Television was invented in the early 1900’s and was made commercially available in the 1920’s. A television is an electronic device in which moving pictures are transmitted via digital signal. Early television was in black and white and was broadcast via analog signal but advance developments are such that now television is very much a personalized form of entertainment. Television now can be broadcast via internet so the range of programming is very diverse, taken from all around the globe.
Marshall McLuhan, an English and Communications professor, once wrote a book in the 1960’s about the future of communications, on television and the advent of the world wide web (30 years before its invention). He wrote that the most important thing was that the “Medium is the Message”, meaning that what is important is not the content of the television but the television itself. The content, whether it is a children’s program or a news show on a war, although obvious, should not be the message. The social changes that the television brings about is really the overriding factor. That any new technology, over time, changes what society does as a whole. And in the case of television and the internet, it caused society as we know it to become a “global village”. McLuhan coined the phrase “a global village” referring to the diversity of the world into becoming one village with the same ideas and values.
And this is what television has done. Programming can make what is not a normal item in one country into something that is normal. It can change attitudes and values of a population. It can make one specific brand from one country into the most wanted item in another country. Television itself has become all powerful as a medium of communication to the world. It turned the world into a global village.
Criminals probably have a much more in-depth look at police procedures after the advent of crime shows such as CSI and other forensics programming. In the past, the ways of catching criminals probably were not that known. Now, with so many of the programs explaining the technology of crime solving, it would make it easier for a criminal to use that information to his benefit.
What about the infomercials with its glut of selling odd appliances and exercise equipment? If seen often enough, they become commonplace and every home will need a vacuuming disc. Television makes the unusual become something normal. Certain things cease to be unique or amazing. It can make change one society’s attitude, whether it be good or bad. It can make that same society become similar in its materialistic values to another. It makes the world similar and eradicates the differences, which in itself can be good as well as bad. Good in that we can understand each other better but bad, in that we lose those differences that make a culture unique. And different cultures is what makes all of us unique.