1960's Archives - Frank Parker

Holidays

The main holidays I celebrated growing up through the decades, and still do, were New Year, Easter, Bonfire Night and Christmas. Celebrating Halloween came much later in my adult years. All these contain happy memories with my family, kids and grandkids.

These holidays carry their traditions and traditions meant a lot to my Mom and they mean a lot to me because as long as I carry on doing the things she did, and my own, they will never die out in a world where such things don’t seem to matter anymore to a lot of people. The traditions that Mom loved, and the ones we did together, forever bring a smile to my face and happy memories and as long as I can do them I will and keep them alive, not just for me but for my grandkids and Mom too because I know she is here in spirit to enjoy them too.

About Holidays

A holiday is a day or other period set aside for festivals or recreation. They appear at various times during the four seasons. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often also observed as public holidays in religious-majority countries. Some religious holidays, such as Christmas, have become secularised by part or all of those who observe them. In addition to secularisation, many holidays have become commercialised due to the growth of industry.

Holidays can be thematic, celebrating or commemorating particular groups, events, or ideas, or non-thematic, days of rest that do not have any particular meaning. In Commonwealth English, the term can refer to any period of rest from work, (a.k.a. vacations) or school holidays. Holidays typically refer to the period from Thanksgiving (in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil, Germany and the Philippines. It is also observed in the Dutch town of Leiden and the Australian territory of Norfolk Island) to New Year’s.

If there is a celebration of some sort you will usually see lots of colourful fireworks.

A great display of blue fireworks.

New Year

You can read about New Year here.

Easter

You can read about Easter here.

Halloween

You can read about Halloween here.

Bonfire Night

You can read about Bonfire Night here.

Christmas

You can read about Christmas here.

Terminology

The word holiday comes from the Old English word hāligdæg (hālig “holy” + dæg “day”). The word originally referred only to special religious days.

The word holiday has differing connotations in different regions. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations, the word may refer to the period where leave from one’s duties has been agreed upon. This time is usually set aside for rest, travel, or participation in recreational activities, with entire industries targeted to coincide with or enhance these experiences. The days of leave may not coincide with any specific customs or laws. Employers and educational institutes may designate holidays themselves, which may or may not overlap nationally or culturally relevant dates, which again comes under this connotation, but it is the first implication detailed that this article is concerned with. Modern use varies geographically. In the United States, the word is used exclusively to refer to the nationally, religiously, or culturally observed day(s) of rest or celebration or the events themselves and is known as a vacation. In North America, it means any dedicated day or period of celebration.

Global Holidays

The celebration of the New Year has been a common holiday across cultures for at least four millennia. Such holidays normally celebrate the last day of the year and the arrival of the next year in a calendar system. In modern cultures using the Gregorian calendar, the New Year’s celebration spans New Year’s Eve on the 31st of December and New Year’s Day on the 1st of January. However, other calendar systems also have New Year’s celebrations, such as Chinese New Year and Vietnamese Tet. New Year’s Day is the most common public holiday, observed by all countries using the Gregorian calendar except Israel.

Christmas is a popular holiday globally due to the spread of Christianity. The holiday is recognised as a public holiday in many countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia and is celebrated by over 2 billion people. Although a holiday with religious origins, Christmas is often celebrated by non-Christians as a secular holiday. For example, 61% of British people celebrate Christmas in an entirely secular way. Christmas has also become a tradition in some non-Christian countries. For example, for many Japanese people, it has become customary to buy and eat fried chicken on Christmas.

Public Holidays

Substitute Holidays

If a holiday coincides with another holiday or a weekend day a substitute holiday may be recognised in lieu. In the United Kingdom, the government website states that “If a bank holiday is on a weekend, a substitute weekday becomes a bank holiday, normally the following Monday.” The process of moving a holiday from a weekend day to the following Monday is known as Mondayisation in New Zealand.

Religious Holidays

Many holidays are linked to faiths and religions (see etymology above). Christian holidays are defined as part of the liturgical year, the chief ones being Easter and Christmas. The Orthodox Christian and Western-Roman Catholic patronal feast day or name day is celebrated on each place’s patron saint’s day, according to the Calendar of Saints. Jehovah’s Witnesses annually commemorate The Memorial of Jesus Christ’s Death but do not celebrate other holidays with any religious significance such as Easter, Christmas or New Year. This holds especially true for those holidays that have combined and absorbed rituals, overtones or practices from non-Christian beliefs into the celebration, as well as those holidays that distract from or replace the worship of Jehovah. In Islam, the largest holidays are Eid al-Fitr (immediately after Ramadan) and Eid al-Adha (at the end of the Hajj). Ahmadi Muslims additionally celebrate Promised Messiah Day, Promised Reformer Day, and Khilafat Day, but contrary to popular belief, neither are regarded as holidays. Hindus, Jains and Sikhs observe several holidays, one of the largest being Diwali (Festival of Light). Japanese holidays as well as a few Catholic holidays contain heavy references to several different faiths and beliefs. Celtic, Norse, and Neopagan holidays follow the order of the Wheel of the Year. For example, Christmas ideas like decorating trees and colours (green, red, and white) have very similar ideas to modern Wicca (a modern Pagan belief) Yule which is a lesser Sabbat of the wheel of the year. Some are closely linked to Swedish festivities. The Bahaʼí Faith observes 11 annual holidays on dates determined using the Bahaʼí calendar. Jews have two holiday seasons, the Spring Feasts of Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Weeks, called Pentecost in Greek) and the Fall Feasts of Rosh Hashanah (Head of the Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot (Tabernacles), and Shemini Atzeret (Eighth Day of Assembly).

Blog Posts

Blue Peter: An Advent Crown For Christmas.

Christmas: A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens – Screen Versions.

Christmas: Nostalgic Christmas Adverts.

E-Books: Free Fantasy E-Books.

E-Books: Free Horror E-Books.

Halloween Photos (Part 1).

Halloween Photos (Part 2).

Halloween Photos (Part 3).

Halloween Photos (Part 4).

Jokes: Christmas Jokes.

Music: Christmas Music.

Poetry: Harley Davidson Christmas Poem.

Links

Pexels – The image shown at the top of this page is the copyright of Pexels You can find more free stock photos on there.

Television

Most of us have grown up watching a television screen of some sort. For me, television was at its best in the 1970’s and 1980’s when it was proper family entertainment.

I don’t watch much telly these days (and I certainly DO NOT watch the bullshit so-called news). Like films, it has all become too woke for my liking. What was once entertainment has become a form of brainwashing and lecturing and I don’t watch it live anymore. I don’t turn on my television much unless it is to watch a DVD via my DVD player, watch YouTube, or Amazon Prime, or watch something decent that fits in with my likes via my Amazon Fire TV stick 4K Max.

I have plenty of favourite television programs over the decades as a child and older, but watching them with family in my favourite decade, the 70’s, will always hold the most special memories for me.

I like most TV genres with my favourite being Horror and Science Fiction ones. I have favourite actors and actresses the same as anyone else does and they will be shown on this page. I am not going to list every telly programme I have watched in my lifetime, that would be IMPOSSIBLE to remember but I will list programmes I have watched and enjoyed that I think are worth watching for someone else but of course, your opinions may differ from mine, that’s life.

About Televison

Television (TV), also referred to as telly, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a TV set or the medium of TV transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.

Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920’s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the United States (U.S.), and TV sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950’s, telly was the primary medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960’s, colour broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries.

