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July 1: __It's a triple anniversary, a signal day in television history. The Federal Communications Commission was established this day in 1934. At the FCC's behest, the NTSC television standard went into effect exactly seven years later. And that same day, a New York City station telecast the first legal TV commercial.
__1934: __The Federal Communications Commission comes into being.
The FCC was created by the Communications Act of 1934 (.pdf), passed on June 19. The law gave to the agency
The FCC replaced the Federal Radio Commission, which had been established just seven years earlier. The new commission also took over some functions from the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Post Office.
Radio was enjoying great success as the first electronic mass medium, and development of television was creating new opportunities ... and problems. The various companies working on TV were using proprietary — and mutually incompatible — standards to define the television signal.
The FCC convened the National Television System Committee in 1940 to resolve the differences and iron out a single standard, so viewers would not need a separate TV for each network. The NTSC released it's recommendations in March 1941,
__1941: __The new NTSC standard becomes official July 1.
The Radio Manufacturers Association had proposed a 441-line standard in 1936. RCA sets already used this standard, and the RCA-owned National Broadcasting Company used the system for its limited, experimental TV broadcasts.
Philco was pressing for a better-resolution 600- or 800-line system. (The clash of companies sounds a lot like the 1980 battle to find a single standard for the music CD.)
The panel eventually compromised on a 525-line system and an image rate of 30 frames per second, with 2:1 interlacing at 262.5 lines per field, and 60 fields per second. The aspect ratio was set at a boxy 4:3, and the sound signal was frequency-modulated.
Engineers and the FCC tweaked the NTSC standard in the early 1950s to make way for color TV. Other than that, TV in North America was operating on pretty much the same standard until June 12 of this year, when the NTSC analog era to to an end. (Other regions of the world have used different standards, including PAL and SECAM.) The new North American digital-TV standard is ATSC, for Advanced Television Systems Committee.
The FCC began authorizing licenses for commercial broadcasting stations in May 1941, with the licenses effective with the beginning of the new standard.
1941: Thus July 1 sees and hears the first legal television commercial.
There are records of television commercials dating back to 1928 aired by W1XAY in Lexington, Massachusetts. Boston's W1XAV ran a commercial for I.J. Fox Furriers on Dec. 7, 1930. That one drew a fine, because the station's license did not authorize the selling of commercial television time.
NBC's New York City station, WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), had the first such license, and it ran the first official TV commercial on its first day of commercial operation, July 1, 1941.
At the start of a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, an image of a Bulova clock appeared with a map of the United States. The announcer intoned: "America runs on Bulova time." The ad lasted 10 seconds, and Bulova paid $9 (about $130 in today's money). The audience for that ad numbered 4,000 television sets.
The NTSC standard is now history, but the FCC and television advertising are still very much with us.
Source: Various
Photo: Bettman/Corbis
See Also:
- July 1, 1858: Darwin and Wallace Shift the Paradigm
- Feb. 23, 1941: One Step Closer
- May 9, 1941: German Sub Caught With the Goods
- May 12, 1941: Fog of War Shrouds Computer Advance
- May 27, 1941: Sink the Bismarck!
- Sept. 27, 1941: First Liberty Ship Launched, More to Follow
- Dec. 7, 1941: Attack at Pearl Harbor a Bold, Desperate Gamble
- Aug. 1, 1949: FCC Gets In on Cable TV
