Tomorrow Will Be Televised

At some point growing up, many kids heard this advice from one or both parents: “Now ____, be on your best behavior.” Quite soon, we TV viewers may have to heed that advice, when dealing with our relationship to TV sets. There’s a huge disrupt ahead for that relationship, and thank Ralph Santana for the Continue Reading →

Two genres ruled the primetime roost on broadcast networks as I grew up. One was the Western, the other was anthology series. Both dominated lineups throughout the 1950s and into the late 1960s. Then primetime largely went the way of police, lawyer and medical series, burying Westerns and anthologies with them. Now that the Western Continue Reading →

I know it’s early to make declarations over what 2012 will be remembered for, but you get the impression that we may, yes may, look back at the week of International CES in Las Vegas as the beginning of the “controllable” TV era. By controllable, manipulating your TV set and what you watch off it Continue Reading →

Sorry, but I’m not into best of/worst of TV lists as many of my fellow journalists are, as one year completes and next year draws close. Trends and mileposts that develop over a year, impacting times ahead, are more my cup of tea. Early on, I noted in different places that what transpires in 2011 Continue Reading →

A few thousand people spend their early December in part inside the Grand Hyatt hotel, watching UBS’ annual global media conference. They’ve been doing it for 39 years, catching presidents, chief executive or financial officers from major media ventures discourse over accomplishments in one year and projections for the next. Few of those few thousand Continue Reading →

Looking for the current example of chicken-and-egg communications dilemma? Look no further than 3D television. With less than a month remaining in 2011, 3D’s on track to add between 3.5 and 4 million households to the community with such a set to watch, according to Consumer Electronics Association stats. Set prices are the lowest ever, Continue Reading →

In past television lives, Larry Aidem ran Sundance Channel and Michael Hirschorn led the programming charge at VH1. Both accomplished plenty in their respective tenures. Now they’re connected, along with dozens of enterprises big and small, headed by big names and no-names in media, out to create the new generation of TV via YouTube. Over Continue Reading →

Go back in time to 1964 for a moment. Remember the Picturephone? It was one of the breakout devices of the future, showcased for the world to see at the New York World’s Fair. Take that phone, dial someone and see that person when the connection is made, no matter how far, in bright black-and-white. Continue Reading →

In years ahead, people might look back at the events of last Friday afternoon as watersheds for interactive TV and new channel development, if Google gets its aims straight. If those aims, cultivating worthwhile interactive applications and the next generation of diverse TV content, become embraced by the public, direct all the credit to what Continue Reading →

Before TV, the Internet or mobile phones–not so long ago–radio was the way millions of people picked up news, information and entertainment day after day, night after night. It was the king of communications hill, and Norman Corwin was that medium’s towering figure. What Steven Spielberg is to film and Steve Jobs was for computers Continue Reading →