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The
First Thoughts on Television
Brian
Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com
Back on April 7, 1927, Walter S. Gifford,
president of the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company, in New York City spoke with and saw Sec.
of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who was in his office
in Washington, D.C. And that, sports fans, was the
first successful demonstration of television.
But
television sets wouldn't hit the market commercially
until 1938-39, and, while David Sarnoff of RCA (together
with inventor Vladimir Kosma Zworykin) is perhaps
best thought to be the inventor of television, in
actuality it was Philo T. Farnsworth. But that's a
story for a different day. [It's very complicated,
frankly.]
For
now, The Atlantic Monthly, as part of its 150th anniversary,
has filed away some of its important essays and I
came across one from May 1937 titled "Television and
Radio" by Gilbert Seldes. Following are a few excerpts
I found somewhat interesting as we look at the power
of the medium today.
---
"About
seven and a half million dollars have already been
invested in experimental television and perhaps half
a million will be spent annually before any income
will appear. In return for this investment, the promoters
have machinery which, they seem to believe, may be
improved, but will not have to be fundamentally altered
in order to give reasonable satisfaction?.
"The
first question on which all the promoters might agree
would be when and at what level of technical perfection
television should be commercially offered. Mr. David
Sarnoff, the President of Radio Corporation, has said,
'In the broadcasting of sight, transmitter and receiver
must fit as lock and key.' This means that the moment
receivers are sold transmitters cannot be altered
or improved in certain fundamental respects, because
if they were the receiver would be utterly worthless.
There is a danger that television may be made rigid
at the beginning when it should be most flexible,
and this danger is all the greater if no sudden surprises
from a rival need be anticipated. Because early receiving
sets will cost about five hundred dollars, the producing
companies will not dare to let them become rapidly
obsolete; the method of yearly models will not apply
until sets are actually in mass production. In this
way the consumer will be protected, but it may be
at the cost of continued improvement."
---
"Radio
programs will continue in undiminished splendor; they
will improve; they will be dominant; and television
will be offered as a supplementary entertainment?.(The
promoters) know that the time will come when they
will be trying to sell electric light bulbs and kerosene
lamps over the same counter. The manufacturers now
sell some two million radio sets a year, on the assumption
that they are the very best sets on the market. Will
the customer be as willing to buy if he knows that
a television set, which includes a perfect radio set,
is also on the market?
"The
quick collapse of the silent moving picture haunts
the promoters of television; and the calm assurance
of their own technicians is ominous. An engineer was
taking me through a television studio and referred
to his own post as the 'monitor room.' When I asked
him what the word meant, he replied: 'Oh, that's just
a hangover from the old radio days.' Engineers in
television are notably cautious in expression, but
one cannot talk to them for five minutes without knowing
that to them television is the natural and inevitable
fulfillment of radio, and radio is only an outline
to be filled in by television. Once it is launched,
the promoters will have a hard time keeping it supplementary."
---
"(The)
problem of promotion slips almost imperceptibly into
the problem of programs. If we assume that the program
directors will somehow free themselves from their
obligations to radio, we shall find three separate
elements available for telecasting. The first is any
actual event at the moment it occurs; a parade, a
football game, a strike. The second is a dramatic
sketch or a song and dance number transmitted from
the studio. The third is any moving-picture film.
"Almost
all the experts in the field are sure that the first
of these, the telecasting of events directly from
their scene of action, will eventually form the staple
of the television programs."
---
Gilbert
Seldes on the difference between radio and television:
"(Here)
we strike at the heart of the difference between the
two forms, because listening to music and looking
at a moving picture absorbs our energies in quite
different ways. It is a difference in the degree of
attention. This is so obvious as to be hardly worth
mentioning, but because it is obvious we are only
aware of it in extreme cases. For instance, you may
like or dislike to have the radio going while you
are driving your car, but to keep looking at a television
screen on your dashboard will be in practice impossible.
"Yet
within radio broadcasting itself there are degrees
of listening, and almost imperceptibly the demands
upon our attention have been varied. I do not know
whether the sponsors have ever worked out the psychological
implications of the two kinds of programs. The sponsor
who offers a good popular brand knows perfectly well
that people will play bridge or read the newspaper
while the music is going on and expects them to snap
to attention when the commercial talk is uttered in
a commanding voice - that is, he is counting on contrast.
The sponsor of a gag comedian, on the other hand,
demands sustained and close attention. Comedians and
their gag writers put down four 'sock' gags a minute
as a minimum for keeping a program going well. And
this means that you cannot divert your attention for
a moment if you want to get the point of the joke.
However commanding the advertising may be, it cannot
compete with the comedy itself; the advertiser must
count on the fact that his listeners are already attentive
and will therefore continue to be."
