Television
The BBC aired there first show in 1934 and were the only show on TV for
The history of television
Way back in the early 1800s the
television was being invented, It all
started with the idea that you could
scan images and broadcast those
images to people and you would see
these images as frames and you
would see multiple frames a second
to create a moving picture. Unlike
cinemas there wasn’t a projector just
a wheel with holes. In the wholes
where small images which would be
magnified onto the screen. This was
created in the 1920s.
Later on they changed the idea due to
the fact that it wasn’t very effective
and there were more efficient way of
showing moving images. Philo Taylor
Farnsworth was the creator of the
first electric TV and the young age of
21. His home town didn’t have
electricity and yet he was so
interested in it. From about 1926 to
1931 they began to refine the electric
television. America started to jump
on TV trend when there population
became obsessed with modern
entertainment. TVs started to
become a massive hit and started
selling well. There were four channels
in America at the time which were
NBS, CBS, CCN and ABC. CCN came a
bit later and was a 24 hour channel
dedicated to broadcasting news.
Later on at around the 1980s MTV
popped up. The channel showed
music videos of all your favourite
songs and became very popular, so
much that you could say it killed the
radio star. The immense popularity of
the TV was shown when it started to
beat out the radio and cemented it as
the biggest entertainment product.
In the UK TV was dominated by the
BBC which was the first channel in the
UK and is still one of the biggest.
Instead of being run of many adverts
the BBC was funded by a TV licence,
which was a tax you have to pay if
you have a TV or watch TV on a
device in the UK.
The BBC
quite a while in the UK. There first show was called By the Baird Process and
it was an opera that was filmed and then shown on the TV, this was what a
lot of the early BBC looked like. After opera news started to pop up which
showed a presenter reading headlines and was similar to the news on the
radio already but it was still quite popular among the few that owned a TV.
In 1936 more shows starting showing like one show in which a bus driver
explains the creation of a special
boat and it was called the golden
hind and there were quite a lot of
shows similar to this one but with
different people explain different
things.
There was also a film in 1936 called
Television Comes to London but it is
unknown to me what this is about because of the lack of any info about but
from what I have seen it looks like a sort of documentary film in which they
show how TV was brought to people’s homes in London, like the name
suggests. There was another show called starlight which aired around the
same time and it was a sort of comedy skit which lasted about 25 minutes.
About 10 years later TVs had developed and longer shows could be
broadcasted. For example they would film plays and they broadcast them
on the BBC but they would be plays that you could go and watch; not plays
that were done epically for the BBC. They would show multiple showing of
one show thought out the space of a month because back them there
wasn’t much to show. Later on, when there was a lot more to show, BBC
became BBC one and BBC two was created in 1964 this meant that they
could air a lot more shows and also it didn’t stop there today it goes up to 4.
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a serial television drama that first aired in 1963 and
consisted of a race that look like humans called time lords. The Doctor is
the last time lord and he can travel though time in a blue police box called
the TARDIS which stands for time and relative demission in space. He would
normally travel with some sort of companion which was normally a young
adult. They would go on adventure to try and stop the creatures of the
universe from destroying it or part of it.
The show was an instant hit because of its originality and amazing effects
for the time. The show also managed to appeal to every age group because
of its dark themes and scary characters but also because of its assurance
that the doctor would always win in the end which made it appeal to the
whole family. The also had another cleaver mechanic which was whenever
the doctor died he would regenerate in to a new person. This meant they
could refresh the cast whenever it got tiring or some of the cast could not
act any more. The only issues with this format was that if you had a weak
cast for a while the show would start to drop in views and review ratings.
Because of this the show went of air in 1989.
This wasn’t the end of Doctor Who though because after much demand
and 16 years the show returned in 2005 and it as good as ever capturing
the next generation of families in its fun and interesting plots about time
travel.
 Comedy in TV
A lot of comedy TV shows are better known as sitcoms
which stands for situational comedies. The situational
part is usually referring to a location in which most of the
show takes place for example in friends the bulk of the
scenes take place in Chandler and Moniker’s apartment,
Joey’s apartment and central perk café. This works
because it means they can focus more on the characters
and the jokes between them instead of the location it
also helps people recognise the show and not feel lost in
an episode because every episode is taking in the same
place so no expiation needed.
Most comedies have a laughing track this is so when
there jokes are either unfunny or really awkward. The
laughing track will make people think the joke is funny or
they will just gloss over it because the laughing track
distracts you. It also makes people laugh more because
when other people are laughing you are psychologically
more likely to laugh with them to be not seen as an
outcast. The issues comes when the laugh track just gets
annoying and it makes episodes hard to watch and
makes the jokes unfunny. Shows like Seinfeld and
Friends are vastly popular because there charters are
easy to relate to and their stories are simple but the
jokes are funny and also relatable.
When looking closer in to what makes certain jokes
funny context is key because it is the whole joke, without
context it’s just like saying any other sentence. When
writing a joke the writers need to think about their target
audience so that they can make the jokes relate to them.
For example in The Big Bang Theory there jokes relate to
their target audience which is nerds and geeks and what
makes the jokes funny is the fact that they are relatable.
Some might not find the jokes as funny or not funny at
all because they may have to not heard of the thing
mentioned and there don’t understand the joke. Jokes
take a long time, the writer of Seinfeld spent two hours
on a joke because they are not easy to think off because
you have think about a lot epically as a lot of thing can be
considered offensive to certain people.
The Office
The Office has played a big part in the world of TV
comedies. The show first aired in 2001 and at the
time the two directors were seen as absolute
nobodies. Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant were
on a radio station together they got a chance create
a pilot for a TV show with a low budget they
managed to create something good enough that the
BBC gave them the ok to make the first season and it
also ran for a second season and Christmas special
finale. The show was so popular that an American
version was made and that lasted for a very popular
10 seasons.
The show is about an office that makes sales of
paper to companies that need paper. The show
would go through the day in a life of working there
and did it in a hand held documentary style which to
a lot of people made it so real that they thought they
were actual people. The appeal of the show was the
characters. David Brent (the boss) is a character who
is not funny but wants to be cool and seen as a role
model but in fact he isn’t funny and instead annoying
and the awkwardness of the jokes he makes is
amplified by the fact that there is no laughing track.
Because they have made the characters so well you
can see that he isn’t that bad of a person and they
somehow make you feel bad for him. The fact that
they were able to make one of the best shows in
comedy for such a low budget is amazing and is a
brilliant example of how important the writing is
when it comes to making a comedy.

Credits
When looking for research for TV it was difficult but I found a few really useful sources. For the research on BBC I found that
all there shows that have aired from their first show in 1934 right up to 2007, this made it quite easy to look at all the work
of the BBC and because they have taken it from the radio times there are air times, dates and most of them have
descriptions so that it was pretty easy to understand what each show was about. If you are interested I suggest checking it
out at https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctv. It is really good that the BBC have done this and I think more channels
should do things like this.

When looking up comedy I used more old fashioned techniques and read books, the book I used was the television hand
book by Jonathan Bignell and Jeremy Orlebar and is useful I you want to look into TV regardless of what genre you are
doing. I would recommend reading it if you are into TV and want to create your own TV show. I also looked at videos. I
found and interview with Seinfeld done by the New York Times which was really useful about writing jokes. For the office I
found that they have made a 40 minute long documentary on it and it was really interesting I’d recommend it to anyone
who enjoys The Office. The article is written and researched by Joseph Ruffell.