Students,
As promised here are the daily notes for Chapter 1. Please use these notes during your continued study of the chapter.
-Mr. K
18. Discuss the emergence and impact of radio.
Scientists in many countries worked to devise a system that could overcome the limitations of the telegraph wire. In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a message in Morse code that was picked up 3 km (2 mi) away by a receiving device that had no wired connection to Marconi's transmitting device. With this transmission, Marconi demonstrated that an electronic signal could be cast broadly (broadcast) through space so that receivers at random points could capture it. The closed circuit of instant communication was at last opened by a so-called wireless telegraph. The invention was also called a radiotelegraph (later shortened to radio), because its signal moved outward in all directions, or radially, from the point of transmission. The age of broadcasting had begun.
Within a decade of Marconi’s invention, wireless telegraphy had developed into a basic tool of the world maritime industry. Many countries soon required by law that vessels engaged in international trade have a radio transmitter and a certified operator aboard at all times. In 1906 the United Fruit Company hired American inventor Dr. Lee De Forest to help build a series of radio broadcasting stations to increase efficiency in shipping perishable goods, especially bananas, from Central America to the United States. These linked stations, which shared information on weather and market conditions, constituted the first broadcasting network. In 1912 a law was passed that empowered the Dept. Of Commerce to assign wavelenghts to license applicants. In 1916 De Forest made the first newscast by broadcasting the returns of the Wilson-Hughes presidential election.
Early evidence of a systematic scheme for broadcasting to the general public can be found in a 1916 memorandum written by David Sarnoff, an employee of Marconi's U.S. branch, which would become the Radio Corporation of America (now part of General Electric Company; see RCA Corporation). Sarnoff proposed “a plan of development which would make radio a household ‘utility’ in the same sense as the piano or phonograph.” Sarnoff's memo was not given serious consideration by Marconi management, and President Wilson’s suspension of nonmilitary broadcasting in 1917 made it impossible for the company to immediately explore Sarnoff's ideas. After World War I ended in 1918, however, several manufacturing companies in the United States began to explore and implement ideas for the mass-marketing of home radio receivers designed for casual use.
In an effort to boost radio sales in peacetime, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation (now CBS Corporation) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, established what many historians consider the first commercially owned radio station to offer a schedule of programming to the general public. Known by the call letters KDKA, the station received its license in October 1920 and began service from a studio inside a canvas tent built on the roof of a Westinghouse factory. Frank Conrad, a radio hobbyist and veteran engineer with experience in civilian and military radio research, ran the project. Responsible for the station's programming as well as its technical operation, he aired various forms of entertainment, including recorded music generated by a phonograph placed before a microphone. KDKA charged no user fees to listeners and carried no paid advertisements; instead, the station was financed by Westinghouse to encourage people to buy home radio receivers.
The Radio Act of 1927 broadened the Dept. of Commerce’s power and created the Federal Radio Commission, which today is known as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which has jurisdiction over radio, as well as television and the internet.
Through the years radio has covered its share of successes and tragedies. From the Hindenburg disaster to the declaration of war by President Roosevelt, radio has been on the cutting edge of present the sounds of world events. In the 1980s, the tradional radio announcer was replaced with often crude commentators of social ills. These shock jocks gave radio a new edge, crude, loud, vulgar, and often a menace in rural and urban communities.
19. Examples of radio broadcasting companies.
The following are radio broadcasting companies:
· The American Telephone & Telegraph Company, barred from manufacturing radios by the terms of its telephone antitrust exemptions, AT&T explored the possibilities of what the company called toll broadcasting (charging fees in return for airing commercial advertisements on its stations). The first known instance of an advertiser paying for a broadcast commercial took place in 1922, when AT&T accepted a fee from the Queensboro Corporation to air a 12-minute pitch for the sale of cooperative apartments on WEAF, the company’s New York City station. Fearing legal action by radio companies that might threaten its telephone franchises, however, AT&T sold its stations to RCA. In return for leaving the broadcasting business, AT&T was granted the exclusive right to provide the connections that would link local stations around the country to the NBC network.
· The National Broadcasting Company was formed in 1926. The General Electric Company (GE) began broadcasting over station WGY, located at its corporate headquarters in Schenectady, New York. The chairman of RCA, Owen D. Young, gave Sarnoff permission to develop company sales of radios for home entertainment. Sarnoff soon opened stations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and in 1926 he began organizing the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), an RCA subsidiary created for the purpose of broadcasting programs via a nationwide network of stations. NBC had two networks; Red (which was known as NBC) and the Blue (which was later formed into ABC).
