Television in the Antenna Age: A Concise History

Television in the Antenna Age: A Concise History

Volumn , Issue , 2008, Pages 1-137

  Marc, David ^a   Thompson, Robert J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84889379803     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1002/9780470775745     Document Type: Book

References (100)

1. The War of 1812 was fought between Britain and the United States, which was composed of a group of former British colonies that had become independent following the revolution of 1776. Washington, DC was invaded and the White House was burned. Despite all the action, there has never been a major feature film or TV mini-series made that concerns the war.
2. This refers to Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), an Italian Renaissance intellectual who supposedly was as gifted in the sciences as he was in the arts.
3. In the earliest laboratory models of the telegraph, Morse placed a moving paper tape between the electromagnetically attracted pieces of metal and recorded the "dots and dashes" as physical marks. One of his financial backers, the industrialist Alfred Vail, axed the motorized paper tape system in favor of the sound system. The choice of listening to sound rather than "reading" paper pointed the way to the future. For more on Samuel Morse, see the Encarta Encyclopedia on his life and work: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761555922.
4. At this point in the history of the English language, the term "hardware" still referred to household tools. Software had not yet showed up in the dictionary. But concepts always precede words and Morse had beaten vocabulary to the punch.
5. Morse correlated his code to the Roman alphabet, and specifically to the English language.
6. Sputnik was the first humanly made satellite to orbit the Earth. It carried no devices or passengers. It was launched in 1957 by the former Soviet Union, a compact of more than a dozen nation-states ruled by a central government in Moscow. Members included such modern-day nations as Russia, Ukraine, and Tajikistan. The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1989. Here "Sputnik" is used as a metaphor for the opening of a new technological age.
7. Martin Van Buren (Democrat of New York) became eighth President of the United States in 1837. The term "Cabinet" refers to the group of heads of federal government departments known as "secretaries" (i.e., Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of the Treasury, etc.).
8. As of the writing of this book, no such device has actually been built.
9. During the mid-1980s, the Federal Express (Fedex) company introduced its "Zap Mail" service, in which customers could pay to have e-mail messages sent from Fedex office to Fedex office, with messengers delivering them to people at their homes and offices, thus briefly reviving the "telegraph boy" phenomenon (sexually integrated this time around, of course). However, as home computer sales and mass-market online servers proliferated, the company ended the service in 1990.
10. The Odyssey is an epic poem usually credited to an ancient Greek known as Homer (no other name, à la Liberace or Sting). The poem concerns a Greek nobleman and soldier who is trying to find his way home after the end of the Trojan war. Though composed to be recited aloud, it is usually read as a "book" at the few remaining colleges where requirements in classic literature have not been abolished.
11. The term "narrowcasting" is also used sometimes to refer to radio or TV programming which is broadcast in the technological sense, but which is aimed by its commercial sponsors at a particular demographic segment of the possible broadcast audience.
12. The "radical transportation scheme" referred to here is Columbus' plan to sail westward from Europe to reach Asia. After the failure of his attempts to secure funding for his venture in Italy, Columbus gained the backing of the Spanish monarchy. He became the first recorded person of Mediterranean origin to visit the western hemisphere.
13. The phrase "lace-curtain Irish" refers to the wealthy, educated classes of Ireland, a nation otherwise then known for its severe poverty. At this time, Ireland was still under British rule. It would not become an independent republic until after the armed revolution of 1916. Six of Ireland's northern counties remain under British rule.
14. "SOS" is an abbreviation for "save our ship," "save our souls," or some such similar message.
15. Example: Can you live without cable? For decades television viewers did. Previous generations even lived without television.
16. See Robert Sklar, Movie Made America (New York: Vintage Books, 1994) for an in-depth treatment of how freedom of expression in film was absorbed into American law and custom.
17. Though we could include it if we wanted to.
18. For an enlightening and entertaining sketch of DeForest's life, see Tom Lewis, Empire of the Air (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) or the film adaptation produced by Ken Burns (1994).
19. Woodrow Wilson (D - New Jersey) won a second term by defeating William Howard Taft (R - Ohio) and former US President Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive - New York).
