50s Television a CHC2D Canadian History presentation
New Competition ★ television finally crossed the Mississippi in 1954, meaning that the entire U.S.A. could now tune in and follow the same programs at once ★ movies responded to the threat of competition by making their pictures and sound wider, and in fuller colour, because t.v. couldn’t compete with it ★ see the first eighty-five seconds of The Girl Can’t Help It as an example of how different movies wanted their picture to seem compared to what t.v.s could showThe Girl Can’t Help It
TV Impact ★ television would have a profound impact on society ★ election debates were now televised, and those who looked better on camera tended to win — such as new Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent ★ variety shows like Ed Sullivan were introducing the rest of America to what was hot on Broadway, up and coming comedians, and new dance styles
TV Impact ★ when it came to children’s television, Parent-Teacher Associations were focused on content right from the very start ★ shows had to communicate the right message to avoid the same problems that movies had in the 30s and comic books more recently
TV Impact ★ case in point: the bedroom ★ the first television program to show the bedroom was The Dick Van Dyke show, starring Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore ★ the bedroom shows mom and dad with separate beds spaced apart by the nightstand — all to avoid any suggestion of intimacy between the parents (it would be decade before the same bed was shown on tv)
TV Impact ★ kids began to be catered to specifically on Saturday mornings with cartoons, establishing a tradition for three decades ★ kids’ biggest live action heroes were Davy Crockett and Superman ★ Crockett started the fad of the coonskin hat
TV Impact ★ for teens, there are three important trends to note ★ the first is the way teens were portrayed on television: they were shown to be clean cut, and never getting into trouble that couldn’t be solved with a light lecture from mom and dad ★ the biggest focus for teens was the trouble getting dates ★ for a modern example, think about the classic Archie comics that were based on life in the fifties
TV Impact ★ the first is the way bad teens were portrayed on television and in movies: they rode motorcycles, wore leather jackets and jeans instead of slacks and sweaters, drank, smoked, and basically got into no good ★ as much as Hollywood wanted to portray the good teens, they knew that the bad teens were good sellers for the movies
TV Impact ★ the second was the impact of American Bandstand ★ American Bandstand was hosted by Dick Clark, and showed off the latest pop records and dances to American teens… but the artists who appeared were generally white and clean cut