The Television Portal

Flat-screen television receivers on display for sale at a consumer electronics store in 2008

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set, rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. The medium is capable of more than "radio broadcasting", which refers to an audio signal sent to radio receivers.

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...)

Lost's co-creator Damon Lindelof
Lost: Missing Pieces are thirteen video clips ranging in length from one to four minutes that aired during the hiatus between the third and fourth seasons of the television show Lost, from which the series is spun off. They generally became available to Verizon Wireless users on Mondays from November 2007 to January 2008 and were uploaded onto the American Broadcasting Company's website a week later for free streaming. The "mobisodes", which have also been referred to as "webisodes", are shot in Honolulu, Hawaii and produced by the same crew with the same cast as the television series; thus, all content is considered to be canon. The project was announced in November 2005 as the Lost Video Diaries; however, production was delayed several times due to contractual restrictions. Lost's writer-producers originally proposed the mobisodes as a self-contained story that would focus on two previously unseen characters of the Lost fictional universe. These characters would be played by actors who were not part of the Screen Actors Guild; however the entertainment guild refused to support such a project. After months of unsuccessful negotiating, the series was seemingly shelved by ABC. In June 2007, it was revealed that the mobisodes, which would be renamed Lost: Missing Pieces, would star the regular characters of Lost in thirteen short video clips unrelated to each other. Twelve scenes were newly shot; one was a deleted scene from the television series. Lost: Missing Pieces received minimal media attention and critical reviews were mixed.

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Mobile TV vans, France
Mobile TV vans, France
Credit: Jebulon

French Outside broadcasting vans

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  • ... that actor Tatsunari Kimura ate pancakes and drank coffee while talking for eight hours during the filming of the television drama Old-Fashioned Cupcake?
  • ... that a federal marshal seized a car and a truck because there was no other way to satisfy a debt owed by Arkansas television station KRZB-TV?
  • ... that Sharp Corporation produced three official variants of Nintendo's Famicom in Japan, one of which was a television set that was subsequently released in the United States?
  • ... that television production companies working in Bhadun, Bangladesh, can hire a local woman as an extra for ৳500 (US$5.30) per day?
  • ... that Phoenix radio station KTAR bought television station KTYL-TV to avoid a conflict with former U.S. senator Ernest McFarland?
  • ... that when acting in HBO television series Big Little Lies, Darby Camp received suggestions from Reese Witherspoon, who plays her onscreen mother?

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Chuck Palahniuk
I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television. And for the most part my friends can always be more entertaining than the tube ever can be. But somehow people have been sold on the idea that only professionals can entertain them, that only professionals can sing or tell jokes. And people are cut out of this creativity loop, and creativity is being limited to these large, centralized voices.

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Skelton in 1960

Richard Red Skelton (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997) was an American entertainer best known for his national radio and television shows between 1937 and 1971, especially as host of the television program The Red Skelton Show. He has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio and television, and also appeared in burlesque, vaudeville, films, nightclubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.

Skelton began developing his comedic and pantomime skills from the age of 10, when he became part of a traveling medicine show. He then spent time on a showboat, worked the burlesque circuit, and then entered into vaudeville in 1934. The "Doughnut Dunkers" pantomime sketch, which he wrote together with his wife, launched a career for him in vaudeville, radio, and films. His radio career began in 1937 with a guest appearance on The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, which led to his becoming the host of Avalon Time in 1938. He became the host of The Raleigh Cigarette Program in 1941, on which many of his comedy characters were created, and he had a regularly scheduled radio program until 1957. Skelton made his film debut in 1938 alongside Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Alfred Santell's Having Wonderful Time, and would appear in numerous musical and comedy films throughout the 1940s and 1950s, with starring roles in 19 films, including Ship Ahoy (1941), I Dood It (1943), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), and The Clown (1953). (Full article...)

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Main topics

History of television: Early television stationsGeographical usage of televisionGolden Age of TelevisionList of experimental television stationsList of years in televisionMechanical televisionSocial aspects of televisionTelevision systems before 1940Timeline of the introduction of television in countriesTimeline of the introduction of color television in countries

Inventors and pioneers: John Logie BairdAlan BlumleinWalter BruchAlan Archibald Campbell-SwintonAllen B. DuMontPhilo Taylor FarnsworthCharles Francis JenkinsBoris GrabovskyPaul Gottlieb NipkowConstantin PerskyiBoris RosingDavid SarnoffKálmán TihanyiVladimir Zworykin

Technology: Comparison of display technologyDigital televisionLiquid crystal display televisionLarge-screen television technologyTechnology of television

Terms: Broadcast television systemsComposite monitorHDTVLiquid crystal display televisionPALPicture-in-picturePay-per-viewPlasma displayNICAMNTSCSECAM

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