The great age of television lasted in Australia from 1960 to 1997. These were the years after the age of the radio and before the internet. It was a generation long, perhaps two. My parents worried that I watched too much TV, but I watched far more than my children do. I have to encourage them: 'do you wanna watch TV?' TV producers recognise this and retread 70s programmes like Doctor Who. Increasingly, TV combs back over its own archives and creates 'classics'.
It is still the case that our lounge rooms are arranged with the seats facing the TV screen, as they would have once been arranged around the fire. The TV is that warm glow against which we warm ourselves - that little box of radiance and enlightenment.
In that period, television had the power to make events as well as record them. We sometimes scoff at the expression ‘television history’; but I don’t think it is an underestimation. The presence of TV cameras made Vietnam an unwinnable war in the public imagination. The Moon landings would not have happened without TV. It is said that the Berlin Wall fell because a TV news reporter mistakenly declared that it had fallen – and so the huge crowds surged to the gates and tore it down.
Television united human beings in single moments more than was ever thought possible. We can be part of a bigger crowd than can actually gather together in one spot- it gives us the ability to be present when we are distant. The thought of 100 million people watching the same event beggars the imagination. But TV made it possible. I remember growing up in Britain in the 70s when there were only three stations for 60 million people. 20 million people would watch the same drivel on Saturday night!
Now that power has largely dissipated; the audience has fragmented. bloggers and tweeters do it better. TV’s great weakness was that it didn’t allow its audience to answer back. It preached at us. Only latterly has it woken up to the possibilities of breaking through the glass and inviting us to take control – through reality TV and through associated technologies like the mobile phone.
5 comments:
Thanks man, i am agree with you. Yes those television show after 1970 had got something to learn . People might learn if they wanted so. Now a days i watch my favorite tv shows in Dish TV .
“Let us all bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.”
I don't recall staring spellbound at a phone to experience "post TV age" global events from 911 to Michael Jackson's funeral. I think you are mourning the end of bad TV. No doubt we'll watch less TV in total, but we watch more and more good TV, because it has to try harder. Its the new golden age, and TVs have celebrated by becoming not only double the quality but triple the size.
Enjoyed your thoughts :)
You know this Michael: but I met Sherwood Schwartz once while I was driving a taxi. (Schwartz is the creator of Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island).
We had a good conversation. But interesting: he spent some time lamenting the (then) new Brady Bunch sequel movies: movie that were really were built on cynicism and smut. He was really wrestling with a former age of TV.
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