JOUR 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: 1936 Summer Olympics, People Tv, Nerdfighteria
19 Jun 2018
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The Rise and Fall of Television
By the fall it means the end of a certain way that the television was produced and consumed.
Advertising interruption causes the business model of modern television to collapse.
What people look for in modern video content has totally changed.
For example: The Paris Attacks
The television didn’t know what was going on- it told you nothing. Meanwhile, social media was alive
with people reporting their own accounts on what happened.
Television in the 1920’s. Some people imagined it was an extension of the telephone. Television was
marrying moving pictures and sound- like movies. People thought it would be like theatre- they would
leave their homes and go to watch television with an audience of strangers. Early televisions had very
small screens- the images couldn’t be displayed to big groups of people.
Television was a method of broadcasting where people watched the same program at the exact same
time. In 1922, people would imagine watching a baseball game on tv. This was accurate- sport and
television are perfect for each other.
Television can capture and transmit the present- it can be live in a way that movies cannot. Sports had
an existing mass appeal, it was already popular. Therefore, televising sports made sense. Sports made
for cheap, readily available content. The content was already there- the television company didn’t’ need
to make the content.
The Nazis wanted to showcase television to show the world how Germany had advanced in technology.
They broadcasted the Berlin Olympics in 1936, when barely anyone had a television.
BBC paid 1000 pounds for rights to broadcast the 1948 London Olympics. 2.6 billion dollars of the
Olympics revenue came from selling the broadcasting rights.
The goal was to take an arena experience and combine it into a box, to be watched in the comforts of
your home. Something that was consumed in the family setting. The household of the suburbs.
Television was the perfect suburban median.
At the end of WW2 6 million men and women are discharged from the army services. The returning
veterans wanted to settle down and get married- baby boom. The problem was that there was nowhere
for them to live. Newlyweds had to move in with their relatives. Veterans were living in garages, sheds,
etc. The US needed 5 million houses right now, and 12 million in the future. Universities exploded-
veterans got a free education. The US and Canadian governments decided that veterans should own
their own homes, as opposed to renting which was previously common. The building of houses became
like the building of tanks at war. The walls, rooves were made in a factory- and then they were put
together. Suburban life was presented as life of a dream- harmony with neighbours who were exactly
like you, backyard bbq’s, pool parties. Life was severely affected by this- black people in the US. They
wouldn’t build houses where black people might live. The result of this was the suburbs being
completely white. The inner city became the ghetto where black people lived, the suburbs where
majority of the public funding went was where the families lived. The suburbs consisted mostly of
families with children- not single people.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
By the fall it means the end of a certain way that the television was produced and consumed. Advertising interruption causes the business model of modern television to collapse. What people look for in modern video content has totally changed. The television didn"t know what was going on- it told you nothing. Meanwhile, social media was alive with people reporting their own accounts on what happened. Some people imagined it was an extension of the telephone. Television was marrying moving pictures and sound- like movies. People thought it would be like theatre- they would leave their homes and go to watch television with an audience of strangers. Early televisions had very small screens- the images couldn"t be displayed to big groups of people. Television was a method of broadcasting where people watched the same program at the exact same time. In 1922, people would imagine watching a baseball game on tv.
