History of Television

From Grolier Encyclopedia

Article by Mitchell Stephens
Few inventions have had as much effect on contemporary
American society as television. Before 1947 the number of U.S.
homes with television sets could be measured in the thousands. By
the late 1990s, 98 percent of U.S. homes had at least one
television set, and those sets were on for an average of more than
seven hours a day. The typical American spends (depending on the
survey and the time of year) from two-and-a-half to almost five
hours a day watching television. It is significant not only that this
time is being spent with television but that it is not being spent
engaging in other activities, such as reading or going out or
socializing.
EXPERIMENTS
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San
Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo
Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house
without electricity until he was 14. While still in high school,
Farnsworth had begun to conceive of a system that could capture
moving images in a form that could be coded onto radio waves and
then transformed back into a picture on a screen. Boris Rosing in
Russia had conducted some crude experiments in transmitting
images 16 years before Farnsworth's first success. Also, a
mechanical television system, which scanned images using a
rotating disk with holes arranged in a spiral pattern, had been
demonstrated by John Logie Baird in England and Charles Francis
Jenkins in the United States earlier in the 1920s. However,
Farnsworth's invention, which scanned images with a beam of
electrons, is the direct ancestor of modern television. The first
image he transmitted on it was a simple line. Soon he aimed his
primitive camera at a dollar sign because an investor had asked,
"When are we going to see some dollars in this thing, Farnsworth?"
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
RCA, the company that dominated the radio business in the United
States with its two NBC networks, invested $50 million in the
development of electronic television. To direct the effort, the
company's president, David Sarnoff, hired the Russian-born
scientist Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, who had participated in
Rosing's experiments. In 1939, RCA televised the opening of the
New York World's Fair, including a speech by President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to appear on
television. Later that year RCA paid for a license to use
Farnsworth's television patents. RCA began selling television sets
with 5 by 12 in (12.7 by 25.4 cm) picture tubes. The company also
began broadcasting regular programs, including scenes captured
by a mobile unit and, on May 17, 1939, the first televised baseball
gamebetween Princeton and Columbia universities. By 1941 the
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), RCA's main competition in
radio, was broadcasting two 15-minute newscasts a day to a tiny
audience on its New York television station.
Early television was quite primitive. All the action at that first
televised baseball game had to be captured by a single camera,
and the limitations of early cameras forced actors in dramas to work
under impossibly hot lights, wearing black lipstick and green
makeup (the cameras had trouble with the color white). The early
newscasts on CBS were "chalk talks," with a newsman moving a
pointer across a map of Europe, then consumed by war. The poor
quality of the picture made it difficult to make out the newsman, let
alone the map. World War II slowed the development of television,
as companies like RCA turned their attention to military production.
Television's progress was further slowed by a struggle over
wavelength allocations with the new FM radio and a battle over
government regulation. The Federal Communications
Commission's (FCC) 1941 ruling that the National Broadcasting
Company (NBC) had to sell one of its two radio networks was
upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943. The second network became
the new American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which would
enter television early in the next decade. Six experimental
television stations remained on the air during the warone each in
Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Schenectady, N.Y., and
two in New York City. But full-scale commercial television
broadcasting did not begin in the United States until 1947.
THE BEGINNING OF COMMERCIAL TELEVISION
By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing number
of television stations in the country could watch, for example, The
Texaco Star Theater (1948), starring Milton Berle, or the children's
program, Howdy Doody (1947!60). They could also choose
between two 15-minute newscastsCBS TV News (1948) with
Douglas Edwards and NBC's Camel News Caravan (1948) with
John Cameron Swayze (who was required by the tobacco company
sponsor to have a burning cigarette always visible when he was on
camera). Many early programssuch as Amos 'n' Andy (1951) or
The Jack Benny Show (1950!65)were borrowed from early
television's older, more established Big Brother: network radio.
Most of the formats of the new programsnewscasts, situation
comedies, variety shows, and dramaswere borrowed from radio,
too (see radio broadcasting and television programming). NBC and
CBS took the funds needed to establish this new medium from their
radio profits. However, television networks soon would be making
substantial profits of their own, and network radio would all but
disappear, except as a carrier of hourly newscasts. Ideas on what
to do with the element television added to radio, the visuals,
sometimes seemed in short supply. On news programs, in
particular, the temptation was to fill the screen with "talking heads,"
newscasters simply reading the news, as they might have for radio.
