Portal:Television
From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
The Television Portal
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.
Television became available in crude experimental forms in the 1920s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, 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 U.S. and most other developed countries.
In 2013, 79% of the world's households owned a television set. The replacement of earlier cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternative technologies such as LCDs (both fluorescent-backlit and LED), OLED displays, and plasma displays was a hardware revolution that began with computer monitors in the late 1990s. Most television sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs. Major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, Digital Light Processing (DLP), plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. LEDs are being gradually replaced by OLEDs. Also, major manufacturers have started increasingly producing smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s. (Full article...)
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The fourteen episodes of the thirteenth season of South Park, an American animated television comedy series, originally aired in 2009. The show focuses on the exploits of protagonists Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and Butters in the fictional Colorado mountain town of South Park. The 13th season satirized such topics as the ACORN scandal, Japanese whaling, piracy in Somalia and the marketing tactics of the Walt Disney Company. Celebrities were spoofed throughout the season, including the Jonas Brothers, Kanye West, Carlos Mencia, Paul Watson and Glenn Beck. The season received mixed reviews: some critics called it one of South Park's strongest seasons, while others claimed the series was starting to decline in quality. The season maintained the average Nielsen rating viewership for the series, around 3 million viewers per episode. The episode "Margaritaville", which satirized the global recession then affecting much of the industrialized world, won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). "Fatbeard" was praised by the crew of the USS Bainbridge, which was involved in the 2009 rescue of the MV Maersk Alabama from Somalian pirates.
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John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and others watching flight of Astronaut Alan Shepard on television. Shepard was the second person and the first American in space. He later commanded the Apollo 14 mission, and was the fifth person to walk on the moon.
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that A Question of Love was widely regarded as a bold film for portraying homosexuality, a rare topic for television dramas in 1978?
- ... that saxophonist Jerry Jumonville was usually part of any band featured in the 1970s television series Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley?
- ... that Colin Mackay, the political editor at Scottish Television, was "very sad" when Colin MacKay, the political editor at Scottish Television, died?
- ... that New Mexico television station KIVA-TV received angry phone calls and a bomb threat after switching away from a tied football game?
- ... that the day employees of Boston television station WLVI received new business cards, they learned the station would be sold and they would lose their jobs?
- ... that Ice King, the antagonist of television series Adventure Time, was at first received negatively by critics but later praised for representing mental health issues such as Alzheimer's disease?
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More did you know
- ...that copies of the 1982 biopic Will: G. Gordon Liddy, about a Watergate co-conspirator, are stored in the Nixon Presidential Materials collection at the U.S. National Archives?
- ...that the air-date of "The Beginning of the End", the fourth season premiere of the television series Lost, means that the season may be interrupted by the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike even if a settlement is reached?
- ...that Augie Hiebert not only built Alaska's first television station, KTVA, but also founded the state's first FM radio station, KNIK-FM?
- ...that the television drama Hill Street Blues imitated the visual style of The Police Tapes, a low-budget documentary about a police precinct in the South Bronx?
- ... 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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Rudolph Cartier (born Rudolph Kacser, renamed himself in Germany to Rudolph Katscher; 17 April 1904 – 7 June 1994) was an Austrian television director, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC. He is best known for his 1950s collaborations with screenwriter Nigel Kneale, most notably the Quatermass serials and their 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
After studying architecture and then drama, Cartier began his career as a screenwriter and then film director in Berlin, working for UFA Studios. After a brief spell in the United States he moved to the United Kingdom in 1935. Initially failing to gain a foothold in the British film industry, he began working for BBC Television in the late 1930s (among other productions he was involved in the making of Rehearsal for a Drama, BBC 1939). The outbreak of war, however, meant that his contract was terminated; his television play The Dead Eye was stopped in the production stage. After the war, he occasionally worked for British films before he was again hired by the BBC in 1952. He soon became one of the public service broadcaster's leading directors and went on to produce and direct over 120 productions in the next 24 years, ending his television career with the play Loyalties in 1976. (Full article...)