The Influential Television
Throughout the last century, society has seen innovation in many
technologies, each of which carries its fair share of positive and
negative influences. Possibly the most talked about set of influences
are those which have arisen since the innovation of television.
Television broadcasting today includes a wide variety of emotive,
educational and persuasive programmes, ranging from a documentary on
starvation in the Sudan to reality television programmes showing
street violence as a form of “entertainment.” Television shows have
generated controversy, been a focus for moral panics and stimulated
debate throughout society.
Like any medium television is influential both in positive and
negative ways, although there will never be an agreement about what we
should celebrate or condemn, television represents social conflicts
and fractures and feeds back into them. Broadcasting today relays
information to the public or global society, but the sources, effects
and biases of this information are often complex and not immediately
clear. Television creates a new relationship between individuals and
societies in a global context.
The combination of emotive language with video has led to a deeper
global concern being injected into society, a recent example being
shown by the many commentaries within the Western world after the
events of September 11th 2001. Ecological concerns, movements for
peace and democracy and campaigns for human rights have been given a
fresh force by the global problems of the last few years, with America
under Bush offering a clear denial of global responsibility for the
environment, combined with an assertion of global responsibility as
the world’s best armed superpower.
The next positive point controversially is the widening of social
attitudes over the last decade through a hidden doctrine of positive
discrimination we have seen a more socially diverse community of
actors and actresses. In an attempt to avoid any allegations of
discrimination this doctrine has allowed society to become aware of a
wider society that encloses it, upon recognising the interest of its
viewers the producers have gone one stage further, to include regular
Technology in the 1950s started with many great innovations that shape the way we live now. Probably the most important innovation of television was the introduction of cable T.V., television broadcasting, sitcoms and talk shows. Television went though many changes in its younger years. The way T.V. Developed in the early years is the foundation for what we watched now days. Transitory radios became very popular in the fact that Music could be heard in any location because it was now portable. Still T.V. Innovations were what the 1950s were all about from a technology and the birth of the T.V. show.
To buy a television it was like to buy a brand new car. In the 1907 the word television was used by scientific American magazine to describe the transmission of moving picture. John L. Baird, a Scottish inventor first telecasted and object in motion in England, 1926 using mechanical television. In 1923 Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, a Russian born American and father of modern television and Philo Taylor invented modern television by using electronic scanning of imaginary on television. On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth successfully demonstrated the transmission of television signal. Television innovations from 1930-1960 created a new way for the entire country to be involved with the current events.
Readability of text: The grade level I chose is fifth, and the material comes from McGraw-Hill’s Reading Wonders. “The Boy Who Invented TV” by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Greg Couch is the text I used to apply Fry’s Readability Formula. The Lexile Text Complexity Range is set at 860 and the Text Evaluator is at 38 for this particular story. “The Boy Who Invented TV” was an appropriate biography for fifth grade, however I was surprised to use the Fry’s Readability Formula and find that it was actually graphed at an upper seventh grade level. After doing this readability I have a newfound understanding as to why students, especially lower level, can really struggle with the text found in their books. It is much more evident that after reading
Presently 98% of the households in the United States have one or more televisions in them. What once was regarded as a luxury item has become a staple appliance of the American household. Gone are the days of the three channel black and white programming of the early years; that has been replaced by digital flat screen televisions connected to satellite programming capable of receiving thousands of channels from around the world. Although televisions and television programming today differ from those of the telescreens in Orwell’s 1984, we are beginning to realize that the effects of television viewing may be the same as those of the telescreens.
News Events in Television History News Events in the History of TV In chronicling the past 50 years of television, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences includes many clips from historical events that were carried on television. Including these news events is appropriate to the history of television because the advent of this technology brought the nation and world together in times of tragedy and joy via the global village created by this medium. The events that changed our world also changed the world of television. It can be argued that it is not necessary to include world events when discussing the history of television, simply because they were not created for television, but television created programming to include it, but this is a narrow-minded view of the medium that is television.
