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Friday 24 August 2018

Television broadcast

John Logie Baird transmitted the first television picture in 1925 in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London. It was the head of two ventriloquist's dummies named "James" and "Stooky Bill" (see picture below). 


Baird gave the first public display of television on January 26, 1926 in his Soho lab in front of members from the Royal Institution and a journalist from the London Times. He broadcast an image of the moving face of his business partner, Oliver Hutchinson through an apparatus he dubbed "the televisor". Although the pictures were small, measuring just 3.5 by 2 inches, the process was revolutionary.

A General Electric engineer, Ernst Alexanderson, made the first in-home television broadcast in the United States at his own home in Schenectady, New York in 1927.

The first long-distance public television broadcast in America took place on April 7, 1927, when a speech by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was broadcast live from Washington DC to New York.  However, at the time television was not yet widely available, and the audience for the broadcast was limited to a small number of people who were able to pick up the signal.

John Logie Baird made the first transatlantic television broadcast between Britain and the USA in 1928 when signals transmitted from the Baird station in Coulson, Kent, were picked up by a receiver in Hartsdale, New York.

Though television was still in its experimental phase in 1928,  the medium's potential to sell goods was already predicted (see picture below). 


On September 30, 1928, the Irish actress Peggy O'Neil agreed to be "televised" as part of a demonstration of the Baird television system at the National Radio Exhibition outside London. For 30 minutes she told stories and sang the song "I'm a Little Bit Fonder of You." A couple years later, in 1930, she gave the first live broadcast interview at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Southampton.

CBS's New York City station, W2XAB, began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the U. S. on July 21, 1931. 
Ad for the beginning of experimental television broadcasting in New York  by RCA in 1939

The first American political telecast took place on October 11, 1932 when the Democratic National Committee sponsored a program from a CBS television studio in New York City.  The program featured a speech by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for president at the time.

At the time, television was still a very new technology, and only a small percentage of Americans had televisions in their homes. However, the telecast of Roosevelt's speech was a significant event in the history of American politics, as it marked the first time that a presidential candidate had used television to communicate directly with the American people.

The first ever TV program was broadcast by NBC/RCA’s W2XBS in New York City on July 7, 1936. It originated from NBC’s first television studio and was watched by a group of NBC radio affiliate executives in the hopes of interesting them in being television affiliates as well. There were three sets in operation at the time, the most distant in Harrison, New Jersey.

The BBC began transmitting a regular television service at 3pm on November 2, 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London. It was the world's first regular, public all-electronic "high-definition" television service. The BBC originally offered three hours of programming a day.


In 1939, the New York Times predicted that the television would fail because the average American family would not have enough time to sit around and watch it.

The first official, paid advertising to appear on American commercial television occurred on July 1, 1941, over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. 

WNBT schedule for first week of commercial TV programming in the United States, July 1941

The abbreviation TV for television was first seen in 1948.

With a program broadcast from Calais, the BBC transmitted the first live TV pictures across the English Channel on August 27, 1950.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco in 1951, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

A television show was transmitted from the United States to Canada for the first time in 1953. The CBS Television production of Studio One was transmitted to CBLT-TV in Canada. 

Nippon Television broadcasted Japan's first television show, a variety show called Ohayo Nippon (Good Morning, Japan) on August 28, 1953. The first TV advertisement broadcast on NTV was for Seikosha clocks.

NTV quickly became a popular television station, and it helped to popularize television in Japan. In 1959, NTV broadcast the wedding of the Crown Prince (currently Emperor Emeritus Akihito), which was the first live coverage broadcast from Japan on color TV.

The first US national TV broadcast in color was the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1954, but over the next dozen years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. 


The first TV show ever to be put into reruns was The Lone Ranger. In the early 1950s, The Lone Ranger was so popular with the television audience that ABC, for a short period of time, ran it on late Friday nights for those who missed the earlier Thursday 7:30 p.m. broadcast.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are generally credited as the inventors of the rerun. All I Love Lucy (1951–57) episodes were recorded on a permanent, re-playable, high-quality medium, which made the rerun possible. It was first utilized during Ball's 1952-53 pregnancy.

St. Claire of Assisi, who died in 1253 AD, was named the Patron Saint of Television by Pope Pius XII in 1958, based on an incident in which she claimed the moving image and sound of a Catholic Mass had been miraculously projected on the wall of her room when she was too sick to attend. 

The first full color  television program in the world, publicly advertised, was broadcast in Mexico City by XHGC-TV, Channel 5 on February 8 1963, due to technical breakthrough advances made by Mexican Engineer Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena.  By that time, the Mexican government had adopted NTSC as the television color system.

In 1967 BBC2 screened four hours of live Wimbledon tennis as Britain's first color television broadcast. 

More than 400 million people viewed Our World on June 25, 1967. It was the first live, international satellite television production.


NBC-TV began a two-night showing of the motion picture, The Godfather on November 16, 1974. The film represented the highest price paid for a movie shown on television. NBC paid Paramount Pictures $10 million for the showing.

Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals, including the sound channel, using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier television technology, analog television, in which the video and audio are carried by analog signals. DirecTV in the U.S. launched the first commercial digital satellite platform in May 1994, using the Digital Satellite System (DSS) standard.

Digital TV arrived in the UK in 1998 on satellite from Sky and terrestrial from Ondigital.

Until 1987, there were no television broadcasts in Iceland on Thursdays.

On November 21 and 22 1996 the United Nations held the first World Television Forum, where leading media figures met under the auspices of the United Nations to discuss the growing significance of television in today's changing world and to consider how they might enhance their mutual cooperation. In December 1996 the United Nations proclaimed November 21 as World Television Day commemorating the date on which the first World Television Forum was held in 1996.

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