MEDIA CONVERGENCE

Media Convergence

Media Convergence

In this paper, we try to focus on the Media Convergence. As, Media convergence describes several phenomena with differing relationships with monopoly and consumer culture. In relation to news media, it refers to mergers and acquisitions of press, radio, and television by large corporations and the consequent monopoly of news production and consumption. The following paper defines about the Television.

Introduction and Background

In the early days of television broadcasting, there was little reason to suspect that the medium viewed by many as a passing novelty will in time become the single most pervasive and influential aspect of popular culture. Certainly, the grainy, problem-prone early broadcasts seemed to pose no real threat to radio, television's predecessor in American living rooms, and dissimilar radio and films, the technology of television did not catch on quickly with the public. Indeed, the necessary technical knowledge had existed since the 1920's, but it was not until the late 1940's that the medium began to become real presence in American life.

In its earliest incarnation, television was a local phenomenon, with broadcasts limited to the East Coast of the United States, within easy range of New York City. Slow developments throughout the 1930's largely put on hold during World War II. However, in the postwar years, the medium began to grow with a force and speed that surprised many skeptics. Both, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) had received commercial broadcasting licenses in 1941, and by 1946 commercial television had become a reality. Joined by the short-lived DuMont network and later by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the networks began searching for programs, to fill their expanding schedules. By 1948, the four networks offered almost complete prime-time broadcasts — the hours between seven and eleven o'clock in the evening — seven nights a week.

Television's Golden Age

Television's Golden Age By 1948, all four networks were offering their viewers live drama, and the period often referred to as television's golden age had begun. With hours of airtime to fill and budgets underwritten by influential sponsors, live television drama became a testing ground for talented young actors and writers and a showcase for the work that had previously been available only to paying audiences in theaters. Viewers could see Maurice Evans performing the plays of William Shakespeare, a live 1954 production of Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men, or a young Sidney Poitier — one of the first African American actors to appear on television in a leading role — in Robert Alan Arthur's A Man Is Ten Feet Tall.

During this era, in an attempt to distinguish themselves from their competitors and establish their own niche in a rapidly burgeoning field, several shows specialized in forms of television drama. Robert Montgomery Presents offered adaptations of popular films and managed to lure such Hollywood stars as James Cagney and Claudette Colbert to the small screen. Philco TV Playhouse began in association with Actors' Equity and presented adaptations of Broadway plays before joining with ...