For shots of news events, the networks relied initially on the
newsreel companies, whose work had been shown previously in
movie studios. The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000
in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new invention entered
American homes faster than black and white television sets; by
1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.
McCARTHYISM
In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities began an
investigation of the film industry, and Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy
soon began to inveigh against what he claimed was Communist
infiltration of the government. Broadcasting, too, felt the impact of
this growing national witch-hunt. Three former members of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published "Counterattack:
The Newsletter of Facts on Communism," and in 1950 a pamphlet,
"Red Channels," listed the supposedly Communist associations of
151 performing artists. Anti-Communist vigilantes applied pressure
to advertisersthe source of network profits. Political beliefs
suddenly became grounds for getting fired. Most of the producers,
writers, and actors who were accused of having had left-wing
leanings found themselves blacklisted, unable to get work. CBS
even instituted a loyalty oath for its employees. Among the few
individuals in television well positioned enough and brave enough
to take a stand against McCarthyism was the distinguished former
radio reporter Edward R. Murrow. In partnership with the news
producer Fred Friendly, Murrow began See It Now, a television
documentary series, in 1950. On Mar. 9, 1954, Murrow narrated a
report on McCarthy, exposing the senator's shoddy tactics. Of
McCarthy, Murrow observed, "His mistake has been to confuse
dissent with disloyalty." A nervous CBS refused to promote Murrow
and Friendly's program. Offered free time by CBS, McCarthy
replied on April 6, calling Murrow "the leader and the cleverest of
the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who
dares to expose Communist traitors." In this TV appearance,
McCarthy proved to be his own worst enemy, and it became
apparent that Murrow had helped to break McCarthy's reign of fear.
In 1954 the U.S. Senate censured McCarthy, and CBS's "security"
office was closed down.
THE GOLDEN AGE
Between 1953 and 1955, television programming began to take
some steps away from radio formats. NBC television president
Sylvester Weaver devised the "spectacular," a notable example of
which was Peter Pan (1955), starring Mary Martin, which attracted
60 million viewers. Weaver also developed the magazine-format
programs Today, which made its debut in 1952 with Dave Garroway
as host (until 1961), and The Tonight Show, which began in 1953
hosted by Steve Allen (until 1957). The third network, ABC, turned
its first profit with youth-oriented shows such as Disneyland, which
debuted in 1954 (and has since been broadcast under different
names), and The Mickey Mouse Club (1955!59; see Disney, Walt).
The programming that dominated the two major networks in the
mid-1950s borrowed heavily from another medium: theater. NBC
and CBS presented such noteworthy, and critically acclaimed,
dramatic anthologies as Kraft Television Theater (1947), Studio
One (1948), Playhouse 90 (1956), and The U.S. Steel Hour (1953).
Memorable television dramas of the eramost of them broadcast
liveincluded Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955), starring Rod
Steiger (Ernest Borgnine starred in the film), and Reginald Rose's
Twelve Angry Men (1954). By the 1955!56 television season, 14 of
these live-drama anthology series were being broadcast. This is
often looked back on as the "Golden Age" of television. However,
by 1960 only one of these series was still on the air. Viewers
apparently preferred dramas or comedies that, while perhaps less
literary, at least had the virtue of sustaining a familiar set of
characters week after week. I Love Lucy, the hugely successful
situation comedy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, had been
recorded on film since it debuted in 1951 (lasting until 1957). It had
many imitators. The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason, was
first broadcast, also via film, in 1955 (lasting until 1956 with the
original cast). The first videotape recorder was invented by Ampex
in 1956 (see video; video recording; video technology). Another
format introduced in the mid-1950s was the big-money quiz show.
The $64,000 Question (1955!58) and Twenty-One (1956!58)
quickly shot to the top of the ratings. In 1959, however, the creator
of The $64,000 Question, Louis C. Cowan, by that time president of
CBS television, was forced to resign from the network amid
revelations of widespread fixing of game shows (see Van Doren,
Charles).
