Basically whomever it took it to its next technical step. The important thing when we are talking about tv is it the mechanical means of conveying information or is it the thing that is used that is it the content on the tv itself. I look at the question very often when i teach tv history, future tv and such which is ive come to defined television as debt which we see on the instrument which traditionally we have called television or whatever content is created that we view on any means whatsoever but it is still thought of as primarily, video primarily television communication. So we are still in the midst of inventing television as we speak. What began the discovery of the instrument in which we watch television . There are two forms of television, the original experiment where Experimental Television was the mechanical system and so the mechanical system that goes back to baird and he had a wonderful moment which he was showing his puppet, bill in a public demonstration and there was this magic of images across the screen and you could see moving images where in the same room and the point about television is it is miraculous still and that was what pushed people to constantly search for what is the best way to present this medium because it is doing what generations, thousands of years ago would have dreamt that only the gods could do to be in one place and see whats going on in another place as it happens. So first mechanical experiments, we laugh at them now, theres videos floating around about the 24 frames of second but that was television and the most important part was it was different from what proceeded it. When did it start to take off in the snus. In the u. S. It also had thoughts and starts because of financial and world events basically we had our first Experimental Television experimental broadcast in late 1920s but then the Great Depression came by and you start to regroup after that. Announced the beginning of a new era. He was not a modest man and he talked about this was so important in the history of communication and, of course, i dont know if its right, nobody knew exactly what it would turn into. They knew what they wanted it to turn into, they wanted it to be a big money maker as radio had been. One of the proponents of exploiting radio, radio patents and such but it wasnt until post world war ii, you are talking about late 1940s in which it finally began totake off, the character that introduced television to so many other to people throughout the country, aw. Throughout the country. Well, when we are talking about what we mean by television, right now what we mean is anything you could see anywhere in the country, back in the early days it was whatever stations were connected to the coast to coast cable, except it wasnt coast to coast yet. It was region, to region, to region. It wasnt until early 1950s that we actually had all the television stations connected so they could show everything at the same time. Theres television taking off. The early 1950s except there were technical issues that kept some markets from truly taking off the fec, communication commission, sorted out some technical details. It wasnt until the mid50s or so that it truly starts to take off. You go from 100 stations at the beginning of the 50s and 500 stations at the end of the 50s, 20 of the country being connected, capable of seeing tv to 90 of the country. Tv households. By the early 1960s, television had taken off. Oh so so the federal commission become the radio commission, had the fcc in early days, was it a promoter of television . It was, one of the funny things about how the government viewed a television is that it was still considered part of the radio bandwidth. When you look at it its radio wave devoted to images and so they were a proponent of it because that was an era in which people said lets try this, oh, we can to it. Automobiles, airplanes, sure. We can do voices through the air, pictures, no problem. Again, it took a while for the pictures to get out there but the fecc had rules which they set up to govern radio, the companies, most of the companies behind television were the companies behind radio and so they looked at this as the opportunity for making more money and also having a different kind of communication. I keep talking about money and profit but there was still that sense of you cant lose sight of this, sense of excitement, look what we can do and that was one of the driving forces between through the early days of television into blossoming in the 50s and full flower in the 1950s, we can do this, we can do this n. The area of news, the sense that famously on his first see it now program, a news person in the radio specially during second wolfed war. He had had don hewitt call up a camera on the west coast and the east coast new york and had the two images side by side on monitoring which he was then showing on his program, that was the first time you could do that, you could see both ends of the country at the same time live and so this is the wonderful tool that we could use and murrow in particular went to the gosh aspect in we can tell pretty compelling stories, one of murrows early news specials was a christmas in korea. It was giving people a sense of what the korean war was like, not on whats some grand scale with soldiers, with the people, what is it like to be in that country. Here is the film that we are bringing back to you. Fully edited, commented on, et cetera, this gives you a sense of what its like, halfway around the world. This is what we are talking about when we are in the korean war, a tv series mash in a fictional venue, Fourth Season or, so they shot it in black and white and did interviews and discussions and just off the cuff comments improv and the way to tell a bigger story in your own living room. That is still the amazing part of television and murrow didnt stop can anecdotes like that. He took on real issues of substance, most famously the senator mccarthy programs and that gives you and i lust ration of how television had a sense that the network, the people behind the broadcast had extense of commitment to presenting news, presenting Public Affairs, murrow started with the see it now, that