history of television essay

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9.1 The Evolution of Television

Learning objectives.

Identify two technological developments that paved the way for the evolution of television.
Explain why electronic television prevailed over mechanical television.
Identify three important developments in the history of television since 1960.

Since replacing radio as the most popular mass medium in the 1950s, television has played such an integral role in modern life that, for some, it is difficult to imagine being without it. Both reflecting and shaping cultural values, television has at times been criticized for its alleged negative influences on children and young people and at other times lauded for its ability to create a common experience for all its viewers. Major world events such as the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations and the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986, the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and the impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have all played out on television, uniting millions of people in shared tragedy and hope. Today, as Internet technology and satellite broadcasting change the way people watch television, the medium continues to evolve, solidifying its position as one of the most important inventions of the 20th century.

The Origins of Television

Inventors conceived the idea of television long before the technology to create it appeared. Early pioneers speculated that if audio waves could be separated from the electromagnetic spectrum to create radio, so too could TV waves be separated to transmit visual images. As early as 1876, Boston civil servant George Carey envisioned complete television systems, putting forward drawings for a “selenium camera” that would enable people to “see by electricity” a year later (Federal Communications Commission, 2005).

During the late 1800s, several technological developments set the stage for television. The invention of the cathode ray tube (CRT) by German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897 played a vital role as the forerunner of the TV picture tube. Initially created as a scanning device known as the cathode ray oscilloscope, the CRT effectively combined the principles of the camera and electricity. It had a fluorescent screen that emitted a visible light (in the form of images) when struck by a beam of electrons. The other key invention during the 1880s was the mechanical scanner system. Created by German inventor Paul Nipkow, the scanning disk was a large, flat metal disk with a series of small perforations arranged in a spiral pattern. As the disk rotated, light passed through the holes, separating pictures into pinpoints of light that could be transmitted as a series of electronic lines. The number of scanned lines equaled the number of perforations, and each rotation of the disk produced a television frame. Nipkow’s mechanical disk served as the foundation for experiments on the transmission of visual images for several decades.

In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing used both the CRT and the mechanical scanner system in an experimental television system. With the CRT in the receiver, he used focused electron beams to display images, transmitting crude geometrical patterns onto the television screen. The mechanical disk system was used as a camera, creating a primitive television system.

Two key inventions in the 1880s paved the way for television to emerge: the cathode ray tube and the mechanical disk system.

Mechanical Television versus Electronic Television

From the early experiments with visual transmissions, two types of television systems came into existence: mechanical television and electronic television. Mechanical television developed out of Nipkow’s disk system and was pioneered by British inventor John Logie Baird. In 1926, Baird gave the world’s first public demonstration of a television system at Selfridge’s department store in London. He used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electrical impulses, which were transmitted by cable to a screen. Here they showed up as a low-resolution pattern of light and dark. Baird’s first television program showed the heads of two ventriloquist dummies, which he operated in front of the camera apparatus out of the audience’s sight. In 1928, Baird extended his system by transmitting a signal between London and New York. The following year, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) adopted his mechanical system, and by 1932, Baird had developed the first commercially viable television system and sold 10,000 sets. Despite its initial success, mechanical television had several technical limitations. Engineers could get no more than about 240 lines of resolution, meaning images would always be slightly fuzzy (most modern televisions produce images of more than 600 lines of resolution). The use of a spinning disk also limited the number of new pictures that could be seen per second, resulting in excessive flickering. The mechanical aspect of television proved to be a disadvantage that required fixing in order for the technology to move forward.

At the same time Baird (and, separately, American inventor Charles Jenkins) was developing the mechanical model, other inventors were working on an electronic television system based on the CRT. While working on his father’s farm, Idaho teenager Philo Farnsworth realized that an electronic beam could scan a picture in horizontal lines, reproducing the image almost instantaneously. In 1927, Farnsworth transmitted the first all-electronic TV picture by rotating a single straight line scratched onto a square piece of painted glass by 90 degrees.

Farnsworth barely profited from his invention; during World War II, the government suspended sales of TV sets, and by the time the war ended, Farnsworth’s original patents were close to expiring. However, following the war, many of his key patents were modified by RCA and were widely applied in broadcasting to improve television picture quality.

Having coexisted for several years, electronic television sets eventually began to replace mechanical systems. With better picture quality, no noise, a more compact size, and fewer visual limitations, the electronic system was far superior to its predecessor and rapidly improving. By 1939, the last mechanical television broadcasts in the United States had been replaced with electronic broadcasts.

Early Broadcasting

Television broadcasting began as early as 1928, when the Federal Radio Commission authorized inventor Charles Jenkins to broadcast from W3XK, an experimental station in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Silhouette images from motion picture films were broadcast to the general public on a regular basis, at a resolution of just 48 lines. Similar experimental stations ran broadcasts throughout the early 1930s. In 1939, RCA subsidiary NBC (National Broadcasting Company) became the first network to introduce regular television broadcasts, transmitting its inaugural telecast of the opening ceremonies at the New York World’s Fair. The station’s initial broadcasts transmitted to just 400 television sets in the New York area, with an audience of 5,000 to 8,000 people (Lohr, 1940).

Television was initially available only to the privileged few, with sets ranging from $200 to $600—a hefty sum in the 1930s, when the average annual salary was $1,368 (KC Library). RCA offered four types of television receivers, which were sold in high-end department stores such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, and received channels 1 through 5. Early receivers were a fraction of the size of modern TV sets, featuring 5-, 9-, or 12-inch screens. Television sales prior to World War II were disappointing—an uncertain economic climate, the threat of war, the high cost of a television receiver, and the limited number of programs on offer deterred numerous prospective buyers. Many unsold television sets were put into storage and sold after the war.

NBC was not the only commercial network to emerge in the 1930s. RCA radio rival CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) also began broadcasting regular programs. So that viewers would not need a separate television set for each individual network, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) outlined a single technical standard. In 1941, the panel recommended a 525-line system and an image rate of 30 frames per second. It also recommended that all U.S. television sets operate using analog signals (broadcast signals made of varying radio waves). Analog signals were replaced by digital signals (signals transmitted as binary code) in 2009.

With the outbreak of World War II, many companies, including RCA and General Electric, turned their attention to military production. Instead of commercial television sets, they began to churn out military electronic equipment. In addition, the war halted nearly all television broadcasting; many TV stations reduced their schedules to around 4 hours per week or went off the air altogether.

Color Technology

Although it did not become available until the 1950s or popular until the 1960s, the technology for producing color television was proposed as early as 1904, and was demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1928. As with his black-and-white television system, Baird adopted the mechanical method, using a Nipkow scanning disk with three spirals, one for each primary color (red, green, and blue). In 1940, CBS researchers, led by Hungarian television engineer Peter Goldmark, used Baird’s 1928 designs to develop a concept of mechanical color television that could reproduce the color seen by a camera lens.

