Television How Has It Changed Essays - Communication,

Television How Has It Changed TELEVISION HOW HAS IT CHANGED SINCE ITS INVENTION? 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 at least 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 exist ing 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 po pular 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 telev ision? If this is the case, then how