Blog #3: Video Killed the Radio Star

          With all due respect to the wonderful radio, the television was the foremost entertainment technology of the 20^th century. Television shaped so much of the culture and still does to this day. Where the Internet did not take from radio that much, Internet entertainment has much for which to thank the TV.

           It is hard to establish the dominance of the TV and its ubiquitous nature for modern American history. Suffice it to say that, according an NYU article on the History of Television, before 1947 the number of U.S. homes with television sets could be measured in the thousands. By the late 1990s, 98 percent of U.S. homes had at least one television set, and those sets were on for an average of more than seven hours a day. There are TV programs today for every single subject you could ever want. There are TV shows that talk about what is happening elsewhere on TV. The television shaped our entertainment culture in the 20^th century in an unparalleled way.

          The television industry, however, owes its start to the movie industry. Without the establishment of long-form films and the fact that they were beloved by so many people, the television may not exist. What is a TV show but a smaller version of a type of movie? But movies were made and television was developed. Though the first ideas for television were developed in the 1920’s, it was not until the 1940s that TV truly emerged as a legitimate source of entertainment. The first mass produced television set was the RCA 630-TS in 1946-1947. Here's a picture for reference:

We've come a long way.

        This new technology exploded in popularity over the next decade. What a revolution this was! While listening to radio programs was engaging, television is an entirely different level of engagement because you can hear and see the action unfold. With the establishment of TV stations like NBC and CBS, you could watch TV programs any time of day. Before TV, one would have to go to the movie theater to see a movie as your source of video entertainment. Now, the video was in your home, readily available to consume. My parents sometimes tell me stories of their family gathered around the TV at night to watch a particular program like The Andy Griffith Show or a Packers game. My grandfather would have to go up to the TV and change the channel manually (a ludicrous thought today) so there was little concept of flipping channels.  People spent their nights less by radio and more around the TV set. It truly was THE form of entertainment.

           Like radio, there were all kinds of programs to watch on the TV. Whatever you wanted was available, so the entertainment options were wide. Game shows such as What’s My Line were popular and featured celebrities, this one being a personal favorite of mine featuring a future president of the United States.

There were countless other original series that I’m sure you’re familiar with that emerged on TV.  With these new programs, the concept of famous actors and actresses really developed around this time because people saw them on screen every week, in a TV world that seemed magical. Apart from fictional programming, TV made a big foray in various other aspects of entertainment culture: news, sports, and religious services, to name a few. As mentioned in the radio post, national news anchors became the most trusted men in America. They were the source of news, trusted to be honest and present the facts. In times of tragedy, such as after the assassination of President Kennedy, the nation looked to Walter Cronkite for details. Here’s footage of that report.

            That footage above shows the power of seeing the entertainment, rather than just hearing it. We feel especially moved with these visual images, which may help explain why visual entertainment has continued on into the age of the Internet. Anyway, the impact of TV was probably not entirely understood at the time, but the power of seeing footage of world events still greatly impacts world society today. Now, all the world’s major events weren’t just talked about: hundreds of thousands of people saw them every night. Footage of the horrors of the Vietnam War in the 1960s were seen by a shocked nation, and this undoubtedly led to the rise in anti-war protests across the country during this time. 

           When the Civil Rights movement was underway in the United States, people looked on in horror as police officers would brutally attack peaceful protesters. This was often a conscious strategy of Civil Rights leaders, and it ultimately worked to their benefit, though many lives were lost in the making. In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon engaged in the first televised debate. Nixon refused to use makeup, while Kennedy did apply it. In the debate, Kennedy looks much more polished and put together, giving off the presidential vibe. Interestingly, TV viewers at the time said that Kennedy won the debate while radio listeners asserted that Nixon was victorious. Look for yourself, and see what you think.

