Author : Julie Fulton
Publisher : Maverick Arts
Page : 32 pages
File Size : 50,82 MB
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 1848866666
John Logie Baird loves inventing things! When he hears about another inventor who has built a machine to show real live pictures, John sets about trying to do the same. Equipped with bits and pieces found in his house, John begins a journey which will change the course of history forever. Mister T.V. follows the life of John Logie Baird and the story behind the invention of the television.
Author : Charles L. Ponce de Leon
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 31,24 MB
Release : 2016-09-09
Category : History
ISBN : 022642152X
Ever since Newton Minow taught us sophisticates to bemoan the descent of television into a vast wasteland, the dyspeptic chorus of jeremiahs who insist that television news in particular has gone from gold to dross gets noisier and noisier. Charles Ponce de Leon says here, in effect, that this is misleading, if not simply fatuous. He argues in this well-paced, lively, readable book that TV news has changed in response to broader changes in the TV industry and American culture. It is pointless to bewail its decline. "That s the Way It Is "gives us the very first history of American television news, spanning more than six decades, from Camel News Caravan to Countdown with Keith Oberman and The Daily Show. Starting in the latter 1940s, television news featured a succession of broadcasters who became household names, even presences: Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and, with cable expansion, people like Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Bill O Reilly. But behind the scenes, the parallel story is just as interesting, involving executives, producers, and journalists who were responsible for the field s most important innovations. Included with mainstream network news programs is an engaging treatment of news magazines like "60 Minutes" and "20/20, " as well as morning news shows like "Today" and "Good Morning America." Ponce de Leon gives ample attention to the establishment of cable networks (CNN, and the later competitors, Fox News and MSNBC), mixing in colorful anecdotes about the likes of Roger Ailes and Roone Arledge. Frothy features and other kinds of entertainment have been part and parcel of TV news from the start; viewer preferences have always played a role in the evolution of programming, although the disintegration of a national culture since the 1970s means that most of us no longer follow the news as a civic obligation. Throughout, Ponce de Leon places his history in a broader cultural context, emphasizing tensions between the public service mission of TV news and the quest for profitability and broad appeal."
Author : Jon Burlingame
Publisher : Schirmer Trade Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,75 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Television music
ISBN : 9780028703244
Everybody loves TV themes - from the silly "Mr. Ed" and "The Addams Family" to the intense "Mission: Impossible" and "Peter Gunn" to the atmospheric "Hill Street Blues" and "The X-Files". But few people know how this music is made, or the stories of the men and women who have worked tirelessly (and often anonymously) to create it. This book offers the complete story of this important musical style, giving it the serious, and colorfully anecdotal, history it deserves. Divided into chapters on each genre, Burlingame provides the real stories of the composers who worked behind the scenes to create the memorable music we all love. Among those who have written and performed for television include many famous musicians - like jazz pianists Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington, arranger/producer Quincy Jones, film music giant John Williams, Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, and classical composer Morton Gould. Illustrated throughout with rare photos of the composers at work, this is a fascinating story of how a new genre of musical artistry was created.
Author : Ed McMahon
Publisher : Thomas Nelson
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 38,66 MB
Release : 2007-09-09
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 141857841X
When television was young . . . Legendary movie producer Darryl Zanuck declared, "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Before 5:30, there were only test patterns. Howdy Doody was the first show of the day. CBS agreed to put I Love Lucy on film only if Desi and Lucy paid part of the production fee. In return, CBS gave them ownership of the shows, including the right to rerun it forever. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was the first network show broadcast in color. 50,000 fans showed up in a New Orleans department store to meet Hopalong Cassidy. Movie studios would not let motion icture stars appear on television for fear that if people saw the stars on TV, they wouldn't go to the movies. Filled with fascinating stories, When Television Was Young is a hilarious, entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at the world of the small screen.
