Televisao

Ja nao pósso.... Nao ha mais.... Ik kán niet meer.... Ben leeg geschreven....

Essay on Window on the World. The story of Europe’s TV, BBC 30 Oct 1986

Window on the world is a walk thru of television history in primarily Europe from the prewar period till the eighties. The overall mood in the documentary is quite cheerful and uplifting. The wonder of the technique is celebrated, and the reactions to it as well. On the other hand the difficulty of introducing the cameras to the public and the different ways of coping with them and the overall concept of television are discussed. The hindrances in perfecting the technique for the global community are also reviewed. All and all does the documentary give a peek in a one sided view, a British view, on the development of television in Europe.

For example, letting a person coming from each of the countries speak about this period in time, seems to provide a factual story, or might say something about a well connected and conniving BBC editor. History must speak for itself, and the problem is that history is often built on prominent companies making believable presentations like this documentary by the prominent BBC.

Of course there is factual information to be found in this presentation, like the reception of television; the possible immediacy of the medium wondered the people and provided a difference with say cinema. Television could be really immediate and live and soon people understood that this offered possibilities, which founded the concept of live news broadcasting. In this the BBC still had, like in radio, a paternalistic way of broadcasting, and a wish for television being a medium to ‘build the nation’; the spreading of optimistic modernist seeds, albeit mainly nationalistic.[1] Like Gripsrud suggest, the BBC wouldn’t mind to ‘inject’ opinions and attitudes in people’s heads.[2] The use and implementation of the medium had different means to an end in different countries.[3]

I must thus conquest the idea introduced in the documentary, and concord with Fickers (2006), that the television has been the primary agent of early globalization and modernization; I think that this property should be appointed to radio. The implementation of the new technology of television and its contexts took place in already existing institutional en technological contexts.[4]

The central narrative found in the documentary is quite positive and presented as a success story, but there are definitely alternative narratives to be found; the whole is not entirely realistic. For example the case of the difference in lines between the countries; this BBC documentary presents Great Britain in this struggle as being a lenient partner, as granting other countries an own approach about how many lines to use, whereas a similar documentary made by say the Germans or the French might present a pushy Britain.

This ongoing inequality suggests that Great Britain wasn’t a driving force in the construction of a European public sphere; they didn’t succumb to a better technology but hold on to their 405 lines. The French weren’t very forthcoming either, their view on the television like a gadget let the European public sphere stagnate, as did their holding on their line standard of 815 lines. Germany spread itself over Europe but since this was a war strategy it didn’t exactly built a communal nation. It did however left behind well operating TV stations in for example Paris which the French took over after the war. After the war, compared to other participating countries were Holland with its Philips and the hidden behind the Iron Curtain Soviet with its satellite, the motor behind the European public sphere, but the indispensable equality of opinions and technology went on.[5] So the wish of a selected few who were striving for a real European Community as can be deducted from the initiative of Eurovision by Jean D'Arcy, strangely remained the wish of a selected few for a long time.

The war played a big roll in the development of European broadcasting because the non-Nazi countries stopped broadcasting in the war, and the others used it solely for spreading Nazi propaganda. The technology didn’t come to a complete standstill but the building of a European community did, and only after the war were cross country circuits built, for the broadcasting of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. This opened the eyes of many viewers and of countries like France (Smith, 1998, p. 49).

I must agree with Gripsrud in the point of view of television being a form of not only economic interests, but also of deep-structures of modern societies.[6] This will most certainly have influenced the development of the medium; people will have felt this underlying power of the institution of television and will have probably feared it. Since not everybody had a direct interest of some sort, not everybody will have worked evenly hard to explore, implement and develop the use of it.

However, the development from the 50’s and 60’s on worth paints a different picture. The Tellstar satellite, launched by the Soviets in 1962, rang in a new era; besides quarrels over the first test was a baseball game the beginning of worldwide broadcasting. A few funerals, a sequence about birth and the man on the moon appeared to become the foundation for D’Arcy’s Eurovision, but Eurovision has never flourished as D’Arcy wanted it to.

To get back to the documentary, one can now say that the main narrative of it is backwards wishful thinking. It appears to present a confirmation of a self thought up roll in the history of the development of the institution of television. It is self-serving whole; it introduces a subjective story, which confirms itself. With out judging the ‘objet d’art’ it is, which is what I wish to name it, I conclude that one should approach it mainly as such, and not solely as a trustworthy historical source.

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[1] Gripsrud, p. 20.

[2] Gripsrud, p. 29.

[3] Gripsrud, p. 24.

[4] Fickers, 2006, p. 16; p. 30.

[5] Fickers, 2006, p. 17; p. 19.

[6] Gripsrud, p. 22.