Following World War II, the National Television System Committee (NTSC) worked to develop an all-electronic color system that was compatible with black-and-white TV sets, gaining FCC approval in 1953. A year later, NBC made the first national color broadcast when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade. Despite the television industry’s support for the new technology, it would be another 10 years before color television gained widespread popularity in the United States, and black-and-white TV sets outnumbered color TV sets until 1972 (Klooster, 2009).

The Golden Age of Television

During the so-called “golden age” of television, the percentage of U.S. households that owned a television set rose from 9 percent in 1950 to 95.3 percent in 1970.

The 1950s proved to be the golden age of television, during which the medium experienced massive growth in popularity. Mass-production advances made during World War II substantially lowered the cost of purchasing a set, making television accessible to the masses. In 1945, there were fewer than 10,000 TV sets in the United States. By 1950, this figure had soared to around 6 million, and by 1960 more than 60 million television sets had been sold (World Book Encyclopedia, 2003). Many of the early television program formats were based on network radio shows and did not take advantage of the potential offered by the new medium. For example, newscasters simply read the news as they would have during a radio broadcast, and the network relied on newsreel companies to provide footage of news events. However, during the early 1950s, television programming began to branch out from radio broadcasting, borrowing from theater to create acclaimed dramatic anthologies such as Playhouse 90 (1956) and The U.S. Steel Hour (1953) and producing quality news film to accompany coverage of daily events.

Two new types of programs—the magazine format and the TV spectacular—played an important role in helping the networks gain control over the content of their broadcasts. Early television programs were developed and produced by a single sponsor, which gave the sponsor a large amount of control over the content of the show. By increasing program length from the standard 15-minute radio show to 30 minutes or longer, the networks substantially increased advertising costs for program sponsors, making it prohibitive for a single sponsor. Magazine programs such as the Today show and The Tonight Show , which premiered in the early 1950s, featured multiple segments and ran for several hours. They were also screened on a daily, rather than weekly, basis, drastically increasing advertising costs. As a result, the networks began to sell spot advertisements that ran for 30 or 60 seconds. Similarly, the television spectacular (now known as the television special) featured lengthy music-variety shows that were sponsored by multiple advertisers.

ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire brought the quiz show back to prime-time television after a 40-year absence.

sonicwwtbamfangamer2 – millionaire – CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the mid-1950s, the networks brought back the radio quiz-show genre. Inexpensive and easy to produce, the trend caught on, and by the end of the 1957–1958 season, 22 quiz shows were being aired on network television, including CBS’s $64,000 Question . Shorter than some of the new types of programs, quiz shows enabled single corporate sponsors to have their names displayed on the set throughout the show. The popularity of the quiz-show genre plunged at the end of the decade, however, when it was discovered that most of the shows were rigged. Producers provided some contestants with the answers to the questions in order to pick and choose the most likable or controversial candidates. When a slew of contestants accused the show Dotto of being fixed in 1958, the networks rapidly dropped 20 quiz shows. A New York grand jury probe and a 1959 congressional investigation effectively ended prime-time quiz shows for 40 years, until ABC revived the genre with its launch of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 1999 (Boddy, 1990).

The Rise of Cable Television

Formerly known as Community Antenna Television, or CATV, cable television was originally developed in the 1940s in remote or mountainous areas, including in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, to enhance poor reception of regular television signals. Cable antennas were erected on mountains or other high points, and homes connected to the towers would receive broadcast signals.

In the late 1950s, cable operators began to experiment with microwave to bring signals from distant cities. Taking advantage of their ability to receive long-distance broadcast signals, operators branched out from providing a local community service and began focusing on offering consumers more extensive programming choices. Rural parts of Pennsylvania, which had only three channels (one for each network), soon had more than double the original number of channels as operators began to import programs from independent stations in New York and Philadelphia. The wider variety of channels and clearer reception the service offered soon attracted viewers from urban areas. By 1962, nearly 800 cable systems were operational, serving 850,000 subscribers.

The Evolution of Television

Cable’s exponential growth was viewed as competition by local TV stations, and broadcasters campaigned for the FCC to step in. The FCC responded by placing restrictions on the ability of cable systems to import signals from distant stations, which froze the development of cable television in major markets until the early 1970s. When gradual deregulation began to loosen the restrictions, cable operator Service Electric launched the service that would change the face of the cable television industry— pay TV . The 1972 Home Box Office (HBO) venture, in which customers paid a subscription fee to access premium cable television shows and video-on-demand products, was the nation’s first successful pay cable service. HBO’s use of a satellite to distribute its programming made the network available throughout the United States. This gave it an advantage over the microwave-distributed services, and other cable providers quickly followed suit. Further deregulation provided by the 1984 Cable Act enabled the industry to expand even further, and by the end of the 1980s, nearly 53 million households subscribed to cable television (see Section 6.3 “Current Popular Trends in the Music Industry” ). In the 1990s, cable operators upgraded their systems by building higher-capacity hybrid networks of fiber-optic and coaxial cable. These broadband networks provide a multichannel television service, along with telephone, high-speed Internet, and advanced digital video services, using a single wire.

The Emergence of Digital Television

Following the FCC standards set out during the early 1940s, television sets received programs via analog signals made of radio waves. The analog signal reached TV sets through three different methods: over the airwaves, through a cable wire, or by satellite transmission. Although the system remained in place for more than 60 years, it had several disadvantages. Analog systems were prone to static and distortion, resulting in a far poorer picture quality than films shown in movie theaters. As television sets grew increasingly larger, the limited resolution made scan lines painfully obvious, reducing the clarity of the image. Companies around the world, most notably in Japan, began to develop technology that provided newer, better-quality television formats, and the broadcasting industry began to lobby the FCC to create a committee to study the desirability and impact of switching to digital television . A more efficient and flexible form of broadcast technology, digital television uses signals that translate TV images and sounds into binary code, working in much the same way as a computer. This means they require much less frequency space and also provide a far higher quality picture. In 1987, the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Services began meeting to test various TV systems, both analog and digital. The committee ultimately agreed to switch from analog to digital format in 2009, allowing a transition period in which broadcasters could send their signal on both an analog and a digital channel. Once the switch took place, many older analog TV sets were unusable without a cable or satellite service or a digital converter. To retain consumers’ access to free over-the-air television, the federal government offered $40 gift cards to people who needed to buy a digital converter, expecting to recoup its costs by auctioning off the old analog broadcast spectrum to wireless companies (Steinberg, 2007). These companies were eager to gain access to the analog spectrum for mobile broadband projects because this frequency band allows signals to travel greater distances and penetrate buildings more easily.

The Era of High-Definition Television

Around the same time the U.S. government was reviewing the options for analog and digital television systems, companies in Japan were developing technology that worked in conjunction with digital signals to create crystal-clear pictures in a wide-screen format. High-definition television , or HDTV, attempts to create a heightened sense of realism by providing the viewer with an almost three-dimensional experience. It has a much higher resolution than standard television systems, using around five times as many pixels per frame. First available in 1998, HDTV products were initially extremely expensive, priced between $5,000 and $10,000 per set. However, as with most new technology, prices dropped considerably over the next few years, making HDTV affordable for mainstream shoppers.

