Portal:Television

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Introduction

Flat-screen televisions for sale at a consumer electronics store in 2008.

Television (TV), sometimes shortened to tele or telly, is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome (black and white), or in colour, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a television set, a television program ("TV show"), or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment and news.

Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but it would still be several years before the new technology would be marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US and most other developed countries. The availability of multiple types of archival storage media such as Betamax, VHS tape, local disks, DVDs, flash drives, high-definition Blu-ray Discs, and cloud digital video recorders has enabled viewers to watch pre-recorded material—such as movies—at home on their own time schedule. For many reasons, especially the convenience of remote retrieval, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity. Another development was the move from standard-definition television (SDTV) (576i, with 576 interlaced lines of resolution and 480i) to high-definition television (HDTV), which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats: 1080p, 1080i and 720p. Since 2010, with the invention of smart television, Internet television has increased the availability of television programs and movies via the Internet through streaming video services such as Netflix, Amazon Video, iPlayer, Hulu, Roku and Chromecast.

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Our Friends in the North is a British television drama. A serial produced by the BBC and originally screened in nine episodes on BBC2 in early 1996, Our Friends tells the story of four friends from the city of Newcastle in North East England over 31 years from 1964 to 1995. The storyline includes real political and social events both specific to the north-east and from Britain as a whole during the era portrayed. The show is commonly regarded as having been one of the most successful BBC television dramas of the 1990s. It was also a controversial production in some respects, as the issues and occurrences upon which its fiction were based involved real politicians and political events. It took several years before the production–adapted from a play originally performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company–finally made it to the screen, due in part to the BBC's fear that it might become involved in legal action.

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Selected image

Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eiriknewth/6998383/

Early television model, from 1936, produced by Telefunken, Germany

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Did you know...

...that the Simpsons short Good Night aired April 19, 1987 on The Tracey Ullman Show and was the first ever appearance of the Simpson family on television?

...that the fight scene between Peter Griffin and a giant chicken on Family Guy episode Blind Ambition was originally created for the episode Cleveland Loretta Quagmire?

...that model Albert Reed, selected to appear in September 2007 on the United States television show Dancing with the Stars, admits that he cannot dance?

..that the time traveling premise featured in the Chrono series of video games was inspired by such television programs as The Time Tunnel?

... that The Owl Service, a 1969 TV adaptation of the novel, was the first fully-scripted colour production by Granada Television?

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News

Wikinews television portal

Upcoming events

Upcoming television series
Upcoming television episodes

Featured biography

Sydney Cecil Newman OC (April 1, 1917 – October 30, 1997) was a Canadian film and television producer, best remembered for the pioneering work he undertook in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. Initially a film editor with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Newman later moved into television with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he began his long association with drama. Moving to Britain in 1958, he worked first with the Associated British Corporation (ABC) before moving across to the BBC in 1962, holding the role of Head of Drama with both organisations. During this phase of his career he was responsible for initiating two hugely popular fantasy series, The Avengers and Doctor Who, as well as overseeing the production of groundbreaking social realist drama series such as Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play. Towards the end of his active career he returned to Canada, where he was for a time Government Film Commissioner and Chairman of the NFB, among other roles. The website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Newman as "the most significant agent in the development of British television drama."