Since the advent of the post-World War II era, television has functioned as the quintessential mass medium. Television’s status as a central cultural storyteller that offers a widely shared lens on news information, media events, and fictional narratives has allowed it to transcend academic approaches and operate as a crucial object of study for a
Makeover television, a subgenre of reality television, began in earnest in the United States in 2001 with Trading Spaces (a home decoration show) and soon spread to body and beauty renovations and a broader international audience. More than 250 makeover-centered shows, across 40 different network/cable sites and created by over 50 production companies are available
There are many different uses for satellite technology, and television broadcasting is only one of them. In fact, communications satellites are also used for maritime applications, intercontinental telephony, business systems, and broadcasting television programming. In television, satellite is the easiest way to transmit a large number of services and thus a wide range of choices
Television networks are organizations that produce or acquire the rights to TV programs, which are centrally distributed to affiliated stations where they are scheduled at uniform time slots. The distribution of content to geographically dispersed stations can occur using a variety of technical systems, involving traditional over-the-air electromagnetic broadcasting, cable, satellite, and now digital transmission.
Television history has developed relatively recently. After pioneering work in the UK (Briggs 1961–1995) and the US (Barnouw 1976), national histories of television (and broadcasting) have been written, mostly in Europe and sometimes beyond (bibliographies can be found at André Lange’s history of television website). Historians have focused mostly on political and institutional history. Television
Technological developments have played a major part in shaping the production, broadcasting, and reception of television. Histories of television tend to highlight a sequence of technologies (e.g., the cathode ray tube, fiber optic cable, and remote control) and their inventors (e.g., Nipkow, Baird, and Zworykin). This approach allows us to trace the development of the
Dr. 90210 is a popular documentary-style reality television program that premiered on the E! network in 2004 in the United States. It has recently completed its sixth season. The show follows the lives of cosmetic surgeons, including their personal and professional lives. Dr. 90210 is often credited with playing a large role in increasing the
The term “cable television” typically refers to a form of subscription-based multichannel program delivery that relies on cables or wires. At first, cable television existed almost exclusively to extend the reach of broadcast signals, but more recently it has also delivered an array of additional program services – primarily satellite networks such as MTV (Music
During the latter half of the twentieth century, most discussions about international television tended to focus on national media systems and relations of exchange among those systems. Since the 1990s, however, television has increasingly been studied as a global phenomenon. Although national systems still figure prominently, research and policy debates now explore the ways in
Television Careers Background Modern television developed from experiments with electricity and vacuum tubes in the mid-1800s, but it was not until 1939, when President Franklin Roosevelt used television to open the New York World’s Fair, that the public realized the power of television as a means of communication. Several television stations went on the air