TELEVISION Essay, Research Paper

How has television changed over the last

25-50 years? This question can be answered in a variety of different ways

ranging from the technological changes and advances it has gone through

to the question of whether it has any type of affects on the way people

perceive it, or if society is manipulated by what they see on television.

This report will hopefully uncover and discover television then and now.

The first aspect that will be uncovered

are the technological advances that television has made over the years.

Naturally to see into this, we must look to how television originated.

Television broadcasting was first introduced in 1936 when it was available

in London. It was not until 1954 when the FCC authorized the NTSC standard

for color television broadcast in the United States. The question

raised at this point is what was the television actually like? How many

channels were available? Naturally the availability of what we have today

was unthought of and in most cases seemed impossible, but most television

sets were capable of providing atleast up to four basic channels. However,

these channels were only received clearly in larger cities. It was very

difficult for television signals to pass through the mountains and rural

areas. In order to resolve the problem what is known as cable television

was introduced in 1948. The purpose of cable television was to be able

to bring existing broadcast signals to rural areas with community antennas

placed at high elevations, usually on mountains or on top of tall poles.

Since the invention of cable television, it has grown rapidly. By 1960,

there were nearly 700 cable systems. In 1971, 2,750 systems were serving

almost 6 million homes. Now in the year 1999, the number has risen to more

than 65 million. Of course, the invention of cable television was by far

if not the only major technological development for television in the early

days of television. Today, cable still continues to advance with new developments

with satellites. There are over 80 different channels available to cable

subscribers ranging from 24 hour music channels, 24 hour movie channels,

and 24 hour news channels, and 24 news channels. In addition to being able

to have these types of channels, pay television services or better known

as premium channels are also associated with the advancement of cable television.

These services offer a variety of popular movies, original programming

and sports without commercial interruption. Soon after this, interactive

television evolved. Interactive TV describes a range in two-way communication

services between service providers and end users. Finally, direct broadcast

satellites were introduced to further expand cable television. Direct TV

and Primestar are just a few companies associated with direct broadcast

satellites.

It is clearly easy to figure out that

television has and will continue to advance. Now that a few various technological

advances and developments have been described, they must be tied into what

is most important, and that is how viewer perception and societal influence

has been changed from television changing over the past 25-50 years.

The main change in television has become

the command center of our culture. Because television is quite different

from other media such as film, theater, or music, it must be examined carefully

and more in depth. People go to movies to watch movies, they go to the

theaters to watch plays, and they buy music to listen to it, etc. However,

we go to television for almost everything. Politics, literature, music,

religion, news, commerce, you name it and television has it. Therefore,

this makes us known as “television people”, because for anything to be

legitimate, it has to come through television. Has American society become

so dependent on television that in order to be an “American”, you have

to watch television in order to make contact with whatever is happening

in the culture to be familiar with what is on the television? In other

words, if we didn’t have television, do you think that people wouldn’t

know what was going on or people wouldn’t be able to follow events that

we see on television? If this is the case, then how did people get by before

television’s invention?

Television also presents us with experience

in symbolic form. Is this preferable to what we used to call reality? For

example, take when Mark McGuire broke the record for the most home runs,

the people who were at the game to actually witness go down in the history

books probably wanted to see it on television because if they didn’t, they

probably would feel a sense of loss and disappointment with the reality

of it because this actually did happen to them before it was on television.

The next issue of concern is whether or

not there is a consequence of image taking over from the word in television?

What essentially is the danger in images being more important than words?

The images or language of television is changing the world, because it

is changing our minds, our thinking, our feelings, and even our way of

relating to other people and to the world. When there is an image culture,

politics per say, we see this in debates, as well as in elections. People

are so far concerned with what these candidates do in their spare time

rather than whether or not they will do well for our country? However,

is it the people to blame, or should what media decides to air be blamed?

Without the media, how would people really now what the candidates or president

does in his or her spare time? We would never know, and it really isn’t

important. Therefore, the media manipulates the way we view political leaders.

They make us form our opinions by what they tell us and what we hear through

the television medium. Society in the same sense has relied too heavily

on the media for depicting images. We are more concerned about the way

a politician looks and dresses, their personal life, rather than how they

will lead the country. Also, we are more concerned with watching our presidents

eat jelly beans in press conferences, watching our president play football

on the beach, or watching our president lie to America about his sexual

affairs, instead of wondering what type of things they have done or what

they will do as president. Wars, I believe are much more important than

the personal lives of our leaders. I also believe that people are so into

television that they tend to forget that a war will affect their life,

more than a jar of jelly beans.

The next question is has television changed

in a sense that news broadcasts are strictly to make money? When we look

back 25 years ago, most news departments were not expected to make money.

It was not expected to make money if anything it was expected to lose money,

but to them that was never a problem or an issue. However, that today has

changed. News is one of the biggest money making divisions in any television

network.

It really does sound like television advancement

has created a lot of problems rather than made our lives easier. And as

we look in to the future, what will television be like both through a technological

sense and perception wise, as it pertains to society? Will there be a consequence

of our news being delivered in a theatrical way? It could just possibly

be that Americans would simply become the most ill informed people in the

world. There is sadly some evidence that this may already be the case.

Has technological developments in television

such as cable; etc, affected the way society operates. Did these types

of problems exist before all the technology developed? Can we blame it

on technology or can we blame it on society and media? Media indeed

takes a huge role in the way society is affected by television. However,

media is not going anywhere and they do not plan on going anywhere, so

how can the problem be solved?

Finally in concluding, as time advances,

so does technology, however it is up to us as a society to make a positive

use of it. Much of this talk on technology is full of negativity, but it

is only because we let it get that way. Why? Surely television has changed

in the past 25-50 years and it will change in another 25-50 years, as will

all forms of media. All and all, society in general needs to stop relying

on television and forming opinions by what they see and hear as a way of

day to day living, because that is what is seems like we are letting happen.

People are relying too much on these technological advances that they can

no longer do for themselves. If we took away all the advances and developments

and went back to the way it was when it was first invented what would it

be like? We would probably have opinions based on values and not on perception.