Author : Paul Schatzkin
Publisher : Teamcom Books
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 28,56 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Electrical engineers
ISBN : 9781928791300
While the great minds of science, financed by the biggest companies in the world, wrestled with 19th century answers to a 20th century problem, Philo T. Farnsworth, age 14, dreamed of trapping light in an empty jar and transmitting it, one line at a time, on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons. Farnsworth was a farm boy from Rigby, Idaho, with virtually no knowledge of electronics when he first sketched his idea for electronic television on a blackboard for his high school science teacher. Fifteen years later, his teacher would recreate that sketch as part of his testimony in patent litigation between Farnsworth and the giant Radio Corporation of America. In 1930, Farnsworth was awarded the fundamental patents for modern television; but he had to spend the next decade fighting off challenges to his patents by the giant Radio Corporation of America and defending his vision against his own shortsighted investors who did not share his larger dream of scientific independence. The Boy Who Invented Television traces Farnsworth's guided tour of discovery, describing the observations he made in the course of developing and improving his initial invention and revealing how his unique insights brought him to the threshold of what could have been an even greater discovery -- clean, safe, and unlimited energy from controlled nuclear fusion. - Publisher.
Author : Kathleen Krull
Publisher : Perfection Learning
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 34,30 MB
Release : 2014-02-11
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781627655750
"An inspiring true story of a boy genius. "Plowing a potato field in 1920, a 14-year-old farm boy from Idaho saw in the parallel rows of overturned earth a way to make pictures fly through the air. This boy was not a magician; he was a scientific genius and just eight years later he made his brainstorm in the potato field a reality by transmitting the world s first television image. This fascinating picture-book biography of Philo Farnsworth covers his early interest in machines and electricity, leading up to how he put it all together in one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. The author s afterword discusses the lawsuit Farnsworth waged and won against RCA when his high school science teacher testified that Philo s invention of television was years before RCA s."
Author : Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 35,34 MB
Release : 2021-03-23
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0062973339
New and Noteworthy —New York Times Book Review Must-Read Book of March —Entertainment Weekly Best Books of March —HelloGiggles “Leaps at the throat of television history and takes down the patriarchy with its fervent, inspired prose. When Women Invented Television offers proof that what we watch is a reflection of who we are as a people.” —Nathalia Holt, New York Times–bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls New York Times–bestselling author of Seinfeldia Jennifer Keishin Armstrong tells the little-known story of four trailblazing women in the early days of television who laid the foundation of the industry we know today. It was the Golden Age of Radio and powerful men were making millions in advertising dollars reaching thousands of listeners every day. When television arrived, few radio moguls were interested in the upstart industry and its tiny production budgets, and expensive television sets were out of reach for most families. But four women—each an independent visionary—saw an opportunity and carved their own paths, and in so doing invented the way we watch tv today. Irna Phillips turned real-life tragedy into daytime serials featuring female dominated casts. Gertrude Berg turned her radio show into a Jewish family comedy that spawned a play, a musical, an advice column, a line of house dresses, and other products. Hazel Scott, already a renowned musician, was the first African American to host a national evening variety program. Betty White became a daytime talk show fan favorite and one of the first women to produce, write, and star in her own show. Together, their stories chronicle a forgotten chapter in the history of television and popular culture. But as the medium became more popular—and lucrative—in the wake of World War II, the House Un-American Activities Committee arose to threaten entertainers, blacklisting many as communist sympathizers. As politics, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and money collided, the women who invented television found themselves fighting from the margins, as men took control. But these women were true survivors who never gave up—and thus their legacies remain with us in our television-dominated era. It's time we reclaimed their forgotten histories and the work they did to pioneer the medium that now rules our lives. This amazing and heartbreaking history, illustrated with photos, tells it all for the first time.
