Television History and Genres

1. Television History and Genres

2. Nature of television research • Primary material is almost totally lacking from the first decades of television • Most of the secondary material is relatively difficult to get hold of • Particularly as regards distribution television is even more technology-bound than cinema • Partly due to technical reasons state and international control has been inevitable • The question about commercial concerns and public responsibilities has always been prominent • The social significance is even greater than that of cinema • Television enjoys less cultural prestige than film • Study of television aesthetics is only gradually emerging

3. Major innovations • Samuel F.B. Morse: Telegraph (1843 ) • Alexander Bain: Copy-telegraph (1843, a predecessor of the fax machine) • Alexander Graham Bell: electric transmission of sound (1876) → telephone • Willoughby Smith & Joseph May: the conductivity of selenium alters according to the lighting (1873) → the idea of electrical transmitting of images • Constantine Perskyi: uses the word television in his lecture at a conference on the magnetic properties of selenium in Paris in 1900 • Archibald Swinton: the idea of the cathode ray tube (1908) • Several attempts at electrical transmission of images (1909)

4. Institutional frameworks of broadcasting • Main modes of nationwide operation • Commercial networks (USA) • Centralized state governed system (BBC, YLE) • Ideologically controlled state system (USSR) • Local radios • Near anarchy on radio waves necessitates state control irrespective of the nationwide mode of operation (1920s) • Some local radio stations survive precariously • Political and technological development gradually enable the resurgence of local radio stations • Pirate radio stations (1960s)

5. Broadcasting begins in the USA • Westinghouse Electric establishes KDKA radio station in 1920 • KDKA’s success leads to rapid increase of radio stations all over the country • Licences granted without restraint: within three years almost 600 stations + 15000 radio amateurs licensed to broadcast → chaos on radio waves • Attempts to drown competitors by using ever more powerful transmitters • Freedom of speech vs. anarchy • 1922 restraints imposed on licensing

6. Networks (verkkoryhmät) • produce or acquire the rights to programs • distribute them through a network of radio stations (affiliates) • secure uniform scheduled broadcast on a dispersed group of local outlets • insure fixed costs of program production • offer efficient distribution and maximum degree exposure to mass audiences • pay for affiliates in proportion to the markets they reach (station compensation)

7. Networks in the USA • National Broadcasting Company (NBC, 1926). Director: ’General’ David Sarnoff. Owned by Radio Corporation of America (RCA) • Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS, 1928). Director: William S. Paley • American Broadcasting Company (ABC, created as NBC is split into two due to anti trust measures 1943). Founder: Edward Noble • DuMont Network (1946-1956). Director: Allen B DuMont • Fox (1985). Director: Rupert Murdoch

8. Public control and commercial interests • Radio companies have general public service duties • Supervising body: Federal Communication Commission (FCC) • Division into sponsored and sustaining (cultural, educational, informative) programs. • At first a show was usually sponsored by a single business • Formats targeted on certain sectors of the audience begin to from in the 1930s • In the 1950s DuMont starts selling advertising blocks to multiple sponsors

9. John Reith’s (long serving director of BBC) ideals • “ Broadcasting is a servant of culture.” • “As we conceive it, our responsibility is to carry out into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour or achievement” • Goals: to inform, to educate, to entertain

10. Reith’s concept of national broadcasting The broadcasting company should • broadcast to everyone in the country who wants to listen • maintain high standards • have a monopoly • be financed by a licence fee • be institutionally and editorially independent, both as regards commercial concerns and government interference

11. The first TV-demonstrations • Supported by General Electric Company and Westinghouse Charles Francis Jenkins demonstrates his device to journalists in1923 • Three week demonstration of John Logie Baird’s electromechanical systemat Selfridges in London 1925 • Westinghouse Electric “radio-movies” demonstration at KDKA radio stations in 1928 • Dr. Vladimir K Zworykin 1929 introduces the kinescope he has patented to a scholarly public. • In order to avoid flicker Zworykin divided in his iconoscope each frame into two consecutie fields • RCA demonstration at the New York World Exhibition in 1939

12. First broadcasts in Europe • Germany • Televising of the Berlin 1936 Olympics (180 lines) • Only a few Volksfernsehen are sold • Broadcasts also during the war (441 lines) • Britain • BBC Broadcasts from Alexandra Palace in London 1936-39 (405 lines) • Varied programming for two separate hours on weekdays • Equipment was expensive and only a few thousand were sold • Activities were discontinued as the war begun

13. BBC pre-war television programming • Quizzes • Music and revue numbers • Cricket and boxing matches • Outside broadcasts • Drama from Shakespeare, Shaw and Coward to light entertainment • Special broadcasts • Coronation of George VI • Neville Chamberlain’s return from Munich