            TV was so engrained into the fabric of American life that it transcended entertainment and was a fixture of cultural and societal change to dismantle power structures and fight for change. That being said, TV never lost its focus as an entertainment medium, an incredibly powerful and revolutionary one at that. The 1960s saw the emergence of color TV and the 1980s and 1990s saw the cable TV boom that gave consumers even more channels to watch, creating an endless buffet of TV programs to watch at any hour of the day on any given topic. Surely nothing could dethrone television as the dominant way in which Americans entertained themselves…right? Well, the Internet had something to say about that.

           As mentioned earlier, the Internet has a lot for which to thank the TV industry as a medium for entertainment.  Every piece of video entertainment on the Internet (which is A LOT) owes their medium to the fact that TV created a market for short-form video entertainment in the first place! That being said, the Internet has made some significant changes to the way we entertain ourselves with TV. The Internet has embraced, expanded, and evolved television’s video format of entertainment in many respects.

          Perhaps the clearest example of how the Internet has changed how we consume TV can be summed up in 1 word: NETFLIX.  Streaming video subscription sites like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime allow you to watch a bevy of shows and movies at any time for a small monthly price. Many shows have transitioned to the Internet, where they can be consumed at any time without any kind of TV set or cable subscription. And this is exactly what has happened. A 2016 report by Fortune magazine found that 1 in 5 American households have cut the cable cord, known logically as “cord-cutting.” This means that these households at one point had a cable subscription, but have recently gotten rid of it, likely in favor of streaming subscription sites like Netflix. Services like these have even begun to offer their own original content that never appears on any TV station, which indicates that these services could be self-sustaining and not reliant upon traditional TV shows for content. More and more people are flocking to these types of sites, with Netflix having about 100 million subscribers as of a few months ago. Gone are the days of driving to Blockbuster to rent a movie and running the risk that’s it’s already been checked out.

The sheer accessibility and ease of use for streaming sites like Netflix has created a modern phenomenon known as “binge watching”, which involves watching multiple episodes of a show in quick succession, sometimes entire seasons in just days. This is possible because all you have to do to watch a new episode is to click one button. While some contemporary thinkers may find binge watching troubling, I don’t think it is that much different than people watching 6-7 hours of TV in a day, which was not uncommon 10-20 years ago. No matter the technology, if the entertainment is great or the boredom is even greater, we have no problem with entertaining ourselves for hours on end.

To deal with this shift toward TV consumption via the Internet, TV stations have made like their radio counterparts, and, by necessity, embraced the digital realm. Many of the biggest stations offer full episodes of their shows for free a day or two after it originally airs. Speaking for myself, this is how I follow most TV shows that I enjoy like Survivor and American Ninja Warrior. While these services are free, paying a small price can grant you an ad-free experience or access to even more content. It seems that TV station are slowly making a shift, perhaps reluctantly to digital content in an attempt to follow the trend of demand.

Has the Internet taken over TV and slowly bringing about the demise of this once impervious technology? That’s a little hard to say. It seems like the TV, the unquestioned ruler of entertainment of the mid to late 20^th century, is being dethroned by the Internet, especially amongst the younger generations who are growing up in a world that has always known the Internet. This is true at least in terms of time spent entertaining ourselves with that technology. However, one could make the case that the Internet television has not replaced TV, but has carved out its own niche and TV is in no harm of becoming irrelevant. In the opinion of this blog, the Internet has changed the way we entertain ourselves with TV by bringing the TV to the Internet. Shows are readily accessible, able to watch at any time, in practically any place. Younger generations are entertaining themselves more and more with the Internet over TV and the stats on “cord-cutting” seem to back up this data. With the ease of access and wide selection of streaming sites, this shift makes sense! The Internet is changing the way we entertain ourselves by making us demand quicker, more constant entertainment. If I have the choice of watching a show on TV with ads or watching equally good shows without ads, I’ll usually choose the ads-free option, right? I can watch at any time and come back to it in the same spot I left off. In this shift, we are showing our preference for asynchronous and intransient entertainment. We seem to prefer entertainment that I can leave and pick up on later and watch whenever is most convenient for me. Perhaps the Internet has not changed the fact that we like to entertain ourselves with TV, but it has drastically changed the way in which we consume TV programming.