Yahoo Web Search

Search results

  1. People also ask

  2. Introduced in the late 1920s in mechanical form, television sets became a popular consumer product after World War II in electronic form, using cathode ray tubes. The addition of color to broadcast television after 1953 further increased the popularity of television sets in the 1960s, and an outdoor antenna became a common feature of suburban ...

    • Overview
    • Getting started

    Television in the United States, the body of television programming created and broadcast in the United States. American TV programs, like American popular culture in general in the 20th and early 21st centuries, have spread far beyond the boundaries of the United States and have had a pervasive influence on global popular culture.

    Until the fall of 1948, regularly scheduled programming on the four networks—the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS; later CBS Corporation), the National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), and the DuMont Television Network, which folded in 1955—was scarce. On some evenings, a network might not offer any programs at all, and it was rare for any network to broadcast a full complement of shows during the entire period that became known as prime time (8–11 pm, Eastern Standard Time). Sales of television sets were low, so, even if programs had been available, their potential audience was limited. To encourage sales, daytime sports broadcasts were scheduled on weekends in an effort to lure heads of households to purchase sets they saw demonstrated in local appliance stores and taverns—the venues where most TV viewing in America took place before 1948.

    Students save 67%! Learn more about our special academic rate today.

    Learn More

    Although a television set cost about $400—a substantial sum at the time—TV was soon “catching on like a case of high-toned scarlet fever,” according to a March 1948 edition of Newsweek magazine. By autumn of that year, most of the evening schedules on all four networks had been filled, and sets began appearing in more and more living rooms, a phenomenon many credited to comedian Milton Berle. Berle was the star of TV’s first hit show, The Texaco Star Theatre (NBC, 1948–53), a comedy-variety show that quickly became the most popular program at that point in television’s very short history. When the series debuted, fewer than 2 percent of American households had a television set; when Berle left the air in 1956 (after starring in his subsequent NBC series The Buick-Berle Show [1953–55] and The Milton Berle Show [1955–56]), TV was in 70 percent of the country’s homes, and Berle had acquired the nickname “Mr. Television.”

  3. Learn how television evolved from the first experiments with electromagnetism and light to the first commercial broadcasts and color systems. See the key inventors, dates, and events that shaped the history of TV.

  4. Jul 12, 2021 · 1930s. The opening of the 1939 World's Fair in New York introduced television to a national audience, thanks to RCA and a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. NBC soon began nightly...

  5. Learn how television evolved from mechanical to electronic systems, and how it became popular in the 1950s. Explore the history and impact of television on culture and society since 1960.

  6. Jan 4, 2022 · The word “television” first appeared in 1907 in the discussion of a theoretical device that transported images across telegraph or telephone wires. Ironically, this prediction was behind the times, as some of the first experiments into television used radio waves from the beginning.

  1. People also search for