Unit 1
Structure
1.1 Introduction
Objectives
1.2 Celluloid Films
1.3 Videotape
1.4 The Impact of Television
1.5 The History of Television
1.6 Television Genres
1.7 Summary
1.8 Glossary
1.9 Terminal Questions
1.10 Answers
1.11 Further Reading
1.1 Introduction
Does
television really need an introduction? The answer, of course, is obviously no.
In fact, in these modern times, life has become unimaginable without a
television. After all, ask yourself, has there been a day when you have not set
your eyes on your television at home? Whether one lives in a small town or a
metropolitan city, there is hardly a day when people do not watch television.
Television has pervaded life in India to such an extent that today, it is a
rarity that a household in either rural or urban India do not own a television
set.
Television has brought the events and happenings of the
world to people’s drawing rooms. Not only this, it has also brought with it
cinemas, soap operas, telefilms, and so on. Any movie that runs in a cinema
hall today is shown on television within a period of five to six months.
Therefore, television has become the most powerful and much accessed medium. In
developed countries like the United States, it is television that keeps the
politicians in power as the contestants have to launch special election
campaigns for television. The trend has begun in developing countries like
India as well, although it is only in its initial stages.
In the first unit of
the book you will be given an overview of the television industry; the unit
will include topics on the fundamental power of moving images, the difference
between the celluloid film and a video cassette, how television was born and
its journey around the world, especially India.
Objectives
After studying this unit, you
should be able to:
•
Describe the impact of television
•
Discuss the history of television
•
Outline the different genres of television
•
Summarise the history of the Indian television
industry
1.2 Celluloid Films
Before trying to understand the television industry, it is
absolutely imperative to know about celluloid films. You may ask why? It is
because Television deals with moving images. When we talk about moving images,
celluloid films are the first thing that come to mind. Besides, they are
considered precursor to television.
You must have gone to cinema halls a number of times to
watch a movie. But have you ever wondered what exactly happens in the
projection room? Or what exactly is a celluloid film? Or why is a movie a much
sought after thing in the world of entertainment?
A film is a continuous or joined strip of exposed acetate
based celluloid, with a unit length of one reel or 1000 feet, normally running
for a duration of 10
minutes. Each reel is composed of several sequences. Each sequence is made up
of several shots. Each shot is a varying multiple of frames. If a shot is unit
action recorded on the film, each frame in a shot is a fractionalization of
this action. By itself, the image in each individual frame is static and
immobile.
You may well ask that if each frame has frozen movement at a
particular instant, then how do the characters move on screen. You will be
surprised to know that there is no genuine movement of images on the screen. It
is only an illusion created by the optic faculty called the persistence of vision.
In other words, the ability of the eye’s innermost sensitive layer called the
retina to retain the image perceived due to light stimuli. Between each frame,
there is a gap of dark space, nearly one seventh of its length. When these
frames are run at a particular speed past the gate of a projector, the static
images reflected on the screen become interconnected optically. If our eyes did
not have this organic faculty, one would have seen images from the projector
but there would not be any .movement. Thus, a film is an image sequence
captured by the camera and regenerated by two projectors running one after the
other at the end of each reel, providing continuous projection. (Maybe you could
mention that persistence of vision has been a contested theory).
In terms of mass communication, a film requires a medium
(camera) for its configuration, another medium (projector) for decoding the
message (images) locked in it, another medium (screen) for recovering the
message, and yet another medium (speakers) for regenerating its sound content.
The soundtrack on a film is incorporated on it lengthwise in an unbroken manner
(unlike the image) in the form of an erratic lateral projection of continuous
streaks, which become reactivated once struck by a beam of light.
1.3 Videotape
In subsequent units, you will learn in detail about
videotapes. However, to state briefly, a videotape is the recording of images
and sounds on to a magnetic tape as opposed to film stock used in filmmaking.
It is a linear method of storing data, which in this case are images and
sounds. A celluloid film consists of various layers of chemicals on an acetate
base. In contrast, a videotape is a layered configuration whose surface has a
magnetic coating of needle-shaped iron oxide or chromium-dioxide particles that
lie in a length-wise direction on the tape. A binder material holds these
particles in place and makes them adhere to the polyester base.
