AHC: Kill Television

Circa 1925, someone invents a cheap, compact film projector suitable for home use. It becomes a popular fad among the rich, but remains inaccessible to the masses because of the expense of film prints.
16mm film came out in 1923, so that's in place. Now all you need is for George Eastman to figure out that well-made 16mm film can be sold pre-recorded, and you have a home projector.

Nonetheless, it popularizes the idea of watching films at home, creating a demand for a cheaper, more portable means of distributing movies for home use. The answer is magnetic tape, a technology which had recently been invented in Germany.
Here's where things get difficult, to make a digital projector you really need LCD technology to be a lot more advanced (the first LCD projector didn't pop up until the late 60s, and I'm given to understand the picture was pretty poor).
 
Television takes off as per OTL in the 1950s and early 1960s, but with the Vietnam War and Civil Rights demonstrations the graphic nature of the news and programs leads to an attempt to place severe restrictions on broadcasts. A Supreme Court decision not only overturns the attempted restrictions but pushes the existing boundaries farther back, leading to basic network programming much more risqué than OTL (think 1994 programming in 1974). As a result most parents forbid their children to watch the newer medium and radio increases notably in popularity for most of the Baby Boomers and their kids. With more households involving two working parents, television shows are released on VCRs in whole seasons at a time and can be pre-screened before release to home markets. In 1993 the television market is so decreased that ABC and NBC merge to survive while NBC is overtaken by a new network known as Fox. By 2000 the rise of the Internet is about to overshadow these last two remaining networks as Hollywood has continued to make programming for all formats, though this has changed as well. Seasons are no longer judged by television ratings but by sales of physical media as of the 1970s (VCR develops a few years earlier in this TL in response to demand), making it much easier to determine which shows are truly popular and which are not. This ironically results in a higher quality of programming with the biggest changes being more ST:TNG and Dallas shows along with far less Knott's Landing and Happy Days (though the phenomenon of the 6 season series called "Firefly" will also be memorable in the early 2000s) along with an avoidance of writer's strikes as Hollywood takes over much more of the programming instead of the networks.

By 2000 television is not quite dead but is certainly a minority medium relegated largely to senior citizens who are very picky about their television shows. American Broadcast System (CBS + ABC) and the National Family Network (NBC + Fox) are the last two major networks left and even then they are still using analog technology simply because they do not think their media would survive the upgrade to digital. Most of the shows revolve around nostalgia for "The American Century" and are thought to be out of touch with younger viewers, programming for any demographic below 65 is *very* limited and television is thought to be on the way to extinction by about 2015-2020.
 
isn't it just semantics to replace airwaves with streaming? The end result is the same thing. Once you stop using your computer to interact, and start using it to watch entertainment, it's basically a TV.

Now, if the question is how do you kill television networks and replace them with on demand TV, that's a tough one. We had on demand TV. they were called movie theatres. Selection was limited. Then we figured out how to make a movie theatre (TV) in your home. selection was limited, but it was free, after the purchase of the TV set. So, the question becomes, how do you increase movie selection/quality so that it becomes more preferable to a TV set in your house? It becomes one of economics/choice/convenience. A movie mogul could buy up patents for TV and then shelve it or make it outrageously expensive. That'll delay things, while said mogul figures out how to put a movie theatre with lots of choices on every street corner and turn it into a social focus. Ultimately, though, you have to completely change the social fabric so that movies, or other entertainment, is seen as the in thing, while TV is seen as vile/undesireable (perhaps a communist plot?). Don't see it happening.
 
I love Hollis's idea. I'd also like to suggest that the inventors of TV could have a patent dispute that's never settled, interfering with them selling the things. I understand that IOTL, those inventors didn't get along.
 
Circa 1925, someone invents a cheap, compact film projector suitable for home use. It becomes a popular fad among the rich, but remains inaccessible to the masses because of the expense of film prints. Nonetheless, it popularizes the idea of watching films at home, creating a demand for a cheaper, more portable means of distributing movies for home use.

The answer is magnetic tape, a technology which had recently been invented in Germany. In OTL magnetic tape remained a cumbersome reel-to-reel affair until the 70's. But in TTL, economic demand leads to a massive investment in this technology. As a result, the compact cassette is invented several decades earlier, circa 1935. The technology completely supplants vinyl records, and is snapped up by film studios, which begin producing home versions of their films. Initially these are a niche item, but sales increase after the end of WWII, when home cinemas become a canonical fixture of every proud middle-class home.

Because this medium develops as a direct offshoot of the film industry, it is cinematic in its conventions. It consists of newsreels, short subjects, and feature-length films. There are serials, but not TV shows as we know them. There are no commercials, because cassettes are bought at shops, like records. In short, there is no distinct medium called "television". It is simply cinema in the home.

Crucially, the latency inherent in the technology allows radio to retain its relevance and prestige for much longer. People still depend on radio for up-to-the-minute news, sports, etc. Even after it becomes technologically feasible to broadcast live images, the convention persists due to habit and protective regulation fostered by the two industries. The same cultural duality that once existed between radio and cinema continues to exist to the present day, except that cinema migrates from theaters into people's houses.
That is brilliant.
(Although I do have to wonder about newsreels on a presumably permanent magnetic tape recording. Seems like it could be a waste of space, unless they become more explicitly like documentaries from the demands of the home-cinema medium.)
 
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