Television, Radio, Media

Name: Maru Janak J

Roll No: 20

Paper No: 15

Paper Name: Mass Communication&Media Studies

Topic: Television, Radio, Media

Email Id: marujanak17@gmail.com

Submitted To: Department of English M.K.Bhavnagar University

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v   Television:

                        The inventions and discoveries in the late 1890s early twentieth century to the invention of television. Vladimir Zworykin, an American scientist of Russian birth, took the first big step in the development of TV. Zworykin developed an all-electronic television system in 1923 and perfected it by 1928. However, only experimental TV broadcasts were conducted in the early days. By 1937, quite a few experimental TV stations were in operation. Only in 1938, TV sets become widely available. In India, television arrived with small scale experimental telecasting in 1959. Slowly the half hour programme experimental grew. New TV station also started coming up. In 1975, the satellite instruction Television Experiment (SITE) was conducted. It used an American satellite and reached viewers in six states through 5,000 communities TV sets. Since then private TV changes, running through cable networks have mushroomed. Now we have more than 250 TV channels available in India.

                 

                 From generalized programming of the days, we now see specialized TV channels. BBC, CNN, NDTV, AAJTAK, Start News, Total TV, INDIA TV and DD News the list of news channels is endless. There are exclusive sports channels- Star Sports, ESPN, ten SPORTS, Nimbus, and DD Sports. National geographic, Discovery and animal planet are highly specialized channels covering nature and wildly exclusively.  Television brings events of far off places to our drawing rooms. Television captures our imagination like no other media. We see things on it, we hear and we see life-like-movement. And it is the most complete and the most dramatic of all mass media. Television captures actual events for us, reaches as immediately, gives us shared meanings for events, situations, happenings, etc. but in addition to packaging reality, television also packages fiction, drama, culture, economy and many other things with equal or better ease. However, TV networks and Channels make profits despite the high costs of programming and transmission because of high advertising revenues. Unlike other mass media, television channels and networks are not just concerned with audience appeal. TV channels produce programmes as much against their competitors’ offerings and they do for the viewers. This is reflected in the adherence to the policy of appealing to the lowest common denominator. And no other mass media practices simplicity and commonality in their content as television. From family dramas, gunfights, drug busts, crime serials, high society melodramas, family comedies, to young woman in simply clothing, to reality shows: the range of TV programmes is grossly limited. In fact, TV is criticized for producing producing; programme aimed at the so-called thirteen years old mentally which will automatically reach every one above that level. At another level, TV watching is considered an addiction. Television has been labeled the ‘plug in drug’. Statistic about TV watching habits reflects this aspect with crystal clarity.  Statistics also shoes that half the population, at least in USA, is glued to TV sets during prime time.

v Advertising ON Television: 

                           Television advertisement is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an to market a product conveys a message, typically to market a product or service. Advertising revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned television networks. Over the years television has grown as a medium of advertising also. In America more than half advertising money is spent on TV. Television is used as an advertising medium for many reasons. One of the reasons is its massive reach. TV reaches every one and everywhere. Young and old, literate and illiterate, students and scholars, workers and experts, house wives and working women, no one escape television. These include drama, humor, dramatic effect, colour, stereo-sound and most importantly, the element or motion. TV also has a unique ability to crate mood, excitement and a sense of involvement.

v Television NEWS:

              TV news is reflected from the following findings of a research study in America. These statistics hold true to a great extent for most other countries also. One third of the adult population receives most of their news from television. For half the population, television is the only source of news. And most people news on TV because it is immediate. Also it is more convenient and requires less effort than any other news media. All those changed with the advent of the magnetic videotape. These tapes were reusable and were easy to edit. Another improvement- particularly for TV news- was the development of electronic-news-gathering.

Criticism OF Television:

                                           Television generally concentrates its efforts on entertaining the masses. It, however, has the potentiality to do better things. As Edward R. Murrow once said, “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, and can even inspire. But it can only do so to the extent that viewers are determined to use it to these ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box. Used carefully, television could be immensely useful in the battle against ignorance and indifference”.

         Cinema still frames of individual photographs are mechanically speeded up and projected in such a way they blend into one another, creating the illusion of motion. It is known by many names- movies, cinema, films or motion pictures. Film is considered a mass medium because it reaches very large audiences. It is not as immediate as newspaper, television or radio. But reaches large masses of people over a reality long period of time. By ‘film’ we generally mean the commercial ‘Masala’ films. But there are many other variations including are films, cartoon films, educational films, social documentaries, television films, and children’s film.

                   Film works on the principles of ‘persistence of vision’. The eye retains an image for fleeting after it is gone. So when individual photographs or visuals are shown one after the other at a very fast, rate then we get an illusion of movement or motion. Then camera the Lumpier brothers. In 1895, they produce and started having commercial shown of films. Soon others followed suit and the beginning of the 20^th century; film became the third mass medium after books and newspapers. Film has had an obvious impact on the audiences. One reason is it is not imposed. It does not come to us. We go to theatres to watch films. So there is willingness on part of the audiences to get transported to another world for two or three hours. Films deal with universal themes. Also it is for more transportable. Audiences all over the world watch Hollywood block busters. People in Russia and cinema loved Raj Kapoor’s films.         

   Radio:

                    Samuel Morse invented telegraph in 1844. Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone in 1876. Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb in 1879. The monopoly of printing was nearing its end. At such a time, a new era in electronics was heralded when in the last decade of the 19^th century; Guglielmo Marconi of ltaly invented a way to transmit sound without using wires. By 1901, Marconi succeeded in creating a wireless communication link between Europe and North America. In 1906 Lee De Forest along with John Ambrose Fleming perfected the ‘audion’ or the vacuum tube, which made clear transmission of voice and music possible.

                                  These developments paved the way for the first ever broadcast that took place on Christmas Eve, 1906 in Massachusetts, USA. Very quickly radio established its place in the minds of listeners. Heavy doses popular almost overtaken- in terms of popularity- by television. Radio needed a savior. But it was already there. Columbia University professor Edwin H. Armstrong had invented frequency modulation(FM) transmission in 1933. It was static-free and had invented frequency modulation (FM) transmission in 1933. It was static-free and had high fidelity second quality. These qualities had been demonstrated by 1938. But use of FM was started only after world war-ll. And only in the 1970’s large-scale use of FM radio started. In American FM has Radio may be small in size. It may not be a status symbol. It may not be as complete a medium like television. But it is doing pretty well now. It recovered from the brink of extinction by learning how to speak to the audience one to one. It became the personal medium. Radio has achieved an unparalleled intimacy