Like a film, a videotape is an image storage medium. But
unlike most films, a videotape contains the capacity to store both picture and
sound. Both film and videotape records individual pictures or frames of
information every second. These frames are visible on the film along with the
sprocket holes which control the rate at which the images are run through the
camera or projector. The soundtrack is placed next to the picture images
and synchronized to match them.
Self-Assessment Questions
1.
Fill in the
blanks using appropriate words.
(a) A
_______ is a continuous or joined strip of exposed acetate based celluloid,
with a unit length of one reel or 1000 feet, normally running for a duration of
ten minutes.
(b) A
film is an image sequence captured by the camera and regenerated by two
__________ running one after the other at the end of each reel.
(c) A celluloid
film consists of various layers of chemicals on an _______ base.
(d) A
_________ is a layered configuration whose surface has a
magnetic coating of needleshaped iron-oxide or chromium-dioxide particles that
lie in a length-wise direction on the tape.
1.4 The Impact of Television
Television has had a profound impact on our society. It has
altered lifestyles and changed values of people and in the process has
considerably influenced our culture. Television’s impact has been almost
instantaneous as compared to printing which took hundreds of years to influence
culture. This is simply because watching TV does not require much mental effort
as compared to reading printed material which needs concentration as well as a
mental faculty of comprehension. For instance, an illiterate person cannot read
a newspaper or a magazine but can definitely watch programmes on television and
thus get influenced by it.
As a technology, Television has
made a huge difference to the manner of conveying ideas to people. This has
been proved time and again by the innovations made in the field of TV
advertising with the help of rapidly developing multimedia techniques during
the last two
Some scholars strongly feel
that television has made positive contributions to the lives of people in
India. This does not gain favour with traditional media people who consistently
underestimate television’s culture changing effects, mainly because they
overlook certain characteristics that are so obvious that one takes them for
granted. The most important feature of television is its ability to mingle
ideas with powerful drama right into the intimate environment of millions of
homes.
Today's information explosion has
opened the floodgates of knowledge and curiosity. A majority of our people are
cut off from modernity as they live in remote villages. Till date, they led a
life submerged in age old conservatism. However, slowly they are also being
able to access information thanks to television.
Self-Assessment Questions
2. Fill in the blanks using
appropriate words.
(a) Television’s
impact has been almost instantaneous as compared to ________, which took
hundreds of years to influence culture.
(b) According
to _________, ‘Having earned a niche for itself in ways that are inimitable and
unprecedented, TV has worked its way as an indispensable member of hundreds of
millions of families across the world. To say that it merely educates, informs
and entertains is an understatement.’
(c) For
any social change to take place, the flow of _______ is of prime importance.
(d) In a developed
country like the United States, television has helped in the homogenization of
a ____________ society.
1.5 The History of Television
In 1920, experiments began in the field of television
broadcasting. The United States and some European countries took the lead in
these exercises. Initially, a mechanical scanning disc was used in these
experiments whose speed of scanning a picture was very slow. The next three
years saw the invention of the iconoscope which basically was an electric
television tube. The invention of the picture tube or kinescope, electronic
camera and TV home receivers took another seven years. In 1930, two respective
TV stations were set up – the National Broadcasting Station (NBC) in New York
and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London. Germany and France
too did not lag behind in setting up television stations.
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin was televised on German
television in a big way as the event was a part of a big propaganda show for
the Third Reich. However, despite the fact that the Nazis used German
television as an instrument of their political propaganda, further developments
in television came to an abrupt halt during the Second World War. The beginning
of the 1950s saw television becoming a part of life in many developed
countries. For example, in 1948, in the US, around five lakh receiving sets had
been counted in 23 cities covered by 41 TV stations. The figure swelled to 533
TV stations covering 5.50 crore receivers by 1958.
In the United States, it took four more years for the age of
satellite communication to dawn. The launch of the satellite Early Bird turned out to be a milestone
in the field of satellite communication. Moreover, in 1965, Intelsat, and in
1971, Intersputnik, came into existence. The progress of television has been
phenomenal since that time.
Today, there is no country in the world that does not have
its earth stations linked to satellites for transmission and reception. In
fact, the modern world has been transformed by these communications satellites
into a ‘global village’. In the words of Canadian media sociologist Marshal
McLuhan, ‘electronic technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of
social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. Extraordinary
information explosion have dramatically shrunk time and distance and have
converted our world into a global village’.
Inventions led to more sophisticated transmission technique
in the decades that followed, employing optical fibre cable and computer
technology. Japan successfully designed a computer controlled network that
enabled two-way video exchange to and from households. The video cassette, the
Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), Closed Circuit TV (CCTV), Internet Protocol
Television (IPTV), Direct to Home (DTH), High Definition Television (HDTV), and
so on, have completely altered the path of televisions development in new and
unexpected ways. The number of accessible channels and media platforms has shot
up because of DTH, HDTV and IPTV. The quality of picture and sound transmission
has also been enhanced. Websites now have streaming video on the Internet and
one can access them even on mobile phones and tablet PCs. Households have been
converted into mini-theatres and gaming arcades with the help of flatscreen TV
sets with Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and plasma screens of varying sizes. But
this fast growth is far from being uniform. Many developing countries in Africa
and Asia do not have their own domestic satellites, transmission centers and
number of receiving sets. Several efforts have been initiated by world
organisations like the UNDP, the UNESCO and the United Nations to narrow this
gap in technology hardware between the developed and developing countries.
1.5.1 Television in India
Television in India began when the Delhi Television Center
came into existence on September 15, 1959. In the beginning this center used to
beam 20 minutes programme(s) twice a week. To make the experiment
successful, 180 ‘teleclubs’ were formed where TV sets provided by UNESCO were
put up. In 1961, a survey conducted by UNESCO concluded that ‘some impact’ was
made by teleclubs’ programmes. In addition to social education programs
– the very basis of setting up the TV center in the capital, the center
introduced information and entertainment programmes from August 1965. A TV production studio
was also set up with the help of the Federal Republic of Germany.
With the addition of news, information and entertainment
programs, the service was extended to three hours by 1970; aside from this, two
weekly programs of 20 minutes duration each for ‘teleclubs’ were already
running. Another program called ‘Krishi Darshan’ for farmers in 80 villages was
also added. Meanwhile, the range of transmitter was extended to 60 k.m. and the
farmers of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh could easily pick it up.
India during that year imported 22000 TV sets but by
mid-seventies the number of television sets being manufactured in India soon
crossed the 100,000
mark. In view of Indira Gandhi government’s popularity and demands from the
advertising industry, television manufacturers and consumers in Indian cities,
it was decided to expand the medium nationwide. The number of TV sets in Delhi
and neighbouring states amounted to 200,000 sets. Such was the encouragement
that the Bombay Center was opened in 1972 and a year later, TV centers became
functional in Srinagar, Amritsar and Pune though only as relay centers. A
couple of years later Kolkata (then Calcutta), Chennai (then Madras) and
Lucknow centers became operational. January 1, 1976, marked the beginning of
‘commercials’ being telecast at all these centers.
Another milestone was achieved the same year when television
was separated from All India Radio. The ministry of I & B recognised
television as an independent media unit and named it ‘Doordarshan’. This
decision taken by the ministry raised hope for improvement in the quality of
the content and duration of the programs. The very next year saw terrestrial
transmitters being set up in Jaipur, Hyderabad, Raipur, Gulbarga, Sambhalpur
and Muzaffarpur. This extended television coverage to a population of more than
10 crores. It was during this year that political parties shared equal radio
and TV time with the ruling party for their election campaigns – a unique and
unparalleled decision in the history of Indian broadcasting.
Satellite Instructional Television
Experiment (SITE)
Launched as an experimental satellite communications project
in 1975, the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was aimed at
providing informational television programmes to rural India. NASA and the
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) jointly designed the project. The
experiment had a two pronged strategy - first to educate the poor on various
issues via satellite broadcasting, and secondly to help India gain technical
experience in the field of satellite communications. The experiment covered
2400 villages in six states of Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra
Pradesh and Karnataka. The experiment ran for one year from 1 August 1975 to 31
July 1976. While All India Radio produced the television programmes, NASA
stationed the ATS-6 satellite above India for the duration of the project
broadcast. Various international agencies such as the UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF,
ITUFord Aerospace were major players in supporting the project while General
Electric, Hughes Aircraft, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and so
on, were the minor players. The experiment was successful because it played a
major role in helping India develop its own satellite program known as INSAT.
It also made clear that India could use advanced technology to fulfill the
socio-economic needs of the country. SITE was followed by similar experiments
in various countries, which showed the important role that satellite TV could
play in providing education.
The INSAT
series of domestic communication satellites and microwave cable networks
provided India the infrastructure for a national satellite hook-up. With
India’s hosting the Asian Games in 1982, the rapid expansion of television
networks got a further boost. During the middle of 1980s, New Delhi and Mumbai
(then Bombay) witnessed the introduction of a second channel which rapidly went
to other metros as well. It was called DD-1.
After the Asian Games were over, the television industry in
India saw the entry of film directors and producers. Progressive directors like
Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, Shyam Benegal and Basu Chatterjee, who
specialised in directing low budget films, found a good expression for
themselves in television. Nihalani came out with Tamas, a serial on India’s partition, Saeed Mirza produced a
socio-political show called Nukkad,
while Basu Chatterjee’s Rajani made a
mark on the small screen. Benegal, however, failed to attract viewers to
his Sunday morning production known as Bharat
ek khoj which was inspired by Jawaharlal Nehru’s book Discovery of India.
In the late 1980s, what took Indian television by storm was
the entry of bigwigs of commercial cinema into the television industry. Noted
filmmaker Ramanand Sagar made Ramayana while
another colleague B.R. Chopra produced Mahabharata.
Both of them were Sunday morning serials, and when they were telecast, it was
said that there used to be a curfew like atmosphere in most of India. After
their success, soon political satires like Kakkaji
Kahin and episodes of Malgudi Days
followed suit.
Rapid Strides in Telecast Technology
Telecast technology has undergone a sea change through all
these decades. Initially, the technology employed was terrestrial television
where the range of the transmitter used to be limited, say only about 50
kilometers. Thus, the signals reached Delhi and some of its neighboring states
like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan only. Delhi and its local studio used
to telecast programmes to Mumbai and other places and viewers of these cities
had no option but to remain content with whatever they got. What was a
revolutionary change was the arrival of cable TV in the early 1990s.
Satellite based TV transmission in India took almost one and
a half decades to come into existence.
Though it turned out to be successful during its trial period as part of
SITE, (cut off either ‘though’ or ‘but’) it took
off only in the early nineties when STAR (Satellite Television Asia Region) TV
arrived from Hong Kong. With this development, national and international
channels and programmes in different Indian languages became accessible to
Indian viewers throughout the country. But STAR alone was not the solution to
the problems of Indian television. For almost 50 per cent of TV households in
the country, satellite transmission was simply unaffordable. Therefore, it was
imperative that satellite transmission became connected to terrestrial cable.
When this occurred, the monopoly that Doordarshan used to exercise
automatically ended. As did the monopoly of Hindi and English TV programmes.
Southern channels like Asianet, Eenadu TV (ETV) and Sun TV and others paved the
way for the growth of television in South India and began to get higher ratings
and advertising revenues as compared to English and Hindi channels.
In 2003, Doordarshan
launched the Direct-to-Home (DTH) deliver mode. In this mode, it became
mandatory to have a set-top box (STB) to receive signals direct from
communication satellites. This move set the viewer’s free from the clutches of
cable operators, although it was an additional investment and many thought it
was expensive as well. It also inspired channels like Zee TV and Star TV to
have their own DTH service – Dish TV and Tata Sky respectively. Today, a
majority of viewers in the major cities subscribe to either of the two
services.
Activity 1
Switch on your TV set and make a
list of all news channels that are available in your area. Classify the news
channels according to language.
Self-Assessment Questions
3. Fill in the blanks using
appropriate words.
(a)
In 1930, two respective TV stations were set up – the
National Broadcasting Station (NBC) in New York and the _______ in London.
(b)
Television in India began when the _____________ came
into existence on September 15, 1959.
(c)
Launched as an experimental satellite communications
project in 1975, ____________ was aimed at providing informational television
programmes to rural India.
(d)
The ___________ series of domestic communication
satellites and microwave cable networks provided India the infrastructure for a
national satellite hook-up.
1.6 Television Genres
The content of television programmes varies. Broadly
speaking, it can be classified into three types: (a) News related programmes
(b) entertainment related programmes and (c) Religious programmes. We shall
discuss these genres one by one.
1.6.1 News related programmes
Television News
Television news forms the most important content unit for
the students of journalism and mass communication. However, it is also the most
superficial medium as far as news is concerned as compared to print media, or,
for that matter, radio.For any news, television
has to show pictures (visuals in TV parlance) and running up visuals takes
time. This does not allow for a thorough investigation or even adequate
background information. Besides, presentation of interesting or significant
news is absolutely out of question for television because a camera has its own
limitations and cannot be omnipresent.
Most of the things that can
be covered by a TV camera are sports, inaugurations, parades, signing of
treaties and memoranda of understandings (MOU), arrivals and departures of VIPs
and ceremonial events like swearing-in ceremonies and coronations. Even if
these events are telecast live, there is no hard news content in them. Besides,
their contribution to daily dose of news is very small in terms of percentage.
In TV parlance, any event that is covered is called a ‘package’ and a daily
newscast comprises of some of these packages put together by a news
reader.
News Bulletins and Current Affairs
The popular news programmes on the over eighty channels of
Indian Television comprise of news bulletins and panel discussions on public
affairs. Like most of the programmes on the national network, these are either
in English or Hindi. These programmes make use of charts, diagrams, maps, film
clips, slides and other visual material.
Crime Based Programmes
Also known as ‘crime specials’, crime based programmes have
now become inseparable with the dawning of 24 hours news channels. Since crime
‘sells’, there is hardly any channel these days which does not have its own
flagship crime show. In most of these programmes, a real life crime story is
reconstructed and dramatised and presented along with eyewitness accounts,
music and a breathless and dramatic narrative. Rape, murder, theft, burglary
and forgery make excellent crime stories and get a lot of television attention.
Sansani, Red Alert, Crime city, Dial 100, Jurm and Wardaat are some
of the crime based programmes on news channels.
Talk Shows
Talk shows can be interviews,
discussions and panel discussions. There may also be participation of the
audience in these shows. Interviews can be of various types. For example, in
shows like Karan Thapar’s The Devil’s
Advocate and Shekhar Gupta’s Walk the
Talk, interviews are personality interviews where the focus is on probing
well-known personalities. On the other hand, programmes like In Conversation and Vibrations deal with literary figures. We the People and The Big
Fight are content interviews in which the message is of prime importance
rather than personalities. Then there are group interviews like press
conference in which a group of newspersons shoot questions at those who are
holding the press conference.
1.6.2 Entertainment Related Programmes
Soap Operas
A soap opera is also known as a TV serial. This genre of TV
programmes came into existence in the mid-1980s. Prior to this, Hindi feature
films and film based programmes dominated Indian television almost for a
decade.
Hum Log was
India’s first indigenous soap opera. 156 episodes of the show were telecast
twice a week from July 7, 1984 to December 17, 1985. Hum Log depicted the ups and the downs in the life of a North
Indian lower middle class joint family with parallel stories which tackled the
problems of smuggling, political corruption and underworld activities. The show
became quite popular as the Indian lower middle class identified itself with
protagonists in the show. Its popularity prompted the production of many
indigenous serials in quick succession. Shows like Khandaan and Buniyaad and
Ye Jo Hai Zindagi and many others
were televised and became successive hits. By the end of 1987, forty serials
had been produced with two being screened every evening.
With the advent of
cable and satellite channels during the beginning of 1990s, the number of soap
operas went up on Indian television. With Ekta Kapoor’s TV production venture
Balaji Telefilms, a new trend in the soap genre was introduced; these serials
later came to be known as K-serials. The pioneer of the K-serials was Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. It
turned out to be longest running soap on Indian television. It had over a
thousand episodes that ran for 7.5 years. Other soaps like Kahani Ghar Ghar ki and Kasauti
Zindagi Ki followed suit. In fact, Balaji Telefilms became a soap factory
and Ekta Kapoor became to be known as a soap queen.
Buoyed by the success of K-serials, a number
of soaps of different production houses also began to be telecast. Soaps like
Balika Vadhu are still popular with the masses.
Children’s Programmes
Programmes specially made for children at certain special
times are called children’s programmes. A children’s show could either be on
educational items, ‘live’ stories and plays, puppet-shows, or cartoons. Some
quiz shows are also included in children’s programming. There are also some
television channels like POGO, Hungamma, Disney and Cartoon Network (CN) that
are targeted at children.
Reality TV
In the late 1990s, there was a
short span where television was dominated by religious programs with the advent
of private TV channels. However, in the beginning of the 21st century, what
dominated the small screen were game shows, quiz and reality shows. During the
period, Star TV’s Kaun Banega Crorepati,
which was a copy of an American show called Who
wants to be a
Millionaire,
became quite popular. Sony’s search of an Indian Idol dominated the competition
during 2004 and 2005. Roadies and Splitsvilla – two shows on MTV - caught
the fancy of the young crowd but what really stole the show was the T20 matches
of the BCCI’s Indian Premier League (IPL) in mid-2008. All the matches were
telecast live at prime time on SET-Max.
Other TV Genres
The youngsters of
India, of late, have become a separate segment of Indian Television viewers and
the channels have not been lagging behind this potential source of revenue.
Many youngsters do jobs and their interest in lifestyle is proverbial. This is
the reason that there are many dedicated lifestyle channels. NDTV in 2007
launched NDTV Good Times. Then came a few other like Zee Trends, Fashion TV and
TLC. These channels have programmes on fashion shows, latest fashion trends and
latest gadgets in the market. And needless to say, the survival of these
channels is an indication that they are doing good business.
The Food and travel
are equal rage as genres on Indian television. NDTV Good Times runs shows on
food as well as travel. A new channel dedicated to food was launched in 2011
with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor as its part owner. Besides, many regional
channels also run shows on food. Some of these shows are quite popular.
Travel shows are
not lagging behind as far as populrity among the public at large is concerned.
The travel shows of National Geographic are quite popular and have considerable
viewership.
1.6.3 Religious Programmes
Also known as spiritual programmes, religious programmes are
a popular genre in India. A number of religious channels have, in recent years,
attracted millions of faithful, each to his own religion. Some of the religious
channels in India include Ashirwad,
Aastha, God, Jagran, Jesus calls, Sanskar, Power Vision, TCTV (Tamil Christian
TV), Velugu TV Newtork and QTV.
These channels contain programs on religious discourses, bhajans, Gurbani,
Ayurved, Yoga, Astrological forecasts, vastu and religious/mythological movies.
This is quite a short section.
1.6.4 Emerging Trends
Today, almost every newspaper publisher in India owns at
least one television channel. For instance, India’s largest chain of newspapers
The Bennet Coleman & Company Limited, also known as the Times of India
group has a news channel Times Now
and a lifestyle channel called Zoom. The
publishers of India Today Living Media group own three channels – Headlines Today, Aaj Tak and Delhi Aaj Tak.
Other major
players in the news media include the Star network and the Zee network, both of
which run news, business news and entertainment channels. Eenadu, Sun, Sahara
and Asianet are the other Indian language networks that include news channels
and sports channels in their hands. In total, there are over eighty news
channels in India including the public service Doordarshan. All of them are
commercial in nature as their primary source of revenue is advertising. Only a
few of them are pay or subscription channels. It has been observed that slowly
the TV industry is going the newspaper way in terms of a similar revenue model.
Local newspapers or local editions of national or regional newspapers have
proved to be successful across the country in winning over advertisers and
readers, according to a study of localisation of Hindi newspapers.
It was probably the boom in the local retail market that
prompted several TV channels to launch city-centric channels in Delhi, Mumbai,
Chennai and Kolkata. Aaj Tak and Sahara Samay NCR started the trend in New
Delhi; NDTV’s Metro station and INX followed suit. Sahara Samay has six
city-specific channels, one each in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh,
Bihar/Jharkhand and Mumbai. NDTV and other networks have also announced the
launch of city-specific general entertainment channels in other Indian cities.
Activity 2
Conduct a survey to find out
the most popular soap operas, news programs and reality tv shows in your neighborhood.
Write an essay commenting on the reasons for their popularity.
Self-Assessment Questions
4. Fill in the blanks using appropriate
words.
(a) _________
news forms the most important content unit for the students of journalism and
mass communication.
(b) __________
was India’s first indigenous soap opera.
(c) With
Ekta Kapoor’s TV production venture _____________, a new trend in the soap
genre was introduced.
(d) In
the beginning of the 21st century, what dominated the small screen in India
were game shows, quiz and _________ shows.
1.7 Summary
Let us recapitulate the important
concepts discussed in this unit:
• A
film is a continuous or joined strip of exposed acetate based celluloid, with a
unit length of one reel or 1000 feet, normally running for a duration of ten
minutes.
• In
terms of mass communication, a film requires a medium (camera) for its
configuration, another medium (projector) for decoding the message (images)
locked in it, another medium (screen) for recovering the message, and yet
another medium (speakers) for regenerating its sound content.
• A
videotape is the recording of images and sounds on to a magnetic tape as
opposed to film stock used in filmmaking.
• As
a technology, Television has made a huge difference to the manner of conveying
ideas to people. This has been proved time and again by the innovations made in
the field of TV advertising with the help of rapidly developing multimedia
techniques during the last two decades.
• The
most important feature of television is its ability to mingle ideas with
powerful drama right into the intimate environment of millions of homes.
• In
1920, experiments began in the field of television broadcasting. The United
States and some European countries took the lead in these exercises.
• In
1930, two respective TV stations were set up – the National Broadcasting
Station (NBC) in New York and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in
London. Germany and France too did not lag behind in setting up television
stations.
• The
launch of the satellite Early Bird
turned out to be a milestone in the field of satellite communication. Moreover,
in 1965, Intelsat, and in 1971, Intersputnik, came into existence. The progress
of television has been phenomenal since that time.
• The
video cassette, the Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), Closed Circuit TV (CCTV),
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Direct to Home (DTH), High Definition
Television (HDTV), and so on, have completely altered the path of televisions
development in new and unexpected ways.
• Television
in India began when the Delhi Television Center came into existence on
September 15, 1959.
• Launched
as an experimental satellite communications project in 1975, the Satellite
Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was aimed at providing informational
television programmes to rural India.
• The
INSAT series of domestic communication satellites and microwave cable networks
provided India the infrastructure for a national satellite hook-up.
• The
content of television programmes varies. Broadly speaking, it can be classified
into three types: (a) News related programmes (b) entertainment related
programmes and (c) Religious programmes.
• Hum Log was India’s first indigenous
soap opera. 156 episodes of the show were telecast twice a week from July 7,
1984 to December 17, 1985.
• In
the late 1990s, there was a short span where television was dominated by
religious programs with the advent of private TV channels. However, in the
beginning of the 21st century, what dominated the small screen were game shows,
quiz and reality shows.
1.8 Glossary
• Celluloid: a transparent flammable
plastic made in sheets from camphor and nitrocellulose, formerly used for
cinematographic film
• Acetate: a salt or ester of acetic
acid, containing the anion CH3COO− or the group — OOCCH3. It is used
to make textile fibres or plastic.
• Static: lacking in movement, action, or
change, especially in an undesirable or uninteresting way.
• Retina: a layer at the back of the
eyeball that contains cells sensitive to light, which trigger nerve impulses
that pass via the optic nerve to the brain, where a visual image is formed.
• Homogenization: the act of making
something homogeneous or uniform in composition. Heterogeneous: diverse in character or
content.
• Terrestrial television: Terrestrial television is a type of television
broadcasting which does not involve either satellite transmission or cables.
Instead, transmission is done with radio waves, and antennas or television
antenna aerials are used for reception.
1.9 Terminal Questions
1.
What is the basic difference between a film and a video
tape? Describe how static images appear to be moving on the screen.
2.
How has television impacted the lives of people in
India? Can you find some examples in real life?
3.
What is the contribution of members of the film
industry to Indian television? Give some examples.
4.
Write a short note on SITE and reality TV.
5.
Describe the different genres of television.
6.
Telecast technology has undergone a sea change through
all these decades. Discuss.
1.10. Answers
Answers to
Self-Assessment Questions
1.
(a) film; (b) projectors; (c) acetate; (d) videotape.
2.
(a) printing; (b) Joseph Levitt; (c) information; (d)
heterogeneous.
3.
(a) British Broadcasting Corporation; (b) Delhi
Television Center; (c) the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment; (d)
INSAT.
4.
(a) Television; (b) Hum Log; (c) Balaji Telefilms; (d)
reality.
Answers to Terminal Questions
1.
Refer to Sections 1.2 and 1.3
2.
Refer to Section 1.4
3.
Refer to Section 1.5.1
4.
Refer to Section 1.5.1
5.
Refer to Section 1.6
6.
Refer to Section 1.5.1
1.11 Further Reading
1.
Utterback Andrew. Studio
Television Production and Directing. London: Taylor & Francis, 2007.
2.
Donald R. Ralph and Riley Maynard. Fundamentals of Television Production. Noida: Pearson Education,
2007.
3.
Zettl Herbert. Television
Production Handbook. New Delhi: Cengage Learning India, 2011.
4.
Mehta Nalin. Television
in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change. London: Routledge,
2008.
5.
Millerson Gerald and Jim Owens. Television Production. London: Taylor & Francis, 2012.
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