ABSTRACT

There is a complicated interaction between the technology of television and the received forms of other kinds of cultural and social activity. Many people have said that television is essentially a combination and development of earlier forms: the newspaper, the public meeting, the educational class, the theatre, the cinema, the sports stadium, the advertising columns and billboards. The development is complicated in some cases by the earlier precedents of radio, and these will need to be considered. Yet it is clearly not only a question of combination and development. The adaptation of received forms to the new technology has led in a number of cases to significant changes and to some real qualitative differences. It is worth looking at each of the main forms with these questions in mind. But when we have done this, it will be necessary also to look at those forms which are not in any obvious way derivative, and which can usefully be seen as the innovating forms of television itself.