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Transformation and Improvement of Television Hardware Essay

Decent Essays

For the past 100 years, television has become one of the key technologies to modern population. Not only does it have the ability to transform and adapt various domestic, national and cultural contexts, but have a seemingly infinite variety of programme genres, as well. What is more, it shares a quality with radio of being able to broadcast events to the public as they happen. This capacity is sometimes connected to television’s characteristic “liveness”. Television is at a crucial moment in its development. Transformation is the main characteristic of the contemporary field of television. Big changes and improvements of television’s technological hardware, increasing satellite services and analogue-to-digital broadcasting transitions are …show more content…

Adequate theory and methods of analysis can be presented to evaluate the cultural force of television’s liveness. Paddy Scannell states a similar point in his book Radio, Television and Modern Life (1996): ‘The liveness of broadcast coverage is the key to its impact, since it offers the real sense of access to an event in its moment-by-moment unfolding’ (Ibid, 84). Even though, liveness is not a focused concept in Scannell’s analysis of radio and television in his book, he still explores how the experience of contemporary culture has changed in the modern world. Scannell writes: ‘The liveness of the world returns through the liveness of radio and television – their most fundamental common characteristic. The liveness is here understood as the specific temporality, the phenomenal now of broadcasting, and this now is magical’ (Ibid, 172). With this statement Paddy Scannell enforces the liveness to define radio and television intense attraction.
Broadcasting is considered a primary function of television, as Paddy Scannell supports this point in his article on the September 11 (2004) television event. There he states that the ‘power of live broadcasting’ is what reinforces the ‘meaningful character of existence, even when it appears to be collapsing in ruins before our disbelieving eyes’ (Ibid, 583). To be able to reassure viewers of the significance of life is truly a great power.
On the other hand, television consists of multiple functions, not only live

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