HDTV uses a wide-screen format with a different aspect ratio (the ratio of the width of the image to its height) than standard-definition TV. The wide-screen format of HDTV is similar to that of movies, allowing for a more authentic film-viewing experience at home.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0.

As of 2010, nearly half of American viewers are watching television in high definition, the fastest adoption of TV technology since the introduction of the VCR in the 1980s (Stelter, 2010). The new technology is attracting viewers to watch television for longer periods of time. According to the Nielsen Company, a company that measures TV viewership, households with HDTV watch 3 percent more prime-time television —programming screened between 7 and 11 p.m., when the largest audience is available—than their standard-definition counterparts (Stelter, 2010). The same report claims that the cinematic experience of HDTV is bringing families back together in the living room in front of the large wide-screen TV and out of the kitchen and bedroom, where individuals tend to watch television alone on smaller screens. However, these viewing patterns may change again soon as the Internet plays an increasingly larger role in how people view TV programs. The impact of new technologies on television is discussed in much greater detail in Section 9.4 “Influence of New Technologies” of this chapter.

Since 1950, the amount of time the average household spends watching television has almost doubled.

Key Takeaways

Two key technological developments in the late 1800s played a vital role in the evolution of television: the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk. The cathode ray tube, invented by German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897, was the forerunner of the TV picture tube. It had a fluorescent screen that emitted a visible light (in the form of images) when struck by a beam of electrons. The scanning disk, invented by German inventor Paul Nipkow, was a large, flat metal disk that could be used as a rotating camera. It served as the foundation for experiments on the transmission of visual images for several decades.
Out of the cathode ray tube and the scanning disk, two types of primitive television systems evolved: mechanical systems and electronic systems. Mechanical television systems had several technical disadvantages: Low resolution caused fuzzy images, and the use of a spinning disk limited the number of new pictures that could be seen per second, resulting in excessive flickering. By 1939, all mechanical television broadcasts in the United States had been replaced by electronic broadcasts.
Early televisions were expensive, and the technology was slow to catch on because development was delayed during World War II. Color technology was delayed even further because early color systems were incompatible with black-and-white television sets. Following the war, television rapidly replaced radio as the new mass medium. During the “golden age” of television in the 1950s, television moved away from radio formats and developed new types of shows, including the magazine-style variety show and the television spectacular.
Since 1960, several key technological developments have taken place in the television industry. Color television gained popularity in the late 1960s and began to replace black-and-white television in the 1970s. Cable television, initially developed in the 1940s to cater to viewers in rural areas, switched its focus from local to national television, offering an extensive number of channels. In 2009, the traditional analog system, which had been in place for 60 years, was replaced with digital television, giving viewers a higher-quality picture and freeing up frequency space. As of 2010, nearly half of American viewers have high-definition television, which offers a crystal-clear picture in wide-screen to provide a cinematic experience at home.

Please respond to the following writing prompts. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

Prior to World War II, television was in the early stages of development. In the years following the war, the technical development and growth in popularity of the medium were exponential. Identify two ways television evolved after World War II. How did these changes make postwar television superior to its predecessor?
Compare the television you use now with the television from your childhood. How have TV sets changed in your lifetime?
What do you consider the most important technological development in television since the 1960s? Why?

Boddy, William. “The Seven Dwarfs and the Money Grubbers,” in Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism , ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 98–116.

Federal Communications Commission, “Visionary Period, 1880’s Through 1920’s,” Federal Communications Commission , November 21, 2005, http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/tv/1880-1929.html .

KC Library, Lone Star College: Kinwood, “American Cultural History 1930–1939,” http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html .

Klooster, John. Icons of Invention: The Makers of the Modern World from Gutenberg to Gates (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 442.

Lohr, Lenox. Television Broadcasting (New York: McGraw Hill, 1940).

Steinberg, Jacques. “Converters Signal a New Era for TVs,” New York Times , June 7, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/technology/07digital.html .

Stelter, Brian. “Crystal-Clear, Maybe Mesmerizing,” New York Times , May 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/media/24def.html .

World Book Encyclopedia (2003), s.v. “Television.”

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section History of Television

Introduction, general histories and textbooks.

General Anthologies
Television Technology Histories
Legal and Regulatory Histories
Studies of the Industry Before 1960
Dramatic Formats Before 1960
Broadcast Television 1960–1990
Broadcast and Cable Television Since 1990
Television and Digital Media
Issues of Race and Gender
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History of Television by William Boddy LAST REVIEWED: 17 November 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 25 June 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0036

While journalists, cultural critics, technology writers, and industry figures have been writing about television for a surprisingly long time (going back at least to experiments with mechanical television in the late 1920s), the academic study of television history largely emerged only in the 1970s in the United States and the United Kingdom. Befitting its object of study as at once a major industry, creative medium, and political battlefield, scholarly writing on television history owes distinct debts to the disciplines of business, technology, and legal studies, as well as humanities-based film and cultural studies. Paralleling the renaissance of the study of film history and the rise of cultural studies, scholarly writing on television’s past since the 1980s has vastly expanded our understanding of the ubiquitous medium during a period of sustained change in its traditional institutions and practices. Supported by a range of scholarly journals, archives, and conferences, contemporary scholarship in television history has actively explored both the medium’s tangled past and its uncertain future in a world of fragmented audiences, proliferating technological platforms, and competing business models. Not surprisingly, given its scale and dominance in international program markets, the US television industry has preoccupied television historians, though increasing attention has been paid to the global contexts of television production and exchange in the early 21st century. Academic writing on television often blurs distinctions among history, theory, and criticism, and this hybrid quality can be seen in the organization of academic conferences, the design of edited anthologies, and even within the pages of a single-authored book. In part, this fluidity reflects the polyglot nature and relative youth of the academic study of television, but it also reflects an attempt by many television scholars to reach out to a wide array of readers and to fully engage with popular, ubiquitous, and sometimes culturally degraded program texts. It remains to be seen what happens to this populist impulse of much historical writing on television as the universalist, top-down culture of traditional broadcast television threatens to dissolve in a multiplatform digital cornucopia. As current intellectual fashions and the academic marketplace coalesce around often carelessly defined notions of new media and screen cultures, the value of rigorous historical work on television’s program forms, audiences, and institutions will be more important than ever.

The historical study of radio and television history through the 1970s in the United States and the United Kingdom was dominated by the massive multivolume institutional histories Barnouw 1966 and Briggs 1961 . Despite their age, the works remain valuable beyond historiographic interest, drawing upon as they do to a rich field of corporate and government archives as well as interviews with contemporary participants. As postsecondary courses in television history expanded since 1990, a new generation of textbooks, including Barnouw 1990 , Edgerton 2009 , Gomery 2008 , Hilmes 2011 , Marc and Thompson 2005 , and Sterling and Kittross 2001 , and synthetic histories of television, like Castleman and Podrazik 2010 , has appeared in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and these works bring with them a new historiographic sophistication as well as the fruits of contemporary scholarship.

Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933 . Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel . New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Still an impressive achievement of archival research and narrative history, this multivolume history combines massive research, strong narrative design, and a skeptical stance toward the industry, with an emphasis on regulatory and political contexts. Barnouw’s political bêtes noires and aesthetic blind spots become more conspicuous in the final volume, which ends with the late 1960s.

Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television . 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

A highly readable single-volume distillation and updating of Barnouw’s three-volume history of US broadcasting, it remains strong in corporate and regulatory history, if uneven in the discussion of specific programs and creative style and increasingly distant in historical coverage.

Briggs, Asa. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom . Vol. 1, The Birth of Broadcasting . New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

This is the first volume of a five-volume history of British broadcasting, written over three and a half decades by an eminent social historian, from the beginnings of radio to the early 1970s, drawing upon BBC and government records, balancing discussion of institutional, political, and program issues. Still indispensable to the study of British broadcasting and the BBC.

Castleman, Harry, and Walter Podrazik. Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television . 2d ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010.

This is a lively and opinionated chronology of prime-time US television, nonacademic though thoughtful and well informed. In its concentration on programs, it serves as a useful complement to more institutionally centered histories. The book also includes prime-time schedule grids for every US American network television season from 1944 to 2010. Originally published in 1982.

Edgerton, Gary R. The Columbia History of American Television . New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

This is a concise and thorough (if still somewhat top-down) history of US television, balancing institutional and programming topics, with four case-study chapters by specialist historians alongside the chronological narrative.

Gomery, Douglas. A History of Broadcasting in the United States . Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.

Gomery’s incisive 350-page history of radio and television in the United States emphasizes issues of programming and industry form over those of technology and regulation. This is a lively contemporary account, exhaustively researched, from a distinguished US media historian.

Hilmes, Michele. Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States . 3d ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011.

Hilmes offers a cultural studies–oriented account of American radio and television, taking advantage of recent scholarship and carefully connecting the medium to its cultural and historical context. The book includes a number of case studies on specific historical topics and is unusually sensitive to questions of historical method.

Marc, David, and Robert Thompson. Television in the Antenna Age: A Concise History . Malden, MA: Wiley, 2005.

DOI: 10.1002/9780470775745

This is a brief and highly readable volume on US television history by two prominent writers on American television and popular culture, with an emphasis on popular programming.

Sterling, Christopher H., and John Kittross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting . 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2001.

This is the most recent edition of an established textbook on US radio and television, with an emphasis upon technology and legal and regulatory issues, concluding with an exhaustive bibliography.

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Television Studies

Introduction
Introductory resources
Finding books about television
Finding television shows
Journals & magazines about television
History of television
TV criticism
Writing for television
Shakespeare on television
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TV genres This link opens in a new window
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In the Library's collections

Books about Television sit just after those on Radio in the stacks. The following subject headings and call numbers will lead you to most of the books about Television and Television broadcasting in the collection.

Books about what is actually broadcast, the history and criticism are shelved in PN 1992 through PN 1992.925 on Baker Stack Level 4 .

Books on the Television broadcasting industry are in the call number range HE 8700 through HE 8700.9 on Berry Level 3 .

Books on the technical aspects of Television are in the call number range TK 6630 through TK 6680.3 on Berry Level 4 .

You can use one of the subject headings below to start your research:

television united states history Substitute another country name for the United States.
television history
television broadcasting united states history
television broadcasting history You can add the name of a specific country to narrow your search.
television actors and actresses

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Finding journal literature for the history of Television

You can find scholarly literature for the history of television in a variety of journals. However, if you want to do targeted searching, you can use a subject specific data such as Film & Television Literature Index . You can also use the new search box at the top of the page.

<< Previous: Journals & magazines about television
Next: Censorship >>
Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024 3:08 PM
URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/television

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History of Television
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Though it is relatively recent, the history of television is multi-faceted and complex. It includes things such as the physical technological advancements, world events broadcast over TV, important television personalities, and the sociological and psychological effects of television programs from different eras. You can select a specific article about these topics or use the databases below to search for more.

Suggested search terms:

history | television (TV)

criticism | television

broadcasting | history

television | actors/actresses

biography | actors/actresses

Important Events

A Cartel in the Public Interest: NCAA Broadcast Policy During the Early Cold War
Teaching the Sixties with Film
The Vietnam War: Perceptions Through Literature, Film, and Television

Oral History and Memory

Nazis, Viewers and Statistics: Television History, Television Audience Research and Collective Memory in West Germany
Oral History on Television: A Retrospective
Ten Pound Poms and Television Oral History

Social and Cultural Phenomena

Possible Social Effects of Television
Radio and Television Studies and American Culture
Understanding Recent History through the Television Medium

Personalities

IMDb: The 100 Most Important People in Television History
Emmy TV Legends

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Last Updated: Aug 24, 2023 1:37 PM
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The History of Television

Updated 25 October 2023

Downloads 62

Category Business , Entertainment , History , Life

The television as we know it has demanded the attention of the public for years. But what once isolated us now connects us through phones, computers, and tablets. It has become apparent that the audience is making its demands on how and what viewers want to see on their screens. Television commands wide viewership and reaches a great expanse of the target audience for any commercials (Greenfield). In "From Wasteland to Wonderland: TV's Altered Landscape," (2015) New York Times writer, Jeff Greenfield, describes his personal experience with the television industry, and authoritatively takes us on a fascinating journey of TV, when TV appeared wounded and dejected as would a soldier facing imminent defeat in a war. He emphasizes the history of television networks, the end of the three-network monopoly, and with the generational shift in what is acceptable to show to the public. With the inventions, development, and advancement of new technologies, it seemed that the TV was no longer as important. However, an upsurge in the commercial industry revived it violently, turning it into a “Darling” for many since the developers had to create relevant presentations which attracted the audience. The audience would, in turn, be sold to advertisers (Greenfield). Greenfield’s purpose is to persuade his audience that the television may have had a rough time in the past but it’s here to stay, and this he does by embracing an assured and friendly tone, repetition, contrast, use of statistics, rhetorical questions, significant quotes and personal testimonies.

Firstly, Greenfield uses logos to persuade his audience that despite the enormous challenges TV went through, it has not only survived but emerged stronger. Logos is the very content of a speech or the application of logic in an argument. Greenfield argues that the audience, who are the consumers, need TV services in their lives such as being updated on the news, being entertained, and being consumers of advertised products. The author achieves the logic argument by bringing the audience up to speed with the history of the Television since the mid-1970s when he says, “The key to the old TV world was scarcity. Only so many channels could beam through the air without running into each other… But in 1975, RCA introduced the first of two “Satcom” communications satellites, and the three-network monopoly was dead. Now competitors could deliver their fare to stations and cable systems coast to coast.” In the example above, Greenfield has made very good use of contrast to draw that distinction between scarcity and abundance in the TV industry. Further, he points out that in as much as the TVs once isolated human beings, they are nowadays essential in every bit of life. For instance, in entertaining, giving information and many other uses that are equally important. This he manages to do by use of contrast when he quotes a historian, “…the historian Daniel Boorstein wrote in Life

magazine that the age of television created “a new sense of isolation and confinement.” Today, a viewer can use a second screen — a phone, a tablet, a computer — to connect with friends, strangers and even creators of the shows to dissect a plotline, deride a piece of dialogue and question a twist in the story line, even as the show is being broadcast” (Greenfield). Again the use of that contrast paints a clear picture of the differences in opinion between isolation and interactivity. Further use of logos is found in the statistics Greenfield uses to convince the audience of the shift to financial abundance from scarcity. He argues thus, “Even in the face of flagging ratings, the network earned more than $440 million in profits last year, and the laggard MSNBC earned about half that much” (Greenfield). His use of such staggering statistics convinces the reader that TV is a booming business.

