Back in 1939, as World War II was breaking out in Europe, the National Association of broadcasters (NAB) was having a crucial meeting. FDR was preparing for war, and radio feared government takeover of the radio business. In response, the NAB hired its first full-time president, who helped draft the NAB code of conduct to establish rules for things like products that could not be advertised on the radio, types of programming that were improper, which opponents of FDR’s war could not appear on radio and Lay the foundation for self censorship – that the NAB would make the rules for radio, before the FCC or some technocrat from the FDR administration stepped in.
But there was another item on the agenda which is kind of curious. It was becoming common for new radios to incorporate pushbutton tuning. In the early 1930s, a company called Motorola made significant ground selling AM radios in cars. States threatened to pass laws banning cars from radios – it was believed they would distract the driver and cause accidents.
One innovation that started to emerge was the use of Push Buttons – so instead of turning the dial by hand, all the driver needed to do was push a button to change stations, which didn’t even require looking away from the road.
The agenda item that was being pushed was the smaller independent radio stations wanted push button radios banned. The push button was also being added to console radios used at home. With only 5 buttons, people would assign the “big” radio stations to their buttons, and that just wasn’t fair to the little guys.
Since The people most active in making and selling radios and running major market stations had significant power in the NAB, no ban was requested.
To this day, radio owners really underestimate the inertia of push buttons. If you allow Rush Limbaugh to move from WABC to WOR, there is a good chance people will change their normal button to WOR and no longer even be aware your station exists. Or even worse, they press the AM/FM button, find NPR and never listen to AM again, hurting both stations.
My two favorite buttons on newer car radios: Scan & Seek.
My car has them on the steering wheel. In Charlotte on AM, scan finds WBT, Jesus lectures and Spanish Jesus lectures. My radio is now set on FM, but turned off.
So how do you seek when your “internet enabled entertainment center” has 175,000 different listening choices?
Ok Siri
Yes?
I would like to listen to a TED lecture on the migration of Monarch Butterflies
Here you go!
Welcome to today’s lecture on the migration of Monarch butterflies, and how they help connect us to the mother spirit…
In 5 years, when the BMW autonomous vehicle is driving us to work, we can just lay down and binge watch season 3 of downtown Abbey projected on the ceiling of the car. Utopia has arrived
I don’t get Downtown Abbey. I have never seen it, though. Worthwhile?
Darn spelling autocorrect – Downton Abbey
My niece and nephew treated me to enduring Season 1 Episode 1 on the monster sized TV. You may or may not know that I made a conscious choice to stop watching TV in 1996, but I was trapped.
This was the week Nelson Mandela had died. The first episode introduces that the owner of the Abbey died on the Lusitania, and the plot starts to unfold of how the servants and relatives are going to scheme to take control of the dead man’s fortune. The fictional dead man had been involved in the Boer wars in South Africa where Cecil Rhodes killed the Dutch speaking farmers and enslaved the native population using the legal system named Apartheid.
Not only did my relatives drooling over splitting up a family fortune not endear them to me as I ponder my own mortality, but I found the timing particularly repugnant. Both of them are hard core Progressives who think Jon Stewart’s program was a newscast. My niece finds nothing objectionable that the English rounded up Dutch farmers and herded them into concentration camps for extermination.
I have been pondering the significance of this really significant social development of people watching episodes of shows one after another until they pass out. Maybe it causes an endorphin high while under self hypnosis.
Okay Art, I’ll bite. Yes, we watch it… via a 17 inch laptop screen. No TV in our household.
Actually, the only male heirs to the estate are presumed to have died on the -Titanic-, which is the ‘breaking news’ as the series begins… thus ensues the primary arc of the series theme.
It’s one of the few shows we actually watch… as American media has become a cesspool of banality violence, death/crime, police-state indoctrination, food consumption, and a venue for the LGBT agenda. (not to mention endless sports channels, etc.)
The series develops a lot of characters and sub-plots, and weaves the impact of WWI and other issues (suffrage, labor party, etc) into the story.
It takes a few episodes to absorb the breadth of cast/characters, but the series has matured well.
Much of it is filmed on location, with the current real-life owners accommodating the production.
Personally, I think this may be the final season, but it may be able to survive another year or so.
You can’t film “on location” when the series is based on fiction.
At some point in my life, I realized my “knowledge” of World War II was mostly based on watching movies made with the cooperation of the U.S. military. Victors in war write the history.
I would assume people realize the story &name are fictitious. Nonetheless, Highclere Castle in Hampshire is used for exterior shots of “Downton Abbey” and most of the interior filming… very cool.
The danger (understood by people who do this for a living) is your brain incorporates the memory without necessarily tagging the memory as “I wasn’t actually there”. You accept your memory as truth. The attention to details and use of real settings just reinforces that the story is an accurate portrayal of real events.
Yes, they absolutely count on viewer ignorance. I worked in the business.
Whenever we drive at night, we’re amazed by the number of people with huge TV’s lighting up their houses, the screens -clearly- visible from the street.
I recall a study investigating why blacks (generally) tended to react more overtly to TV and movies… their visual/auditory wiring more readily perceives that they are actually IN the scene, which triggers their emotional ‘fight or flight’ response.
Ethnic propensities aside, it’s the agenda for ever larger TV screens, virtual reality, IMAX, Google Glass, etc. i.e. ‘Immersive experiences’ and blurring the lines.
They Live.