Television is Born

TELEVISION IS BORN

Slow Development

Although the basic components of television were developed as early as the 1870s, the technology was not sophisticated enough to broadcast an image until the 1920s. Even then television was too crude for widespread use. There were eighteen experimental television stations in the United States in 1931, but opposition to the new medium by radio broadcasters and a lack of funding during the Depression left these promising starts wanting. Nonetheless, technical innovations by inventors such as Vladimir Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth refined and improved television, and RCA was ready to introduce widespread commercial manufacture of television sets by 1938. RCA's competitors opposed the deployment of a national broadcast system based on RCA technology and moved to block the licensing of commercial broadcasting by the FCC. In 1940 a government panel concluded that RCA was attempting to establish industry broadcasting standards on terms disadvantageous to its competitors, and it reviewed and revised television broadcasting standards. On 3 May 1941 the FCC established guidelines more equitable for a variety of television manufacturers, opening the way for widespread commercial television broadcasting in the United States. On 1 July 1941 CBS and NBC switched their New York stations from experimental to commercial status, broadcasting about fifteen hours of programming a week. Television sets, extremely expensive at the time, limited the expansion of the technology. By the time of Pearl Harbor, there were only ten thousand to twenty thousand receivers in use in the United States, and broadcasting was limited to a few urban centers. The war put a hold on the expansion of television. The FCC forbade building new television stations in order to conserve materials for the war. For the moment television's potential remained unrealized.

Postwar Boom

The hiatus in television growth during World War II gave television manufacturers an opportunity to improve existing technology using electronic innovations developed during the war. The image orthicon, a sensitive television camera developed by RCA in 1945, was an important advance. Postwar introduction of television nonetheless took place slowly at first, then developed in a rush. The sheer expense involved in building a television station—at a time when profits were un-proven—retarded investor support. Television costs generally ran ten times higher than those of radio, and few stations posted profits before 1952. Most stations were thus owned by business concerns that could sustain long-term losses. Television manufacturers bought stations, hoping to spark sales of their products. Allen B. Dumont, a television-set maker, bought several East Coast stations after the war, hoping to build a network to support his manufacturing. Newspapers also bought local stations, anticipating that television's immediacy would be a boon to the news business. Most important, however, the old radio networks and large independent radio stations moved into television. NBC was the most powerful of these networks, with over twenty-five national affiliates by 1948. CBS quickly developed a reputation for outstanding news broadcasting. Noble's ABC struggled until 1951, when it absorbed and was revitalized by a powerful entertainment company, United Paramount Theaters. Concerned about the potential of the new industry, radio networks moved into television to control their losses. But the networks also moved into television broadcasting because it was less regulated by the FCC than was radio. Despite the ban on monopolies, NBC, CBS, and ABC exercised enormous control over affiliate stations in major markets, and by the early 1960s the "big three" networks had a virtual monopoly on U.S. television broadcasting.

Programming

As radio networks moved to dominate television broadcasting, they brought many of the popular radio shows and personalities to television. Life of Riley, a popular program dealing with a blue-collar worker, made the transition, as did comedies such as Our Miss Brooks, starring Eve Arden, The Goldbergs, Ozzie and Harriet, and Amos and Andy. Radio format staples, such as the talent shows Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, relocated to the small screen. Your Hit Parade had run for fifteen years on radio before it moved to television in 1950. The program featured contemporary best-selling pop tunes. Crime-detective dramas, such as Dragnet, jumped from radio to television, as did the "thriller" programs aimed at school-age children, such as Sky King and Superman. Sports broadcasting was, of course, immensely popular, as were original children's programs such as Super Circus, Howdy Doody, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. Television also borrowed radio newsmen and formats. Reporters made famous by World War II, such as Edward R. Murrow, extended their celebrity to television. Network public-affairs programming, such as Meet the Press and Hear It Now (which became See It Now), also made the transition to television. A staple of early television, the variety show, was borrowed from vaudeville theater. The imperturbable Ed Sullivan hosted the long-running Toast of the Town, while Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca made Your Show of Shows an audience favorite.

Uncle Miltie

By far the most popular program in television's early years was a similar variety program, Texaco Star Theater, starring Milton Berle, a forty-year-old comedian when NBC hired him for the program in 1948. A Borscht Belt vaudevillian, he specialized in slapstick humor and manic, unflagging energy. By the fall of 1948 Berle's program had earned a 94.7 rating in the television markets—meaning that when he was on television, 94.7 percent of the viewers in the United States tuned into his program. The next year "Uncle Miltie," as he was affectionately called, graced the cover of Time and Newsweek. His name was synonymous with television when the medium served urban, ethnic audiences—35 percent of viewers lived in New York. As television expanded into the heartland, Berle's humor seemed less vital, and his jokes about New York and its ethnic groups fell flat. His fortunes declined, and by 1955 television's first superstar was dropped from Texaco Star Theater.

The Television Freeze

Uncle Miltie was not the only casualty of television's expansion. By 1948 the growth of television in the Northeast was so great that the FCC's original channel allocation plan, drafted only three years earlier, had to be revised. Because there were only thirteen channels available for VHF television broadcasts, the FCC had the unenviable task of making sure that stations were assigned broadcast frequencies fairly and competitively. With channel one assigned to emergency broadcasting, the FCC had to balance carefully the assignment of twelve channels in major metropolitan areas such as New York City. Geography was an important factor: New York could easily sustain twelve commercial channels, but other communities within two hundred broadcast miles of New York (including Philadelphia and Hartford) also needed channels; if the same channel were assigned to stations in close broadcast proximity, the signals would interfere with one another. In 1948 interference and channel assignment were overwhelming problems. The FCC responded by freezing the licensing of new stations, ostensibly for a six-to nine-month period. In fact, the freeze lasted until 14 April 1952. Although it retarded the construction of new stations, the freeze lessened competitive pressures on existing stations, allowing them to standardize production and broadcast practices. The freeze also gave the FCC time to adjudicate a terrific battle between RCA and CBS over the technological standard to be adopted in color-television transmissions, an issue resolved in RCA's favor in 1953. The freeze was resolved by a careful geographic allocation of VHF channels and by opening up the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) bands to commercial television. By the end of the freeze, all the technological, commercial, and licensing elements of the television industry were in place. In the 1950s television would undergo explosive growth and transform the character of American culture irrevocably.

Source:

Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume II —1933-1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).