Alternate television

I've always wondered why noone in the 60+ years of American TV broadcasting ever had the idea of filming shows live from Chicago so that everyone in the lower 48 could see the shows in real time...
 
I've always wondered why noone in the 60+ years of American TV broadcasting ever had the idea of filming shows live from Chicago so that everyone in the lower 48 could see the shows in real time...

Prior to the invention of video tape in 1956, a large number of TV shows were in fact live, just as radio dramas were read by live actors with sound effects a decade earlier.

Live shows could be filmed for posterity with the Kinescope but the quality was lacking, as referenced here in Wikipedia:

In the beginning there was a very definite reason for the decision of Desilu Productions to put I Love Lucy on film instead of doing it live and having kinescope recordings carry it to affiliate outlets of the network. The company was not satisfied with the quality of kinescopes. It saw that film, produced especially for television, was the only means of insuring top quality pictures on the home receiver as well as insuring a flawless show.

Stations were constrained to pre-recorded films, live network broadcasts or shows produced in their own studios to fill time. Most markets had an after-school children's show, with kids in the studio, hosted by a cowboy, clown or astronaut.
 
Hmm, very interesting. :D:cool:

For half-hour soap operas, might I suggest a more successful introduction of the telenovela format? Thus, instead of soaps operas like Guiding Light or Days of our Lives going on and on, we could have small, one-to-three season soap operas, which could span a wide range of forms, from drama to romcom/sitcom. This, in fact, is exactly similar to how Québec's téléromans (which are similar to the telenovelas, but in French) operate. Plus, telenovelas are "family-friendly". :)rolleyes::D)

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Another "alternate" idea for American television is if the US developed a version of the BBC much earlier (though that risks being outside the scope of the OP, since it requires a post-WW1/pre-WW2 POD) or if the channel bandplan were different (say, for example, if the US had the same channel setup as Japan, where channels 1 to 3 are in the American FM band, thus requiring an ALT American FM band either matching Japanese FM exactly or something else).
 
The problem was indeed the way the US FCC allocated the band plan for TV channels and the geographical separation requirements. Britain and Japan are island-oriented, so the 60-mile radius of VHF and 45 mile radius of UHF can be easily predicted and allocated.

The US has wide geographic separation, with large rural gaps. The US established a wide separation standard, 175 miles between the same channel and 85 miles between adjacent channels with bordering frequencies. Channels 4 and 5 are separated by a narrow amateur band and 6 and 7 separated by hi-lo, so they are compatible in the same markets.

From 1946 to 1948, the NBC network was very aggressive in pursuing TV markets, and went for the first licenses, usually on channels 4 or 5. Soon, CBS countered by going for the low end, long coverage channel 2. Then, in 1949, the FCC froze TV allocations for three years, so they could make a master plan. The wide separations were designed to provide deep rural areas with fringe coverage. That is why TV did not penetrate the US until 1953-1955. The ABC network was not established until 1954, and suffered a disadvantage in any market with less than three commercial VHF stations.

Communities were assigned VHF channels based on size: one for small cities, two for bigger ones, three or four for major cities and five or more for the largest cites. No consideration was given to the establishment of networks. Only New York City, Los Angeles and El Paso were assigned the maximum of seven VHF channels (2,4,5,7,9,11,13) the latter sharing with Ciudad Juarez south of the border. The area midway between Baltimore and Washington DC also shared the seven channels, with programming duplication.

The result was a TV dial with wide gaps of no stations. Had the FCC used a lower separation distance, there would have been more broadcast channels and possibly more commercial networks before cable.
 
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Public Broadcasting Network

Taken From : Ill Bethisad

The Public Broadcasting Network (or PBN) was the brainchild of former North American League General Moderator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. In essence the idea was to create a major television network by combining numerous smaller (including a lot of Native-language) stations under government sanction and funding. The ruling body is a Board of Governors, composed of an equal number of corporate representatives and government appointees.
Its purpose was to give a large media outlet to ethnic minorities as well as an alternative forum for non-profit broadcasting. PBN's charter mandates a maximum time limit per day on advertising as well as a much higher quota of public service programming.
Generally, the Whig and Democratic Socialist parties have been firm supporters of PBN while the Progressive Conservatives favor turning it over entirely to private hands. The new Covenant Loyalist party in general agrees with the PCs but don't regard it as such a high priority. The Alliance for Public Decency decries the PBN's relatively lax standards regarding sexuality and nudity as well as what it sees as a liberal, humanist bias in programming.
PBN currently has affiliates in virtually every province and major city in the NAL. Many individual stations sell "membership" and accept corporate underwriting for certain prestige programmes such as Front Page (a broadcast news magazine).
 
