Television Boom

Report Outline
Rapid Growth of the Television Industry
Television Uses and Television Programs
Television and the Radio, Movies and Press
Special Focus

Rapid Growth of the Television Industry

Advent of Powerful New Communications Medium

The Miracle of television last week enabled an estimated ten million Americans to watch the inaugural ceremonies at Washington without leaving their homes in cities and towns in the East and Middle West. Demonstration on this scale of the marvels of the new medium of communication was made possible by the linking on Jan. 11 of eastern and midwestern television networks. With the opening of transcontinental networks promised within a few years, people in every part of the country, with the possible exception of remote rural areas, will be able to witness the next inauguration in 1953.

Development of television on a commercial basis was delayed by the war and did not get into full swing until 1947, but its progress during the last two years has been spectacular. Since Jan. 1, 1947, the number of television stations regularly on the air has increased six times over, and the number of receiving sets in the hands of the public has jumped from a few thousand to nearly a million. This is only a beginning, for many more stations are expected to go into operation in the next few years, and sales of sets are expected to mount by leaps and bounds for some years to come.

Wayne Coy, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has predicted that television will become “the most powerful instrument of communication ever devised …with almost unlimited potentialities for the promotion of the welfare, the education, and the entertainment of all our people.” As such it may profoundly alter existing social, educational and cultural patterns, and in the process it is bound to have far-reaching, though as yet not clearly visible, economic effects. The post-World War II development of television may be compared with the development of radio after World War I. Generally it is agreed, however, that television will have even more important social and economic consequences for the nation than did its forerunner in the field of communications.