was in prime time for a couple of years and it was a weekly show which meant like the 60 minutes decades later, if there was an issue that he raised and someone said, well, we would like to respond, fine, come on the show next week. We can do that. We can have this ongoing dialogue about the issues of our time through television and he was particularly effective on taking on senator mccarthy because the technique he used was the senators own words, he said this, theres the fact, hebts this, theres a fact. It just laid it out one item after the other. Television could that that even more effectively than radio because television showed you the person. This is something in the back of your heads, it must be true, im seeing the person speak right in front of me, he said that, but thats not right. And one more murrow because i think he absolutely deserves his spot in terms of defining television in news and Public Affairs vehicle and thats one of his last productions for cbs before he left the company and retired and this was thanksgiving day, talk about good timing and it was all about migrant workers, it was all about people who picked the bounty of america and are paid a piddling and he took his time telling that story, it was an hour special and i watched it recently and the first five minutes like, what is this, its very cleverly set up so at the time there was talk about exploring the nations of africa and you would have images of look at those poor people, no, this is here, this is here in the u. S. And this is what we are doing and then murrow sat down with government officials, talked them through, again same technique, they might say one thing, okay, they make this grand generalization, here is the reality for these people. And you watched Something Like that and its pretty heavy duty, but its what television allowed itself to be a show case for. We have this commitment to serve the Public Interest which gets us back to the ffcc. Has news always or has it been required on Network Broadcast . One of the things thats very important to remember is that we are talking about the fcc setting rules for the broadcast stations and the broadcast stations have obligations that broad i will go under the Public Interest, cons vines, convenience, necessity. What does that mean, whatever its appropriate to mean which means theres certain benchmarks and among bench marks were covering items of community interests, news, Public Affairs, also education, children, religion, et cetera. You are not pay forking the paying for the tradeoff. We are licensing it. We are going to review your performance every couple of years, how well we judge you, how well did you serve the community, how well did you deliver. You can deliver entertainment and have great profit. Thats fine, how did you perform public service. The speech may 1961. Exactly. He has said many times since that the wrong two words were focused on, vast, he said that only once. It should have been public service. That was the title of the speech. You put a couple of perhaps from that speech in your book. Yes. He really lays it out. Yes, that was incredibly daring of him and departure from him, makes him about the only fcc commissioner in the history of the commission that anybody would even know by name and he did that for a couple of reasons. Im going tell you what youre wrong, first im going the tell you what youre doing right. He goes through their profits for the last couple of years and so, youre not doing badly. We are in recessionary times and youre doing quite well on your return. Your in fine financial shape. Now, lets talk about the commitment side, lets talk about the public side, lets talk about what youre offering the public to generate all that cash and he started just lambasting them for the type of formula programs, a lot of violence but mostly mindlessness. And in a strange sort of way, thats the formula for television which is, look, weve got all of this time to fill, what are we trying to do is trying to sell commercials and so we are selling commercials, we need something on the air, the most important thing is that its on the air, not that its the best we could possibly do, if it is its coincidental and thats great, we need something there that proves popular with the public so we can turn around and pay for everything that we are doing and specially in those days, i mean, news was regarded as pretty much not necessarily a loss leader but they werent making their profits from news so the profits of Something Like the beverly hill billies or action and thats whats going to pay for the coverage and all and when the fcc says through newton mino, the rules have always been there. If he wasnt making up anything new, im going to hold you to that, im going to hold your feet to the fire, i want you to do better. Who says they cant, who in this room says that they cant do better . I challenge you, they were kind of stunned by that because no one had ever talked to them that way and they were kind of in a bind too because this was like in may and they were set to schedule for the next season so they kind of quickly plugged in some more Public Affairs and such, all right, lets weather our way through this and maybe with coincidence, maybe it was the luck of the gods, what have you, there are actually good shows, the Dick Van Dyke show, that was a good season for that. There were some others, good medical shows, this may not seem like a big deal now, but they are putting prime time movies and before you could see movies is going to theaters and seeing ancient movies and show you some of the best movies that we were able to get license for and present. It was a declaration, though that you can do better and even the yeah, you know, we probably can do better and they did. Over the 60s they did. What was the impact of the cable . Cable introduced a new way of regarding television. Now, remember i mentioned the fcc has rules for over the air broadcasters. Now cable started as simply a way of bringing over the air stations to regions that for usually for geographical challenges couldnt receive the signal and so they piped in via cable these stations, but then they started adding a original to cable