Author : James Day
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 470 pages
File Size : 36,27 MB
Release : 2023-04-28
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0520309960
This spirited history of public television offers an insider's account of its topsy-turvy forty-year odyssey. James Day, a founder of San Francisco's KQED and a past president of New York's WNET, provides a vivid and often amusing behind-the-screens history. Day tells how a program producer, desperate to locate a family willing to live with television cameras for seven months, borrowed a dime—and a suggestion—from a blind date and telephoned the Louds of Santa Barbara. The result was the mesmerizing twelve-hour documentary An American Family. Day relates how Big Bird and his friends were created to spice up Sesame Street when test runs showed a flagging interest in the program's "live-action" segments. And he describes how Frieda Hennock, the first woman appointed to the FCC, overpowered the resistance of her male colleagues to lay the foundation for public television. Day identifies the particular forces that have shaped public television and produced a Byzantine bureaucracy kept on a leash by an untrusting Congress, with a fragmented leadership that lacks a clearly defined mission in today's multimedia environment. Day calls for a bold rethinking of public television's mission, advocating a system that is adequately funded, independent of government, and capable of countering commercial television's "lowest-common-denominator" approach with a full range of substantive programs, comedy as well as culture, entertainment as well as information. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.
Author : Don Hewitt
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 16,68 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781586481414
The producer for "60 Minutes" recounts his early experiences and his more than fifty years with CBS, including the first broadcasts of political conventions, the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and the events portrayed in the film "The Insider."
Author : Seth Shapiro
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 10,37 MB
Release : 2016-08-08
Category :
ISBN : 9780997304206
No medium in history can match the power of television. No product has spread so far and so fast. Nothing has had so much influence. Nothing has impacted how the world sees itself like television. TELEVISION: Volume 1 brings together seven decades of stories on how this happened into one epic narrative. How did an impoverished immigrant become the king of all media, creating the first radio network and the first TV network? What caused the inventor of FM radio to jump out of a window to his death? How did NBC, CBS and ABC innovate to build their media monopolies? How did Star Trek create the first fan culture movement? What made The Mary Tyler Moore Show the first great feminist show, and #1 hit? What made Norman Lear the most influential TV comedy producer ever? How did Lucille Ball go from a washed-up B movie actress to a multi-millionaire Hollywood studio mogul? What makes Louis C.K. the Jackie Gleason of the digital age? With unparalleled insider insight, it shares critical, practical, behind the scenes lessons from the business of TV. The TELEVISION series is a must-read for media executives, students, entrepreneurs, and fans. Two-time Emmy(R) Award winner, author Seth Shapiro is a leading advisor in business innovation, media and technology. He is an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, a Governor of the Television Academy, and Principal of New Amsterdam Media LLC. "If you ever wanted to know how the television industry began, this is your primer." -- Garth Ancier, Former Entertainment President, Fox Broadcasting Company President, NBC Entertainment Chairman, The WB Television Network President, BBC Worldwide America Seth Shapiro masterfully chronicles the evolution of television... It was like seeing my life pass before my eyes." -- Preston Beckman, Senior Strategist, FOX Networks Group - Executive Vice President, Program Planning, NBC Entertainment "Seth Shapiro teaches THE class on the media business. Now, he's writing THE book. He's THE expert." -- Ryan Holiday, Editor-at-large, The New York Observer Best-Selling Author of Trust Me I'm Lying and The Obstacle is the Way "Seth is a spectacular storyteller with extraordinary perspective and real world experience. If you want to truly understand the TV business, TELEVISION: Volume 1 is a must read." -- Shelly Palmer, Business Advisor, Author and Commentator "Seth Shapiro nails it. With an eye for keen detail, insider's access, and a gift for analytic storytelling, Shapiro weaves a powerful tapestry...TELEVISION: Volume 1 stands to become a must-read for all industry participants, students of electronic media, and viewers who have ever wondered how this global phenomenon called TV came to be." -- John Penney, Chief Strategy Officer, STARZ "Seth Shapiro has crafted a delightful, story-filled history of television that is as entertaining as the medium itself... a must read for all those looking to comprehend the future of video." -- Jay Samit, Author of Disrupt You: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation Seth is the perfect author to tell the story of television. And the story is a fascinating combination of art and business, of technology and culture. -- Jeff Schultz, Senior Vice President Business Development, CBS