TELEVISION AND POLITICS
Television news first covered the presidential nominating
conventions of the two major parties, events then still at the heart of
America politics, in 1952. The term "anchorman" was used,
probably for the first time, to describe Walter Cronkite's central role
in CBS's convention coverage that year. In succeeding decades
these conventions would become so concerned with looking good
on television that they would lose their spontaneity and eventually
their news value. The power of television news increased with the
arrival of the popular newscast, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, on
NBC in 1956 (see Huntley, Chet, and Brinkley, David). The
networks had begun producing their own news film. Increasingly,
they began to compete with newspapers as the country's primary
source of news (see journalism).
The election of a young and vital president in 1960, John F.
Kennedy, seemed to provide evidence of how profoundly television
would change politics. Commentators pointed to the first televised
debate that fall between Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for
president, and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican's
nominee. A survey of those who listened to the debate on radio
indicated that Nixon had won; however, those who watched on
television, and were able to contrast Nixon's poor posture and
poorly shaven face with Kennedy's poise and grace, were more
likely to think Kennedy had won the debate. Television's coverage
of the assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, and of
the events that followed, provided further evidence of the medium's
power. Most Americans joined in watching coverage of the shocking
and tragic events, not as crowds in the streets, but from their own
living rooms. A newscast that would soon surpass the popularity of
Huntley-Brinkley, The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite,
debuted in 1962 (and was broadcast until 1981). By the end of the
decade Cronkite had become not just a highly respected journalist
but, according to public opinion surveys, "the most trusted man in
America." His role in coverage of the Vietnam War would be
important. While the overwhelming majority of television news
reports on the Vietnam War were supportive of U.S. policy,
television news film of the fighting sometimes gave Americans back
home an unfamiliar, harsh, and unromantic view of combat. Many
believed it contributed to growing public dissatisfaction with the war.
And some of the anger of those defending U.S. policy in Vietnam
was leveled against television news. In 1965, CBS reporter Morley
Safer accompanied a group of U.S. Marines on a "search and
destroy" mission to a complex of hamlets called Cam Ne. The
Marines faced no enemy resistance, yet they held cigarette lighters
to the thatched roofs and proceeded to "waste" Cam Ne. After
much debate, Safer's filmed report on the incident was shown on
CBS. Early the next morning the president of CBS received an
angry phone call from the president of the United States, Lyndon B.
Johnson, accusing the network of a lack of patriotism. During the
Tet offensive in 1968, Cronkite went to Vietnam to report a
documentary on the state of the war. That documentary, broadcast
on Feb. 28, 1968, concluded with what Cronkite has described as
"a clearly labeled editorial": "It is increasingly clear to this reporter
that the only rational way out will be to negotiate," he said.
President Johnson was watching Cronkite's report. According to Bill
Moyers, one of his press aides at the time: "The president flipped
off the set and said, `If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America.'"
THE THREE NETWORKS AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR POWER
In 1964 color broadcasting began on prime-time television. The
FCC initially approved a CBS color system, then swung in RCA's
favor after Sarnoff swamped the marketplace with black-and-white
sets compatible with RCA color (the CBS color system was not
compatible with black-and-white sets and would have required the
purchase of new sets). During the 1960s and 1970s a country
increasingly fascinated with television was limited to watching
almost exclusively what appeared on the three major networks:
CBS, NBC, and ABC. These networks purchased time to broadcast
their programs from about 200 affiliates eachstations in each of
the major cities or metropolitan areas of the United States. In the
larger cities, there might also be a few independent stations (mostly
playing reruns of old network shows) and perhaps a fledgling public
broadcasting channel. Programming on each of the three networks
was designed to grab a mass audience. Network shows therefore
catered, as critics put it, to the lowest common denominator. James
Aubrey, president of CBS television, doubled the network's profits
between 1960 and 1966 by broadcasting simple comedies like The
Beverly Hillbillies (1962!71). In 1961, Newton Minow, then
chairman of the FCC, called television a "vast wasteland."
Programming became a little more adventurous with the arrival of
more realistic situation comedies, beginning with CBS's All in the
Family in 1971 (broadcast until 1979). Along with situation
comediesusually a half-hour focused on either a family and their
neighbors or a group of co-workersthe other main staple of
network prime-time programming has been the one-hour drama,
featuring the adventures of police, detectives, doctors, lawyers, or,
in the early decades of television, cowboys. Daytime television
programming consisted primarily of soap operas and quiz shows
until the 1980s, when talk shows discussing subjects that were
formerly taboo, such as sexuality, became popular.