In today’s society, the mass media has consumed our lives from magazines to movies. As technology continues to grow, mass media expands in a variety of places. The media engages us to connect from mobile to online without being out of touch from important events. Mass media can shape a person’s opinion and even persuade someone to buy something he/she does not need. Notably, television is a primary source of media, which can influence a person positively and negatively. Television has become accessible globally giving useful information, intriguing stories, and capturing real world events. The high exposure to television shapes a person’s view on reality, such as, the images on TV can inspire people in a career field. For example, “Greater quantity of television viewing has been shown to be positively correlated with estimates of doctors, lawyers, and police officers in the real world” (Shrum 2002). For television, it can affect our viewing behavior and social attitudes. The media exaggerates reality in gender roles, the middle class unfairly represented, and a disproportion of demographics. Furthermore, television images cultivate our social attitudes in materialism, stereotypes, and violence.
This essay is about how televisions have developed over the years and how the technology of televisions has influenced people’s lives and how it has changed the way we share and receive information.
The role of mass media in the society cannot be underrated. All breaking news consistently aired and disseminated to the public as soon as it occurs. Furthermore, some forms of mass media such as the television heavily contribute towards the shaping of the consciousness of many people. According to Berger (17), “the media entertain us, socialize us, inform us, educate us, sell things to us (and sell us, as audiences, to advertisers), and indoctrinate us – among other things.” Moreover, television is a story-telling centralized system. All the programs viewed on television creates a coherent system that signifies various messages in every homestead (Gerbner 177). Crime drama programs are not an exception. Crime drama is not a new thing on television;
Canadian media, theorist, Marshall McLuhan (1964), argued that different types of media have very different effects on society. His famous dictum is that, ‘the medium is the message’. That is to say, society is influenced much more by the type of the media than by its content, or messages, which are conveyed by it (Giddens, 2009, p.724). We live in a society that solely depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right path and do our daily performances like work, entertainment, health care, education, travelling and other things tha...
“Adults should trust teens to be responsible for their media choices and listen to them about why the stories they like are important, instead of fixating on their choices only as an opportunity to lecture on ‘having better things to do’ and ‘all the crap that’s on television’ (Campbell). Though not all television is good for teenagers, there is still a great deal of television aimed at teenagers that understand them without wrongly influencing them. The main concern should be whether, in the long run, television is beneficial or damaging to the overall person. Television comes with its negatives, bad influences from some shows and just outright stupidity from others. It also has some more positive intentions like molding the younger generations’ minds and promoting good morals for younger and older generations. Despite the negative connotation of watching a lot of television, it still can be beneficial to helping one’s mind grow.
One can argue that the invention of television is one of the greatest of all time and since the 1940’s, television has had a major impact on American culture and society. The content viewed on television influences the way individuals think about race, gender, social classes, and especially politics. Television has allowed society to view world events within the click of a button and has served as major tool, whether it is used purely for entertainment or for politics.
The entertainment world: How does television actually influence us? Within today’s society, it would seem like television has become an almost norm or the way of life compared to the postmodernists views on entertainment. Nearly everyone has it, watches it and more importantly has been influenced in some way by the effects of these moving images becoming ever more present in popular culture. Some call it pointless, others inspiring, but how does television actually affect those who live in a contemporary style of life compared to the more traditional forms or culture?
Television is a very important part of today’s society. Without the invention of television, the world would be without many wonders, such as Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Here Comes Honey BooBoo, and Jersey Shore. More importantly, daily news, breaking updates, mass information, and quality programming would unaccessible to thousands, if not millions, of people. Television has changed the way information is spread and changed the way the world experiences entertainment. Although much has changed throughout the history of the television, the main point has stayed the same. Whether a person’s first experience with a TV was a small black and white box with very few channels or an LCD or Plasma flat screen with thousands of channels, it has impacted the lives of millions all over the developed world and especially in the United States. With all the advances and changes made to the original television design, it is obvious that the first one had enough of a societal and technological impact to last for a long time.
Can T.V. shows be the reflection of our society or influence the behavior of the members of our community? Since 1936, when television broadcasting begin, it priority was to inform and to entertain our society; subsequently, a massive amount of rules and regulations were created to control the material presented in TV, which principal goal was to safeguard the moral and ethical standards of it time. Nevertheless, from its beginning to the present home entertainment television standards contents have change; likewise, the moral an ethics values of our society have change and continuing changing from generation to generation. TV shows from the 50’s, 80’s, and the present exposed many changes in the way human role are exposed, the language tone is utilized, the sexual content is displayed, and the multicultural influences are incorporated on TV.
On the other hand, there is an opinion that “TV shows and films have, and are given, cultural values and uses that are not easily (if at all) re...