Television’s Past: Anyone who has studied the history of television recognizes the name Philo T. Farnsworth. Farnsworth invented the first all-electronic television camera and receiver system but spent so much time embroiled in patent lawsuits with David Sarnoff’s RCA that he was never able to capitalize on his work, while RCA’s technology (using a similar system invented by Vladimir Zworykin) would go on to become the standard. Later on, Farnsworth ended up selling his patents to RCA and became a forgotten figure, working on nuclear fusion technology.
Well doesn’t that sound like a cheery idea for a big Broadway show? Yeah, me neither, but there you have it. In fact, “Vidiot” (aptly enough) went to see it recently and says it’s better than the NYT review would have you think. The play was written by Aaron Sorkin, whom you might recognize as the executive producer of “The West Wing”, and stars Hank Azaria (better known for his many roles on “The Simpsons”) as David Sarnoff and little-known TV actor Jimmi Simpson as Farnsworth.
Television’s Present: Would you believe that nearly 40% of Americans still do not know that we are converting all broadcast television to the HDTV standard in January of 2009? I don’t know how anybody can be unaware, since it seems like every other TV commercial right now is about some high-def video technology, but then people still think Iraq is responsible for 9/11. The General Accounting Office (you know the only guys in the federal government who know what the fuck they’re doing) released a report recently that takes the FCC to task for not doing a better job of overseeing public information efforts about the changeover and about the subsidy program that has been created that will provide a rebate for the very small percentage of American television viewers who ONLY receive over-the-air signals to buy converter boxes for their existing analog TV sets. This is getting a lot of news media attention this week, though it’s not really too big of a deal — the number of homes with only over-the-air reception is miniscule, and even if the general public is unaware, they won’t have to do anything about it until they have to replace their TV sets, because the cable companies were forced to make their systems downwardly compatible.
Television’s Future: Going off in a totally different direction for this last link, you might be interested in listening to this podcast, which is a recording of one set of presentations at MIT’s recent Communications Forum, which focused on shifting the model of television viewing from a passive activity to an engaged one, as brilliantly exemplified by the NBC series “Heroes”. Heroes makes extensive use of the Internet, comic books, fan groups, and other participatory elements to enhance and expand the narrative content of the series and is a showcase for how TV producers might use multi-media approaches to producing content. “Heroes” clearly owes a huge debt to the world of “Star Trek” fandom, which practically invented fan engagement in the 1970s and has been widely emulated. (It’s no accident that all those “Star Trek” actors and references keep popping up on the show).
