“Television,” the British critic Malcolm Muggeridge (1903—1990) once wrote, “was not invented to make human beings vacuous, but is an Emanation of their vacuity.” Television is an electronic system of transmitting changing images, together with sound, along a wire or through space by converting the images and sounds into electrical signals and then reconverting the received signals into images and sound. The word first appeared in Scientific American magazine in 1907. The history of television shares many similarities with feature and documentary film—with one basic difference: film was intended as a group experience in a public theater, whereas television was meant to be seen in one’s home. Television can be traced back to a German invention in 1884, but television as we know it uses a process dating back to 1930, and even that is remote from television after 1945. In the 1930s Germany, Britain, and the United States all had television programming, but it was available only to the privileged few, and generally as an experimental competitor to radio or film, which were both well established in the 1930s. World War II effectively canceled television programming in all three countries, though some broadcasts continued in the United States, including a propaganda “special” in support of the United Nations.
Television programming is a central source for the cultural propaganda of the producing country. It can be crucial to the electoral process, but it also deserves to be dismissed as a “vast wasteland,” as it was in 1962 by Newton Minow (1926— ), chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
From a practical point of view, television is a post-1945 phenomenon. In Germany television was reluctant to admit to its Nazi past; in Britain the BBC introduced noncommercial television, where, as with radio, each owner paid a yearly license fee. In the United States competing technologies led the FCC to issue an order limiting the total number of television stations for the entire country at just over 100 from 1948 until 1952, a ruling that saw New York City and Los Angeles with seven stations apiece, while many other cities had none. Thus, only after 1953 did television become pervasive in American life, and it did not truly come into its own until 1960. The year 1967 saw the arrival of color broadcasting in the United States, though many viewers enjoyed black-and-white reception well into the 1970s; of course, all earlier programming in black-and-white continues to be rebroadcast as originally produced, though recently some films have been colorized digitally.
In the United States television proved a bonanza for advertisers. The 1950s witnessed the collapse of network radio and the Hollywood system as millions of Americans bought television sets and stayed home to enjoy a new leisure-time activity. Television experienced a brief moment during which productions were aired live, but it soon settled into a pattern that continues to characterize the commercial broadcasts to this day: escapist fare, endless advertisements that interrupt programs at moments when something interesting is about to occur; some news programs; some talk shows; and some local programs. In the 1950s the typical television station was only on the air for a few hours a day; nobody had yet thought of a round-the-clock schedule. In the United States three networks reigned supreme: NBC, CBS, and ABC. (Actually until the 1970s ABC remained a rather feeble third network in terms of station strength, programming, advertising revenues, and numbers of viewers.) In the 1960s commercial television was restricted to the UHF (ultra high frequency) channels; the VHF (very high frequency) channels were difficult to locate given the primitive tuning devices on most sets, so that VHF was left for educators—a sure indication of poor reception.
Cable television, satellite transmission, and video totally changed a viewing world controlled by the three commercial U.S. networks or, in Britain, by the BBC. Britain succumbed to the fare offered by commercial television. The United States broadcast a myriad of offerings from literally hundreds of providers. With the arrival of satellite transmission, the entire world could theoretically be linked through television—but only to those with appropriate receivers. These days television also entails the use of videocassette recorders (VCRs). The entire planet can be divided into three basically incompatible color systems: NTSC (United States); PAL (Britain and most of Europe and Asia) and SEC AM (France, the former Soviet Union, and a good bit of Africa). The development of these rival systems was not unrelated to issues of national pride and technology as propaganda.
Cable television, with such world broadcasters as CNN (Cable News Network), Fox News, and MSNBC, has changed the nature of viewing in more than just the United States. Gone forever is the dominance of the three commercial U.S. networks. The advent of the VCR means that viewers are free to record programs on any channel and to view them at a time that seems convenient. In the Arab world Al Jazeera, created by the emir of Qatar in 1996, provides round-the-clock Arabic programming that now reaches some 35 million people in twenty-two countries.
The future of television is driven by technological changes. The Internet and the World Wide Web have affected leisure-time schedules for millions of people. Indeed, the latest technological innovation has advertisers quite worried: digital video recorders record programs and store them on hard disks, making it easy to fast-forward past commercials. This has led one anonymous industry executive to issue a dire warning: “There’s no Santa Claus. If you don’t watch the commercials, someone’s going to have to pay for television and it’s going to be you.” It seems unlikely that such hortatory appeals will move many viewers.