Ethos is the characteristic of influencing the process of persuasion through the author’s honesty, authority, and credibility about the topic in question. In his briefing of the history of the television, Greenfield assumes that authority because he informs his audience of the true things that unfolded when in his presence, for example, “When I began writing about the television industry in the mid-1970s, these were some of the kinder terms of endearment” (Greenfield).This means Greenfield has been in the business long enough to be an authority; in fact, for over 40 years. Besides, he uses personal testimony when he honestly admits to being wrong the time he predicted that the then enormous pressure that forced the commercial television into its quite narrow boundaries would not widen in the future. The author earnestly admits that he was wrong in that prediction and that the very boundaries he predicted would not widen began to widen that same year. This honesty from a personal testimony influences the persuasion process, and the reader tends to be persuaded to buy his stance in the argument. Another factor that influences the persuasion process of the reader is the author’s credibility on the subject as seen in his knowledge about the television. In fact, the author explains every bit clearly on how the television services have changed over the years, which give a listener or the reader confidence in taking the same stance with the author about TV. Not only has the author been in the TV industry for years, he has also interacted with fellow industry players, and this has increased his knowledge over the years, thus contributing to his credibility. For example, he includes quotations such as, “Remember,” the NBC executive Don Carswell told me, “we’re not selling the program. We’re selling the audience for the program.” Also, “The veteran writer had gotten a deal from Fox to write a pilot script about a family headed by a gangster. As he recounted in a public discussion with me…” (Greenfield). These quotations and other factors examined above tend to convince the audience not only of the author’s credibility but also on his argument that TV is here to stay.

Greenfield has also used pathos in his line of argument that TV will survive. By definition, pathos is the appeal to the emotional side of the audience that is targeted. This aspect of communication is achieved by Greenfield by familiarizing the adverse effects of the TV with his audience. Greenfield cleverly uses repetition to draw us into his discussion of TV, thus working with our emotions. “Everything about the medium — how we receive it, how we consume it, how we pay for it, how we interact with it — has been altered, and TV is infinitely better for it.” Also, “What this meant was that every hour, every half-hour, every moment of prime time had to be devoted to gathering the biggest possible audience.” (Greenfield). In fact, he gives an example of hardship that was faced by anyone who tried to start another network besides the three that had a nationwide distribution system of relays. Further, he talks of writers like David Chase who had to write things they never believed just for the said television program to gain a bigger audience. In this narration, Greenfield skillfully employs

rhetorical questions to pique the reader’s sense of morality when the Fox Executives punch holes in David’s work simply because society has become more and more permissive, “Did Tony Soprano really have to be seeing a psychiatrist? Didn’t this make him seem vulnerable, a bit weak?” (Greenfield). There are more rhetorical questions posed to emphasize on the shift from the age of morality to the age of permissiveness. “A chemistry teacher turned meth supplier; Soviet spies as the protagonists of a weekly drama? A drug-addicted nurse? A firefighter fighting his own demons?” (Greenfield). The author wants to draw us into an emotional discussion of the new trend of creating antiheroes. Greenfield still has one more question which he nevertheless answers; a question that reveals the pathos side of his story. “Is there still a mountain of junk on TV? More than ever. The same cable abundance that brings us Mad Men

and Justified brings us the Real Liposuctioned Housewives of Springfield.” (Greenfield). Thus, the author manages to use pathos to draw the audience into siding with him that television is no longer a wasteland but a wonderland.

The author aimed to persuade his audience that despite the intricate battles for survival that TV waged in the past, it has not only survived but is now thriving over and above anyone’s imagination. Greenfield accomplishes his purpose by using compelling techniques of a friendly tone, repetition, contrast, rhetorical questions, personal testimony and statistics to appeal to the logos, ethos, and pathos of the audience. “The boob tube,” “The idiot box,” “The plug-in drug, and “A vast wasteland” now has the last laugh as Greenfield concludes by calling it a ‘dazzling landscape.” It has indeed taken the world by storm.

Greenfield, Jeff. “From Wasteland to Wonderland: TV’s Altered Landscape.” New York Times, 3 October 2015.

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Editor(s): Mary Beth Haralovich , Lauren Rabinovitz

Contributor(s): Mary Beth Haralovich , Michele Hilmes , Mark Williams , Mary R. Desjardins , Moya Luckett , Julie D′Acci , Jane Shattuc , Jane Feuer , Lauren Rabinovitz

Subjects Gender and Sexuality > Feminism and Women’s Studies , Media Studies > TV , Cultural Studies

“[T]he utility and readability of these essays, not to mention their intriguing readings of old television programmes, marks them as wonderful contributions to feminist media research for students and scholars alike.” — Mary Douglas Vavrus , Cultural Studies

“From woman- and character-centered textual interpretations, through discussions of the complexity of audience and spectatorship, to redefinition of the role of consumerism in television’s industrial practices, each essay contributes to the reader’s understanding of the role of television as an agent of cultural and social consciousness.” — J. D. Hamlet , Choice

“Reading this collection will be a tonic for anyone wearied by ongoing assaults on feminism and cultural studies as having passed their prime; these essays suggest a vital field of inquiry and a vibrant political spirit . . . The contributors list reads like a who’s who of American feminist television studies.” — Henry Jenkins, editor of Children’s Culture Reader

Author/Editor Bios
Table of Contents
Additional Information

Mary Beth Haralovich is Associate Professor of Media Arts at the University of Arizona. Lauren Rabinovitz is Professor of American Studies and Film Studies at the University of Iowa.

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Essay on Television for Students and Children

500+ words essay on television.

Television is one of the most popular devices that are used for entertainment all over the world. It has become quite common nowadays and almost every household has one television set at their place. In the beginning, we see how it was referred to as the ‘idiot box.’ This was mostly so because back in those days, it was all about entertainment. It did not have that many informative channels as it does now.

Moreover, with this invention, the craze attracted many people to spend all their time watching TV. People started considering it harmful as it attracted the kids the most. In other words, kids spent most of their time watching television and not studying. However, as times passed, the channels of television changed. More and more channels were broadcasted with different specialties. Thus, it gave us knowledge too along with entertainment.

Benefits of Watching Television

The invention of television gave us various benefits. It was helpful in providing the common man with a cheap mode of entertainment. As they are very affordable, everyone can now own television and get access to entertainment.

In addition, it keeps us updated on the latest happenings of the world. It is now possible to get news from the other corner of the world. Similarly, television also offers educational programs that enhance our knowledge about science and wildlife and more.

