New media and popular imagination

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Boddy, William. (2004). "The amateur, the housewife, and the salesroom floor: Promoting post-war US television" in New media and popular imagination, pp 44-55. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Defamiliarization of the ... over-familiar living-room TV set" (44)

  • "Recovering the sense of novelty, improvisation, euphoria, and terror"

TV had no "natural" place in the home (45)

  • Early sales mostly to taverns and homes of media professionals (46)

Contents

Lessons from radio: Hobbyist and homemaker

Hobbyist + homemaker

  • An opposition generated from radio (47)
  • Broadcast v. transmit
  • Amateurs opposed commercialization, advertising

Enthusiasts believed television initially a "paradise for the experimenter" (49)

  • Recalling earlier era of radio

But commercial/industry stakeholders wished to avoid "the mistakes" of early radio

  • "organized resistance among a community of radio amateurs" (49)

Early proponents of commercial TV

  • derided hobbyists
  • championed homemakers
    • homemakers = advertising $

But housewife as audience caused anxiety too

  • Would she ditch housework to watch daytime TV?
  • Radio was background

Anticipating practices:

  • Assuming that TV requires 100% attention
  • Is that true?

Gendering of TV derived from gendering of radio practices

  • Home listening
  • Male v. female listening practices
  • Listening as emasculation, inactive

Early battles on the television sales floor

Not only selling television sets

  • But television itself
  • Similar to early PC retailers (see Creative Computing articles...)
  • Manufacturers counseled retailers that TV should be "more than just a gadget" (54)
  • Also: avoid technical details in favor of emotional appeals

Selling TV to post-war families included:

  • Appeal to whole-family use
  • Repression of technical hobbyist amateur interests
  • Obscuring alternatives to commercial network radio economic (and regulatory) model

Last thoughts

Home computer transformed (55)

  • From calculation
  • To communication



Jump offs

  • Hugo Gernsback, Modern Electrics, 1908, "popular electronics magazine"
    • Other Gernsback titles
  • A. Frederick Collins, The Boy Astronomer, The Boy Chemist, The Boy Scientist, 1932, Experimental Television
  • Charles A. Siepmann, 1946, Radio's Second Chance
    • New journal to promote good taste, attracted radio amateurs interested in tech
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