Watch This!: America’s Transition from Radio to Television
A Six Hour Docuseries
Project Summary
Logline: As the world transitions from traditional television into the age of streaming online media, this six hour docuseries examines the challenges America faced when adapting the highly popular audio entertainment content of radio broadcasting to the new visual medium of television; its legendary and unsung heroes; and the innovations the new format brought to a captivated audience.
One hundred years ago, the American public was formally introduced to radiophone broadcasting or “wireless telephony” as it had been known during the two decades of its rise from amateur to professional status. “Radio” described the new medium of entertainment as well as the mechanical device that delivered the transmission of human voices across vast distances without the need of telephone cables.
When station KDKA in Pittsburgh became first on the air in November of 1920, listeners could hear the news of the day, political speeches, sporting events, music and dramas by tuning their portable, battery operated receivers to the broadcast signal. In no time, hundreds of radio stations sprang up all across the country and the world as the public anxiously devoured this new form of news delivery and entertainment. People began staying home in droves, crowded around their radio cabinets being entertained as never before. All it took was a little imagination and listeners could be on the scene as police tried to solve “whodunit”, or Martians invaded the earth. By the close of the decade, the world was hooked on radio but already there was talk of something greater – pictures to accompany the sights and sounds of broadcasting.
Once the playground of radio broadcasting began to stagnate for the hardcore amateur enthusiasts that had done so much to define the capabilities and value of the science, television became their focus. By the mid-1920s, the federal government was doling out experimental licenses for those wishing to explore the possibilities this fantastic idea promised, and the industry giants of radio such as RCA began their own efforts in earnest. It would take another decade before the first professional television broadcasting station would launch, and a further ten years before there were enough dedicated stations in America to create and transport the expensive programming. A little distraction that came to be known as World War 2 had slowed the delivery of this exciting technology to the masses, but once the war concluded, the rush was on.
Since the dawn of man, humans have advanced their quality of life in marked stages of development. The taming of fire was among the first of these major changes. In the relatively short history of America, our nation reinvented itself many times over as the industrial age introduced all manner of machines to assist or replace the work of man. Oil lamps and gas lighting transitioned to electricity. Horse drawn carriages transitioned to automobiles. Fans transitioned to air conditioning. Telegraphs transitioned to telephones and then to radio. With each of these milestones, the population experienced profound change and growth as their daily lives were impacted by these technological advances. And then came the transition from radio to television.
“Watch This!” is a six hour television documentary series designed for the latest technological platform of streaming content. As the world of television redefines its boundaries to include the internet and shifts to programming on demand tailored to every possible interest and every level of attention span delivered to every corner of the world, it seems only fitting to shine a spotlight on the ancestors of this industry and the struggles they faced to invent and perfect the visual entertainment medium that has wholly taken over society in a measure much larger than radio, and is expanding its reach and influence with no end in sight.
“Watch This!” will tackle this subject in three two-hour installments (or six one-hour segments) covering the early experiments and milestones of television, the achievements of the transition period of the post-war era, and the maturity of the technology into the standardized color programming we enjoy today.
“Watch This!” plans to not only showcase early television history in a form palatable to today’s demanding viewer but, in many cases, unearth new facts that rewrite that history by accessing and sharing archives and transcripts heretofore unknown. The show’s producers are knowledgeable, dedicated historians with a gift for stitching together disjointed elements of a story and turning historic notations into fun factoids the audience will enjoy, remember and share with others. In terms of a docuseries, this will result in substantial and repeat viewership.