20. The "two great oceans" referred to here are the Atlantic and Pacific.
21. Before the Defense Department was established in the late 1940s, the army and the navy were organized as separate federal departments, each with its own Secretary sitting as a full Cabinet member.
22. Wilbur and Orville Wright, two American brothers from Ohio, working without any direct corporate support, are generally acknowledged as the inventors of the airplane. They achieved 12 minutes of engine-propelled flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
23. The war referred to here is the First World War (1914-18), also known as "the Great War" until there was a second. Big winners: Britain, France and, especially, the US, which joined the war in 1917. Big losers: Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Ottoman empire (the forerunner of modern-day Turkey).
24. This is the origin of the school holiday now known as "Veterans Day."
25. The corporate history of RCA is a complicated one to say the least. General Electric bought the company from British Marconi, later sold it, and much later bought it back again. However, it was as an independent company (circa 1922-78) that RCA dominated American radio and television development.
26. The "patents pool" refers to the agreement of the three big radio manufacturers, General Electric, Westinghouse, and RCA, to share their patents in the field of radio.
27. For these transportation solutions to be successful, however, one must resist the temptation to bring a Walkman along for the stroll, or keep the radio turned off in the car. Even then, it is necessary to contend with the billboards plastered on the streets and on the clothing of any people one may encounter.
28. This refers to the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which a traditional monarchy had been overthrown and replaced by an extreme left-wing faction known as the Bolsheviks.
29. Parliament is Britain's national legislative body, similar to, and older than, the US Congress.
30. Adam Smith (1723-90) was an economist. In The Wealth of Nations he described the push of unseen market forces upon people as an "invisible hand."
31. In 1941 NBC was forced by the FCC's "Chain Broadcasting" regulations to sell one of its two networks. The Blue Network passed into other hands and became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). See chapter 4 for further details.
32. Before the widespread diffusion of home audiotape in the 1960s, followed by the introduction of the compact disk in the 1980s, music was recorded on vinyl discs (and, for a brief time before that, on wax cylinders). The home appliance used to play these discs was known as a phonograph or record player. In the stereo component era, beginning in the late 1950s, the term "turntable" came into use as well. Yet another name for the appliance was the "Victrola," which was originally a brand name used by the Victor Company, which became a subsidiary of RCA.
33. See Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1965).
34. See Genesis 2: 17.
35. Both these statistics are taken from the documentary Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, produced by Ken Burns (Alexandria, VA: PBS Video; Radio Pioneers Film Project, Inc., ca. 1991).
36. William Fore, Television and Religion: The Shaping of Faith, Values and Culture (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1987).
37. Monotheistic religions believe in God as a single being. Polytheistic religions, by contrast, believe in the simultaneous existence of many gods.
38. See Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Knopf, 1994), especially pp. 13-15.
39. Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925). The book went into its twenty-fourth printing in 1984.
40. Frank Stanton, interviewed by David Marc, May 21, 1999. Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television. Copyright Syracuse University, 1999. In the 1930s Stanton devised many of the techniques that remain in use in the twenty-first century to measure audience preference and size.
41. See T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), especially "Notes Towards the Definition of Culture," for an example of the rejection of popular culture by traditionalist conservatives.
42. The development of the motion picture industry is historically close to the development of the broadcasting industry. However, the Hollywood film clearly precedes radio in the chronology of mass entertainment forms. The silent film, for example, was drawing millions before commercial broadcasting even existed. The great leap forward in attendance and profitability occasioned by sound film was well underway during the last three years of the 1920s, even as the radio networks were attempting to invent themselves.
43. Peggy Charren, interviewed by David Marc, Boston, May 5, 1998. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television. Copyright Syracuse University 1999.
44. Betty White, interviewed by David Marc, Los Angeles, April 29, 1997. Audiotape and transcription. Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television. Copyright Syracuse University 1999.
45. Ken Burns, producer, Empire of the Air.
46. The exceptions to this rule are the radio stations licensed to the Pacifica Foundation, which is dedicated to free speech. The Pacifica Stations also, unfortunately, prove the rule.
