Introduction

Television is a communications technology that was developed in the West in the early years of the twentieth century. However, the events of the Second World War inhibited its technical and commercial development in America and the United Kingdom, the two countries where it showed its earliest promise. In the United Kingdom, the London Television Service began operations in 1936. In the United States, the earliest television broadcast began a few years later in 1939. But the onset of war suspended any further development in both countries (Smith 1995: 31). Immediately after the war, services were rapidly developed, covering important national political and sporting events. If the Second World War put the development of television on hold in Europe, it was the most significant factor that precipitated the development and character of television broadcasting in Asia. In our view, the changes in geopolitical relations which the end of the war initiated, contributed more significantly to the pattern of development of television in Asia than the promotion of television as part of Asian industrial and economic development as Smith suggests (1995: 311).