a manufactured product and readers could pick it up when they wanted to and could read and gain information on their own schedules. Also newspapers could publish coupons in its advertisements unlike television.

       NEW TECHNOLOGY 

AND CHANGING NEWSPAPERS

A revolutionary change in newspaper technology most significantly began with paper tape, an inch wide.Small newspapers used a process called, Teletypesetter. It came in rolls about a foot in diameter and was installed so that it ran through a small black box called a "perforator". An operation could tap on a keyboard and the attached perforator would punch holes across the tape in combinations of one to six holes. These combinations represented every letter, figure, punctuation mark, and spacing combination that a Linotype machine could produce. 

The Teletypesetter made it easier and much less expensive to use the wire service material than before. This process also created a uniformity in three ways. Also in the 1950's the teletypesetter technology locked up punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, and usage style and the Associated Press, United Press, and the International News Service agreed on a basic style. The style book set standards that mainstream newspapers use to this day. 

-Sources:   

•                The Media in America: A History. 7th ed. Wm. David Sloan. Vision Press. 2008 
•                http://www.fcc.gov/aboutus.html
•                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_Show
•               http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=ilovelucy