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A Romantic Travelogue Through Time and Television

The television is one such medium that has for years kept the viewers glued to their couches all over the world. But how did the television revolution took place in different countries? How did the people adopt themselves to this giant called Television? Who were the most influential personalities in regards to the spread of television all over the world? In this romantic travelogue you will travel through time and television all over the world to discover a world  called Global Television.

PART 1: Czechoslovakia

 PART 2: Spain

We don’t get much Czech television in the UK.  Some with a keen memory may remember the Czech cartoon featuring Krtek, the unintelligible little mole, and more recently some might have tuned their digital satellite boxes to receive some Czech television stations from the Eurobird satellite. Perhaps one reason why we don’t get much Czech television over here is that it seems to be a tricky language to learn.  I recently spent four days on a city break in Prague (or Praha in Czech) and through all that time I couldn’t master how to say “Thank you.” The phrase book had it pronounced one way, and the Czechs themselves seemed to say it another...more

The “look” of British television has moved away from the rather austere, understated presentation that it once had, towards a more loose and casual feel. But where had this idea come from? I found out when I went to Spain, and watched a lot of their presentation on cable and terrestial television…For example, TVE (Television Espanola) is the equivalent of the BBC. While to a certain extent it is commercial, it is seen as THE state broadcaster. There are very fluid ident sequences, where a camera tracks laterally through a house until reaching the windows streaming with sunlight, forming the “1” symbol as it goes ...more

PART 3: UK vs. USA

PART 4: The Rise of The Nations

Although they apparently share the same language, people in the UK and the US sometimes have very different terms that mean the same things. This has the power to cause confusion when people from one side of the Atlantic attempt to have a conversation with people from the other in all manner of mundane conversations...more

Public opinion in the United States is changing. Slowly, but it is changing. It’s been changing as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001. The American people are beginning to realise that they live in a global community, where what they do has an impact on what happens to them. They are realising they can’t afford to be insular anymore ...more

PART 5: Cross Country Viewers

PART 6: Room For More Broadcasters?

With the deregulation of television networks in western Europe and the ex-communist eastern European countries and Russia there is now a thriving trade in both programmes and formats. The newly commercialised networks generally have far fewer restrictions and have to compete with rival networks for viewers - even in many cases against broadcasters operating in neighbouring countries, so all...more

Americans like myself would be very surprised to have visited Britain in the 1950s and early 60s. By the middle 50s, most American television set owners had access to three channels. In some cities, like Chicago, it would be five channels. In New York and Los Angeles, seven channels each. ....more

PART 7: A man called Rupert Murdoch

 PART 8: Rise of a giant

Given the virtually unregulated free market for television in the United States, it's surprising to note that television was a slow starter. While experiments in Europe had led to a regular medium-definition service in Nazi Germany followed by the world's first regular high-definition service from the BBC in London during the 1930s, television remained strictly experimental in the States...more

PART 9: Australia

PART 10: Styles of Presentation

For nearly 10 years under the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating Labor federal governments, pay-TV was a distant dream in Australia. The Labor Party determined to keep out new operators, perhaps to appease the then current commercial TV operators, channels 7, 9 and 10, the state-owned ABC and the multicultural SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) who were perceived as soft on a Labor government...more

I became interested in local television presentation whilst growing up in the Midwestern United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I believe I was still sleeping in a crib when I was treated to my first closedown on our CBS affiliate, WSAW – it may even have still been known as WSAU then - on channel 7 in Wausau, Wisconsin...more

PART 11: Wake Up USA

 PART 12: Australia on the Fast Track

At one time, television stations in the USA, like ITV contractors in the UK, had daily "start-up" (or "sign-on" as we call them here in the States) routines. But the traditional sign-on routines have all but vanished with the advent of 24-hour television. In some respects, sign-ons of TV stations in the USA were similar to start-ups of ITV regions. But there were a few differences. By following one station's "sign-on" routine from my childhood (the late 1960s), we can see how sign-ons of US stations and start-ups of ITV contractors were similar and different...more

Bendigo is a rural city of 60,000 people in southeastern Australia, built in the 1850s on what was, at the time, the richest gold field in the world. Bendigo was the heart of the great Australian gold rush that gave it so much fame and beautiful Victorian-era buildings. The gold was mined out, but the people stayed on. The trams continued rattling down the main street and the city's Chinese population still paraded with their amazing imperial dragon at Easter...more

 PART 13: Belgium

 PART 14: Canada

The problems faced by the Netherlands government when reconciling broadcasting with the structure of their society led to a system where each defined group had access to the air. Thus Catholics, Socialists and Liberals each had a 'slice' of the airwaves available for them to air their views and show their distinctness from each other...more

Television broadcasting in the United Kingdom started in the mid-1930s. It had a distinctive style and has evolved into a highly successful, well thought of medium, known and respected worldwide. Most people take television for granted and assume that the evolution process was the same across the globe....more

PART 15: France

 PART 16: Then East Germany

Broadcasting developed in different ways in different countries. The prevailing ideology in each state in the world decided how radio would develop and therefore how its younger sibling television would be used. In each country it was also a product of the times. Thus broadcasting in Britain began with a private monopoly that was compromise-nationalised into a public monopoly...more

A major problem for ITV companies in the United Kingdom has always been the geographic overlaps between regions. No broadcaster has ever chosen to fight for an audience if the opportunity exists not to. On the continent, this situation has been broadly replicated, but with extreme political consequences. While an overlap between, say, French- and German-language transmissions may not be a problem thanks to mutual unintelligibility, an overlap between the broadcasters of two countries with a common language can be a problem...more

 PART 17: Hungary

PART 18: Netherlands

As Warsaw Pact tanks appeared on the streets of Budapest, the government of Hungary appealed by radio for help and support from a western world distracted by the Suez Crisis. The relatively few pictures of the crushing of the liberalising regime of Imre Nagy available today is in part due to the fact that Hungary had no television service at the time...more

The Netherlands has a long tradition of liberal democracy. This tradition extends to broadcasting. When radio broadcasting began in Holland, religious and political groups were quick to set up rival organisations to exploit the new medium.  With limited air-space, a system was devised where each frequency was handed to a particular group for a time period related to it size.  The largest four organisations took the lion's share, while the remaining groups split 7 hours a week between them....more

PART 19: USA

I started becoming aware of the flickering "eye" in the corner of the room when I was about four, in the mid sixties. I became quite fascinated with the medium, probably too much so. Growing up in the Midwest, in southeast Iowa, my hometown was on the fringes of a couple of markets, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids - Waterloo. Our best signal came from nearby Ottumwa, which was a much smaller...more

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