In the beginning was
the test pattern. And lousy signals. That's all changed in the last
fifty years and it's set to change even move in the years just ahead.
My family bought one of the first television sets in our town
in the early 1950s. Dad said we got it to watch the Coronation
of Elizabeth II. He never mentioned Milton Berle or Hopalong Cassidy.
The truth was, though, that there wasn't much to see.
There weren't many stations and those stations didn't broadcast
all the time. On Saturday mornings I usually got up before the
stations signed on for the day. That didn't bother me, I turned
on that magic TV and watched the test pattern.
Back then, television was a novelty. So when my folks invited
friends over to watch TV, they wouldn't always tell them what
was on. It didn't matter. It also didn't seem to matter that most
of the time the signal was unreliable and the picture on our set
was covered with what we called "snow."
At least in the beginning it didn't matter. But people wouldn't
keep watching TV unless the experience got better and there was
more to watch.
The makers of television sets wanted more and more people to
watch so they would sell more sets. Purveyors of goods and services
wanted more and more people to watch so they could reach them
with advertisements. And the advertising industry wanted more
and more people to watch so they could sell more and more expensive
ads.
So for the last fifty years we've seen changes aimed at giving
us better sets to watch television on and more things to watch.
Mostly, set technology has gotten out in front of programming.
My parents bought our first TV before there was much to watch.
The first color televisions hit the market when there were only
a couple of color shows. Now that pattern is repeating with High
Definition Television.
The equipment is out there, but the programming isn't. Watch
for that to change quickly in the next year or so, with sports
leading the way. Sports programming is an excellent vehicle to
show of the benefits of HDTV.
New and better equipment was just a small part of what changed
our viewing experience. Over the last fifty years we've been offered
more and more choices of things to watch, and more flexibility
in when we can watch.
Community Antenna Television (called CATV) was originally developed
to get TV signals and advertisements to the hollows and valleys
of America where reception was pretty awful. Community antennas
were great big antennas, usually set up on hills.
They could pick up signals beyond the hope of the fanciest home
antenna. Some systems used cables to get the signals down to houses
in the valley.
We got cable TV. And then we got TV bounced off satellites. Suddenly
we were able to get stations from all over, including Ted Turner's
pioneering WTBS. Then came specialty cable channels like CNN and
the Weather Channel and the History Channel. More channels and
more things to watch.
That trend toward abundance continues. Cable and satellite systems
can now deliver hundreds of channels and special packages. But
that leaves us with the problem of managing that abundance.
In the beginning we programmed our lives around the shows we
wanted to watch. We had no choice.
But, technology to the rescue. First came VCRs and you record
a show even when you weren't there.
Now there are digital recording systems. Tivo is the best known.
Those systems let you do all kinds of things to control what you
watch and when. They also let you skip commercials without leaving
the room and that's shaking the foundations of the TV business.
Even though just about everything else has changed, the television
business model has been the same for decades. Revenue has come
mostly advertising, with a few fees. That will have to change.
You can be sure that the stations, the networks and the advertisers
will fight to maintain and adapt the old system. That's how the
folks with investment in old models always react. The smart ones
will be investing in a new business model.
We don't know exactly what the new business model will be but
it's almost certain to give you more choice in how many and what
kind of ads you see on your TV. My guess is that model will begin
to emerge before the decade is out. We've come a long way from
the test patter, but the biggest changes may still be ahead.
Top of page
The history
of television, either as technology or business, is fascinating.
Here are a couple of sites to get you started.
And, there are some links to ideas about the future of television.
Books
27 July 2004
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