47. Neither Visa nor MasterCard yet existed. Credit arrangements were made directly between customers and merchants.
48. David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953).
49. Tom Wolfe, producer, The Video McLuhan (Toronto: McLuhan Productions, 1996). Videotaped program.
50. HUT is an industry acronym for "Household Using TV," or a household that has at least one operating television set.
51. David Adams interviewed by Les Brown, Croton-on-Hudson, New York, December 17, 1996. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University 1999.
52. Franklin D. Roosevelt's general approach of restructuring the American economy to help bring it back from the Great Depression was known as the "New Deal."
53. United Paramount Theaters should not be confused with Paramount Pictures, the movie studio. Though originally owned by Paramount Pictures, the company was divested following an anti-trust suit in 1949 and it was an independent entity when it merged with ABC in 1953.
54. For a biographical sketch of Leonard Goldenson, including his extraordinary strategy that saved ABC as the third American television network, see David Marc's entry on Goldenson in Oxford's American National Biography Online www.anb.org.
55. The term "theme park" did not yet exist.
56. The term "double feature" refers to a movie theater offering two films on the same program for the price of a single admission ticket. The less important (usually the less expense to make) picture was known as the "B picture," and was shown before the main feature.
57. Pro wrestling, though a prominent feature of early television schedules, was not nearly as profitable it would become in the twenty-first century. See Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946 to Present, 7th edn (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), for program schedules for 1947-55, which illustrate Dumont's heavy dependence on boxing and wrestling.
58. The one exception to the "all-color" rule was CBS's annual presentation of the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. The film's opening and closing black-and-white sequences were the only black and white moments still broadcast on network television for many years.
59. William Boddy, Fifties Television: The Industry and its Critics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
60. See the documentary film The Quiz Show Scandal produced by Julian Krainin (PBS Video, 1992). Also see the dramatic feature film Quiz Show (1994) directed by Robert Redford, which explores several human dimensions of the scandal.
61. For accounts of the FCC bribery scandals, see Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 199-201.
62. The words "payola" and "plugola" derive from a now obscure root in the history of recorded music. Dating back to the start of the twentieth century, the "Victrola," a phonograph (or wax record player) made by the Victor Company (later RCA Victor) was so popular that Victrola became a synonym for phonograph.
63. Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kitross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1978; 2nd edn, 1990). This statistic refers to the number of hours that a set was believed to be "on" during a given day, rather than the number of hours any particular individual was watching it.
64. Beginning with its arrival in the early 1950s, rock 'n' roll music was viewed by some segments of American society as a corrupting force among youth. In the age of "least objectionability," the TV networks had to tread lightly when they presented it. For example, in 1957 CBS would only allow its cameras to show Elvis Presley above the waist during his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
65. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 288.
66. A radio version, Hear It Now, had preceded it on CBS in the late 1940s.
67. Agronsky received a Peabody Award for his ABC radio broadcasts against McCarthy in 1951. However, it was a sign of the growing power of television that no big fuss was made until TV took up the matter. See David Marc's entry on Martin Agronsky in Oxford's American National Biography Online www.anb.org.
68. The network still uses the title "CBS Reports" for its prime-time news presentations. However these programs bear little resemblance to the muckraking pieces discussed here.
69. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
70. The Andy Griffith Show was not the first rural sitcom to appear on network TV. That distinction goes to The Real McCoys (CBS, 1957-63), concerning a West Virginia family that migrates to the San Joaquin Valley of California, which was the first of the genre to reach television.
71. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946 to Present, 7th edn (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), p. 453.
72. Ken Burns, producer, Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (Alexandria, VA: PBS Video; Radio Pioneers Film Project, Inc., ca. 1991).
73. Clifton Webb (1889-1966) was a quintessential upper-middle-class father-figure in midtwentieth- century films such as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Mister Scoutmaster (1953).
74. Remark attributed to Pat Buttram by Ruth Henning in David Marc, "Interview with Paul and Ruth Henning" [Sound Recording], September 9, 1996, Television Oral History Archive, Syracuse University Copyright Syracuse University, 1999. Language has been embellished with the habits of the speaker.
