WI : Delayed massive use of television

Let's admit that televisual technologies appearance are delayed by 20 years, making television not being reasonably widespread before the late 60's in America up to late 70's in Europe.

What would be the cultural, and possibly political consequences?
 

Deleted member 1487

That's not possible short of nuclear winter. You probably get a delay from no WW2 making the parts so cheap that TV becomes widespread in the 1950s; without WW2 it gets introduced sooner, but its a luxury item that takes a while to catch on due to price. Still, its pretty widespread by the late 1950s-early 1960s. You'd need a massive global catastrophe that delays technology and commerce for decades otherwise because TV was actually introduced just before WW2 started.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television
 
Giving that I didn't asked for a 40's PoD, but just a delay happening at some point after 1900, I'm not sure focusing on WWII is that relevant, to be honest.
 
Actually, the Farnsworth picture tube was patented in 1929, and were it not for the Great Depression and World War II, it would have reached the market much sooner. But to delay it even longer, you would need to prolong the austerity and scarcity of World War II. One scenario would be a version of World War III right on the heels of WWII in 1946. Even in the most severe case, I don't think a delay could be longer than ten years.

At the time, patents lasted 17 years and poor Philo Farnsworth saw few royalties from his work. It was enough to drive a Mormon to alcoholism.
 
Actually, the Farnsworth picture tube was patented in 1929, and were it not for the Great Depression and World War II, it would have reached the market much sooner. But to delay it even longer, you would need to prolong the austerity and scarcity of World War II. One scenario would be a version of World War III right on the heels of WWII in 1946. Even in the most severe case, I don't think a delay could be longer than ten years.

That's the problem, most of the necessary technologies were developed shortly after the turn of the century. To delay it even further you have to have a situation where consumer goods aren't being produced which will take either the destruction of the economy or an extended WWII or WWIII as you said. Short of nuclear war or a POD that's pre-1900 I don't think you can delay it until the 1970s
 
Without a definite POD, it's hard to be specific about personalities and events, but I can imagine some broad trends:

Radio remains the only way to experience live or up-to-the-minute events like news and sporting events. This butterflies the kind of vivid, cinematic TV reportage that had such an impact on the public during the Vietnam War. In general, current events have less visual immediacy than in OTL. People hear about events long before they see images of them. Huge events like the moon landing are experienced entirely over the radio.

The prestige and cultural ubiquity of radio continues. Formats like sitcoms, panel shows, and game shows continue to be primarily radio-based. Radio orchestras remain popular and relevant much longer than in OTL.

Films don't have to compete for people's eyeballs, so this butterflies gimmicks like Cinerama and 3D films, and delays the adoption of color film. Movie formats probably remain more variety-oriented, with newsreels, short films, etc.

Animation remains a purely cinematic form. There are no Saturday-morning cartoons exclusively watched by unattended children. Instead, cartoons retain a broad-based audience including adults. This prevents cartoons from becoming infantilized, shoddy, and mass-produced, as happened in OTL during the 50's and 60's.

In general, moviegoing remains a frequent and communal experience, a routine rather than a special event. In OTL, one of the effects of TV was to make cinema look high-class and artistic by comparison. That had a big effect on the way films were made and marketed. In the absence of TV, cinema is never exalted by comparison with a newer, tackier rival. Movies continue to be seen as vulgar and ephemeral entertainment. Big producers continue to run the show, and visionary auteurs have much less mainstream exposure. In general, people who see themselves as high artists are less likely to go into the motion picture business. A lot of them remain in live theater, where they have greater creative control. At the same time, radio drama becomes more highly developed.
 
Even during the 1930s, one has to admit that the technology was still so new that even though it did appear when it did, even as a luxury for those lucky few who could afford one (whether watching the experimental stations in NYC, or Radiodiffusion nationale télévision in Paris, or the BBC Television Service in London, for example), there was actually so much fluidity going on that if you bought a TV set one year, the next year it could be made obsolete due to different technology being used. Eventually, around the late 1930s some sort of workable standard around 441 lines was more or less agreed upon (with some differences, like Britain's 405-line system or France's pre-WW2 455-line system). So were it not for WW2, then 441 lines (or 383i in modern terminology) would be the standard. In North America, the fluidity of the system could even allow Canada and the US to have different TV standards completely, let alone Saint-Pierre et Miquelon (which could either adopt the French 455-line standard, adopt the 441-line standard, or adopt whatever standard the Canadians adopt).

At the same time, however, I could easily see the spread of television massively delayed and more slower in such a scenario, and it's not hard to see why. For the most part in the 1930s, particularly in Europe, the focus for television was largely the capital cities, never provincial centres, and even then television service was still largely experimental even with the officially licensed stations. If television was largely middle-class to upper-class entertainment, as it most likely would have been in OTL without WW2, then that perception could hinder any spread of television, particularly if the focus is mainly on the capital cities and only gradual, if any, deployment to provincial centres. This would still give time for radio and cinema, as mass entertainment, to adjust so that once television gets fully adopted en masse later on (as the perception shifts away from a class-based form of entertainment to a universal form of mass entertainment) it could survive better (as it still more or less does, to a limited degree, in OTL). That is, if it does get fully adopted (which could be more so in North America, but the question would be of degree and how much bickering could one handle - as well as if the Canadians decide to leap-frog the Americans in terms of technological development, which although pretty un-Canadian is definitely possible).
 
as has been pointed out Farnsworth;s system isa late 1920s innovation , and it was the depression that retarded the introduction . WW2 has an interesting effect retarding developement becasue of broadcasting restrictions, TV transmissions even (Band 1 never mind Band 3 or UHF ) are just too much of a localiser , however all the work on radar makes a lot of the parts of a TV cheaper and better and the understading of UHF is far greater.
 
Could a cultural POD work better? Estes Kefauver (the same guy who whipped up the moral panic that created the Comics Code Authority) went after TV as a potential cause of "juvenile deliquency." The motion picture studios were scared of TV ruining their business too. What if they were ablt to get television stigmatized as immoral?

This seems even less likely, but maybe the FCC does a poor job regulating or enforcing broadcasting rights, leading to patchwork of stations with poor signal and coverage. If TV is unreliable, it may cause a delay in adoption.
 
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