Exhaustive 13-part survey of the television medium from its hesitant beginnings in the 1920s to the multi-million dollar extravaganzas of today and the cable and satellite technologies of the future [relative to 1985]. Tackling the medium as a worldwide phenomenon, the series examines each of the principal areas of programming - news, drama, documentaries, and light entertainment - and the unique impact of "live" coverage.
1 season · 13 episodes
Visions of Power
Feb 12, 198545 min
A look at the way that TV affects and manipulates viewers.
The Race for Television
Feb 19, 198545 min
Goes back to TV's earliest flickering beginnings, in the first primitive TV camera built by the eccentric Scots inventor John Logie Baird - whose previous triumph had been the indestructible sock - out of hat-boxes, sealing-wax and an old t
We Bring You Live Pictures
Feb 26, 198545 min
The development and impact of outside broadcasts and live coverage of news, sport and pageantry. Peter Dimmock, then in charge of OBs at the BBC, recalls how the coronation in 1953 was a turning-point. When Prince Charles married Lady Di in
News Power
Mar 5, 198545 min
Continuing the worldwide history of the medium, this programme moves on to television news, tracing its development from the first TV news in America in the forties to today's high-powered satellite broadcasts. (Daily Telegraph)
News: The Power of Pictures
Mar 12, 198545 min
Looks at the awesome ability of on-screen images to evoke a massive public response, as with the pictures of the starving children of Biafra in 1968; to shape the nature of the response, with American footage showing how protesters in close
The Story Machine
Mar 19, 198545 min
From news to fiction as the series moves behind the scenes to look at how some of the most popular drama series are produced, what they cost and how they came about. Hollywood is the home of most of the world's TV drama, but there is also a
