American television owes much to two emigrants: the engineer-inventor Vladimir Zvorykin and the entrepreneur-entrepreneur David Sarnoff, whom Time magazine named one of America’s most prominent businessmen of the 20th century. Zvorykin, back in 1923, demonstrated the work of electronic television to the management of Westinghouse Electric. Unfortunately, his idea was not supported because of poor picture quality, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a patent for the invention of television to Philo Farnsworth. From Westinghouse Electric Sarnoff led Zvorykin to RCA (Radio Corporation of America), where the brilliant inventor from Murom to 1931 created the world’s first “iconscope” – a transmitting electronic tube, which marked the beginning of the development of electronic television systems.
At the same time, Ernst Alexanderson’s laboratory at General Electric began daily testing of the television signal at an experimental station. On September 11, 1928, General Electric televised its first dramatic production. It was called The Queen’s Messenger. Sound was broadcast simultaneously with the picture on the radio. Three fixed TV cameras were used for filming, and viewers could see the show on a screen measuring 6.5 cm by 10 cm.
Television fever was gaining momentum in the United States, and in 1933 the National Broadcasting Company began experimental broadcasts from the tallest building in New York City, the Empire State Building.
In 1936, the British BBC was the first in the world to begin regular television broadcasting. The American NBC was three years behind.
Regular television broadcasting did not begin in the United States until 1939, with the New York World’s Fair opening ceremony. Franklin Roosevelt became the first president to speak on television. The same year, baseball and American soccer games were shown for the first time. In the beginning, there were few programs, and most of the time you could only see the splash page on the screen. Progress, however, was tremendous. By 1954, 90 percent of the country was televised, and by May 1970, there were 650 television stations in the United States and television had become the most powerful medium in the world.
In 1940, a television set could be bought for about $400. Very expensive for those days.
In the mid-1970s, new technology emerged that made it possible to watch television programs with a minimum of interference – cable TV emerged. But until 1980, it offered viewers TV programs and movies without any pretensions to innovation or originality. Ted Turner co-developed specialized cable broadcasting with audience fragmentation into targeted niches, building connections with subscribers and making “individual” deals. Cable television went from broadcasting to targeting (narrowcasting). However, cable systems alone could not cope with the ambitious task of conquering the world because of their high cost and technical problems. The situation was saved by artificial satellites. And, naturally, one of the first specialized satellite-cable channels was Ted Turner’s CNN network. But when he entered the television business, the idea of global television was only in the minds of scientists. Marshall McLuhan’s “TV prophet” theories were realized by the enterprising Turner. CNN began to turn the world into a “global village”, gathering a multimillion audience and justifying one of McLuhan’s main principles: “the medium is the message.