Remember the time when you had to go up to the TV if you needed to change channels? I barely do. Though the TV we had at that point only had 6 channels so it wasn’t needed too much. The reason I’m mentioning this is that television sets and the actual programs on them have evolved a lot since the first broadcasts in the 1920s. I don’t want to get into the boring stuff, so instead let’s explore some fun facts about television:
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- The Late Late Show of Ireland which started in 1962 and The Tonight Show which started in 1954 are the longest running TV talk shows in the world.
- The first television advertisement ever was broadcasted on July 1, 1941, in New York. The advertisement was for Bulova Watch and lasted a total of 20 seconds. It aired before a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Brooklyn Dodgers. TV advertisements during that time only cost $9.
- At this moment, the largest television in the world is the new curved UHD, 105 inch TV from Samsung. This new TV does not yet have an official price, but Samsung promises that it will cost under $150,000, so good thing it’s affordable, right?
- By the time the average American child reaches the age of 14, they have seen around 11,000 murders on TV. That’s a heck of a lot of CSI, Criminal Minds, and Law and Order watching for your kids.
- In 1926, J.L. Baird unveiled the first television, which had only 30 lines and gave a coarse image. Currently, the digital signal of the TVs sends pictures with 1080 lines. (Hence why it’s 1080p for HD.)
- The original, unaired pilot for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia cost only $200 to make. Some of the footage did make it into the series opening credits, however – all of which was shot by a digital camera through a car window.
- Reportedly, producers for That 70’s Show initially wanted Chuck Norris to play the part of Red. Thankfully, however, it ended up going to Kurtwood Smith. That guy totally owns that role, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else in it – even someone as awesome as Chuck Norris.
- Did you ever watch a little TV show called Breaking Bad? Oh, you’ve heard of it? Okay, good. Wasn’t sure, because, you know, it’s not that popular or anything. Anyway, all of the meth seen on Breaking Bad is actually blue rock candy. Stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and others would eat it regularly during their breaks on set.
- In 2008, the cost of a 30-second advertisement was $2.7 million in the Super Bowl broadcast. It is the world’s most costly airtime.
- British show Top Gear is the most watched television show in the world, with an estimated 350 million weekly viewers in 170 countries.
- Queen Elizabeth II has launched her own YouTube channel, fifty years after she first addressed the UK public on TV on Christmas morning.
- It has been calculated that the average American child sees about 13,000 deaths on television between the ages of five and 14.
- There is something called the “CSI effect”. Because of television crime dramas, jurors have unrealistic expectations of forensic science and investigation techniques.
- Sony began selling VCRs in 1970 that were capable of recording television shows. However, Sony was sued by the film studios for copyright piracy. Later on, the US Supreme Court backed Sony.
- In August 2006, NASA has announced that they have lost all of their original tapes of Apollo 11’s TV transmission.
- Cable TV was introduced in 1952 in Canada but it didn’t spread across the country at that time.
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