Early Television

NBC and CBS Open Shop on the West Coast (Literary Digest, 1936)

In order to take advantage of the local talent abiding in the sleepy film colony of Hollywood, the far-seeing executives at NBC and CBS saw fit to open radio and television broadcasting facilities in that far, distant burg.

The trek to Hollywood of the Broadcasting companies began in earnest last winter when the National Broadcasting Company opened a large building – fire-proof, earthquake-proof, sound-proof and air-conditioned.

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Waiting for Television (Literary Digest, 1937)

Written in response to the loud cries generated by those would-be pioneering couch-potatoes, this article presents a lengthy list of all the technical difficulties the young television broadcasting industry had to deal with in 1937.

First to have commercial television, it is agreed, will be New York City, then Philadelphia. In both of these cities transmitting-stations already exist. Advancement to other urban centers will be slower. Chicago, for example will have commercial television only after it has been made to pay in New York and Philadelphia. As each city’s television enterprises become self-supporting, installation will be begun in a new center.

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BBC Television Broadcasting Begins (Literary Digest, 1935)

The British Broadcasting Corporation announced that they were capable of transmitting television programming as early as 1935:

The British engineers plan to begin with a single broadcasting tower, capable of transmitting television images to receiving sets within a radius of about thirty miles…British engineers are not the first to try television broadcasting. A station has been operating regularly in Berlin for several months.

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Television with All It’s Possibilities (Stage Magazine, 1939)

There wasn’t a single soul in 1939 would have imagined that television would be the sort of venue that would allow millions of strangers to see Tyra Banks get a breast exam, but that is the kind of institution it has become.

STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Alan Rinehart was astonished that so much dough was being invested in such a young industry, yet he recognized that T.V. was capable of much good, but was also capable of generating the kind of banality that we’re used to.

What then, will be the entertainment value of television?…What’s to be the entertainment? Why should we tune in? Will we get more than we will on the radio?…The revolutionary idea about television is that the medium has been developed before the art. It’s as if the piano had been invented before music, or paint and canvas before drawing.

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