On the 1991 ITV Franchise Round, I wrote about what I considered to be 'The Satellite Era of Television', ie: the time period that will be associated with a certain era of the way that television has been broadcasted. I wanted to start this thread to make a discussion out of this. If we can break down the 100 years (there about) of Television, as a medium, in the UK. How would you do it? Here's my arbitrary definitions of the Televisual Eras:
1926-1955: The Birth of Television: The Early Experiments with TV, BBC Television, and the spread of Television
1955-1993: The Multi Channel Era: ITV, BBC Two, Channel 4 launching respectively, Colour Television, and the Early days of Satellite.
1993-2021: The Satellite Era: Sky Multichannels, ON Digital/ITV Digital, Consolidation of ITV, and the end for Analogue broadcasting, Rise of Streaming
2021-Now: The Streaming Era: Streaming becomes the norm, and more popular way of watching television...More to come on that
I wouldn't call three or four channels "Multi Channel". Also, your second era is far too big, I'd split it in two. I've also adjusted the dates slightly.
1926-1955 - Experimental
1955-1969 - Monochrome/Commercial TV (starts with launch of ITV)
1969-1989 - Colour TV
1989-2020 - Satellite/Digital multi-channels (starts with launch of Sky on Astra 1A)
2020-present - Streaming (the pandemic accelerated this switch, hence 2020 instead of 2021).
1989 and 2020 far from fall in the same era too - Sky may have been around since the late 1980s but multi-channel TV didn't become the norm for the majority of viewers until the early to mid-noughties. I'd say the switch to streaming began way before 2020 too.
For me in my lifetime there has been three eras really. The analogue age, the digital age where Freeview bought multi-channel TV into so many more homes but also saw the loss of the regionalisation of ITV, and then the streaming age which has been growing over the last decade or so, and that has coincided with what many in the industry see as a golden period for drama production too.
TV didn't become "widespread" until the 1950s, the story goes that TV coverage of the Coronation in 1953 was the catalyst for the take up of TV in the domestic home. And of course you only got ITV if you lived in London in 1955. The Midlands was second up in 1956, but you had to wait until the 1960s for the South West.
And also satellite TV didn't just spontaneously appear in 1993, Sky had been broadcasting to Europe since 1982. BSB of course were granted their licence in 1986, hampered with all the startup costs and managed to get nine months worth of broadcasting done in 1990 before merging with Sky when they were both on the verge of bankruptcy.
I’d put the multi channel era into 3 sections
The first one being from when Sky won the football rights and really started gaining traction - before then Satellite may have existed but hardly anyone had it so it can’t define an era. This was 1992 wasn’t it?
The second period being the early digital era, when it looked like an exciting new world, so stuff like On Digital and ITV Digital would fit here, exciting cheap extension programmes on BBC Choice and ITV2, BBC Knowledge, BBC News 24 becoming mainstream. Stuff like being able to watch football from multiple angles. This is around 1998ish?
The third period being the modern digital era, when must of the exciting stuff was axed and digital channels became mostly filler, or the same few programmes over and over again. Not sure when this started
Then the present day era, with streaming dominating and even big dramas on BBC/ITV half the viewers don’t watch at the time of transmission
As I said, it is very much arbitrary, but its worth a good discussion. [mention]JAS84[/mention] makes a good point, it was a bit long, so in response to that, here is an altered version of my own:
1926-1939, 1946-1953: Experimental Era- First tests, BBC Television, Beginning of regular broadcasting
1953-1968: The Classic Era- Coronation, ITV, BBC Two
1969-1990: The Colour Era- Colour Broadcasting, expansion of timeslots to 24 hour television, Channel 4/S4C, the beginning of Satellite Television
1990-2008: The Multi Channel Era- Satellite becoming Mainstream, BSKYB, Consolidation of ITV, MultiChannels, ONDigital
2008-2020: The Digital Era- End of Analogue Broadcasting, Adoption of HD as the primary standard for broadcasting, the early days of streaming
2020-Now: The Streaming Era- As JAS84 said
Andrew post_id=48305 time= user_id=791 Wrote:Stuff like being able to watch football from multiple angles. This is around 1998ish?
That was more likely a selling point of digital TV for the likes of Sky. Considering the limited transponder space available (as they were sharing 19.2 with German broadcasters and no doubt others), it was very unlikely to be on analogue TV offerings.
As it turned out most of the "interactive" sport stuff became relatively limited and then scrapped in favour of on-demand highlights, and of course when a selling point of DVD was different viewing angles, that for the most part went unused as well. 3D could have aided but of course that fell out of favour as well.
The choose your own angle thing was soon dropped by Sky, but has kind of come back in over the last couple of years certainly on the BT app, and possibly with Sky too, but more for replays than live viewing I think.
To answer the original question and think about before my lifetime too I would say the eras are roughly:
Pre-1955: The early era
Limited single channel viewing of the BBC
1955-1969: The original multi-channel era
The introduction of ITV and then BBC2, rolled out across the nation, but still with limited hours.
1969-1982: The colour era
After a couple of years of BBC2 in colour ITV and BBC1 follow suit, but it isn't until 1976 colour TVs outnumber black and white sets. Also sees the arrival of many entertainment shows and comedies which set the tone for the future of British TV.
1982-2002: The 24 hour era
C4 arrives, and then breakfast and daytime television, and ultimately overnight TV too. The VHS also begins to revolutionise how people watch TV and arguably the true start of the "on demand" era. Sky and Cable emerge but remain an add on for the lucky few rather than the norm. Also over this time TV began to loosen up a bit and put a greater range of people in a greater range of shows on screen.
2002-2012: The Digital era
This is where the years get tricky but I'd say Freeview arriving is what made multi-channel the norm for the majority of viewers, and in the space of a few viewers choice changed from a few channels to a few dozen channels for terrestrial viewers, whilst for those who had long had satellite they went from a few dozen to a few hundred.
2012+: The Smart era
It's tricky to pinpoint when the streaming era began and I may have gone a bit early but the turning point was surely the availability of Smart TV and Smart sticks, which bought On Demand services like the iPlayer and Netflix direct to your television screen, and with the growth of the streamers came a whole host of new content too, with many seeing it as a new golden age of television.
I don’t think we actively started streaming rather than watching live until amazingly recently actually. Having said that though, I recently realised my aerial no longer works. I’ve no idea when it stopped picking anything up but it’s at some point in the last 4-5 years, I have Freesat for live TV and Chromecast for streaming.
It’s hard to give specific years as different people upgraded their viewing habits at different times. In early 2010 I had friends with smart TVs streaming programmes, which felt astonishingly futuristic at the time, meanwhile my mum at home was still recording episodes of Lost onto VHS on a 4:3 TV, as if it was still the 1980s/90s. We didn’t have a VHS machine at all until 1996 so recording or owning programmes wasn’t possible for much of my childhood.
For my parents generation, neither of them had colour sets until 1980-81 (which might seem late but many really did keep their black and white TVs for a long time) and neither were “allowed” to watch ITV as it was seen as inferior and a bad influence by my future grandparents, meaning it was BBC or nothing. It seems amusing looking back how excited I was when Channel 5 launched in 1997, given that just two years later I’d have dozens of channels to choose from.
As for streaming, I still prefer DVDs as there’s no danger of programmes being removed online and I don’t have to pay any subscription fees other than about a pound at CeX every so often.