The three major networks have always been in a continual race for
ratings and advertising dollars. CBS and NBC dominated through
the mid-1970s, when ABC, traditionally regarded as a poor third,
rose to the top of the ratings, largely because of shrewd scheduling.
PUBLIC BROADCASTING
A Carnegie Commission report in 1967 recommended the creation
of a fourth, noncommercial, public television network built around
the educational nonprofit stations already in operation throughout
the United States (see television, noncommercial). Congress
created the Public Broadcasting System that year. Unlike
commercial networks, which are centered in New York and Los
Angeles, PBS's key stations, many of which produce programs that
are shown throughout the network, are spread across the country.
PBS comprises more than 300 stations, more than any commercial
network. Some of the most praised programs on PBS, such as the
dramatic series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971), have been imports
from Britain, which has long had a reputation for producing high-
quality television. Perhaps the most influential of PBS's original
contributions to American television were the educational program
for preschoolers, Sesame Street, which first appeared in 1969and
is still a popular programand a thoughtful news program called
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (1995; originally The MacNeil/
Lehrer NewsHour, first broadcast in 1975see MacNeil, Robert and
Lehrer, Jim). Among the many special series produced for public
broadcasting, The Civil War (1990), a five-part historical
documentary, was particularly successful and won some of the
largest audiences ever achieved by public TV. PBS funds come
from three major sources: congressional appropriations (which
suffered substantial cuts beginning in 1982), viewer donations, and
private corporate underwriters. None of these types of contributions
are problem-free. Government funding brings the possibility of
government interference. Conservatives, dating back to the Nixon
administration, have pressured PBS to make its programming less
liberal. The search for viewer donations has led to long on-air
fundraising campaigns. And some critics contend that the need to
win corporate support discourages programming that might
challenge corporate values.
THE RISE OF CABLE
The force that would challenge the dominance of the three major
television networks and offer Americans the choice of dozens and
potentially hundreds of television channelscable TVbegan
quietly in a few geographically isolated towns. Large antennas
erected in high places gave everyone connected the chance to
receive all the channels available in the nearest city. By 1960 the
United States had about 640 such CATV (community antenna
television) systems. It soon became apparent, however, that the
"television deprived" were not the only viewers who might want
access to additional channels and additional programming. In New
York City, cable operators contracted to broadcast the home games
of the local basketball and hockey teams. By 1971 cable had more
than 80,000 subscribers in New York. Then networks specifically
designed to be distributed by the cable system began to appear:
Time Inc.'s Home Box Office (HBO) in 1975; Ted Turner's
"superstation," soon renamed WTBS, in 1976; C-SPAN (live
broadcasts of the House of Representatives), ESPN (sports), and
Nickelodeon (children's programming), all in 1979. Turner followed
with the Cable News Network (CNN) the next year.
INTERNATIONAL GROWTH
Television's development followed different patterns in other
countries. Often government, not private corporations, owned
some, most, or all of the major networks. In Great Britain the British
Broadcasting Corporation, the country's dominant radio
broadcaster, established and retained dominance over television.
The BBC, funded by a tax on the sale of television sets, established
a worldwide reputation for producing quality programming. The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also freed by government
support from many commercial pressures, was praised by some
observers for the seriousness of much of its news and public-affairs
programming. France's major television networks were also
supported by the government; however, in France that support was
seen as encouraging a tilt in news coverage toward the side of
whatever party happened to be in power. By the late 1980s and
1990s, as cable and direct-satellite television systems increased
the number of channels, the hold of these government-funded
networks began to weaken. Most countries around the world began
moving more toward the U.S. model of privately owned, advertiser-
supported television networks.
