-The genie is out of the box-
New Media is Unveiled
RCA introduced a glowing box to a distracted international audience at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. World War II soon pulled those ur-audiences from the television sets; the first, last and only time international events took the human race away from the self-advertising medium.
Why? Not for lack of interest. The technology was there, and promoters recognized the addictive nature of the box the moment they saw it penetrating the minds of passersby - passesby, it should be mentioned, representing every niche of society. Clearly, the twin shortages in content and distribution were the only barriers in these early years.
To solve the distribution problem, profiteers needed only peacetime and a war-economy. Creating content would require a more active role for all parties involved. Convinced of television's eventual success long before the end of the war was regarded as inevitable in Europe or the Pacific, the media magnates assembled a secret amalgam of writers representing theatre, radio and book publishing. Later, a filing error led historians to believe the think tank was known in secret government circles as the Los Alamos project. If participants had given the project a title, it almost certainly is derived from the site where the writers met to conduct their early info-tainment research. It was located on the island of Manhattan.
The Real Manhattan Project
Fueled by nicotine, caffeine, alcohol and other creative fuels, the writers experimented with various formats and genres. Absolute secrecy was necessary at this stage, for while most of their tricks were routine in their former professions, the effect of laugh-tracks, star-powered comedies and vaudvillian sight-gags on television was only theoretical. In those early days, there was a very real fear that the first pixels scattered at the end of the countdown could set off a chain reaction that would ignite the air-waves worldwide and change life as we know it.
But first, the writers needed to develop a MASTER SCRIPT.
New Media is Unveiled
RCA introduced a glowing box to a distracted international audience at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. World War II soon pulled those ur-audiences from the television sets; the first, last and only time international events took the human race away from the self-advertising medium.
Why? Not for lack of interest. The technology was there, and promoters recognized the addictive nature of the box the moment they saw it penetrating the minds of passersby - passesby, it should be mentioned, representing every niche of society. Clearly, the twin shortages in content and distribution were the only barriers in these early years.
To solve the distribution problem, profiteers needed only peacetime and a war-economy. Creating content would require a more active role for all parties involved. Convinced of television's eventual success long before the end of the war was regarded as inevitable in Europe or the Pacific, the media magnates assembled a secret amalgam of writers representing theatre, radio and book publishing. Later, a filing error led historians to believe the think tank was known in secret government circles as the Los Alamos project. If participants had given the project a title, it almost certainly is derived from the site where the writers met to conduct their early info-tainment research. It was located on the island of Manhattan.
The Real Manhattan Project
Fueled by nicotine, caffeine, alcohol and other creative fuels, the writers experimented with various formats and genres. Absolute secrecy was necessary at this stage, for while most of their tricks were routine in their former professions, the effect of laugh-tracks, star-powered comedies and vaudvillian sight-gags on television was only theoretical. In those early days, there was a very real fear that the first pixels scattered at the end of the countdown could set off a chain reaction that would ignite the air-waves worldwide and change life as we know it.
But first, the writers needed to develop a MASTER SCRIPT.
posted by Benedict | 11:02 PM
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