An inside look at the history of television

The Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives (ASCLA) began a decade ago with the gift of the TV Guide Prime-Time Script Collection, including 29,000 scripts of TV series, specials, and movies, such as “Seinfeld” and Agnes Nixon soap operas including “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.” Lead archivist Samantha Dodd Summerbell says the number of scripts increases each year, and the archives have also grown to include memorabilia, research, and more. Researchers from around the world come to look at scripts, she says.

Annenberg not only possesses these documents; it also played a role in the history of many. Annenberg founder Walter Annenberg founded TV Guide, and ASCLA holds issues published from 1953 to the mid-1990s. It also houses the papers of former dean George Gerbner, a pioneer in research on television’s impact on viewers’ perceptions of the world and the effects of violent media on children.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first public demonstration of television. Reflecting on this milestone, Penn Today took a look inside ASCLA’s collections. Here are a few TV-related highlights.

The first issue of TV Guide

Gracing the cover of the April 3-9, 1953, inaugural edition is a chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed, consternated-looking Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV—the infant son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, or as TV Guide proclaimed, “LUCY’s $50,000,000 BABY.”

Walter Annenberg stated in his publisher’s message inside the front cover, “Television’s growing importance in our daily lives brought a need for accurate and complete station schedules printed in convenient form.” After his introduction, the first issue includes listings, a photo series depicting newspaper columnist and TV host Walter Winchell, a humor column on “three-D” films, and a review of the drama series “Robert Montgomery Presents.”

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ASCLA has print editions of the Philadelphia version of TV Guide and microfiche for other media markets, Summerbell says.

HBO Oral History Project

Today’s viewers may associate HBO with popular shows such as “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City,” or “Game of Thrones.” But the premium television network launched in 1972, and the HBO Oral History Project dives into business practices, government regulations, technology, and company culture in the early years.

The project was initiated by Annenberg alumnus Howard Burkat, HBO’s promotions director from 1977 to 1982, who also secured sponsorship from the Annenberg School for Communication. It features interviews with 38 people responsible for the founding and early development of HBO.

HBO founder Charles Dolan’s interview recalled that first broadcast included the Paul Newman movie “Sometimes a Great Notion” and a hockey game, and how he brought on as chief of programming Gerald M. Levin—a Penn Carey Law grad who would later become CEO of Time Warner. Other interviewees referenced HBO’s first broadcast via satellite in 1975: the “Thrilla in Manila” boxing match featuring Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Last fall, Annenberg research associate and lecturer Jeff Pooley taught Media in the Making: Podcasting HBO, in which students learned about television history as they scripted, recorded, and edited podcast episodes using audio from the HBO Oral History Project.

Pooley says the students recorded four 10-minute episodes, which detail financial losses and a turnaround in the mid-1970s, innovative programming, and the impact of the mainstream adoption of videocassette recorders in the 1980s. The plan, notes Pooley, is to release the episodes publicly in connection with an event in April.

Federal Communications Commission papers

Summerbell says that within the past two years, ASCLA acquired the collections of two former FCC chairmen: Alfred Sikes and Michael Copps. Annenberg professor Victor Pickard and doctoral student Matthew Conaty—a former FCC attorney—helped facilitate these acquisitions. Reviewing these files, Conaty says he was struck by Sikes’ early advocacy of high-definition television and his calls for uniform technological standards across national borders.

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Sikes, chairman from 1989 to 1993, documented each time an article mentioning him was published. An article in Radio Business Report and an op-ed by Sikes in Newsweek, for example, detailed the chairman’s criticism of rules preventing cross-ownership within the same market, such as ownership of a radio station and cable station or a telephone company and cable company.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 ultimately granted Sikes his wish. But in 1991, he was lamenting that incumbent congressmen interested in preserving the status quo were hampering his vision of the future: “What about a television in your home the size and quality of a movie screen?” Sikes wrote. “Or, what about being able to use a personal, pocket-sized telephone to place or receive calls anywhere in the world via satellite?”