Curated playlist
Television terminology
- Television advertisementA Bulova clock face ran for one minute before a 1941 Dodgers game. The ad cost somewhere between $4.00 and $9.00.
- Blu-rayBlu-ray discs look just like DVDs but hold about five times the data per layer.
- Satellite televisionTaylor Howard built his own dish in 1976 and became the first known private citizen to catch satellite TV at home.
- Streaming mediaA Pittsburgh bar jukebox once played requests through an operator on the telephone. The service ran from 1929 to 1997.
- Television broadcasterIn June 1940, AT&T sent a political convention over cable to New York. Only a few hundred television sets saw it.
- NewsFlorence's town criers had to repeat each proclamation forty times. News long depended on people tied to power.
- Nielsen Media ResearchA TV show can record a 0.0 rating even with a real audience. Nielsen's sample-based system made that possible.
- Story arcIn 1950s DC Superman comics, no permanent change to characters was allowed. Every story ended where it began.
- Anthology seriesAn anthology series gets its name from a garland of poems. A poet named Meleager called his collection Stephanos.
- NTSCNTSC color needed a tint knob so viewers could fix skin tones. Engineers joked the name meant Never The Same Color.
- RerunWhen Rod Serling's teleplay Patterns was rerun about a month later, it drew more viewers than the first airing.
- Streaming televisionIn the mid-1990s, engineers thought sending TV over a phone wire was physically impossible.
- Live actionDisney's 2019 remake of The Lion King was called live action, though no real animals appear.
- TelevisionEarly television could not show a real face, so an inventor filmed a ventriloquist's dummy.
- SimulcastIn 1972, the BBC used a radio to give TV viewers stereo sound. TV could not carry stereo, so viewers tuned an FM radio.
- Digital video recorderSONICblue, owner of ReplayTV, filed for bankruptcy in March 2003 after a suit over commercial skipping.
- Saturday-morning cartoonWhat ended Saturday-morning cartoons on American TV? No single cancellation did. Rules, audiences and rivals did.
- Direct-to-videoThe first movie made straight for home video was a 1984 comedy. It was E. Nick: A Legend in His Own Mind.