Television

(Straubhaar & LaRose, 2006)

History

• 1922: Philo Farnsworth invents the electronic image dissector.

• 1925: First television transmission.• 1936: British Broadcasting Corporation

(BBC) opens the first electronic television service in 1936.

• 1941: National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) establishes the standards for broadcast television.

History

• 1941-1945: United States involvement in World War II delays the proliferation of television.

• 1945-1950s: Soldiers return home and families move to the suburbs where television quickly proliferates.

History

• 1948-1952: The rapid emergence of new stations and disagreements over standards for the color television technology lead to a “freeze” on the issuing of licenses. Because many smaller cities were left without reception, this also contributed to the growth of cable television.

History

• 1952: The FCC’s Sixth Report and Order establishes a division between VHF (very high frequency) channels (2-13) and UHF (ultra high frequency channels (14-69).

History

• 1950s: Television’s “Golden Age”– In the 1950s, television networks (CBS, NBC,

and ABC) experienced tremendous growth and prosperity through the rise of affiliates and “owned and operated” stations.

– Classic entertainment programming included programs such as The Twilight Zone, The Texaco Star Theater, I Love Lucy.

– Broadcast news included programs such as Meet the Press and See it Now.

History

• Early television programs had a single sponsor, but, as programs became more ambitious and expensive, networks adopted the practice of selling time slots to multiple sponsors.

• As television’s reach spread beyond urban, educated elites, quality programming declined in the ratings.

History

• 1967: The Public Broadcasting Act established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to finance programming with tax money.

• 1970: The FCC enforces the Financial Interest in Syndication rules (Fin-Syn) prohibiting networks from profiting from syndication at the expense of producers.

History

• 1972: FCC opens cities to cable.

• 1975: HBO is the first to make use of satellite technology in broadcasting.

• 1976: TBS forms starts “basic cable” subsidized by nationalized advertising revenue.

• 1987: Fox network begins.

History

• 1996: Telecommunications Act of 1996 triggers a wave of mergers.

• 1998: Broadcast networks lose viewers to cable.

• 2009: Digital television arrives.

Cable

• First “Mom and Pop” System: E. L. Parsons from Astoria Oregon placed an antenna in a position where it could receive a television signal from KRSC (now KING-TV) in Seattle, Washington so that he and his wife could watch high school football games. When others heard, word spread and Ed routed cable to local gathering places for a fee of $125.

Cable

• Appliance store owners became the first providers of CATV (Community Antenna Television) by placing antennae on top of their buildings and routing cable to local community centers and businesses. In Pennsylvania, Robert Tarlton started Panther Valley CATV to bring a signal from Philadelphia to Lansford. This was the genesis of the local cable company.

Cable

• Much of early cable programming served simply to carry the signal of the major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) into the homes of small communities without access to a strong signal.

Cable

• By the 1980s, cable stations began to generate their own content. Some began to create cable networks distributed nationally via satellite. Some early examples included:– CNN (Cable News Network)– ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Network)– C-SPAN (Cable Satellite Public Affairs

Network)

Cable

• Ted Turner pioneered cable advertising by re-broadcasting signals from his Atlanta television station (WTBS) nationally and exposing his sponsors to a national audience. WTBS became the first superstation.

Industry

• Between government regulation (the “fin-syn” rules) of the “big three” national broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) and the rise of numerous cable networks, “the big three” began to experience a steep decline in viewers.

Industry

• As a result of these conditions and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a wave of mergers and buy-outs took place resulting in five major media companies that account for the vast majority of not only television content, but all other media forms as well. These are:– Disney– Viacom– News Corp.– Time Warner– NBC Universal

Technology

• As opposed to film, with it’s mechanical progression of projected images, television produces motion pictures through a Cathode Ray: a focused beam of energy from the electrode inside a vacuum tube that projects lines of pixels (points of light) on the far end of the tube. The following two slides provide an illustration of this.

Technology

• The televised image is reproduced through a process known as scanning. Scanning breaks down an image into lines of pixels that can be transferred into energy and transmitted across distances.

Technology

• Television signal information, including luminance (brightness) and chrominance (red, green, or blue) is carried through electromagnetic waves to receivers on AM radio waves. Sound is transmitted through FM waves.

Technology

• New methods for reproducing the television image include:– LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)– Plasma– DLP (Digital Light Processing)

Technology

• In addition to these new display technologies, high definition television (HDTV) has vastly improved the quality of the television signal by doubling the level of resolution.

The Future

• The future of television will likely be guided by two principles:– Convergence: The way we use television

may become almost indistinguishable from the internet and web-casting may ultimately replace broadcasting.

– Interactivity: Television content will respond in real time to the input of the viewer.

Terms

• Affiliates: Independently owned stations that broadcast network content.

• O & Os: Stations that are owned and operated by the network itself.

• Ratings: Services that gauge the number of viewers that are watching a particular station.

• Syndication: The practice of renting content between stations.

Terms

• Must Carry: Law requiring that cable stations provide local broadcast signals.

• Superstation: A local station with national distribution via satellite.

• Narrowcasting: The cable television practice of offering specialized content to a specific TV audience (e.g. The Food Network).

Terms

• Multiple System Carriers: Cable companies that have locations in multiple areas (e.g. Comcast and Cablevision).

• Direct Broadcast Satellite: Pulling satellite signals directly from their source (rather than through the cable company).

• Scanning: Composing a television image from lines of resolution.

Terms

• Public Access TV: Cable station service that provides resources for ordinary citizens to create TV content.

• Horizontal Integration: Concentration of ownership through the acquisition of multiple competing companies.

• Vertical Integration: Concentration of ownership through acquisition of all related businesses (e.g. film production, distribution, exhibition)