Document Type

Other

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.4 SOCIOLOGY, 5.8 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS, 6. HUMANITIES, History

Publication Details

Report from Brainstorm. RTÉ. 30 November 2017. https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1129/923718-the-future-of-television-may-be-a-lot-like-its-past/

Abstract

Like that first card from an old friend, or the roof of twinkling lights over the streets, in Ireland The Late Late Toy Show is one of those signs that Christmas is on its way. Kids are let loose on a grown - up show for a night of singing, dancing and, most importantly, toys. This annual special is ‘event television’. It will be discussed in kitchens, offices and school yards for days afterwards. Television events are set up, across different media, weeks in advance. There are ‘making of’ programmes, press pieces, promos, retrospect ives and so on that tell you this is something you must see, and see live if possible. But then, many parents will remember when The Late Late Show or Dallas managed to be on the tips of Irish people’s tongues without needing wall - to - wall promotion. So recently central to national and family life, television seems to be fragmenting and receding into the background. Is television dying out? Has the internet killed it? The ghost of television past can help us here. Travelling back to the early twentieth ce ntury we can see, not what television was, but ideas about what it might have been and what it may become.

DOI

10.21427/D74F5T

Download


Share

COinS