75. "Rat Pack" refers to a group of male entertainers, including such figures as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop, who were mythologized for their drunken debauchery and sexual escapades. The film Oceans 11 (1960), directed by Lewis Milestone, is recommended, as is the 2001 remake, directed by Steven Soderberg and starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Also see Rat Pack (HBO, 2002).
76. See David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture, 2nd edn (Boston: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 118-23, for a detailed account of the two programs.
77. Allen Ginsberg, lecture/reading, State University of New York at Binghamton, April 5, 1971.
78. The Korean War (1950-2) occurred before US troop involvement in the Vietnam War (1956-74).
79. Jane Feuer, Tise Vahimagi, and Paul Kerr (eds), MTM: "Quality Television" (London: British Film Institute Books, 1984).
80. For a detailed discussion of television drama during this period, see Robert J. Thompson, Television's Second Golden Age (New York: Continuum, 1996).
81. Pat Robertson, interviewed by David Marc, Virginia Beach, Virginia, February 16, 2000. Videotape and transcription, oral history collections, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University 2000. The interview was made possible by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.
82. Frank Stanton, interviewed by David Marc, New York City, May 21, 1999. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University, 1999.
83. The anti-social security plank would remain in the Republican Party platform until 1968 when Richard Nixon, ever the pragmatist/opportunist, demanded its removal.
84. For further reading on this subject see the poem by Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West" (1951), in Collected Poetry and Prose Wallace Stevens (New York: Library of America, 1997).
85. "A Survey of Television," The Economist, April 13, 2002, p. 3.
86. These government subsidies were "highly visible" as compared to the technologies that passenger trains had to compete with: cheaper car and bus travel made possible by the invisible subsidies of government road-building and maintenance; and faster air travel, invisibly subsidized by government air-traffic control systems and airport building and maintenance.
87. Ronald Reagan served two four-year terms as President of the United States from 1980 to 1988.
88. By "the art of electronic journalism," we refer to the methods of audio reporting created by Edward R. Murrow, Robert Trout, Howard K. Smith, and others, which were adapted by their practitioners for early television broadcasting.
89. Frank Stanton, interviewed by David Marc, May 21, 1999 (see note 2 above).
90. PBS: Public Broadcasting System.
91. While relatively safe from charges of dental menace, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other PBS children's programs produced by the Children's Television Workshop have been criticized for capitulating on length of attention-span. See Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death (New York: Viking, 1985).
92. Peggy Charren, interviewed by David Marc, Boston, May 5, 1999. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University, 1999.
93. No criticism of the journalistic abilities of Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings is meant. The communications business changed and they stayed for the money. The same can be said of just about every successful American newspaper, magazine, and book editor born before 1950.
94. For a sketch of Robert Trout's remarkable career see David Marc's biographical article on Trout in Oxford's American National Biography Online, www.anb.com.
95. Robert Trout interviewed by Ron Simon at Mr. Trout's home in New York City, March 2, 1998. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University, 1999. It is only fair to mention that, after severing his relationship with CBS, he did join ABC News for a time. "They were a young group and needed a grand old man," he said.
96. The pronoun "our" in the phrase "get the government off of our backs" refers here to the several dozen multi-million-dollar corporations that own television and radio stations.
97. See Pat Weaver, Best Seat in the House (New York: Knopf, 1994). In his autobiography, Weaver elaborates on these programming ideas.
98. "Branding," in contemporary mass communications, refers to the practice of creating a public identity for a particular product that makes it synonymous with the generic product and thus indicates dependability and quality. Early examples include Kleenex, a brand of tissues; Jello, a brand of gelatin; and Frigidaire, a brand of refrigerator. In the UK, Hoover vacuum cleaners have achieved this status, though the Hoover brand has not achieved this status in the US.
99. Rivera did not actually say this. We wrote the quotation ourselves and inserted it to make two important points: (1) the ease with which people can be misled by the implied authority of a medium (whether it is a television program or a book); and (2) the importance of reading footnotes and other documentation. It's not just busy work!
100. Joan Konner, interviewed by David Marc, New York City, December 21, 1998. Audiotape and transcription, Steven H. Scheuer Collection in Television History, Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Library. Copyright Syracuse University 1999.