---
"In
broadcasting circles, news commentary, advice to the
lovelorn, instruction in any subject, and even political
oratory are lumped together as 'talk programs.' Following
that shrewd classification, I postpone for a moment
considering the rest of the average radio program
and note that statesmen may not find television an
unmixed blessing. There has been an advantage in the
sourceless voice. It has been nothuman (sic), even
superhuman. In the newsreels Father Coughlin, for
instance, lost much of the authority he exerted over
the air; Huey Long, on the whole, gained; Mr. Roosevelt,
in my opinion, loses a little, but I do not believe
that this is a universal judgment. But in any case
the politicians will fall under the law of compression
which I suggested above. An actual audience in a stadium
or convention hall enjoys the contagion of the mob
and will sit for an hour and clap hands and throw
hats in the air, but when only two or three are gathered
together the spectacle of an orating man will not
be nearly so absorbing. We shall be thrilled by the
spectacle of a nominating convention, but before a
debate or an ordinary radio speech is telecast the
astute politician will want to be sure that his audience
will have something agreeable, but not distracting,
to look at which, in nine cases out of ten, eliminates
the speaker himself."
---
"Clearly
a program of information and ideas can gain even more
by television than a program of jokes and music. Here
is a blackboard for the mathematician, a laboratory
for the chemist, a picture gallery for the art critic,
and possibly a stage upon which the historian can
reenact the events of the past, or the news commentator
the headlines of today."
---
"(The)
audience which television will create will be more
attentive and, if properly handled, more suggestible
even than the audience of radio. The question we are
allowed to ask is whether all of radio's errors have
to be repeated by television. Considering the advances
made both in radio and in the movies, cannot television
start off at its highest level instead of going back
to where they began? The tendency of most new forms
of entertainment is to take over the second-rate from
an earlier type: as the silent movies took over melodrama
from the stage, as radio took over the dialect comedian
from vaudeville. The practical reason is that these
second rate elements are familiar and commercially
dependable; the entertainment which adapts them to
its own uses purges its older rivals but has to spend
a long time rising to their level. It would be a great
thing if television could from the start combine the
best of the two forms of entertainment which ultimately,
I believe, it will supersede.
"And
yet I have a feeling that the most important thing
for television is to make sure of its own popularity.
Like the moving picture and the radio, television
would act against its own nature if it did not try
to be virtually a universal entertainment. I see no
reason for thinking that this universality is any
bar to excellence. Commenting on a rough division
of the arts which I once made, Professor Mortimer
J. Adler has recently written: 'Great and lively art
have this in common: they are able to please the multitude.'
Professor Adler offers 'the work of Walt Disney as
lively art that also reaches greatness, a degree of
perfection in its field which surpasses our best critical
capacity to analyze and which succeeds at the same
time in pleasing children and simple folk.'
"At
least twenty years of popular work which was not great,
which was often offensive to reasonable taste and
of doubtful effect on the people, preceded those comparatively
few works in the movies which can stand beside Disney's
masterpieces. One of the reasons for this long delay
was the indifference of the intelligent public. Perhaps
a more alert and critical citizenry will help television
more rapidly over its difficulties."
Gilbert
Seldes should be rolling over in his grave after the
latest JonBenet Ramsey spectacle.
Anyway,
I was perusing my copy of "The Encyclopedia of American
Facts and Dates" (edited by Gorton Carruth) and here
are a few more tidbits regarding television.
Dec.
24, 1951? 'Amahl and the Night Visitors,' an opera
by Gian-Carlo Menotti commissioned by the National
Broadcasting Company, was broadcast on TV on Christmas
Eve. That must have been a great event for the time.
[Also
in 1951, Sen. Estes Kefauver, chairman of a Senate
committee on organized crime, opened hearings to television
cameras?a big moment.]
1954?29,000,000
households had television sets, or about 60% of American
households. What I failed to mention above is that
the manufacturing of sets had ceased during World
War II and didn't pick up again until 1947.
1958?45,592,000
households had TV sets.
Feb.
14, 1962?A televised tour of the White House by Jacqueline
Kennedy, accompanied by Charles Collingwood, was broadcast
simultaneously by CBS and NBC and was seen by an estimated
46,500,000 persons.
By
1966 nearly all network shows were being broadcast
in color and nearly half the 11,000,000 TV sets sold
that year were color as well.
Nov.
21, 1980?The so-called 'Who Shot J.R.?' episode of
the TV evening soap "Dallas" was seen by more U.S.
viewers than any other television program in history.
More than half the nation's audience watched to see
who had tried to kill J.R. Ewing, a question unanswered
at the end of the spring season.
March
2, 1983?The final episode of M*A*S*H was seen by the
largest television audience to date for a nonsports
program, 125,000,000 viewers. Your editor was depressed
the show was no longer on the air.
---
Wall
Street History returns next week. Since
Mr. Seldes mentioned Walt Disney in his essay I'm
going to attempt to tackle his story.
Brian
Trumbore
BUYandHOLD
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