POLITICS ADAPTS TO TELEVISION
By the 1980s politicians and government leaders were familiar
enough with the workings of television to be able to exploit the
medium to their own ends. This seemed particularly apparent
during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, himself formerly the host
of a television show (General Electric Theater, 1954!62). Reagan's
skilled advisors were masters of the art of arranging flags and
releasing balloons to place him in the most attractive settings. They
also knew how to craft and release messages to maximize positive
coverage on television newscasts. The Persian Gulf War in 1991
provided further proof of the power of television, with pictures of
U.S. bombs falling on the Iraqi capital broadcast live in the United
States. Both Iraqi and U.S. leaders admitted to monitoring CNN to
help keep up with news of the war. However, the U.S. Defense
Department, armed with lessons learned in Vietnam, succeeded in
keeping most reporters well away from the action and the
bloodshed. Instead, pictures were provided to television by the
military of "smart" bombs deftly hitting their targets.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
In the 1980s, home videocassette recorders became widely
available. Viewers gained the ability to record and replay programs
and, more significantly, to rent and watch movies at times of their
own choosing in their own homes. Video games also became
popular during this decade, particularly with the young, and the
television, formally just the site of passive entertainment, became
an intricate, moving, computerized game board. The number of
cable networks grew throughout the 1980s and then exploded in
the 1990s as improved cable technology and direct-broadcast
satellite television multiplied the channels available to viewers. The
number of broadcast networks increased also, with the success of
the Fox network and then the arrival of the UPN and WB networks.
The share the broadcast networks attracted continued to erode,
from well over 90 percent in the early 1980s to under 50 percent by
1997. Although the population of the United States has continued to
grow, the Nielson Media Research company estimated that fewer
people watched the highly publicized final episode of Seinfeld in
1998 (first aired in 1990; see Seinfeld, Jerry) than watched the final
episode of MASH in 1983 (first aired in 1972). The trial of former
football star O. J. Simpson in 1994 for the murder of his wife (he
was acquitted) further demonstrated the hold that cable networks
had on American audiences. Some stations carried almost every
minute of the lengthy trial live and then filled the evening with talk
shows dissecting that day's developments. The effects of television
on children, particularly through its emphasis on violence and sex,
has long been an issue for social scientists, parents, and politicians
(see children's television). In the late 1980s and 1990s, with
increased competition brought on by the proliferation of cable
networks, talk shows and "tabloid" news shows seemed to broaden
further frank or sensational on-air discussion of sex.
In response to government pressure, the television industry
decided to display ratings of its programs in 1996. The ratings were
designed to indicate the age groups for which the programs might
be suitable: TV-G (for general audiences), TV-PG (parental
guidance suggested), TV-14 (unsuitable for children under 14), and
TV-MA (for mature audiences only). In response to additional
complaints, all the networks except NBC agreed the next year to
add V (for violence), S (for sex), L (for course language) and D (for
suggestive dialogue) to those ratings. Also, the "V-chip" imbedded
in new television sets, in accordance with a provision of a
telecommunications bill passed in 1996, gave parents the power to
automatically prevent their children from watching television
programs with inappropriate ratings. Critics of the ratings saw them
as a step toward censorship and questioned whether a TV-14 rating
would make a program seem more, not less, attractive to an
inquisitive child. In 1997 the federal government gave each U.S.
television broadcaster an additional channel on which to introduce
high definition television, or HDTV. Initial transmissions of this high-
resolution form of television, in which images appear much sharper
and clearer, began in 1998. Standard television sets cannot pick up
HDTV and will presumably have to be replaced or modified by
2006, when traditional, low-definition television broadcasts are
scheduled to end and broadcasters are scheduled to return their
original, non-HDTV channel to the government. The HDTV format
approved in the United States calls for television signals to be
transmitted digitally. This will allow for further convergence between
computers, the Internet, and television.
In 1998 it was already possible to view video on the World Wide
Web and to see and search television broadcasts on a computer.
As computers become more powerful, they should be able to
handle video as easily as they now handle text. The television
schedule may eventually be replaced by a system in which viewers
are able to watch digitally stored and distributed programs or
segments of programs whenever they want. Such technological
changes, including the spread of new cable networks, have been
arriving slower in most other countries than in the United States.
Indeed, according to one survey, it was only in the 1990s that the
spread of television transmitters, television sets, and electricity
made it possible for half of the individuals in the world to watch
television. However, television's attraction globally is strong. Those
human beings who have a television set watch it, by one estimate,
for an average of two-and-a-half hours a day.
Mitchell Stephens
Bibliography: Barnouw, Erik, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of
American Television, 2d ed. (1990); Fisher, David E. and Marshall
J., Tube: The Invention of Television (1997); Stephens, Mitchell,
Broadcast News, 3d ed. (1993), A History of News (1996) and The
Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word (1998); Watson, Mary A.,
Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience since
1945 (1997).