Fourth week

I'm not quite sure how to sum up my idea of 50s television in one image (which is the assignment for you mythical people reading this who aren't in my class) but here goes.

I like this image not just because it's very "period" but because it symbolizes the authority of TV at the time. If you said something on TV you were assumed to be both intelligent and informed about your topic. Part of this might be because we were more trussing and naive, and part of it might be that the criteria for appearing on television back in the day really was stricter back in the day.

For the copyright bit, this image is from a now-finished ebay auction that I found through LiveJournal. Here is the link. http://i21.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/fe/38/87ab_1.JPG

Third Week

So, I have to list what I learned that was interesting, surprising and new to me. Well, I though all the back room shenanigans and other shady deals involved in bringing radio and TV to life were interesting. These sort of things usually don't come to light until years after. The thing I found surprising, and I might be getting ahead here, is the fact that color TV was ready in some form two decades before the viewers got to see it. The new information was exactly how the systems of advertising were different back in the day. You see ads for a multitude of things on shows now, instead of shows having just one sponsor.

Second Week

For my "Classic" TV assignment, I watched the Doctor Who story Spearhead from Space. For a more modern show, I watched a few episodes of Third Rock from the Sun. One of the most obvious differences would be the picture clarity. Even with restoration, the UNIT era episodes of Doctor Who don't come close to anything done today. 

Spearhead from Space was also serialized. This wasn't that unusual to do back in the day. Another prominent example I can think of is Rocky and Bullwinkle. I think it harkens back to radio, when serialized stories that kept the listener tuning back in with cliffhangers was the norm. Some modern shows, like Lost for example, use cliffhangers and story arcs, but I think that most shows today prefer stand alone episodes.

One of the differences that I didn't expect was just how studio bound third rock was as opposed to all of the location footage in Doctor Who. You would have thought that the older show would have been more studio bound. Part of it might be the genre difference. Sitcoms are less reliant on visuals than action shows are.

The pacing was different as well. The entire Spearhead from Space arc would probably be crammed into a much shorter time frame nowadays. Just look at the new series. Whether this would be to the show's benefit or detriment is debatable. Some classic stories are notoriously saggy in the middle and featured a lot of unnecessary "corridor acting", that is actors running up and down hallways to pad the run time. Still, I sometimes find that the relaxed pace of an old story is a welcome change to a rushed, ADD inducing modern drama.

That turned out to be a lot about Doctor Who and very little about Third Rock from the Sun, didn't it? Well, it's me. What did you expect?

First Week

I didn't watch too much TV this week. I saw a few episodes of Family Guy on Canadian TV (I think it was Global), an episode of Numb3rs and some Canadian news (Global and CTV). Just stuff that I came across while channel hopping to pass the time. There was also a documentary on PBS at the same time as Numb3rs that was talking about some concept in cosmology that happened to be brought up in the Numb3rs episode. How convenient.

I watched the Super Bowl of course. I didn't think the commercials were up to snuff this year, with the possible exemption of the Hulu and Career Builder ones. I tuned in late, and was sorry to hear later that I missed a G.I. Joe trailer with CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON! Game? What game? No, the game was great, even though I had no personal stake in either team. My father pointed out that the whole bit where all the players stroke the Lombardi trophy as it's brought up is because they're trying to make the trophy itself a big deal, like the Stanley Cup. I just though it made the trophy look greasy.