channels and those werent subject to the same rules as in abc, cbs, nbc, basically over the air individual stations and so they had a little bit more flexibility, they could be more explicit, they could be they could either have no commercials because they were charging a fee or a lot of commercials, it sort of didnt matter because the rules that applied to the broadcasters didnt apply to the cable channels. Why not . Thats just the way they argued successfully frankly, the cable folks lobbied successful that they were differently. Its not anybody can pick us up. You have to make the conscious decision to pay for this service. Its different and we are not using the public air waves in the same way but once that was established, more and more people embraced cable as the way that they would receive television, both over the air and the original the cable channels and once maybe 90s is pretty much is when you have it truly kicking off and in the 90s it truly kicks off and you have people saying we have so many choices now and in this sense the general public was a head of the business communicators in that they made no distinction between what originated versus cable origination, what they knew is that everything that came through cable wire which included broadcast stations but they are all the same. Channel 7 is no different from channel 77, they are all choices that you can have out there. Once that was injected in the system, that raised the stakes for everyone in the spectrum. Lets bring it to today, you say that everything is in play today . Everything is in play starting with the fcc sort of regiggerring the way they treat the spectrum without getting into the complications of the spectrum auction or reverse auction, essentially, the stuff that you have been getting for free, lets repack that, lets change the allocation on the on the spectrum and lets collect fees from the part of the spectrum that youre no longer using or other forms of communication, cell phone communication and all. Then you have channels which whorg neat originate online and what you have in the modern Communication System is people who can pick and choose what they want to see, when they want to see it adding video recording to it and they are treating it less like the mass medium and more like personalized channels that can enter their lives at any time. I was thinking of cspan being part of this recently, very, very recently with periscope, essentially allows anyone to be your own tv channel online. There was a point which the house of representatives turned off cameras and someone said which we do not control. Which you do not control. Guess what, im on periscopi, you want it. I know that cspan picked up the feed and continued the contentious gavel to a close about what was going on in the chambers, i think that in a nutshell shows where we are now that is on a business side everything that you thought was going to be the status quo is a little bit different from the consumer side so many decisions, choice that is you have. One of the things i look at when watching tv, look at the players, look at the ownership, once upon a time there were three or four major networks, major corporations, there are more than that that but not that many more. Theres still a limited number of folks who are gate keepers to what we share. So the obligation almost goes full circle to a bully on the part of the fcc which says, you do have an obligation to do the best help to help the communicators, to help the audiences understand whats going on in this complex world. Theres you, you ladies and gentlemen, you the gatekeepers, you have the control over how we see ourselves, how we see the world. Hes also a television curator at the broadcast communications in chicago. How did you get interested . I was looking at notes i took as a kid on a particular series, it was called the prisoner and that was partially in preparation for writing about the tv series, patrick was creator of it and im looking at the notes i wrote as a kid and said, these are pretty good. I was already making connections with program flow and script flow and all and for the watching tv book, its all about context. Its not just about news, its not just about entertainment programs, its not just about the business, its not just about some trivia, its all of that wooven into a story. In fact, we thought it was an obvious way to tell a story, why isnt anybody doing it . We quickly found out why, because its hard. You have to have so Much Research on your table to start creating one paragraph to explain something and then what youre doing is youre boiling it down from this big to this big and then understandable and entertaining way. Ive always loved the fact that you can see the world in your living room, in your bedroom and we can share exciting moments. Everyone has their favorites. The moon landing would be the best example of wow, i mean, wow. Look at that and im just sitting here and more recently chicago cubs win the world series, wow, im not there but im there because im tuned in through television. Who is Harry Castleman . Hes my coworker, we met at Northwest University and he and i were actually the beatles experts at our College Radio station and as one of our send offs to the station we did a 17hour, 46minute live history of the beatles and it showed how well we could Work Together and we just had a nice giveandtake repartee, we havent been in the same city for years. I have this idea, i have to entertain my coauthor and if it doesnt make his cut, its not good enough. So i think we benefit from having to one up each other throughout. Well, unfortunately we barely scratched the surface of this 50page book, history of television. Our guest walter pedrazik coauthor. This is book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers, here is our prime time lineup, tonight starting at 6 45 eastern david provides history of civil wars around the world. Then at 7 45 p. M. How everyday items and occurrences can help explain physics. On book tvs afterwords programs at 9 00 p. M. Eastern tracy martin, parents of the late Trayvon Martin remember their sons life and death. At 10 00 his or historians describe john adams fears of inf