Television is 100 years old today

Posted by qassiov 1/26/2026

Television is 100 years old today(diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)

669 points | 273 commentspage 4

nephihaha 1/26/2026|

I have mixed feelings about television and no longer have one. Some great series but also tonnes and tonnes of forgettable and insulting trash.

I think television has had a negative effect on community and social interaction.

ChrisMarshallNY 1/26/2026||

Love the name of the blog!

I think that LCD screens, huge digital bandwidth, and CCD sensors, have turned video ("television"), into a vast new landscape.

I'm old enough to remember putting foil on the rabbit-ears...

banku_brougham 1/26/2026||

for every episode of the A-Team, for Saturday morning cartoons, for I Love Lucy, and for Miami Vice, I give thanks.

Edit: And Star Trek, and Cosmos

nephihaha 1/26/2026|

Diamonds on a dung heap. For every good series which we love there are dozens of terrible/forgettable ones.

A shame since TV has so much potential as a medium.

HelloMcFly 1/26/2026|||

I think this is likely to be true for every artistic creation that requires lots of capital and widespread human coordination. Ultimately for a TV show to be great many, many things have to go right, and much of what could go wrong happens after the money is spent and the air date is already assured. I'm grateful we've had so many great things, certainly far more than I'll have time to watch in my life. But I'm not a heavy TV viewer.

account42 1/27/2026|||

TV has a fairly bad record of keeping shows that are already shown to be good alive though because good does not equate profitable for the network or individual decision makers (which are again no the same thing).

HelloMcFly 1/27/2026||

That's just one of the things that has to go right: marketing, finding the audience, being in the right places and place in time for your target viewers, etc.

nephihaha 1/27/2026|||

I think the problem nowadays is that there are so many channels and so much space to fill. TV runs 24/7 now on hundreds of channels. In many cases, it isn't worth the while of a small channel to make an expensive programme as they would lose money.

Sometimes, the "wrong" programme is the hit. I know the History Channel started off with serious documentaries (some of them excellent quality) which not enough people watched. They then tried Nazis and Ancient Egypt, but it seems to be "Ancient Aliens" which is their biggest hit. Its version of history is questionable, to say the least.

account42 1/27/2026||

How many people even watch TV "channels" these days? Seems most people have moved to a la carte streaming services. I don't really like either myself and prefer local copies of films but seem to be in a very small minority there.

nephihaha 1/27/2026||

I've been having a lot of trouble with Amazon Prime. I specifically have it so that I can download films and watch them offline when I don't have internet, and yet the player keeps glitching. I do prefer physical media because at least I'm owning it instead of just hiring it.

account42 1/28/2026||

Yeah, I don't really consider it a local copy when I can't play it in a player of my choice on any device I want. I'd be fine with digital files (although having a movie shelf is nice) but that isn't really an option so physical media (ripped to a hard disk for convenience) it is.

banku_brougham 1/27/2026||||

Well, A-Team was objectively terrible but I have a nostalgic connection to kids shows like that, Knight Rider etc. In retrospect Bay Watch was an effective CPR training tool at unprecedented scale.

I would be hesitant to pass judgement.

nephihaha 1/27/2026||

The A Team was objectively terrible, but I think it had a good main cast and never pretended to be anything it wasn't. Ditto Knight Rider.

I think Glen Larson was behind both of these.

Baywatch was often terrible, but many of us watched for other reasons.

account42 1/27/2026|||

Terrible shows are still better than actively malicious ones.

Kye 1/26/2026||

Blogger was new when TV was 75 years old. Glad to see it's still around.

morkalork 1/26/2026||

Long live the new flesh

Edman274 1/26/2026|

It did always strike me as funny that Cronenberg had a movie about "what if TV was evil and made people murderous and the studio execs had to pay", and a movie about "what if video games were evil and made people murderous and their creators had to pay", but never a movie about "what if movies were evil and made people murderous and film directors had to pay". Obvious bias aside I wonder if it would work as a story - movies don't seem as hypnotic in the public consciousness, I believe.

account42 1/27/2026||

The game one being eXistenZ? Only recently got to see Videodrome and quite liked it so will check it out.

fuzzfactor 1/26/2026||

My buddy has an old Portacolor, but it's only 60.

throw0101a 1/26/2026||

In interesting plot point in the novel/movie Contact (early, so not much of a spoiler):

> […] This puts her at odds with much of the scientific community, including Drumlin, who pushes to defund SETI. Eventually, the project detects a signal from Vega, 26 light-years away, transmitting prime numbers.[a][b] Further analysis reveals a retransmission of Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympic speech, the first TV signal to escape Earth's ionosphere.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)

ngcc_hk 1/27/2026||

Only 100 years. Less than even Leica ? Wow!

jakedata 1/26/2026||

Inspired one of my absolute favorite Zappa grooves.

I am the Slime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCQcEW98OY

I am gross and perverted

I'm obsessed and deranged

I have existed for years

But very little has changed

I'm the tool of the Government

And industry too

For I am destined to rule

And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious

But you can't look away

I make you think I'm delicious

With the stuff that I say

I'm the best you can get

Have you guessed me yet?

I'm the slime oozin' out

From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you

And eat the garbage that I feed you

Until the day that we don't need you

Don't go for help, no one will heed you

Your mind is totally controlled

It has been stuffed into my mold

And you will do as you are told

Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks

Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video

Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video

Can't stop the slime, people, look at me go

I am the slime from your video

Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video

Can't stop the slime, people, look at me go

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Frank Zappa

lr1970 1/26/2026|

Another important person in creation of the TV technology was Vladimir Zworykin [0]. He developed cathode-ray tube based TV transmission devices that he patented in 1923 and 1925.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_K._Zworykin

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