Moreover, television also motivates individuals to develop skills. They also have various programs showing speeches of motivational speakers. This pushes people to do better. You can also say that television widens the exposure we get. It increases our knowledge about several sports, national events and more.

While television comes with a lot of benefits, it also has a negative side. Television is corrupting the mind of the youth and we will further discuss how.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

How Television is Harming the Youth

Additionally, it also makes people addict. People get addicted to their TV’s and avoid social interaction. This impacts their social life as they spend their time in their rooms all alone. This addiction also makes them vulnerable and they take their programs too seriously.

The most dangerous of all is the fake information that circulates on news channels and more. Many media channels are now only promoting the propaganda of the governments and misinforming citizens. This makes causes a lot of division within the otherwise peaceful community of our country.

Thus, it is extremely important to keep the TV watching in check. Parents must limit the time of their children watching TV and encouraging them to indulge in outdoor games. As for the parents, we should not believe everything on the TV to be true. We must be the better judge of the situation and act wisely without any influence.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “How does television benefit people?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Television offers people a cheap source of entertainment. It saves them from boredom and helps them get information and knowledge about worldly affairs.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the negative side of television?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”Television has a negative side to it because it harms people’s health when watched in excess. Moreover, it is the easiest platform to spread fake news and create misunderstandings between communities and destroy the peace and harmony of the country.”} }] }

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Comedy — The History Of Television Sitcom

The History of Television Sitcom

Categories: Comedy Watching TV

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Published: Jun 20, 2019

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History of American Television Essay Example

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Television has become an integral and inseparable part of people’s everyday life all over the world, being the primary source of news and entertainment for millions of people. Of course, different countries have different levels of television development and population’s access to quality TV services. However, the overwhelming majority of nations, especially highly developed ones, offer a wide range of TV channels for all groups of audience for a relatively low cost. The internet has somewhat decreased the popularity of television as a primary news and entertainment source, but availability of various channels online has stopped this decrease. Anyway, television remains a highly demanded and valued medium in the USA that is actively used in most households. The current paper strives to provide a brief overview of the history of television in the USA with a special emphasis on the role and characteristics of this medium and such topical issues as the effect of corporate ownership on television and relations between television and American culture. Thus, the paper claims that since the time of its advent, television has been and remains a popular and demanded medium in the USA that has a significant impact on American culture and society.

Historical Development of Television

History of television as a peculiar medium started in 1878 when W. Crookes informed the general public that there existed cathode rays, which would be an essential prerequisite for the development of special tubes and scanning devices (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). However, the word ‘television’ was used for the first time by Constantin Perskyi at the First International Congress of Electricity at the Parisian World’s Fair (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Some scholars predicted at this fair that color television would appear by the beginning of the 21st century. The first moving television pictures were shown in 1925 in England by J. L. Baird, who employed a specialized mechanical system for that purpose (Television history – A timeline, n.d.).

Bell Labs and AT&T were pioneers in the sphere of television development and transmission, launching a broadcast in Washington and New York in 1927 (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). In the same year, the US government decided to start governing a new medium and adopted the Radio Act, which was later repealed in 1934 (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). This act stipulated programming rules, licensing procedures, and establishment of the Federal Radio Commission (hereinafter referred to as the FRA) that granted permits for the use of airwaves (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Two first television stations named WGY-TV and W2XBS were launched in New York in 1928, and the former succeeded in transmitting a rather prolonged program to 4 TV sets (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). 1928 was marked with other two significant events in the history of American television: the FRA issued its first license to Jenkins’ W3XK, and the first mechanical TV sets were produced by GE for sale to the general public (Television history – A timeline, n.d.).

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Withal, the history of American television is full of various achievements and remarkable events, and it is virtually an impossible task to list them all while it would take dozens, if not hundreds of pages merely to name them and their respective years. Therefore, only the most significant dates and achievements are going to be mentioned. Commercial television began in the USA on July 1, 1941 and was subject to the standard of 525 lines (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). In the same year, the first legal commercial, which advertised Bulova watches, was shown. The ad lasted 10 seconds, which cost the company $9 (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). On July 1, the first newscast was aired by WCBS (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). The well-known companies CBS and NBC undertook television programming that encompassed about 15 hours a week. In the same year, CBS broadcasted news about the Pearl Harbor attack on its TV channel.

Since the US entered the WWII, production and sale of commercial television equipment was suspended. Thus, 1946 was a revival year for American television when post-war programs were developed and broadcasted and new TV sets, called 630-TS, went on sale for $350 (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Approximately 10,000 TV sets were sold within a year. This number increased to 44,000 and 350,000 TV sets in 1947 and 1948 respectively (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). This number has been steadily growing since then. The year of 1950 saw a real TV sets boom when more than 6,132,000 sets were sold, thus accounting for 9 percent of American households (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Color television was highly anticipated in the country. And the first color television sets went on sale in 1954 for $1,000 each. In 1954, more than half of all US households had a TV set at home (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Within 2 years, the price of color television sets fell by more than a half, hence becoming more affordable for ordinary Americans. In the early 1960s, there were already almost 70 million TV sets in the USA. In the 1950s – 1960s, television became the favorite medium of the American society.

One of the proofs of such popularity is the fact that “TV Guide” became “the biggest-selling periodical of the decade” (U.S. History, 2014). Sitcoms and westerns were the most beloved programs in the US within this period. Thus, the sitcom “I Love Lucy” had the highest ratings in the 1950s, being followed by such shows as “Leave It to Beaver”, “Father Knows Best”, and “The Donna Reed Show” (U.S. History, 2014). At the same time, westerns were recognized as the best films shown on television thanks to “America’s fascination with the Wild West”, which turned “into a love affair” after broadcasting of “The Roy Rogers Show”, “Hopalong Cassidy”, “Bonanza”, “Rin Tin Tin”, and the like (U.S. History, 2014).

A qualitatively new television era started in 1962 after AT&T launched the first satellite. Just two years later, the University of Illinois presented plasma television prototypes. However, the amount of color television sets owned by American households remained relatively low in the 1960s, reaching only approximately 5 percent by the end of the decade. Afterwards, the development of television has been quite rapid, and each year has seen new presentations and achievements. New television standards, programs, children television requirements, as well as achievements in terms of broadcasting and cable television have been introduced since the 1970s. In 1999, reality television reached the peak of its popularity with the program “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” being on the top of TV rankings (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). In 2000, legal dramas were among the most popular television programs as 9 out of 20 top rankings were taken by them (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). At the beginning of the new millennium, 98 percent of American households had more than 1 TV set at home. On average, every adult American reported watching about 4 hours of television a day in the early 2000s. In 2004, there were more than 300 cable networks in the USA, and many of them were available online (Television history – A timeline, n.d.). Hence, the history of television has been extremely eventful and rich.

