One of the main things I learned from the article is how television was created out of necessity and it was a progression of the other technological devices that had come before it. This was mainly the radio and the telegraph. I also learned that the invention of television was delayed by war. Televsion should have came tio be in the late 1930s or early 1940s but sinxce wat broke out it didn't come to be until the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The article also talked about broadcasting and the role it played in forming the programming on television we see now. People needed a quicker and more effective way to transmit stories and current events. The radio and telegram were very limited in this capacity. This is when television came in to play. It was a way for people to send and receive images and messages at a greater rate. The book explains, "there was an evident need for a new form, which largely traditional institutions of church and school could not meet." (296) This led to the eventual formation of the press. This is why people now go to the press for their news. It was how the press came to be.
What I also found interesting in the article is something I have felt for a long time. That being the idea that television is, "an inferior kind of cinema." (299) Raymond Williams thinks that people began watching television because it was the easy thing to do. People were craving a medium that provided them with instant access to current events. This realization came thanks to teh invention of the television. He describes it was an ,"inferior immediate technology." (299) It may have been readily availabe but it was still an inferior kind of technology.
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