Television in The United States - History of American Television

History of American Television

Television first became commercialized in the U.S. in the early 1950s, initially by RCA (through NBC, which it owned) and CBS. A number of different broadcast systems had been developed through the end of the 1930s. The National Television System Committee (NTSC) standardized on a 525-line broadcast in 1941 that would provide the basis for TV across the country through the end of the century. Television development halted with the onset of World War II, but pioneers returned to the airwaves when that conflict ended.

After a flood of television license applications, the FCC froze the application process for new here were only a few dozen stations operating at the end of the decade, concentrated on the East and West coasts. The FCC began handing out broadcasting licenses to communities of all sizes in the early 1950s, spurring an explosion of growth in the medium. A brief debacle over the system to use for color broadcasts occurred at this time, but was soon settled. Half of all U.S. households had TV sets by 1955, though color was a premium feature for many years (most households able to purchase TV sets could only afford black-and-white models, and few programs were broadcast in color until the mid-1960s).

Many of the earliest TV programs were modified versions of well-established radio shows. Barn dances and opries were regular staples of early television, as were the first variety shows. Reruns of film shorts, such as Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges, were also staples of early television and to a certain extent remain popular today. The '50s saw the first flowering of the genres that would distinguish TV from movies and radio: talk shows like The Jack Paar Show and sitcoms like I Love Lucy. Other popular genera in early television were TV Westerns and soap operas, both of which were adapted from the radio medium. Game shows were also a major part of the early part of television, aided by massive prizes unheard of in the radio era; however, the pressure to keep the programs entertaining led to the quiz show scandals in which it was revealed many of the popular high-stakes games were rigged or outright scripted. The Saturday morning cartoons, animated productions made specifically for television (and, accordingly, with much tighter budgets and more limited animation), also debuted in the late 1950s.

Television in the United States was primarily on VHF in its earliest years; it was not until the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1964 that UHF television broadcasting became a feasible medium.

Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, concurrent with the development of color television, the evolution of television led to an event colloquially known as the rural purge; genera such as the Western, variety show, barn dance, and rural-oriented sitcom all met their demise in favor of newer, more modern series targeted at wealthier suburban and urban viewers. Around the same time, videotape became a more affordable alternative to film for recording programs, which practically ended the practice of destroying and recycling old television episodes and led to more extensive archiving of television programming.

Stations across the country also produced their own local programs. Usually carried live, they ranged from simple advertisements to game shows and children's shows that often featured clowns and other offbeat characters. Local shows could often be popular and profitable, but concerns about product promotion led them to almost completely disappear by the mid-1970s. The last remaining locally originated shows on American television as of 2012 are local newscasts and some brokered programming paid for by advertisers.

Subscription television (such as cable and satellite) became popular in the early 1980s, and has been growing in significance since then–spurring the emergence of multinational conglomerates such as Fox. As the number of outlets for potential new television channels increased, this also introduced the threat of audience fracturing, in that it would become much more difficult to attain a critical mass of viewers in this highly competitive market. As ratings declined, the number of game shows and soap operas followed, with the former genre almost completely disappearing from American daytime television, to be replaced by much cheaper and more lowbrow tabloid talk shows.

Infomercials were legalized in 1984, approximately the same time that cable television became widespread. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, stations began airing infomercials throughout the night instead of signing off; infomercials also began to overtake other less-watched dayparts (such as weekends and during the daytime), which forced series that would otherwise be syndicated onto cable networks or off the air entirely. Cable networks have also begun selling infomercial space, usually in multiple-hour blocks in the early morning hours. Infomercials have earned a reputation as a medium for advertising scams and products of dubious quality.

The U.S. has now moved to digital television. U.S. networks began transitioning to recording their programs in high-definition television in the late 1990s, a process that is now mostly complete. A law passed in 2006 required over-the-air stations to cease analog broadcasting in 2009, with the end of analog television arriving on June 12 of that year.

The late 1990s also saw the invention of digital video recorders. While the ability to record a television program for home viewing was possible with the earlier VCRs, that medium was a bulky mechanical tape medium that was far less convenient than the all-digital technology DVRs used. DVR technology allowed wide-scale time shifting of programming, which had a negative impact on programming in time slots outside of prime time by allowing viewers to watch their favorite programs on demand. It also put pressure on advertisers, since DVRs make it relatively easy to skip over commercials.

During the 2000s, the major development in U.S. television was the growth of reality television, which proved to be an inexpensive and entertaining alternative to scripted prime time programming. The process of nonlinear video editing and digital recording allowed for much easier and less expensive editing of mass amounts of video, making reality television more viable than it had been in previous decades. All four major broadcast networks carry at least one long-running reality franchise in their lineup at any given time of the year.

In 2008, there were an estimated 327 million television sets in the US.