Role of the Medium as an Expression of the Storytelling Tradition

Storytelling is an ancient concept that has existed for centuries and has been used by the humanity to share and exchange knowledge, values and wisdom with their fellow societies and future generations. However, introduction of various media like television has led to the necessity to review this notion and its basic principles, hence resulting in the emergence of digital storytelling. Digital Storytelling Association defines this relatively new concept as “the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling” (as cited in Digital storytelling for communities, n.d.). Besides, it adds that “Throughout history…stories have taken many different forms. Stories have been adapted to each successive medium that has emerged, from the circle of the campfire to the silver screen, and now the computer screen” (as cited in Digital storytelling for communities, n.d.). Thus, storytelling has evolved over the centuries to incorporate new technologies to tell stories in a more efficient way. Therefore, modern storytelling, including the television one, may be considered as a natural evolution of the storytelling tradition and its successful progression to fit the contemporary reality.

Television storytelling is unique in many respects, but it has the most in common with cinema storytelling due to the similar history of these two media’s development. Nonetheless, television storytelling has had to tackle unprecedented obstacles and overcome difficulties that are absent in the cinema discourse. Thus, Tom Dowd (2013) calls television storytelling “a tale of two dynamics.” The first dynamics consists in its similarities with storytelling of motion pictures since television has borrowed many elements from the film industry. The second dynamics is “a gradual evolution over time, with television storytelling being slowly reshaped by strong forces tied directly to a medium that is dictated by broadcast networks and their financial model” (Dowd, 2013). The matter is that television storytelling is governed by the broadcast schedule and the necessity for sponsor-driven broadcasters to adapt their storytelling to advertising needs. Sponsor-driven model of television networks means that series and programs are broken into parts with ads, and directors have to devise ways to sustain viewers and attract premium commercial companies who search for quality advertising services at the same time. This model currently dominates in the industry of American television though the subscriber-driven model gains popularity thanks to lobbying of such networks as Showtime and HBO. Anyway, advertising is an integral part of television, and its storytelling has to take into account this element.

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Commercials have become so deeply engrained into the television medium that one may occasionally hear “derisive comments that television stories are simply a method for delivering advertisements”, yet TV producers have succeeded in “creatively adapting traditional storytelling techniques into new forms” that are dynamic and unique as well as attractive for other media striving to adapt to requirements of the modern age (Dowd, 2013). Any television story consists of acts, i.e. constituent blocks that divide the entire story into narrative chunks. However, television acts are quite different from acts in motion pictures because they do not seamlessly flow into each other. Besides, television storytelling model does not always comply with the film three-act model. Television stories may consist of many acts that are separated by ads at regular intervals. Therefore, TV producers have had to invent ways how to hold viewers’ attention during commercial breaks and not to let them forget what has been shown in the previous act. The latter task is successfully completed thanks to “additional storytelling elements, such as the recap, prologue, teaser, tag, cliffhanger and previews” (Dowd, 2013).

Some shows still try to fit in the three-act model, but recently more and more television programs have shifted to more acts that are not always logically divided into parts but are successfully bridged thanks to the above mentioned additional storytelling elements. On the whole, the number of acts and additional storytelling elements preferred depends on the genre and format of a TV program, but the narration usually follows conventions set forth by the three-act model of storytelling. In initial acts, which coincide with Act 1 of the three-act model, the key characters are presented and the protagonist is shown to have some need or wish. In order to satisfy the need, the protagonist has to undertake some actions and solve a problematic situation. The protagonist does everything possible to reach his/her goal, and entire program develops around this particular goal.

Besides, the protagonist has to face some conflict irrespective of the genre of the program. In the further acts, just like in Act 2 in cinema storytelling, conflicts become more challenging and complicated, and it is more difficult to solve problems than before. In the final acts, which can be equated to Act 3 in the three-act model, there should be a climax of the story when the protagonist either succeeds or fails. Everything after the climax is the resolution of the story. Television storytelling sometimes breaks the described model into more than three acts and inserts commercials between them. The more successful the program is, the higher will be the price of the commercial time in breaks, thus generating more revenues for the network, making the program successful and ensuring that it will be aired for seasons.

Characteristics of Genre

Genre has been employed for many years in literary studies as well as in film analysis, but it was applied to the research of television only in the 1970s, hence being a relatively new sphere of studies. Television genre is subject to various discussions and debates. Most scholars agree that genre may be defined as “a system based on perceived similarities and differences and on a set of expectations and assumptions shared by the reader/viewer” (Akass & McCabe, 2007). In terms of television genre, this concept remains quite difficult to define in a unanimous way. Moreover, there is a supposition that this concept is abstract and a phenomenon made by people.

With respect to television genre, there are several key ideas. Some scholars agree that this genre “guides industrial procedures – how it organized itself, how it appeals to viewers and how commercial stations deliver audiences to advertisers” (Akass & McCabe, 2007). Some scholars claim that genre “is a means of managing TVs notorious extensiveness as a cultural form” (Akass & McCabe, 2007). In the sphere of television, the concept of genre is extremely useful and valuable since it helps broadcasting companies create new programs quickly and efficiently on the basis of formulas that have already proved their success among target audience. Moreover, some broadcasting companies, for instance, Sci-Fi and Comedy Central create their brand image on the basis of their adherence to a particular television genre that they promote. Studies of the television genre point out that companies have to take into consideration their target audience since “as far as genre is concerned, expectations exist both to be satisfied, and, also, to be redefined”, i.e. producers should evolve and develop their channels in line with viewers’ wishes (Akass & McCabe, 2007).

In general, scholars distinguish three major characteristics of the television genre. The first one concerns “the structural analysis of text” (Akass & McCabe, 2007). The second one considers viewers targeted and their expected reception of various formats and shows. The third one consists in “commercial practices and institutional demands” (Akass & McCabe, 2007). Television genre cannot be determined as merely one generic type of programs shown by some company, like a comedy or a drama, as it is a much broader implicitly perceived notion. Different companies often mix typically distinguished genres of programs to create a mixture that would be appealing to the target audience. Therefore, television genre may be considered as extremely hybridized and constantly changing in accordance with viewers’ preferences and expectations. Furthermore, the television genre is subject to intertextuality and flexibility with respect to products offered to the target audience.

Effect of Corporate Ownership on Trends in Television

It goes without saying that the mass media play an essential role in shaping the society and its views on various issues they raise. However, the media and especially television can hardly be called objective in their coverage of news and events and unbiased and utterly disinterested in the provision of different reality shows and programs. Television is present in the daily life of every American, and it often influences their subconscious and shapes their perception of miscellaneous notions and events. Therefore, owners of television companies are the ones who control their broadcasting schedules and set forth their companies’ ideologies. In addition, ownership has an immense effect on television trends and “pervasive consequences for the character of public debate, the attitudes people form towards social issues and social conflicts, and ultimately the possibilities for various kinds of social change to occur in a democracy” (Wright & Rogers, 2010).

