TV has undergone many changes since the first black and white sets were sent to market. Here are 4 of the biggest technological changes to TV over the decades:
- Mass production – The first television signals were being broadcast in the 1930s, but the TV didn’t become a common item in American homes until 1948, when mass production began. In 1939, there were less than 1,000 TVs in use. By 1953, there were 25,233,000.
- Cable – The widespread adoption of cable TV in the 70s, 80s, and 90s dramatically expanded the number of channels available to people in their homes and led to the creation of boutique, pay-for-access channels like HBO. The growth of cable also coincided with the start of MTV, which brought a pop culture revolution straight into American living rooms.
- TiVo – In the age of streaming and smart TVs, it’s hard to remember what a dramatic change TiVo was from the TV status quo. Before TiVo, people had to either catch a show right as it aired, or hope that the cassette in their VCR didn’t run out of tape. Suddenly, people had the ability to digitally record shows and store them in perpetuity. Within a few years, they could even record on two channels at once.
- Social media – While sites like Twitter and Facebook didn’t change TV directly, they did change the way people talk about and experience television. Instead of waiting until the next day to talk about a show at work, people can share their reactions to a show as it airs, and potentially reach millions of people in the process.
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