Mass Media, TV, TV Past and Future

TV.

The name «Television» comes from Greek word meaning «far» and Latin word meaning «to see» so it means «to see far».

There are commercial stations, they sell advertising time to pay for their operating costs and to make profit/ The public stations are nonprofit organizations.

Commercial TV stations broadcast mostly entertainment programs to attract lager number of viewers.

These programs include light dramas called situation comedies, action-packed dramas about life of detectives, police officers, lawyers and doctors, show dancers and singers, movies, quiz shows, soap operas, cartoons, talk shows. On talk shows a host interviews politicians, TV, movie stars athletes. There are also sport programs, brief summaries of local, national and international news.

Advertising is an important part of commercial TV. Commercials appear between and during most programs. They urge viewers to bye different kinds of products – from dog food to hair spray, from cars to insurance polices.

Public TV focuses mainly on education and culture. Public TV also broadcasts plays, ballets, symphonies as well as programs about art and history. It attract less viewers then commercial TV.

TV. Past and Future.

In just half a century, television has covered the planet. TV affects our daily life is a way that no other media can. It was simply an idea of a machine able to broadcast both sound and vision.

First TV-sets were in black and white.

Since 1980 there have been four major developments of TV. The first is video, which has given viewers the power to control what they watch and when they watch it. These days, fifty percent of homes have a video-cassette-recorder (VCR) and millions more are being sold every year.

The second is satellite TV. Thanks to direct broadcast satellites (DBS) dozens of new channels are now available to everyone who buys a receiving «dish». Many of these new channels specialize in one kind of program – only news, sport, cartoons, music, movies.

The third development is cable – a system of hi-tech wires. Which provides even more channels.

So, TV has come a very long way in a very short time.