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What Is Television? (Re) Defining the Medium Dr Marc C-Scott

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What Is Television? (Re) Defining the Medium Dr Marc C-Scott What is television? (Re) Defining the medium Dr Marc C-Scott (PhD) College of Arts and Education, Victoria University, Footscray, Australia Email: [email protected] Phone: +61 399192920 Twitter: @marc_cscott Dr Marc C-Scott is a senior lecturer in screen media at Victoria University, Australia. He completed his PhD “Invention to Institution: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Television across Three National Sites” in 2016. His research interests are within television (history, institutions, policy, broadcast technologies and methods), cross-platform media and sportscasting. Marc regularly appears on both local and international television and radio commentating on the changing media landscape. He also writes for The Conversation about many topics associated with changes in the media landscape. 1 What is television? (Re) Defining the medium This paper will discuss the difficulties that have and will continue in defining the medium of television. The term has for many years been used to describe an entertainment medium which is part of the mass media landscape. It was first discussed, in the context of the medium of television, in a paper presented by Constantin Perskyi, at the International Electricity Congress during 1900. Almost thirty years later, as television broadcast tests commenced in Britain, the United States and Australia, there was still confusion and debate as to whether television was the correct term to use for the new medium. The contemporary misconception of defining television is made evident when its definition is reviewed within dictionaries, which consists of multiple definitions. This multipurpose approach and the new media landscape, which includes streaming and video-on-demand, has only created greater confusion. The evolution of television as a platform, institution and popular cultural has historically created difficulties in defining television. The increase of media convergence will exacerbate the difficulty in answering, what is television? Keywords: television; radiovision; medium; definition; distant vision 2 What is television? Since its introduction during the mid 1900s, television has become interwoven into society’s daily lives. But more recently, there has been a decline in the hours spent watching broadcast television. This has been accompanied by a significant shift in the way audiences both source and view televisual media. The changes in media consumption have led to a debate in academia, industry and society regarding the future of television. There have been many recent publications that have debated television’s future, including Arrow, Baker & Monagle (2016) and Wolk (2017). Whilst this may be viewed as a contemporary issue, the question associated television’s future had already been raised by Given (1998) more than twenty years ago, in The death of broadcasting? where he noted; Television and radio broadcasting, the clearest examples of mass media, are supposed to be dying. New technology is said to be making it possible to personalise audiences’ media experience, to deliver the images, sound and texts that each individual wants, when they wanted it. (1998, p. 6) Given continued to debate television’s future in Turning off television: Broadcasting’s uncertain future (2003). More than fifteen years later the debate of television’s future still remains. More recently this debate has incorporated subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), which is commonly referred to as a key contributor for television’s decline. The ongoing debate associated with television’s future has led to confusion and raises a larger question, what television is? Whilst defining television may appear to be a contemporary issue, when analysed from an historical perspective it is clear that throughout its development and introduction, opinion varied in defining television. Television has a complex history, 3 which has been impacted by social, political and technological factors. It began as part of the human desire to see at a distance. Through the work of many inventors, it became a reality through the television set. A device with a screen, that could allow one to see events a considerable distance away, and later across the other side of the world. Historically, television has been defined differently in its various interrelated technological, social and institutional contexts. The subsequent words used after television, for example, set, receiver or program, have been subsumed within the single term of ‘television’. This broad definition and multi-purpose approach to the use of the term, exacerbates the confusion in defining what is television? This paper will argue that changes in defining television are not simply a present issue. When analysed historically, it is evident that defining television has continually faced challenges. This paper will analyse television from a historical perspective, to evaluate the varying terms and definitions used to describe the medium. The focus will include the following areas: developments in aural, visual communications and the moving image; the public emergence of television; social influence upon television; the impact of convergence in defining television; challenges for contemporary television; difficulties in defining television. Developments in aural, visual communications and the moving image A major factor in the evolution and progress of television was the development rate and impact of other technologies, which included electricity, telegraphy, photography, radio and motion pictures. There were simultaneous developments in both the areas of visual and aural communication technologies. During 1837 to 1876, work was undertaken in the field of picture telegraphy, which Burns (1998) argues was ‘an influence on early 4 distant vision schemes’ (p. 4). In 1837, Samuel F.B Morse developed the electrical telegraph, which was subsequently improved by Alexander Bain’s invention, the automatic copying telegraph, during 1843. Five years later, Fredrick Bakewell’s developed an advance telegraph which added further capabilities and was able to send copies of visual material (written and print). Each of these developments added to the potential of visual communication through the telegraph. The aural element of Morse’s telegraph was added in 1876, when Alexander Bell’s talking telegraph or telephone was discovered (Abramson 2008, pp. 5-6). These discoveries were influential on television’s early developments, in so far as they allowed for the viewing of visual and aural media to be presented to a large and dispersed mass audience. Predictions of future developments of the telegraph and telephone were illustrated in the British magazine, Punch, during 1879. The illustration depicted an apparatus capable of transmitting visual and aural communication across a distance, entitled Edison’s Telephonoscope. Pictured was a gentleman sitting with a woman in front of a large wide-screen, holding cone devices which produced the sound associated with the projected visuals. This was only three years after Alexander Bell’s discovery of the telephone. Whilst fictional for the era in which it was printed, it depicts a modern social reality, a proposition of converging devices and an early visual representation of future television (Abramson 2008, p. 8). Albert Robida (1884) also described the telephonoscope, as ‘the supreme and final development of the telephone’ that would allow the user to both ‘see and hear’ the person at the same time (Burns 1998, pp. 78- 80). In addition to the developments of visual and aural media technologies, there was also research conducted in the area of moving images. During 1824, Peter Mark Roget conducted research in the field of persistence of vision. He argued that the retina 5 had the ability to ‘retain an image of an object for 1/20 to 1/5 of a second after its removal from the field of vision’ (Parkinson 2002, p. 7). Subsequent research in the area of psycho-perceptual, conducted by Max Wertheimer and Hugo Münsterberg, contradicted Roget’s research. The research argued that image retention was not due to the retina, but due to the film frame rate of twenty-four frames per second being lower than the brain’s perception threshold (Parkinson 2002, p. 7). These discoveries would later impact on both motion pictures and television. Motion pictures being the first art form to rely solely on psycho-perceptual illusions generated by machine (Parkinson 2002, p. 7). During the first half of the nineteenth century there were a range of discoveries and apparatuses developed to create the illusion of motion. Faraday presented his rotating wheel to the Fellows of the Royal Society during 1831. Faraday was unaware that Belgian philosopher and scientist, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau, had made the same discovery three years before (Cook 1963, pp. 125-6). Plateau later developed the Phenakistiscope during 1849-1852, an apparatus capable of projecting continuous imagery, which gave the illusion of movement. The first version consisted of drawings depicting a dragon blowing fire; the apparatus created euphoria among the populace who saw it. Plateau was encouraged to create another version using still photography. Plateau modified the apparatus to display posed photographs of a workman using a pestle and mortar. Unfortunately, the success of the photographs was limited and revealed the difficulties in portraying natural movement through the use of still imagery. This was evident when the workman was shown the moving images, he stated, ‘But that’s not how I work!’
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