Curated category
Television terminology
- Television advertisementTelevision advertisements have shaped public culture, political campaigns, and commercial life since the 1st of July 1941, when a single paid spot aired on…
- Blu-rayBlu-ray arrived in stores on the 20th of June 2006, and the world's home entertainment shelves would never look quite the same.
- Satellite televisionSatellite television begins with a dish on a rooftop and a signal that has traveled 36,000 kilometers from space. The idea that a handful of satellites…
- Streaming mediaStreaming media is the method by which multimedia data travels across a network and plays back in real time, without requiring the listener or viewer to…
- Television broadcasterTelevision broadcaster networks are the invisible architecture behind nearly every program that has ever appeared on a screen.
- NewsNews is information about current events, and the famous dictum holds that "Dog Bites Man" is not news, while "Man Bites Dog" is.
- Nielsen Media ResearchNielsen Media Research holds a quiet but decisive power over American television. Every autumn, when networks decide which shows live and which die, the…
- Story arcA story arc is one of the most quietly powerful tools in all of storytelling, yet the term itself barely existed before 1973.
- Anthology seriesThe word anthology traces back to Ancient Greek, where it meant flower-gathering. Meleager of Gadara coined the term around 60 BCE as garland to describe a…
- NTSCNTSC, the National Television System Committee standard, gave the United States its first unified analog television system in 1941.
- RerunRerun. The word itself sounds lazy, almost dismissive. But before Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz changed the rules of American television, the rerun did not…
- Streaming televisionStreaming television, the delivery of series and films over the open internet, is now the dominant form of TV viewing in the United States.
- Live actionClint Eastwood and Marianne Koch stand in a real-world location for the film A Fistful of Dollars. This image captures the core definition of live action as…
- TelevisionIn 2013-79% of the world's households owned a television set. This was a medium that began as a spinning disk with holes punched into it, a contraption that…
- SimulcastA press agent at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia coined the word simulcast in 1948. This portmanteau of simultaneous and broadcast described a new practice where…
- Digital video recorderThe digital video recorder, or DVR, turned the television set from a passive window into something a viewer could rewind, pause, and escape from at will.
- Saturday-morning cartoonSaturday-morning cartoons once commanded the full attention of American children from 8:00 a.m. until roughly 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time every weekend.
- Direct-to-videoDirect-to-video names a film distribution method so familiar today that it barely registers as a choice. A movie skips theaters entirely and lands directly…