The availability of various types of archival storage media such as Betamax and Video Home System (VHS) tapes, Laser Discs, high-capacity hard disk drives, Compact Discs (CD’s), Digital Versatile Discs (DVD’s, flash drives, high-definition (HD) DVD’s and Blu-ray Discs, and cloud digital video recorders has enabled viewers to watch pre-recorded material, such as movies, at home on their own time schedule. For many reasons, especially the convenience of remote retrieval, the storage of television and video programming now also occurs on the cloud (such as the video-on-demand service by Netflix). At the end of the first decade of the 2000’s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity. Another development was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (576i, with 576 interlaced lines of resolution and 480i) to high-definition TV (HDTV), which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in different formats (1080p, 1080i and 720p). Since 2010, with the invention of smart television, Internet television has increased the availability of television programs and movies via the Internet through streaming video services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.

In 2013, 79% of the world’s households owned a television set. The replacement of earlier cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternative technologies such as liquid-crystal display (LCD) both fluorescent backlit and light-emitting diode (LED), organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and plasma displays was a hardware revolution that began with computer monitors in the late 1990’s. Most television sets sold in the 2000’s were flat-panel, mainly LED’s. Major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, Digital Light Processing (DLP), plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCD TV’s by the mid-2010’s. In the near future, LED’s are expected to be gradually replaced by OLED TV’s. Also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TV’s in the mid-2010’s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010’s.

Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency television transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively, television signals are distributed by coaxial cable or optical fibre, satellite systems and, since the 2000’s via the Internet. Until the early 2000’s, these were transmitted as analogue signals, but a transition to digital television was expected to be completed worldwide by the late 2010’s. A standard television set consists of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device that lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television.

Flat-screen televisions for sale at a consumer electronics store in 2008.

Etymology

The word television comes from the Ancient Greek τῆλε (tele) meaning far, and Latin visio meaning sight. The first documented usage of the term dates back to 1900, when the Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi used it in a paper that he presented in French at the first International Congress of Electricity, which ran from the 18th to the 25th of August 1900 during the International World Fair in Paris.

The anglicised version of the term was first attested in 1907 when it was classed as a theoretical system to transmit moving images over telegraph or telephone wires. It was formed in English or borrowed from the French word télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other proposals for the name of a then-hypothetical technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote (1880) and televista (1904).

The abbreviation TV is from 1948. The use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941. The use of the term to mean television as a medium dates from 1927.

The term telly is more common in the United Kingdom (U.K). The slang term the tube or the boob tube derives from the bulky cathode-ray tube used on most TV’s until the advent of flat-screen tellies.

The History Of Television

Mechanical Television

Read more about Mechanical Television here.

Facsimile transmission systems (FAX) for still photographs pioneered methods of mechanical scanning of images in the early 19th century. Alexander Bain introduced the facsimile machine between 1843 and 1846. Frederick Bakewell demonstrated a working laboratory version in 1851. Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium in 1873. As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the Nipkow disk in 1884 in Berlin. This was a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of holes in it, so each hole scanned a line of the image. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow’s spinning disk image rasteriser became exceedingly common. Constantin Perskyi coined the word television (TV) in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on the 24th of August, 1900. Perskyi’s paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others. However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology by Lee de Forest and Arthur Korn, among others, made the design practical.

The first demonstration of the live transmission of images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. A matrix of 64 selenium cells, individually wired to a mechanical commutator, served as an electronic retina. In the receiver, a type of Kerr cell modulated the light and a series of differently angled mirrors attached to the edge of a rotating disc scanned the modulated beam onto the display screen. A separate circuit regulated synchronisation. The 8×8 pixel resolution in this proof-of-concept demonstration was just sufficient to clearly transmit individual letters of the alphabet. An updated image was transmitted several times each second.

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin’s words, “very crude images” over wires to the Braun tube (cathode-ray tube) in the receiver. Moving images was not possible because in the scanner the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy.

In 1921, Edouard Belin sent the first image via radio waves with his belinograph.

By the 1920’s, when amplification made TV practical, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird employed the Nipkow disk in his prototype video systems. On the 25th of March, 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridges’s department store in London. Since human faces had inadequate contrast to show up in his primitive system, he televised a ventriloquist’s dummy named Stooky Bill, whose painted face had higher contrast, talking and moving. By the 26th of January, 1926, he had demonstrated before members of the Royal Institution the transmission of an image of a face in motion by radio. This is widely regarded as the world’s first true public TV demonstration, exhibiting light, shade and detail. Baird’s system used the Nipkow disk for both scanning the image and displaying it. A brightly illuminated subject was placed in front of a spinning Nipkow disk set with lenses which swept images across a static photocell. The thallium sulphide (Thalofide) cell, developed by Theodore Case in the United States (U.S.), detected the light reflected from the subject and converted it into a proportional electrical signal. This was transmitted by Amplitude Modulation (AM) radio waves to a receiver unit, where the video signal was applied to a neon light behind a second Nipkow disk rotating synchronised with the first. The brightness of the neon lamp was varied in proportion to the brightness of each spot on the image. As each hole in the disk passed by, one scan line of the image was reproduced. Baird’s disk had 30 holes, producing an image with only 30 scan lines, just enough to recognize a human face. In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow. Baird’s original televisor now resides in the Science Museum, South Kensington.

In 1928, Baird’s company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic TV signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental mechanical TV service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan of Pathe established France’s first television company, Television-Baird-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of The Derby. In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short-wave (USW) television. Baird’s mechanical system reached a peak of 240 lines of resolution on the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) telecasts in 1936, though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead, a 17.5 mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet.

A U.S. inventor, Charles Francis Jenkins, also pioneered the television. He published an article on Motion Pictures by Wireless in 1913 and transmitted moving silhouette images for witnesses in December 1923. On the 13th of June, 1925, he publicly demonstrated the synchronised transmission of silhouette pictures. In 1925 Jenkins used the Nipkow disk and transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of 5 miles (8 km), from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution. He was granted U.S. Patent No. 1,544,156 (Transmitting Pictures over Wireless) on the 30th of June, 1925 and filed it on the 13th of March, 1922.

Herbert E. Ives and Frank Gray of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on the 7th of April, 1927. Their reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a 2-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen (5 by 6 cm). The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high (60 by 75 cm). Both sets could reproduce reasonably accurate, monochromatic, moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets received synchronised sound. The system transmitted images over two paths. The first was a copper wire link from Washington to New York City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 milliseconds (today’s systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively). Telly historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration and said, “It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality.”

In 1928, WRGB, then W2XB, was started as the world’s first TV station. It was broadcast from the General Electric (GE) facility in Schenectady, N.Y. It was popularly known as WGY Television. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Leon Theremin had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926. As part of his thesis, on the 7th of May, 1926, he electrically transmitted, and then projected, near-simultaneous moving images on a 5-square-foot (0.46 m²) screen.

By 1927 Theremin had achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until May 1932 by Radio Corporation of America (RCA), with 120 lines.

On Christmas Day in 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and cathode ray tubes (CRT) display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This prototype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum at Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu Campus. His research in creating a production model was halted by the SCAP after World War II.

Because only a limited number of holes could be made in the disks, and disks beyond a certain diameter became impractical, image resolution on mechanical television broadcasts was relatively low, ranging from about 30 lines up to 120 or so. Nevertheless, the image quality of 30-line transmissions steadily improved with technical advances, and by 1933 the United Kingdom (U.K.) broadcasts using the Baird system were remarkably clear. A few systems ranging into the 200-line region also went on the air. Two of these were the 180-line system that Compagnie des Compteurs installed in Paris in 1935, and the 180-line system that Peck Television Corp. started in 1935 at station VE9AK in Montreal. The advancement of all-electronic television (including image dissectors and other camera tubes and CRT’s for the reproducer) marked the start of the end for mechanical systems as the dominant form of television. Mechanical TV, despite its inferior image quality and generally smaller picture, would remain the primary television technology until the 1930’s. The last mechanical telecasts ended in 1939 at stations run by a lot of public universities in the U.S.

John Logie Baird in 1925 with his televisor equipment and dummies James (on the left) and Stooky Bill (on the right).

The above image is on page 650 of Popular Radio magazine, Vol. 10, No. 7, dated November 1926. It was published by Popular Radio, Inc. in New York, U.S.A. You can download a copy of this magazine via World Radio History by clicking here.

Electronic Television

Read more about Electronic Television here.

In 1897, English physicist J. J. Thomson was able, in his three well-known experiments, to deflect cathode rays, a fundamental function of the modern cathode-ray tube. The earliest version of the cathode ray tube (CRT) was invented by the German physicist Ferdinand Braun in 1897 and is also known as the Braun tube. It was a cold-cathode diode, a modification of the Crookes tube, with a phosphor-coated screen. Braun was the first to conceive the use of a CRT as a display device. The Braun tube became the foundation of 20th-century television. In 1906 the Germans Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage produced raster images for the first time in a CRT. In 1907, Russian scientist Boris Rosing used a CRT in the receiving end of an experimental video signal to form a picture. He managed to display simple geometric shapes on the screen.

In 1908, Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, fellow of the Royal Society, published a letter in the scientific journal Nature in which he described how distant electric vision could be achieved by using a cathode-ray tube, or Braun tube, as both a transmitting and receiving device, he expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in The Times and the Journal of the Rontgen Society in another letter to Nature published in October 1926. Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some not-very-successful experiments he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam. These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died, but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937, by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. (EMI), and by H. Iams and A. Rose from Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Both teams succeeded in transmitting very faint images with the original Campbell-Swinton’s selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode-ray tube as a receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel. The first cathode-ray tube to use a hot cathode was developed by John B. Johnson (who gave his name to the term Johnson noise) and Harry Weiner Weinhart of Western Electric and became a commercial product in 1922.

In 1926, Hungarian engineer Kalman Tihanyi designed a television (TV) system using fully electronic scanning and display elements and employing the principle of charge storage within the scanning (or camera) tube. The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting (or camera) tubes would be solved with the introduction of charge-storage technology by Kalman Tihanyi beginning in 1924. His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges (photoelectrons) within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in Hungary in March 1926 for a television system he called Radioskop. After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application, Tihanyi’s patent was declared void in Great Britain in 1930, so he applied for patents in the United States (U.S.). Although his breakthrough would be incorporated into RCA’s iconoscope design in 1931, the U.S. patent for Tihanyi’s transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to their approval. Charge storage remains a basic principle in the design of imaging devices for television to the present day. On Christmas Day, 1926, at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan, Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a TV system with a 40-line resolution that employed a CRT display. This was the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver and Takayanagi’s team later made improvements to this system parallel to other TV developments. Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.

In the 1930’s, Allen B. DuMont made the first CRT to last 1,000 hours of use, which was one of the factors that led to the widespread adoption of TV.

On the 7th of September 1927, U.S. inventor Philo Farnsworth’s image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. By the 3rd of September 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press. This is widely regarded as the first electronic television demonstration. In 1929, the system was improved further by the elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three-and-a-half-inch image of his wife Elma (nicknamed Pem) with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin was also experimenting with the cathode-ray tube to create and show images. While working for Westinghouse Electric in 1923, he began to develop an electronic camera tube. But in a 1925 demonstration, the image was dim, had low contrast, and poor definition, and was stationary. Zworykin’s imaging tube never got beyond the laboratory stage but RCA, which acquired the Westinghouse patent, asserted that the patent for Farnsworth’s 1927 image dissector was written so broadly that it would exclude any other electronic imaging device. Thus RCA, on the basis of Zworykin’s 1923 patent application, filed a patent interference suit against Farnsworth. The U.S. Patent Office examiner disagreed in a 1935 decision, finding priority of invention for Farnsworth against Zworykin. Farnsworth claimed that Zworykin’s 1923 system could not produce an electrical image of the type to challenge his patent. Zworykin received a patent in 1928 for a colour transmission version of his 1923 patent application. He also divided his original application in 1931. Zworykin was unable or unwilling to introduce evidence of a working model of his tube that was based on his 1923 patent application. In September 1939, after losing an appeal in the courts, and being determined to go forward with the commercial manufacturing of television equipment, RCA agreed to pay Farnsworth US$1 million over a ten-year period, in addition to license payments, to use his patents.

In 1933, RCA introduced an improved camera tube that relied on Tihanyi’s charge storage principle. Called the Iconoscope by Zworykin, the new tube had a light sensitivity of about 75,000 lux and thus was claimed to be much more sensitive than Farnsworth’s image dissector. However, Farnsworth had overcome his power issues with his Image Dissector through the invention of a completely unique multipactor device that he began work on in 1930, and demonstrated in 1931. This small tube could amplify a signal reportedly to the 60th power or better and showed great promise in all fields of electronics. Unfortunately, an issue with the multipactor was that it wore out at an unsatisfactory rate.

At the Berlin Radio Show in August 1931 in Berlin, Manfred von Ardenne gave a public demonstration of a television system using a CRT for both transmission and reception, the first completely electronic television transmission. However, Ardenne had not developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a flying-spot scanner to scan slides and film. Ardenne achieved his first transmission of TV pictures on Christmas Eve, 1933, followed by test runs for a public television service in 1934. The world’s first electronically scanned TV service started in Berlin in 1935, the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, culminating in the live broadcast of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games from Berlin to public places all over Germany.

Philo Farnsworth gave the world’s first public demonstration of an all-electronic TV system, using a live camera, at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia on the 25th of August 1934, and for ten days afterwards. Mexican inventor Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena also played an important role in early telly. His experiments with TV (known as telectroescopía at first) began in 1931 and led to a patent for the trichromatic field sequential system colour TV in 1940. In Britain, the EMI engineering team led by Isaac Shoenberg applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they called the Emitron, which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). On the 2nd of November 1936, a 405-line broadcasting service employing the Emitron began at studios in Alexandra Palace, and transmitted from a specially built mast atop one of the Victorian building’s towers. It alternated for a short time with Baird’s mechanical system in adjoining studios but was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world’s first regular high-definition television (HDTV) service.

The original U.S. iconoscope was noisy, had a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately gave disappointing results, especially when compared to the high-definition (HD) mechanical scanning systems that became available. The Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. (EMI) team, under the supervision of Isaac Shoenberg, analysed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum. They solved this problem by developing, and patenting in 1934, two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron. The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater. It was used for outside broadcasting by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), for the first time, on Armistice Day 1937, when the general public could watch on a TV set as the King laid a wreath at the Cenotaph. This was the first time that anyone had broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighbouring buildings because neither Farnsworth nor R.C.A. would do the same until the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

On the other hand, in 1934, Zworykin shared some patent rights with the German licensee company Telefunken. The image iconoscope (Superikonoskop in Germany) was produced as a result of the collaboration. This tube is essentially identical to the super-Emitron. The production and commercialisation of the super-Emitron and image iconoscope in Europe were not affected by the patent war between Zworykin and Farnsworth, because Dieckmann and Hell had priority in Germany for the invention of the image dissector, having submitted a patent application for their Lichtelektrische Bildzerlegerrohre fur Fernseher (Photoelectric Image Dissector Tube for Television) in Germany in 1925, two years before Farnsworth did the same in the United States. The image iconoscope (Superikonoskop) became the industrial standard for public broadcasting in Europe from 1936 until 1960 when it was replaced by the vidicon and plumbicon tubes. Indeed, it was the representative of the European tradition in electronic tubes competing against the American tradition represented by the image orthicon. The German company Heimann produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, later Heimann also produced and commercialised it from 1940 to 1955. From 1952 to 1958 the Dutch company Philips finally produced and commercialised the image iconoscope and multicon.

U.S. television broadcasting, at the time, consisted of a variety of markets in a wide range of sizes, each competing for programming and dominance with separate technology, until deals were made and standards agreed upon in 1941. RCA, for example, used only Iconoscopes in the New York area, but Farnsworth Image Dissectors in Philadelphia and San Francisco. In September 1939, RCA agreed to pay the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation royalties over the next ten years for access to Farnsworth’s patents. With this historic agreement in place, RCA integrated much of what was best about Farnsworth Technology into their systems. In 1941, the United States implemented 525-line television. Electrical engineer Benjamin Adler played a prominent role in the development of television.

The world’s first 625-line TV standard was designed in the Soviet Union in 1944 and became a national standard in 1946. The first broadcast in 625-line standard occurred in Moscow in 1948. The concept of 625 lines per frame was subsequently implemented in the European CCIR standard. In 1936, Kalman Tihanyi described the principle of plasma display, the first flat panel display system.

Early electronic TV sets were large and bulky, with analogue circuits made of vacuum tubes. Following the invention of the first working transistor at Bell Labs, Sony founder Masaru Ibuka predicted in 1952 that the transition to electronic circuits made of transistors would lead to smaller and more portable TV sets. The first fully transistorised, portable solid-state television set was the 8-inch Sony TV8-301, developed in 1959 and released in 1960. This began the transformation of TV viewership from a communal viewing experience to a solitary viewing experience. By 1960, Sony had sold over 4 million portable TV sets worldwide.

Ferdinand Braun.

Vladimir Zworykin in 1929.

The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company research engineer can be seen here with Mildred Birt demonstrating electronic television.

The broadcast images are projected on a mirror on the top of the cabinet making it possible for many to watch.

Manfred von Ardenne in 1933.

A Radio Corporation Of America Advertisement.

This RCA advertisement from the Radio & Television magazine (Vol. X, No. 2, June, 1939) is for the beginning of regular experimental television broadcasting from the NBC studios to the New York metropolitan area, U.S.A.

An Indian-head test pattern.

This 2F21 monoscope tube motif was used from 1940 until the advent of colour television. It was displayed when a television station first signed on every day.

Colour Television

Digital Television

Read more about Digital Television here and here.

Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of audio and video by digitally processed and multiplexed signals, in contrast to the totally analogue and channel-separated signals used by analogue television (TV). Due to data compression, digital TV can support more than one programme in the same channel bandwidth. It is an innovative service that represents the most significant evolution in TV broadcast technology since colour TV emerged in the 1950’s. Digital TV’s roots have been tied very closely to the availability of inexpensive, high-performance computers. It was not until the 1990’s that digital TV became possible. Digital TV was previously not practically possible due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed digital video, requiring around 200 Mbit/s for a standard-definition television (SDTV) signal, and over 1 Gbit/s for high-definition television (HDTV).

A digital TV service was proposed in 1986 by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication (MPT) in Japan, where there were plans to develop an Integrated Network System service. However, it was not possible to practically implement such a digital TV service until the adoption of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) video compression technology made it possible in the early 1990’s.

In the mid-1980’s, as Japanese consumer electronics firms forged ahead with the development of HDTV technology, the MUSE analogue format proposed by Japan Broadcasting Corporation (also known as NHK), a Japanese company, was seen as a pacesetter that threatened to eclipse United States (U.S.) electronics companies’ technologies. Until June 1990, the Japanese MUSE standard, based on an analogue system, was the front-runner among the more than 23 other technical concepts under consideration. Then, a U.S. company, General Instrument, demonstrated the possibility of a digital TV signal. This breakthrough was of such significance that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was persuaded to delay its decision on an Associated Television (ATV) standard until a digitally-based standard could be developed.

In March 1990, when it became clear that a digital standard was possible, the FCC made a number of critical decisions. First, the Commission declared that the new ATV standard must be more than an enhanced analogue signal, but be able to provide a genuine HDTV signal with at least twice the resolution of existing TV images. Then, to ensure that viewers who did not wish to buy a new digital TV set could continue to receive conventional TV broadcasts, it dictated that the new ATV standard must be capable of being simulcast on different channels. The new ATV standard also allowed the new definition television (DTV) signal to be based on entirely new design principles. Although incompatible with the existing National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) standard, the new DTV standard would be able to incorporate many improvements.

The last standards adopted by the FCC did not require a single standard for scanning formats, aspect ratios, or lines of resolution. This compromise resulted from a dispute between the consumer electronics industry (joined by some broadcasters) and the computer industry (joined by the film industry and some public interest groups) over which of the two scanning processes (interlaced or progressive) would be best suited for the newer digital HDTV compatible display devices. Interlaced scanning, which had been specifically designed for older analogue cathode ray tube (CRT) display technologies, scans even-numbered lines first, then odd-numbered ones. In fact, interlaced scanning can be looked at as the first video compression model as it was partly designed in the 1940’s to double the image resolution to exceed the limitations of the TV broadcast bandwidth. Another reason for its adoption was to limit the flickering on early CRT screens whose phosphor-coated screens could only retain the image from the electron scanning gun for a relatively short duration. However, interlaced scanning does not work as efficiently on newer devices such as Liquid-crystal display (LCD), for example, which are better suited to a more frequent progressive refresh rate.

Progressive scanning, the format that the computer industry had long adopted for computer display monitors, scans every line in sequence, from top to bottom. Progressive scanning in effect doubles the amount of data generated for every full screen displayed in comparison to interlaced scanning by painting the screen in one pass in 1/60-second, instead of two passes in 1/30-second. The computer industry argued that progressive scanning is superior because it does not flicker on the new standard of display devices in the manner of interlaced scanning. It also argued that progressive scanning enables easier connections with the Internet, and is more cheaply converted to interlaced formats than vice versa. The film industry also supported progressive scanning because it offered a more efficient means of converting filmed programming into digital formats. For their part, the consumer electronics industry and broadcasters argued that interlaced scanning was the only technology that could transmit the highest quality pictures then (and currently) feasible, i.e., 1,080 lines per picture and 1,920 pixels per line. Broadcasters also favoured interlaced scanning because their vast archive of interlaced programming is not readily compatible with a progressive format. William F. Schreiber, who was director of the Advanced Television Research Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 until his retirement in 1990, thought that the continued advocacy of interlaced equipment originated from consumer electronics companies that were trying to get back the substantial investments they made in the interlaced technology.

The digital TV transition started in the late 2000’s. All governments across the world set the deadline for analogue shutdown by 2010’s. Initially, the adoption rate was low, as the first digital tuner-equipped TV sets were costly but soon, as the price of digital-capable TV sets dropped, more and more households were converting to digital TV sets.

Smart Television

3D Television

Broadcast Systems

Terrestrial Television

Read more about Terrestrial Television here and here.

Programming is broadcast by television (TV) stations, sometimes called channels, as stations are licensed by their governments to broadcast only over assigned channels in the TV band. At first, terrestrial broadcasting was the only way TV could be widely distributed, and because bandwidth was limited, i.e., there were only a small number of channels available, government regulation was the norm. In the United States (U.S.), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed stations to broadcast advertisements beginning in July 1941 but required public service programming commitments as a requirement for a license. By contrast, the United Kingdom (U.K.) chose a different route, imposing a TV license fee on owners of TV reception equipment to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which had public service as part of its Royal Charter.

WRGB claims to be the world’s oldest TV station, tracing its roots to an experimental station founded on the 13th of January, 1928, broadcasting from the General Electric (G.E.) factory in Schenectady, New York, U.S. under the call letters W2XB. It was popularly known as WGY Television after its sister radio station. Later in 1928, G.E. started a second facility, this one in New York City, which had the call letters W2XBS and which today is known as WNBC. The two stations were experimental in nature and had no regular programming, as receivers were operated by engineers within the company. The image of a Felix the Cat doll rotating on a turntable was broadcast for two hours every day for several years as new technology was being tested by the engineers. On the 2nd of November 1936, the BBC began transmitting the world’s first public regular high-definition service from the Victorian Alexandra Palace in north London. It therefore claims to be the birthplace of TV broadcasting as we now know it.

With the widespread adoption of cable across the U.S. in the 1970’s and 1980’s, terrestrial TV broadcasts have been in decline. In 2013 it was estimated that about 7% of U.S. households used an antenna. A slight increase in use began around 2010 due to the switchover to digital terrestrial TV broadcasts, which offered pristine image quality over very large areas and offered an alternative to cable TV (CATV) for cord-cutters. All other countries around the world are also in the process of either shutting down analogue terrestrial TV or switching over to digital terrestrial TV.

A modern high-gain UHF Yagi television antenna.

This antenna is used for UHF HDTV reception. The antenna’s main lobe is off the right end of the antenna and it is most sensitive to stations in that direction. Each of the metal crossbars along the antenna support boom is called an element, which acts as a half-wave dipole resonator for the radio waves. The antenna has one driven element which is attached to the TV and it is behind the black box. The black box is a preamplifier which increases the power of the TV signal before it is sent to the TV set. The 17 elements to the right of the driven element are called directors. They reinforce the signal. The 4 elements on the V-shaped boom are called a corner reflector and they serve to reflect the signal back toward the driven element.

Yagi HDTV antennas use a corner reflector to increase the bandwidth of the antenna. The rest of the antenna increases the gain at higher channels, while the corner reflector increases the gain at lower channels.

Cable Television

Read more about Cable Television here and here.

Cable television (CATV) is a system of broadcasting television (TV) programming to paying subscribers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables or light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with traditional terrestrial TV, in which the TV signal is transmitted over the air by radio waves and received by a television antenna attached to the TV. In the 2000’s, frequency modulation (FM) radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephone service, and similar non-television services may also be provided through these cables. The abbreviation CATV is used for cable television in the United States (U.S.). It originally stood for Community Access Television or Community Antenna Television, from cable television’s origins in 1948, in areas where over-the-air reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain, large community antennas were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes.

Coaxial cable.

This cable is used to carry cable television signals into cathode-ray tubes and flat-panel TV sets.

Satellite Television

Read more about Satellite Television here.

Satellite television is a system of supplying television (TV) programming using broadcast signals relayed from communication satellites. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic reflector antenna usually referred to as a satellite dish and a low-noise block downconverter. A satellite receiver then decodes the desired TV program for viewing on a television set. Receivers can be external set-top boxes or a built-in TV tuner. Satellite TV provides a wide range of channels and services, especially to geographic areas without terrestrial TV or cable TV (CATV).

The most common method of reception is direct-broadcast satellite TV, also known as direct-to-home. In direct-broadcast satellite television (DBSTV) systems, signals are relayed from a direct broadcast satellite on the K_u wavelength and are completely digital. Satellite TV systems formerly used systems known as TV receive-only. These systems received analogue signals transmitted in the C-band spectrum from fixed-satellite service (FSS) type satellites and required the use of large dishes. Consequently, these systems were nicknamed big dish systems and were more expensive and less popular.

The direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) TV signals were earlier analogue signals and later digital signals, both of which require a compatible receiver. Digital signals may include high-definition television (HDTV). Some transmissions and channels are free-to-air or free-to-view, while many other channels are pay-for television requiring a subscription. In 1945, British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke proposed a worldwide communications system which would function by means of three satellites equally spaced apart in Earth’s orbit. This was published in the October 1945 issue of the Wireless World magazine and won him the Franklin Institute’s Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963.

The first satellite TV signals from Europe to North America were relayed via the Telstar satellite over the Atlantic Ocean on the 23rd of July. 1962. The signals were received and broadcast in North American and European countries and watched by over 100 million. Launched in 1962, the Relay 1 satellite was the first satellite to transmit TV signals from the U.S. to Japan. The first geosynchronous communication satellite, Syncom 2, was launched on the 26th of July 1963.

The world’s first commercial communications satellite, called Intelsat I nicknamed Early Bird, was launched into geosynchronous orbit on the 6th of April. 1965. The first national network of TV satellites, called Orbita, was created by the Soviet Union in October 1967 and was based on the principle of using the highly elliptical Molniya satellite for rebroadcasting and delivering television signals to ground downlink stations. The first commercial North American satellite to carry TV transmissions was Canada’s geostationary Anik 1, which was launched on the 9th of November, 1972. ATS-6, the world’s first experimental educational and Direct Broadcast Satellite, was launched on the 30th of May, 1974. It transmitted at 860 MHz using wideband frequency modulation (FM) and had two sound channels. The transmissions were focused on the Indian subcontinent but experimenters were able to receive the signal in Western Europe using home-constructed equipment that drew on Ultra high frequency (UHF) television design techniques already in use.

The first in a series of Soviet geostationary satellites to carry Direct-To-Home television, Ekran 1, was launched on the 26th of October, 1976. It used a 714 MHz UHF downlink frequency so that the transmissions could be received with existing UHF television technology rather than microwave technology.

DBS satellite dishes.

These Dishes are installed on an apartment complex in San Jose, California, U.S.A.

Internet Television

Read more about Internet Television here.

Internet television (or online television) is the digital distribution of television (TV) content via the Internet as opposed to traditional systems like terrestrial, cable, and satellite, although the Internet itself is received by terrestrial, cable, or satellite methods. Internet television is a general term that covers the delivery of television series, and other video content, over the Internet by video streaming technology, typically by major traditional television broadcasters. Internet television should not be confused with Smart TV, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) or Web TV. Smart television refers to a television set which has a built-in operating system. IPTV is one of the emerging Internet television technology standards for use by television networks. Web television is a term used for programs created by a wide variety of companies and individuals for broadcast on Internet television.

Television Sets

Display Technologies

Read more about Display Technologies here.

Disk

CRT

DLP

Plasma

LCD

OLED

Display Resolution

LDTV

SDTV

HDTV

UHDTV

Content

Television Programming

Read more about Television Programming here, here and here.

Getting television (TV) programming shown to the public can happen in many other ways. After production, the next step is to market and deliver the product to whichever markets are open to using it. This typically happens on two levels:

Original run or First run (a producer creates a programme of one or multiple episodes and shows it on a station or network which has either paid for the production itself or to which a license has been granted by the TV producers to do the same).

Broadcast syndication (this is the terminology rather broadly used to describe secondary programming usages i.e. beyond its original run. It includes secondary runs in the country of the first issue, but also international usage which may not be managed by the originating producer. In many cases, other companies, TV stations, or individuals are engaged to do the syndication work, in other words, to sell the product into the markets they are allowed to sell into by contract from the copyright holders, in most cases the producers).

First-run programming is increasing on subscription services outside of the United States (U.S.), but few domestically produced programs are syndicated on domestic free-to-air (FTA) elsewhere. This practice is increasing, however, generally on digital-only FTA channels or with subscriber-only, first-run material appearing on FTA. Unlike the U.S., repeat FTA screenings of an FTA network program usually only occur on that network. Also, affiliates rarely buy or produce non-network programming that is not focused on local programming.

Television Genres

Television (TV) genres include a broad range of programming types that entertain, inform, and educate viewers. The most expensive entertainment genres to produce are usually dramas and dramatic miniseries. However, other genres, such as historical Western genres, may also have high production costs.

Pop culture entertainment genres include action-oriented shows such as police, crime, detective dramas, horror, or thriller shows. As well, there are also other variants of the drama genre, such as medical dramas and daytime soap operas. Sci-fi series can fall into either the drama or action category, depending on whether they emphasise philosophical questions or high adventure. Comedy is a popular genre which includes situation comedy (sitcom) and animated series for the adult demographic such as Comedy Central’s South Park.

The least expensive forms of entertainment programming genres are game shows, talk shows, variety shows, and reality TV. Game shows feature contestants answering questions and solving puzzles to win prizes. Talk shows contain interviews with film, TV, music and sports celebrities and public figures. Variety shows feature a range of musical performers and other entertainers, such as comedians and magicians, introduced by a host or Master of Ceremonies. There is some crossover between some talk shows and variety shows because leading talk shows often feature performances by bands, singers, comedians, and other performers in between the interview segments. Reality TV series regular people (i.e., not actors) facing unusual challenges or experiences ranging from arrest by police officers to significant weight loss. A derived version of reality shows depicts celebrities doing mundane activities such as going about their everyday life or doing regular jobs.

Fictional TV programmes that some telly scholars and broadcasting advocacy groups argue are quality TV programmes include series such as The Sopranos. Kristin Thompson argues that some of these television series exhibit traits also found in art films, such as psychological realism, narrative complexity, and ambiguous plot lines. Nonfiction TV programmes that some telly scholars and broadcasting advocacy groups argue are quality television programmes, include a range of serious, noncommercial, programming aimed at a niche audience, such as documentaries and public affairs shows.

Television Funding

Around the world, broadcast television (TV) is financed by government, advertising, licensing (a form of tax), subscription, or any combination of these. To protect revenues, subscription TV channels are usually encrypted to ensure that only subscribers receive the decryption codes to see the signal. Unencrypted channels are known as free-to-air (FTA). In 2009, the global TV market represented 1,217.2 million TV households with at least one TV and total revenues of 268.9 billion EUR (declining 1.2% compared to 2008). North America had the biggest TV revenue market share with 39% followed by Europe (31%), Asia-Pacific (21%), Latin America (8%), and Africa and the Middle East (2%). Globally, the different TV revenue sources are divided into 45–50% TV advertising revenues, 40–45% subscription fees and 10% public funding.

Television Advertising

Read more about Television advertising here.

Television’s broad reach makes it a powerful and attractive medium for advertisers. Many television (TV) networks and stations sell blocks of broadcast time to advertisers (sponsors) to fund their programming. Television advertisements (also called a TV commercial, commercial, ad and an advert) is a span of TV programming produced and paid for by an organisation, which conveys a message, typically to market a product or service. Advertising revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned TV networks. The vast majority of TV ads today consist of brief advertising spots, ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes (as well as programme-length infomercials). Adverts of this sort have been used to promote a wide variety of goods, services and ideas since the beginning of TV.

The effects of TV advertising upon the viewing public (and the effects of mass media in general) have been the subject of discourse by philosophers including Marshall McLuhan. The viewership of TV programming, as measured by companies such as Nielsen Media Research, is often used as a metric for TV advertisement placement, and consequently, for the rates charged to advertisers to air within a given network, television programme, or time of day (called a daypart). In many countries, including the United States (U.S.), TV campaign advertisements are considered indispensable for a political campaign. In other countries, such as France, political advertising on the telly is heavily restricted, while some countries, such as Norway, completely ban political adverts.

The first official, paid television ad was broadcast in the U.S. on the 1st of July, 1941, over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00 (reports vary), displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase Bulova Watch Time, was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. The first TV ad broadcast in the United Kingdom (U.K.) was on ITV on the 22nd of September, 1955, advertising Gibbs SR toothpaste. The first TV ad broadcast in Asia was on Nippon Television in Tokyo on the 28th of August, 1953, advertising Seikosha (now Seiko), which also displayed a clock with the current time.

Radio News cover, September, 1928.

Television was still in its experimental phase in 1928, but the medium’s potential to sell goods was already predicted. It was seen as the ideal television of the future but these early experimental televisions could not maintain synchronisation with the camera. The viewer had to constantly make adjustments as seen by the sync control in the man’s hand.

United Kingdom

The television (TV) regulator oversees TV advertising in the United Kingdom (U.K.). Its restrictions have applied since the early days of commercially funded TV. Despite this, an early TV mogul, Roy Thomson, likened the broadcasting licence to being a licence to print money. Restrictions mean that the big three national commercial TV channels ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 can show an average of only seven minutes of advertising per hour (eight minutes in the peak period). Other broadcasters must average no more than nine minutes (twelve in the peak). This means that many imported TV shows from the United States (U.S.) have unnatural pauses where a British company does not use the narrative breaks intended for more frequent U.S. advertising. Advertisements must not be inserted in the course of certain specific proscribed types of programmes which last less than half an hour in scheduled duration. This list includes any news or current affairs programmes, documentaries, and programmes for children. Additionally, ads may not be carried in a programme designed and broadcast for reception in schools in any religious broadcasting service or other devotional program or during a formal Royal ceremony or occasion. There also must be clear demarcations in time between the programmes and the adverts. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC), being strictly non-commercial, is not allowed to show advertisements on TV in the U.K., although it has many advertising-funded channels abroad. The majority of its budget comes from TV license fees and broadcast syndication, the sale of content to other broadcasters.

United States

Since its inception in the United States (U.S.) in 1941, television (TV) commercials have become one of the most effective, persuasive, and popular methods of selling products of many sorts, especially consumer goods. During the 1940’s and into the 1950’s, programmes were hosted by single advertisers. This, in turn, gave great creative control to the advertisers over the content of the show. Perhaps due to the quiz show scandals in the 1950’s, networks shifted to the magazine concept, introducing advertising breaks with other advertisers.

U.S. advertising rates are determined primarily by Nielsen ratings. The time of the day and popularity of the channel determine how much a TV commercial can cost. For example, it can cost approximately $750,000 for a 30-second block of commercial time during the highly popular singing competition American Idol, while the same amount of time for the Super Bowl can cost several million dollars. Conversely, lesser-viewed time slots, such as early mornings and weekday afternoons, are often sold in bulk to producers of infomercials at far lower rates. In recent years, the paid programme or infomercial has become common, usually in lengths of 30 minutes or one hour. Some drug companies and other businesses have even created news items for broadcast, known in the industry as video news releases, paying programme directors to use them.

Some TV programmes also deliberately place products into their shows as advertisements, a practice started in feature films and is known as product placement. For example, a character could be drinking a certain kind of pop, going to a particular chain restaurant, or driving a certain make of car. This is sometimes very subtle, with shows having vehicles provided by manufacturers for low cost in exchange for product placement. Sometimes, a specific brand or trade mark, or music from a certain artist or group, is used. This excludes guest appearances by artists who perform on the show.

Ireland

Broadcast advertising is regulated by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Subscription

Some television (TV) channels are partly funded from subscriptions, therefore, the signals are encrypted during the broadcast to ensure that only the paying subscribers have access to the decryption codes to watch pay television or speciality channels. Most subscription services are also funded by advertising.

Taxation Or License

Television (TV) services in some countries may be funded by a TV licence or a form of taxation, which means that advertising plays a lesser role or no role at all. For example, some channels may carry no advertising at all and some very little, including:

Australia (ABC Television).

Belgium (VRT for Flanders and RTBF for Wallonia).

Denmark (DR).

Ireland (RTE).

Japan (NHK).

Norway (NRK).

Sweden (SVT).

Switzerland (SRG SSR).

Republic of China (Taiwan) (PTS).

United Kingdom (BBC).

United States (PBS).

Broadcast Programming

Read more about Broadcast Programming here and here.

Broadcast programming, or television (TV) listings in the United Kingdom (U.K.), is the practice of organising TV programmes in a schedule, with broadcast automation used to regularly change the scheduling of TV programmes to build an audience for a new show, retain that audience, or compete with other broadcasters’ programmes.

Blog Posts

Blue Peter: An Advent Crown For Christmas.

Television: Blue Peter.

Notes And Links

Article source: Wikipedia and is subject to change.

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Birmingham City: Trevor Francis

There is only one team in Birmingham worth supporting with true passion and Birmingham City is it. I have been supporting them since 1979 when Jim Smith was the manager. I was 13 at the time. He is my favourite manager to date. I am a blue nose ’til I die.

You can read lots more about Blues by clicking here.

The 24th of July 2023 was a day of shock and sadness for those associated with Birmingham City Football Club, Trevor Francis had died. Trevor wore the number 8 shirt and was certainly the most well-known player for B.C.F.C., adored by many. You can read my tribute page to him here.

I never got to see him play in person. I was only in my early teens when I started supporting Blues and could only dream of going to St. Andrews but I saw him on television work his magic on the pitch. He was at the end of his Blues career when I first started following Jim Smith and the Lads. I can’t exactly recall when it was but it was around the time he was sold to Nottingham Forest as the first million player in British history. I continued to watch him for Forest cementing my love for them and their manager Brian Clough. Forest automatically became my second team until Clough retired in 1993.

R.I.P. Trevor.

About Trevor Francis

Trevor Francis was an English footballer who played as a forward for a number of clubs in England, the United States, Italy, Scotland and Australia. In 1979 he became Britain’s first £1 million player following his transfer from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest. He scored the winning goal for Forest in the 1979 European Cup final against Malmö. He won the European Cup again with the club the following year. At international level, he played for England 52 times between 1976 and 1986, scoring 12 goals, and played at the 1982 FIFA World Cup.

Between 1988 and 2003, Francis was a football manager with Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday, Birmingham City and Crystal Palace.

Trevor Francis in Amsterdam on the 22nd Of April 1980. He was playing for Nottingham Forest at the time.

Early Life And Education

Trevor John Francis was born on the 19th of April 1954, in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Plymouth’s Public Secondary School for Boys. He was an agile and skilful forward and joined Birmingham City as a schoolboy.

Club Career

Birmingham City

Francis quickly rose in status, making his debut for Birmingham City’s first team in 1970, aged just 16. His talent was noted when, before his 17th birthday, he scored four goals in a match against Bolton Wanderers. He ended his first season with 15 goals from just 22 games. Birmingham City manager at the time, Freddie Goodwin, compared Francis to both Jimmy Greaves and Denis Law.

On the 30th of October 1976, he scored one of Birmingham’s most famous goals, when he turned away from the touchline and cut inside two Queens Park Rangers defenders, constantly being forced backwards before suddenly unleashing a 25-yard (23 meters) shot.

Detroit Express

Francis negotiated a loan from Birmingham in 1978 to play for the Detroit Express in the North American Soccer League where he scored 22 goals in 19 league matches and was named to the N.A.S.L. first XI alongside Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia before returning home to the Midlands.

Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest, the reigning First Division champions and League Cup holders managed by Brian Clough, put in a bid for Francis which totalled just over £1 million. No player had ever been sold between English clubs for a seven-figure fee before and the deal was sealed, with Francis famously being introduced to the media by a manager impatient to play squash. Clough was in his red gym kit and carrying a racquet as he addressed the press conference.

While recognised as the first British million-pound player, the actual transfer fee for the player was £1,150,000, including a 15% commission to the Football League. Clough wrote in his autobiography that the fee was £999,999, as he wanted to ensure the million-pound milestone did not go to the player’s head, although Francis says that was a tongue-in-cheek remark by Clough.

Nottingham Forest retained the League Cup shortly afterwards without the cup-tied Francis and made progress in the European Cup to the extent that they reached the semi-finals, although Francis was not eligible to play in the competition until the final. They won their semi-final, and in May 1979 Forest took on Swedish club Malmö in the final in Munich, and a major instalment of the huge investment money was repaid just before half time.

The ball was spread to Forest’s winger John Robertson wide on the left and he took on two defenders at once to reach the byline and curl an awkward, outswinging cross towards the far post. Francis had already begun to sprint into position, but even so, he had to increase his pace in order to reach the cross as it dropped and ended up throwing himself low at the ball. He connected with his head and the ball diverted powerfully into the roof of the net. Forest won the match 1–0 and footage of the goal was used in the opening titles to Match of the Day for some years afterwards. A giant picture of Francis stooping to head the ball remains on display in the main entrance and reception area of Forest’s City Ground stadium.

Even though the season ended there, Francis duly headed back to Detroit for another summer playing in the N.A.S.L., where once again he was named to the first XI alongside Johan Cruyff (Los Angeles Aztecs) and Giorgio Chinaglia (New York Cosmos), despite playing only half the season. In his brief career in America, Francis scored 36 goals in 33 regular season matches and had 18 assists.

At Nottingham Forest Clough frequently played Francis on the right wing, rather than in his preferred position as a central attacker. Francis was in the side which lost the 1980 League Cup Final to Wolverhampton Wanderers but missed the European Cup Final against Hamburg due to an injury to his Achilles tendon. Somehow the success of his Forest career never quite reflected his huge fee. He scored only 14 league goals in the 1979 – 80 season and 6 in the next 18 games that he played for Forest. Although still a regular for England, his Achilles injury prevented him from being in the squad for the 1980 European Championships.

Manchester City

The injury kept Francis out of the game for over six months. He was sold to Manchester City in September 1981, this time for £1.2 million. The deal caused behind-the-scenes friction at Manchester City. During negotiations City chairman Peter Swales informed manager John Bond that the club could not afford the transfer fee. Bond then issued an ultimatum which was if Francis did not sign, Bond would resign. Francis made a promising start at the club, scoring two goals against Stoke City on his debut, but over the course of the season, he was frequently injured. In total, he scored 12 goals in 26 games and made the England squad for the 1982 World Cup.

Back at his club, financial problems were again an issue. Francis’ contract gave him a salary of £100,000 plus bonuses, which the club could no longer afford to pay to a player who regularly sustained injuries.

Sampdoria

Later that summer, Francis was approached by Italian club Sampdoria, who paid Manchester City £700,000 for his services. He helped win the 1984–85 Coppa Italia, in the same team as Scotland midfielder Graeme Souness. It was the first time that Sampdoria had won the competition.

Atalanta

Francis joined Atalanta in 1986. He played 21 league games and scored once in his only season, but added two goals in nine games in the Coppa Italia. Atalanta lost the final to Napoli. He was the second Englishman at the Bergamo-based club after Gerry Hitchens, and by the time of his death, their only other English-born player was Ademola Lookman.

Rangers

Francis returned to Britain in September 1987 to join Rangers under Graeme Souness. Numerous English players were brought to the Scottish club by Souness as English clubs had been banned from European competition since the Heysel disaster. Francis cost just £75,000, signed on a pay-as-you-play basis, and won the 1987 – 88 Scottish League Cup, scoring a penalty in the shootout.

Queens Park Rangers

Francis signed for Queens Park Rangers on a free transfer in March 1988 and helped the team finish fifth in the First Division. He scored 10 goals from 26 appearances in the first half of the 1988 – 89 season and took over as player-manager in December 1988 when Jim Smith moved to Newcastle United, but a knee injury in January 1989 put an end to his playing season. He marked his return to the field in September 1989 with a hat-trick against Aston Villa, but was replaced as manager by Don Howe in November 1989 and his playing contract was paid up a few days later.

During his time at Queens Park Rangers, Francis completed a brief loan in 1988 with an Australian National Soccer League team, Wollongong City, as part of businessman Harry Michaels’ attempt to market football in Australia. Michaels had previously funded the loans of Alan Brazil and Paul Mariner, whom Francis was to replace, and had discussions with Norman Whiteside, Nigel Clough and Michel Platini about playing for the New South Wales-based team.

Sheffield Wednesday

Francis left Queens Park Rangers in February 1990 to play for Sheffield Wednesday. Despite gaining a good reputation amongst supporters, he could not help the club avoid relegation to the second tier under manager Ron Atkinson for the 1990 – 91 season. However, that season he helped Wednesday win the League Cup, although he was a non-playing substitute in the final, and also gained promotion back to the top flight.

International Career

Francis played for England 52 times between 1977 and 1986 and scored 12 goals. In 1977, he was given his first England cap by Don Revie, in a 2 – 0 loss against the Netherlands. After missing out on Euro 1980 due to an Achilles injury, Francis was named in the England squad for the 1982 World Cup in Spain. In the first round of the tournament, he scored in the group games against Czechoslovakia and Kuwait. England was eliminated after goalless draws against both the host nation and West Germany. In the spring of 1986, he made his 52nd and final appearance for England in a victory over Scotland and was subsequently not selected for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Managerial Career

Sheffield Wednesday

After the departure of Ron Atkinson, Francis took over as manager of Sheffield Wednesday with popular support from the club and supporters. He guided Wednesday to a third-place finish in 1992. The following year, Wednesday reached the F.A. Cup and League Cup finals, losing both to Arsenal, the former after a replay. In 1994, Francis finally retired as a player, shortly before his 40th birthday. He was dismissed as manager a year later after Wednesday finished 13th in the Premiership.

In February 1992, Francis brought former French international Eric Cantona back from a poor discipline-enforced hiatus in his career by inviting him for a trial at Sheffield Wednesday. However, as the snowy conditions meant that he could only evaluate Cantona on AstroTurf, Francis requested an extension to the trial to see whether Cantona could play on grass. An outraged Cantona walked out on The Owls and was signed (without a trial) by Leeds United, inspiring first them and then Manchester United to success. In a 2012 interview, Francis said that he had agreed to take Cantona on as a favour to Francis’ former agent, Dennis Roach, and Michel Platini, who he knew from his time playing in Italy when they approached him about taking on Cantona, and that it was intended as an opportunity for Cantona to put himself in the shop window. Wednesday had only recently been promoted back to the top flight, with most of the squad still being on Second Division-level wages, and the club could not afford to sign him.

Birmingham City

Francis was hired as Birmingham City as manager in 1996, with the club in the First Division. He guided Birmingham to a 10th and 7th place finish in his first two seasons, missing out on the playoffs on goal difference in the latter. Finishes of 4th, 4th and 5th in the next three seasons resulted in playoff entry, losing each time.

Francis led Blues to the 2001 League Cup Final, where they lost on penalties to Liverpool. He was dismissed in October of that year. BBC Sport wrote “Francis the player was legendary. Francis the manager is the nearly man.”

Crystal Palace

Francis was manager of Crystal Palace from November 2001 to April 2003. He was appointed by Crystal Palace chairman, Simon Jordan to replace Steve Bruce who had resigned as Crystal Palace manager with the intention of taking the manager’s role at Birmingham City. Litigation followed with Bruce being placed on gardening leave. Of the appointment, Jordan said, “The last two or three weeks have not been easy. I’m bored of Steve Bruce and Birmingham and what I’m interested in is Trevor Francis and Crystal Palace.” At the time Francis said that he had turned down four jobs before accepting the role at Crystal Palace. Under his managership, Palace defeated a Gerard Houllier-managed Liverpool in an FA Cup fourth-round replay at Anfield in February 2003 and beat Palace’s main rivals, Brighton & Hove Albion, 5 – 0 in October 2002. However, after the team’s second failure to achieve promotion to the Premier League, Simon Jordan dismissed him, stating: “People know I am very unhappy with the selection of our players under Francis. We have a very strong squad and we should have done a lot better this season – a lot of lessons need to be learned from injury prevention and transfer policy.”

Personal Life

Francis married Helen in 1974. The couple had two children together. On the 5th of April 2017, it was reported that Helen Francis had died.

On the 13th of April 2012, Francis was reported to be recovering in hospital from a suspected heart attack.

Francis died of a heart attack at his home near Marbella, Spain, on July 24th, 2023. He was 69.

Trevor Francis in 2009.

Career And Managerial Statistics

Click here to read about Francis’ club, international and managerial statistics.

Honours

Player

Birmingham City

Football League Second Division runner-up: 1971 – 72.

Detroit Express

American Conference Central Division: 1978.

Nottingham Forest

European Cup: 1978 – 79 and 1979 – 80.

European Super Cup: 1979.

Football League Cup: runner-up 1979 – 80.

Sampdoria

Coppa Italia: 1984 – 85.

Rangers

Scottish League Cup: 1987 – 88.

Sheffield Wednesday

Football League Cup: 1990 – 91.

Individual

P.F.A. First Division Team of the Year: 1976 – 77, 1977 – 78, and 1981 – 82.

Coppa Italia top scorer: 1984 – 85 (9 goals).

Manager

Sheffield Wednesday

F.A. Cup runner-up: 1992–93.

Football League Cup runner-up: 1992 – 93.

Birmingham City

Football League Cup runner-up: 2000 – 01.

Individual

Premier League Manager of the Month: December 1993.

Read more about Trevor Francis’ Wikipedia page here.

Blog Posts

Birmingham City: Blues History.

Birmingham City: First Team Squad For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Fixtures, Results And Goal Scorers For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Kits For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Our 2023/24 Season In Review.

Birmingham City: Staff For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Summer Transfers For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: The 2023/24 Season Archive.

Birmingham City: Welcome To New Manager Chris Davies.

Notes And Links

The image shown at the top of this page is copyright of Birmingham City F.C.

The image above of Trevor Francis In Amsterdam In 1980 is the copyright of Hans van Dijk via Wikipedia. It comes with a Creative Commons licence (CC0 1.0) and is in the Public Domain.

The image above of Trevor Francis in 2009 is the copyright of Wikipedia user Christophe95. It comes with a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 3.0). You can find more great work from him by clicking here.

The above links in the Before Knighthead section will take you to Wikipedia and its content is subject to change.

Birmingham City F.C. – Official website.

Birmingham City on Facebook – This is their official Facebook page.

Birmingham City on Twitter – This is their official Twitter page.

Birmingham City on YouTube – This is their official YouTube page.

Blues Store Online – Birmingham City’s official club store online.

Wikipedia – Official website. Its purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge. Funded and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia consists of freely editable content whose articles also provide numerous links to guide readers to related pages with more information.

Birmingham Mail – Official website. The Birmingham Mail is a newspaper based in Birmingham, England but distributed around Birmingham, the Black Country, Solihull and parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire.

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