In 1945, a young British radar instructor named Arthur C. Clarke imagined satellites orbiting high above the Earth, relaying radio and television signals around the world. Twenty-two years later, the…
In the beginning, there was baseball. But by the 1960s, television had discovered that football was almost perfectly designed for the small screen. From the first televised football game in 1939 to…
In 1964, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and gave the television age a way to understand itself. McLuhan argued that television was far more than a machine for…
On February 9, 1964, more than 70 million Americans tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show to see four young musicians from Liverpool who had already conquered Britain but were only beginning to make their…
On December 7, 1963, the Army and Navy football teams met in Philadelphia for a game already heavy with national emotion. Postponed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the contest…
On September 7, 1927, in a San Francisco loft, Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted the first electronic television image—and set in motion the screen-based world we now take completely for granted.…
On Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963, millions of Americans were following the everyday lives of the Hughes family in the fictional town of Oakdale when a simple black title card appeared on their…
Podcast Description The Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated television's extraordinary ability to place viewers in the middle of history. But once the danger had passed, audiences were ready for…
On the evening of October 22, 1962, regular television programming came to an abrupt halt as President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation from the White House. For the first time, tens of millions…
For most of the 1950s, ABC was the forgotten third network—outgunned by NBC and CBS in affiliates, programming, and advertising. But a series of bold business decisions, led by Leonard Goldenson and a…