· The Columbia Broadcasting System was formed in 1927. Originally launched by the Columbia Phonograph Record Company as a means of promoting its recording artists, it was saved from bankruptcy after less than a year of operation by the Paley family of Philadelphia.
· The Mutual Broadcasting System was formed in 1934 when a group of nonnetwork (or independent) stations, led by WGN in Chicago, Illinois, and WOR in New York City, formed a cooperative programming and news venture to compete against the network programs of NBC and CBS stations. When part of NBC was sold in 1945 it was later renamed the American Broadcasting Company.
· National Public Radio was formed in 1970 as the first coast-to-coast noncommerical radio company in over 40 years. NPR was formed in response to the passing of the Public Broadcasting Act by the Congress of the United States in 1967. The act authorized the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which was to “encourage the growth and development of noncommercial radio” and to develop programming that “will be responsible to the interests of the people.” The CPB set out to foster professionalism in the many small, noncommercial stations. NPR was created to provide national news coverage and to act as the first nationwide connection between the noncommercial stations. Incorporated in 1970 with 90 public radio stations as charter members, NPR transmitted its first program on April 19, 1971. On May 3, 1971, the news program “All Things Considered” debuted, establishing NPR as a national news and information service. In 1977 NPR merged with the Association of Public Radio Stations. Two years later, NPR established the first nationwide satellite-delivered radio distribution network.
20. Discuss the emergence and impact of television.
The earliest U.S. patent for an all-electronic television system was granted in 1927 to a young Philo T. Farnsworth, who transmitted a picture of a U.S. dollar sign using his so-called image dissector tube in the laboratories of the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (Philco). Meanwhile, the three radio technology powerhouses—General Electric, Westinghouse, and RCA—were cooperating closely with each other. General Electric and Westinghouse owned substantial shares of RCA stock, and the companies shared a collection of radio patents valuable to the development of television. In 1930 they consolidated their television research efforts at an RCA facility in New Jersey under the direction of Russian immigrant scientist Vladimir Zworykin. Historians usually credit Farnsworth, Zworykin, or both with the invention of television.
RCA unveiled television to the American public in grand style at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, with live coverage of the fair's opening ceremonies. This included a speech by President Roosevelt—the first televised appearance of an American president. Daily telecasts were made from the RCA pavilion at the fair. Visitors were invited to experience television viewing and were given the opportunity to walk in front of television cameras and see themselves on monitors.
Technically, network broadcasting takes place when local stations of different regions simultaneously transmit the same signal. Four companies stood ready to initiate network television broadcasting in the United States immediately following the end of World War II in 1945. Two of the companies, NBC and CBS, had made vast fortunes from radio broadcasting and were well prepared to dominate the television industry. The remaining two, the American Broadcasting Company (now ABC, Inc.) and the DuMont Television Network, were competing without the advantage of such previous commercial success. ABC had been created in 1945 when the government won a lawsuit forcing RCA to sell off one of its two national radio networks. RCA’s Blue Network had been sold to Edward J. Noble, owner of the Lifesavers Candy Company, who renamed it the American Broadcasting Company. ABC managed to survive the early years of television through a corporate merger and imaginative programming innovations, many of them instituted by Leonard Goldenson, who joined Sarnoff and Paley as the third great founding mogul of American television. But ABC remained a poor third place in the programming ratings (estimates of the percentage of television viewers tuned to a particular program) for decades; it would finally catch up to its rivals in the late 1970s. The DuMont Network, owned by American television manufacturer Allen B. DuMont, was the only television network launched by a company without prior broadcasting experience. It went out of business in 1955.
By the mid-1950s the so-called Big Three radio broadcasting networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) had successfully secured American network television as their exclusive domain. It was not until the mid-1980s that a fourth company, News Corporation, Limited, owned by Australian-born executive Rupert Murdoch, broke this oligopoly with the establishment of the FOX television network. In the 1990s Paramount Pictures (today a division of Viacom, Inc.) established UPN, and Warner Bros. (now a division of Time Warner Inc.) established WB, bringing the number of American commercial television networks to six.
21. Examples of television broadcasting companies.
The following are television broadcasting companies:
· NBC
· CBS
· ABC
· FOX
· UPN
· WB
NOTE: The WB and UPN networks merged in 2006 to form the CW network.
22. Discuss television in the 21st Century.
Television is powerful medium. It has often been the eyes and ears of some of the most tragic and joyous events in the global village, or the phenomenon that refers to the total inclusion of the world. From the 1969 landing on the moon, to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, television has been an important through its merging of sights and sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment