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1936 Perspective on Television

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the talkies dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes "The New Yorker is running an article from their archives from 1936. In it, E.B.White (author of Charlotte's Web) discusses a demonstration he attended of the current state of television, which didn't impress him at all."

3 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. The web didn't impress me by Elbereth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The web didn't impress me much when I saw a demonstration of it in a computer lab. My friend said, "Hey, Matt, check this out! You can throw a snowball at these scientists when you click on this link!"

    I'm waiting for special internet keyboards that can send a shock to people to say something stupid. Now that would be cool.

  2. Storytelling - a dying art? by Darth+Paul · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is a little off topic, but the mention of Charlotte's Web, and all the posts here saying "TV is still crap, struck a chord with me ...

    I've recently gotten into anime and I'm really, really loving it. I've never been an avid TV watcher but lately I've been doing several hours of anime a day. I ask myself what it is I love about anime and it's not the visuals or the cuteness or the different-ness, it's the simple fact that they have stories. A series of 26 episodes is about 8 hours of viewing, and in that time you can pack in a seriously good story and excellent character development. Good stories are just not found in (my local) australian tv anymore.

    Here's the state of TV in Australia, I don't think it's majorly different to america apart from the fact that cable has relatively low penetration here. Most of the prime time shows are:

    • Socalled reality shows, big brother, survivor, popstarts. Mush.
    • "Edutainment" shows, like how to build a coffee table, or travel shows, cooking and gardening. If I come home and collapse and turn on the box, I'll watch 'em because they're there, but I won't make a point of coming back next week.
    • And the soaps, often imported from america. Often, there is no story in these - usually it's just a bunch of people living every day lives, cracking a few jokes. No story to speak of (apart from who's going out with who this episode?)... a little character development but not much reason to tune in regularly. I can watch an episode, skip a few weeks, and not miss anything significant.

    There are no regular shows which tell a decent story!Star Trek is probably comes closest. DS9 and Voyager are gone, just a single episode of Enterprise weekly, late on wednesday nights. I haven't been watching much though. DS9 and Voyager particularly suffered overly from the hit-the-reset-button-at-the-end-of-every-episode syndrome. Despite, they have far more continuity and return appeal (for me) than most other shows around.

    So, where have all the decent stories gone? All this hurrah about "Spiderman rocks because everybody relates to it!" is a crock to me. The recent blockbusters (Ep2, Spiderman, LOTR) have been successes because they are uncommon good stories told well. Visuals and action and romance put together do not make a good show. It's the story which captures your imagination and takes you away for a few hours.

    Back to the anime, episodes often finish on a cliffhanger note, and I'm excited in the few seconds it takes to change directories and load up the next divx. Can you imagine what it must be like to see this episode and have to wait a whole week to see it resolved? GUARANTEED VIEWERS.

    This is related to how Harry Potter is lauded as making it "cool for kids to read again". I hope Hogwart's is as real to today's kids as Kirrin Cottage (don't laugh!) was to me as a kid...

    Good storytellers have always been hard to find but unfortunately it seems the TV networks have given up the search in favour of DIY handymen.

  3. Underwhelming technology by saphena · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At the start of the Afghanistan campaign recently I watched a live broadcast by the BBC correspondent John Simpson perched somewhere up a mountain in Afghanistan who was using a satellite video link.

    The video was a bit jumpy and flaky and I was initially critical of the quality and thought "why can't the BBC do better?".

    A little while later, however, I suddenly realised the significance of what I was seeing:-

    Here we have a man, perched on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, in a country with no electricity and being bombed by an overwhelming force, actually making a live broadcast with sound and colour video! I'm sitting in the comfort of my living room witnessing events as they happen several thousand miles away.

    Isn't that truly amazing? It's easy to criticize the defects of new technology. Sometimes it needs a real leap of imagination to spot the virtues.