The matter is that most television companies as well as other mass media companies are corporate in the USA and are arranged as capitalist companies. There are virtually no publicly-owned television networks, which has given a rise to criticism of the situation, implying that “efforts at global dominance” of “a tiny group of oligopolistic industrialists” “have been accelerated by their cozy relationship with succeeding administrators” (Barnett, 2010). Media conglomerates own television networks and determine what the viewers will see and what views will be subconsciously suggested. Corporate ownership of major television and media giants is sometimes perceived as “a significant anti-democratic force in the US” (Barnett, 2010). This is so because one and the same idea or event may be represented in different ways, which would definitely impact the public’s attitude towards this idea or event to a large extent. The ability to determine and select news and programs that are suitable for some peculiar purpose means power to influence the country’s direction and ordinary Americans’ life. This supposition is proved with numerous studies researching the influence and power of television with respect to human beings.

Corporate ownership of television means that directors and producers have to create products that would generate revenues rather than fulfill any other purposes like education or enlightenment. In turn, such profit-oriented direction promotes the culture of consumerism among Americans since most TV channels get a significant share of their revenues from commercials. Thus, breaks during shows or programs become more frequent and advertising becomes more creative and persuasive while other TV products may suffer a decline in quality and innovation. Commercials are sometimes more creative and impressive than new television series that target average consumers without any aspiration to broaden their outlook. Many television products have become merely a way to spend time in front of the TV screen without a necessity to think about some important or topical issues. Corporate ownership also means that programs are assessed in terms of their popularity among viewers, and once a likable format or genre is detected, it will be exploited and countless imitations will be produced until its popularity wanes and its ability to bring profit exhausts. Current television trends promoted by corporate owners of media giants include legal and medical dramas, reality shows with celebrities, programs relating to some scandals, and sitcoms.

Influence of Television on American Culture

Television has had an unprecedented impact on American culture because of its pervasive nature. Thus, Professor Gary R. Edgerton emphasizes that “no technology before TV ever integrated faster into American life. Television took only 10 years to reach a penetration of 35 million households, while the telephone required 80 years…and even radio needed 25” (Falck, 2008). Moreover, every American watches in general up to 35 hours of TV per week, which means that television plays a vital role in daily activities. Hence, it may be definitely stated that television has significantly impacted American culture since it is its major part as “Just the act of watching TV impacts who we are” (Striepe, 2013).

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The influence of television on American culture has been both positive and negative in some respects. First of all, television is often blamed for promotion of consumerism and unhealthy eating, resulting in obesity. Commercials advertise various products and junk food that are then desired by average Americans. Obesity is also caused by the fact that people spend a lot of time sitting on their couches in front of TV screens instead of exercising or going for a walk, for example. Furthermore, television has had a significant influence on values perceived as common by Americans. The value and concept of family has been somewhat damaged as one study proves that married couples are less committed to preserving their families once they start believing in images and stereotypical portrayals propagated by television (Striepe, 2013). Quality time spent with children has also decreased to 38 minutes per week spent on “screen-free interactions” (Striepe, 2013). However, there are positive impacts in this respect as well since some harmful social stereotypes are destroyed and tolerance is promoted. For example, television has increased acceptance of gay and lesbian couples by average Americans (Striepe, 2013). Gender equality may be regarded as another positive influence of television that has helped to promote it in the society. At the same time, television reduces the level of knowledgeability about recent news and topical issues. This may seem odd due to a wide range of channels, but people tend to prefer one or two major news sources and believe in what they are told by these sources and ignore other less biased channels, which may be increase their ignorance and limited worldview.

Another major impact of television concerns body image and promotion of stereotypical perception of beauty. Although it has been recently declared that all body shapes and all types of beauty should be appreciated, ordinary people, especially teenagers, aspire to look and behave like celebrities, hence increasing their chances of developing unhealthy habits relating to eating disorders and substance abuse. One of the most negative influences of television on American culture concerns acceptance of violence and desensitization to cruelty and violent behavior. There are numerous studied related to this issue that research both short-term and long-term impact of television on violent behavior, but their findings differ and are not yet conclusive. Nonetheless, researchers agree that one “might be more likely to react violently in a stressful situation, because you’ve been desensitized to that type of behavior or think it’s an acceptable reaction” (Striepe, 2013). This is especially so for children. If this is really true, then television has made American culture more violent and tolerant to cruelty than it was before. Nonetheless, there has been another positive impact of television, which consists in offering people common interests and a basis for socialization, but only provided that television is combined with other more interactive media.

Influence of American Culture on Television

The relationship between American culture and television should not be regarded as something unilateral as their influence is reciprocal. Not only television influences the society, American culture also has a significant impact on the medium. Television is often called a mirror of the society that allows it to see its shortcomings and faults in order to improve them. The fact that television is the source of all vices in the USA is highly disputable and cannot be proved with sufficient evidence. Some people say that it promotes violence, yet if the American society was not violent to some extent in the first place, television channels would have no interest in and no profit from creating products that have a lot of violent behavior. In such case, viewers would not watch them, which would lower their ratings and lead to closure of these programs.

Furthermore, the American society determines what television formats and genres are popular at a definite period of time. Of course, networks may implicitly influence people’s likes and dislikes, but they always take into account initial social moods and viewers’ preferences, which then become the basis for TV products. Thus, reality shows have become so popular because American culture has been a fruitful ground for them. Various dramas and sitcoms have high ratings because they reflect some key values of American culture. American television is often exported abroad, thus propagating American culture all over the world. It is possible to state that gays have been increasingly accepted in the world thanks to their portrayal in American television shows and series. Diminutive shifts and changes in American culture immediately find their reflection in products offered by television since the society and television have mutual influence and are tightly interrelated.

Television has been an inseparable part of the American society for many decades. Recently, there have been speculations that its popularity may be threatened by the internet, but this prediction has not come true so far. Television has been and remains a key news and entertainment source for millions of Americans. The question whether it influences the society positively or negatively is highly controversial and debatable. The medium under consideration is multifaceted and should not be approached from one perspective. The current paper has attempted to provide a brief overview of the history of American television as well as its relationship with American culture. Besides, it has presented television as a peculiar genre that is greatly impacted by corporate ownership of major US media conglomerates. The paper has proved that television is a fascinating medium that performs a wide range of functions and roles in the American society and evolves and develops along with the USA. Withal, the future of television seems to depend on its ability to adapt to demands and needs of the contemporary digitalized and globalized world as well as its willingness to cooperate with other media.

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History of Television
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Television
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9.1 The Evolution of Television
The Golden Age of Television. During the so-called "golden age" of television, the percentage of U.S. households that owned a television set rose from 9 percent in 1950 to 95.3 percent in 1970. The 1950s proved to be the golden age of television, during which the medium experienced massive growth in popularity.
The First TV: A Complete History of Television
The first television broadcast was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. However, this was the broadcast of a single line. The first broadcast that general audiences would have been wowed by was on March 25, 1925. That is the date John Logie Baird presented his mechanical television.
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The year of 1950 saw a real TV sets boom when more than 6,132,000 sets were sold, thus accounting for 9 percent of American households (Television history - A timeline, n.d.). Color television was highly anticipated in the country. And the first color television sets went on sale in 1954 for $1,000 each.

9.1 The Evolution of Television

The Origins of Television

Mechanical Television versus Electronic Television

Early Broadcasting

Color Technology

The Golden Age of Television

The Rise of Cable Television

The Emergence of Digital Television

The Era of High-Definition Television

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