Associate Professor of Film and Television studies Charlotte Howell joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about the history of television. How did television work before digital transmission? How was TV able to grow from four channels to literally hundreds? What are the most impactful and revolutionary television shows in history? How did life change when the television was first released? When do critics say was the modern golden age of television? Answers to these questions and many more await on Television History Support.
0:00 Television History Support
0:19 Criticism of Television in society
2:42 Origins of Late Night TV
3:50 365 channels and nothing’s on
5:47 90’s Family Sitcoms
7:10 Emmy snubs
8:08 I Love Lucy
10:04 We now return to our regularly scheduled programming
11:45 Star Trek
13:06 Most impactful TV shows
14:40 Educational cable gives way to Reality TV
16:36 How did life change when the television was first released?
17:25 TV in the 1940s
18:53 The Modern Golden Age of Television
20:30 Revolutionary shows
21:33 TV before digital transmission
22:19 I’m goin down to South Park gonna have myself a time
23:19 Black and White TV to Color
24:49 Syndication
25:38 Westerns
26:39 The advent of streaming
27:29 Pubic Access Television
28:27 Signing off
Director: Lauren Zeitoun
Director of Photography: Kevin Dynia
Editor: Richard Trammell
Expert: Charlotte Howell
Creative Producer: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Jonathan Rinkerman
Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer
Camera Operator: Jeremy Harris
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Sonia Butt
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Additional Editor: Sam DiVito
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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I agree about Battlestar Galactica. The stunning quality of the acting and the intelligent use of modern political controversies as plot lines was so much higher than the bar set by a lot of other shows, sci-fi or not.
Meanwhile Lucille Ball is responsible for many films becoming lost media.
“The Jetsons” was a show produced in color even before there was color broadcasting. Yay for the future!
I was surprised when I learned that and that they only made 20 eps.
The history she provides a TV is actually in an abridged version. It goes back way further than that way if you consider things such as radio or film (aka other forms of mass distribution media)…
Those same exact criticisms that she talks about in the 1960s and that mass scare? That has been going on for well over 100 years now. It’s not something that started in the 60s.
If you go back to, when we looked at film and radio, the exact same criticisms that you would hear today were being said then. And if you look at the genres of entertainment, then versus now they’re roughly actually the exact same.
There was always been a mass scare of how these things affect children.
Children have always been the decoy to use to attack these new media.
More like “Professor Answers AMERICAN Television History Questions”
The only question here is “Why did we become so fragile that something like Southpark worries us.”
Your organization is a bunch of over privileged sumptuous lackadaisical assholes. You know nothing don’t deserve the business you have and you belong in prison. :/
B&W tv turned to color right in the middle of making the Wizard of Oz.
Interesting but I feel it was too focused on USA TV history and shows
Pubic Access? Ya’ll either have an awesome typo in the labels of your chapters or it was someone’s last day 🙂
I’m amazed “the simpsons” was not even mentionned as one of the revolutionary shows. Almost every comedy show created afterwards cited the simpsons as one of their influence.
wow I’m surprised FRIENDS didn’t get mentioned specially for the syndication part.. they dominate that
South Park is a true based documentary about America. Its’s the stupidity in a nutshell… it’s how great the world thinks the USA actually is. You people are just ignorant and shout you’re the best 😂😂. Canceling is nothing else than avoiding a mirror
I was surprised Friends wasn’t talked about.
Interesting, but I feel like she isn’t actually answering half of the questions – just goes on a long ramble about something TV-history-related that was not the actual question. Like WAS I Love Lucy the first big scripted TV show? If so, why? What DID happen to Discovery, History, etc… I know she partly answered most questions, but felt like the focus was to talk around it and give loads of information on something that wasn’t asked.
Came looking for this, she seems lovely but almost too smart for such a small clip format this show does.
Best one of the series. Very informative.
I can hear that TV next to her the entire time 😂
The boom in reality TV was a result of the Writer’s Guild of America strike in 2007/2008. The networks realized that unscripted shows were a lot cheaper to produce.
So thaaaaat’s what Eminem meant when he said “the fcc won’t let me be”
What a brilliant episode.