An idea that I recently came up with would be the US adopting positive modulation for its TV standard (like the UK's 405-line TV system, for example), instead of OTL negative modulation. The resulting effect would be similar to AM radio, which could mean that TV networks could use less transmitters but more high-power transmitters to reach more people, particularly rural areas. Another idea would be that, for colour TV, something like OTL's SECAM was developed in North America, rather than OTL's NTSC.
 
I've also decided to add this to my earlier mini essays over promotion and relegation in American sports leauges and transportation. There's also going to be no Fox in this timeline.

Would a TV industry with more players early on result in some networks looking at alternate sports to cover?

I'm thinking perhaps stations that miss out on American Football, Baseball, Basketball & Ice Hockey may want to chance their arm with Soccer or Rugby (in a pitch to the immigrant population initially..?)

If this happens in the early days of televised sport, it could have major implications - not just for US sport...
 
Would a TV industry with more players early on result in some networks looking at alternate sports to cover?

I'm thinking perhaps stations that miss out on American Football, Baseball, Basketball & Ice Hockey may want to chance their arm with Soccer or Rugby (in a pitch to the immigrant population initially..?)

If this happens in the early days of televised sport, it could have major implications - not just for US sport...

I think the issue is this: if your viewers are not interested in watching the Big Football/Baseball/Basketball Game, would they rather watch a soccer game you know nothing about, or a replay of a Three Stooges movie? (insert appropriate movie depending on how long ago sports were first broadcast on television). If I were a television executive, I'd stake my earnings on the movie replay, or some other inexpensive syndicated programming, since sports fans are probably going to be tuned into the football game and it will cost me more money to send in a camera crew and announcer to film the soccer game.

It'd be different, of course, if soccer or rugby were already popular, then I might be willing to try to show those sports, since they'd have a dedicated fan base who would be willing to miss the football game to watch them -- hence, in OTL you can show car races, golf, tennis, etc. opposite the NFL games.

I think your best bet at using TV to increase popularity of other sports is cable/satellite TV with a dedicated sports network that needs to open up more channels to show more simultaneous games, but needs something to do with their secondary channels when there aren't enough big games to show.
 
I can see four major television networks with the survive of DBA (DuMont Broadcasting Agency) and maybe a earlier PBS said the early 50's. With PBS becoming an American BBC.
 
I can see four major television networks with the survive of DBA (DuMont Broadcasting Agency) and maybe a earlier PBS said the early 50's. With PBS becoming an American BBC.

Having PBS as an American BBC requires a POD as early as 1918 and no later than the late 1920's, IMO. And that's back in the radio era.
 
Altering this thread a bit, how about regional networks in addition to the OTL national networks?

Pacific Television Association (PTA)
SouthWest Area Television (SWAT) (bilingual English/Espanol)
Mountain Broadcasting Association (MBA)
Prairie Alliance Television Service (PATS)
Dixie Entertainment League Television Association (DELTA)
Florida Anti-Castro Television (FACT) (en Espanol)
Great Lakes Industrial Broadcasting (GLIB)
New England Television Service (NETS)

Also, how about international networks? While I doubt Canada or Mexico would ever allow ABC/CBS/NBC affiliates (though I heard the San Diego Fox affiliate is technically in Tijuana), might they be more open to spillover stations of a regional network?

Examples (using above ATL networks)

PTA affiliates in Vancouver, Victoria
SWAT affiliates in Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez
MBA affiliates in Calgary, Edmonton
PATS affiliates in Winnipeg, Thunder Bay
FACT affiliates throughout the Caribbean, Venezuela, Columbia
GLIB affiliates in Toronto and southern Ontario
NETS affiliates in the Maritime provinces
 
Also, how about international networks? While I doubt Canada or Mexico would ever allow ABC/CBS/NBC affiliates (though I heard the San Diego Fox affiliate is technically in Tijuana),

XETV is now an affiliate of The CW. And XETV, as an English language TV station located in Tijuana, could easily go for a major American network affiliation if they want to (at one point, it was a charter ABC affiliate), because the bankrollers of XETV is the Azcárraga family, who owns Televisa (the television network in Mexico), and as such they have deep enough pockets that they can do anything with it in order for it to be an equal with the US stations. That's why XETV transitioned to digital TV along with the rest of the US - making it the first digital Mexican TV station in the process. :cool:
 
Altering this thread a bit, how about regional networks in addition to the OTL national networks?

