ABSTRACT
Live drama gave way to pre-recorded performances, in order for directors and producers—not to mention the hapless actors—to establish the kind of ‘control and precision’ that was already familiar in film. Liveness’ was a marketing advantage, a property of the new technology that could be used to encourage governments to liberalise the licensing of television (TV) stations, investors to support TV’s very costly infrastructural development, and viewers to buy or rent the expensive decoding apparatus. TV took a long while to relax sufficiently to go out and about into an unrehearsed, unstaged version of live reality. TV’s ‘liveness’ was that of the theatre— the performative kind. The TV live event was developed and used around the world as a secular ritual of community-building. TV was a good barometer for these variations in the political and cultural climate. TV took identity out of the political arena— of contestation for rights or competition for resources— and into the cultural arena.
