Made In America - Bill Bryson [149]
In 1928 Baird made the first transatlantic broadcast from a studio near London to one in Hartsdale, New York, and the following year the cumbersomely named W2XCW in Schenectady, New York, became the country’s first ‘regularly operating television station’, though in fact its telecasts consisted of three thirty-minute programmes a week – usually just shots of an unidentified head talking, laughing or smoking – and of course there was almost no one to watch them. By the end of 1929 there were twenty-six stations in America, though only those that were supported by big corporations, such as W2XBS in New York (which evolved into WNBC), were destined to survive through the 1930s. There was no great impetus to promote the industry in America because of the lack of a market during the Great Depression and the government’s refusal to allow commercials until 1941.
Many people got their first glimpse of television at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The New York Times, with its now standard lack of prescience, forecast that it would never be a serious competitor for radio because ‘people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it’.34
The year 1939 also saw the first television sets go on sale to the public, but still there wasn’t much to watch (unlike Britain where the BBC was celebrating its tenth anniversary). During the war years, America had just nine television stations in five cities – New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Schenectady – and just 7,000 sets on which to watch the meagre programming available. In the autumn of 1944, for instance, on Wednesday and Saturday nights there was no television at all in America. On Thursdays only CBS was on the air, with fifteen minutes of news followed by an hour of local programming where available and a half-hour show called Missus Goes A Shopping. On Sundays the American viewer could watch DuMont Labs’ Thrills and Chills followed by Irwin Shane’s Television Workshop, or nothing.35
With the end of the war, American TV was unleashed at last. By 1947, the number of television sets in American homes had soared to 170,000. In that same year a programme called Puppet Television Theater made its début. A year later it was renamed Howdy Doody, and television had its first hit.
As late as 1949, radio was still generating profits of over $50 million, while TV was making losses of $25 million.36 But as the 1950s opened, television became a kind of national mania. As early as 1951, advertisers were cashing in on the craze. McGregor Sportswear took a full-page ad in Life to unveil its new sportswear range for go-ahead guys, ‘Videos’, which featured such televisually appropriate fare as the reversible ‘Visa-Versa Jacket’, ‘the Host Tri-Threat Jacket,’ the ‘Durosheen Host Casual Jacket’ and matching ‘Durosheen Host Lounge Slacks’, all expressly designed for wear in front of the TV. Soon people everywhere were buying folding tray-tables so they could eat their ‘TV Dinners’ while glued to the box. America was well on its way to becoming a nation of couch potatoes, though that expression would not of course be used for many years. (Its first appearance has been traced to the unlikely forum of American Banker magazine of 30 December 1980, but the context suggests that it was already current, at least in California.)37
By 1952, the number of sets had soared to 18 million, 105 times as many as there had been just five years earlier. The seminal date for television was Monday, 19 January 1953, the date on which Lucille Ball gave birth to ‘Little Ricky’ on national