I wonder if its possible for television signals to be transmitted in frequencies around that of AM radio, with skywave propagation. If so, you could really expand the reception area after sunset. Then, you could easily just have a regional broadcast station, with a station in Chicago being received from Buffalo to Sioux Falls.
 
I wonder if its possible for television signals to be transmitted in frequencies around that of AM radio, with skywave propagation. If so, you could really expand the reception area after sunset. Then, you could easily just have a regional broadcast station, with a station in Chicago being received from Buffalo to Sioux Falls.

I don't think so. the best that could be done is put a couple of (analog) channels between 30-60MHZ. During WWII the FM band was down around 42-50MHZ and there was some long distance reception of FM stations (in the 1941 FM Band). to add, every 11 years, any station transmitting between 30-60 MHZ take on shortwave characteristic (due to the solar cycle).
 
I wonder if its possible for television signals to be transmitted in frequencies around that of AM radio, with skywave propagation. If so, you could really expand the reception area after sunset. Then, you could easily just have a regional broadcast station, with a station in Chicago being received from Buffalo to Sioux Falls.

You don't need to use AM radio frequencies - just mimic the same technology, which is what happens with positive modulation. Positive modulation was what the UK, Ireland, and France (Metropolitan) used for their TV systems (in the UK's/Ireland's case, until 1985) until digital TV.
 
I don't think so. the best that could be done is put a couple of (analog) channels between 30-60MHZ. During WWII the FM band was down around 42-50MHZ and there was some long distance reception of FM stations (in the 1941 FM Band). to add, every 11 years, any station transmitting between 30-60 MHZ take on shortwave characteristic (due to the solar cycle).

In addition, there was this going on at the same time.
 
Half hour soap operas? What sort of story line can be told within 24 minutes or less?! Your vision is clouded unless the show was to be shown a half hour every night.
That was the standard for dramatic TV of all kinds until the late '50s, & soaps were 30min as late as the late '70s. (I know, my mom was a big fan of "Edge of Night", & it was 30min.) "Dragnet" was 30min for all its first-generation run. So was "Adam 12". So was "Highway Patrol".
 
Half hour soap operas? What sort of story line can be told within 24 minutes or less?! Your vision is clouded unless the show was to be shown a half hour every night. However, one could be showing remakes of Flash Gordon with a cliffhanger at the end of each show in order tempt the viewers back next week. However I don't see the plots being too complicated.

You have essentially described telenovelas and its Québécois offspring, the téléroman, to a T - though it's possible for novelas to last an entire hour, and the plots can get pretty complicated - particularly Brazilian novelas, which can be a bit more controversial than usual. There's a reason why, in Spain, novelas are popularly called culebrónes (snakes). If we can expand on it, we could have an evening schedule similar to Rede Globo's in Brazil. According to the Fountain of All Knowledge (TM), this means:

Its [Rede Globo's] productions are split into three different categories, according to the airtime:
  • at 6PM (novela das seis), stories are romantic and family-oriented (like Cabocla or Sinhá Moça). No violence, sex or bad language (with a few exceptions) and plenty of historic and religious themes.
  • at 7PM (novela das sete) they broadcast comedy plots, filled with action, humour and romance (with a considerable amount of implicit sex). This is the schedule in which new writers are tested. Plots tend to be more experimental but themes are usually repetitive.
  • at 9PM (known as novela das oito, or 8PM soap, but never broadcast at 8PM, the earliest known time was 8:30PM) plots tend to be more formulaic, but a wider range of themes are explored. These productions include action, romantism and humour and usually last longer than the others. These are the productions with the highest ratings. These categories became widely adopted by most television companies in Brazil.
That, however, does not mean that this would be strictly adhered to and could be bent any way you want it. The 9pm novela, in particular - since it's after the watershed, you could expand things to include content that would be normally not allowed. To allow for other programming, you could restrict novelas to airing on certain days and use the other days for airing other programmes, such as (for example) those dealing with investigative journalism or variety programming.
 
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