Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV

Before streaming, before cable, and before anyone had ever heard the phrase “binge watching,” television viewers had one thing in common: if they wanted to change the channel, they had to get up and walk across the room. In this episode of 100 Years of Television, we explore one of the most overlooked innovations in TV history: the remote control. From Zenith’s wired “Lazy Bones” to the light-beam...

On September 9, 1956, more than 60 million Americans tuned in to witness a cultural earthquake: Elvis Presley’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The cameras framed him only from the waist up, but the hysteria could not be contained. To millions of teenagers, Elvis represented freedom, rebellion, sexuality, and a brand-new sound called rock 'n roll. To critics and moral watchdogs, Elvis re...

It is hard to believe that there were only 39 episodes.  And yet The Honeymooners became one of the most influential sitcoms in television history. This podcat episode traces the rise of Jackie Gleason from Brooklyn pool halls and smoky nightclubs to television superstardom as the blustering bus driver Ralph Kramden. Along the way came Art Carney’s lovable Ed Norton, Audrey Meadows’ razor-sharp Al...

By 1954, television was powerful enough to challenge political demagoguery in real time. This episode explores the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose reckless accusations and anti-Communist crusade defined one of the most fearful chapters of Cold War America. While newspapers and radio largely echoed McCarthy’s claims, television exposed them. From Edward R. Murrow and CBS’s See It No...

On January 1, 1954, television crossed a technological threshold that had been decades in the making: color. In this episode of Countdown to the Centennial, we trace the long road from early color experiments by John Logie Baird and others to the industry-defining breakthrough engineered by RCA under David Sarnoff. The challenge was not just creating color images—it was making them compatible with...

Long before touchscreens, controllers, or even computers in the home, there was a children’s show that invited kids to interact with their televisions—by drawing on them. Premiering on October 10, 1953, Winky Dink and You transformed passive viewing into participation. Armed with a plastic screen and “magic crayons,” millions of children helped the cartoon hero solve problems in real time—bridging...

TV Guide didn’t just list programs—it reshaped how America experienced television. From a pocket-sized weekly to the most widely read magazine in the country, this is the story of how viewers learned to navigate their new electronic world. On April 3, 1953, Walter Annenberg launched TV Guide as a national publication, transforming a patchwork of local listings into a unified cultural roadmap as te...

Starting in 1952, an after-school dance program in Philadelphia called Bandstand began to sketch the blueprint for modern youth culture in the age of television. Renamed American Bandstand, the program went national on the ABC network in 1957, hosted by the perennially youthful Dick Clark. American Bandstand didn’t just play the hits—it transformed teenagers into one of the most powerful consumer...

America’s Favorite Family — The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952) Countdown #69 | 100 Years of Television (1927–2027) On October 3, 1952, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet premiered on ABC, introducing television audiences to the family that would define postwar suburban America for more than a decade. Originally a radio hit, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson brought their real-life family — includi...

The Today Show premiered on NBC on January 14, 1952, launching the modern era of morning television. Hosted originally by Dave Garroway and developed by NBC president Pat Weaver, “Today” became one of the most influential formats in television history. This episode of Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of Television continues the countdown with Milestone #70 — NBC Today (1952), exploring how the...

On the radio, audiences can't see that you're not wearing blackface. But once your popular radio show portraying disparaging stereotypes of African Americans moves to television, some adjustments will have to be made in the casting.  Such was the case for Amos-n-Andy, one of the most popular shows on radio in the 1930s. The show was created by two white veterans of vaudeville, Freeman Gosden and C...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ In 1940, RKO Pictures released the film adaptation of a Broadway musical, Rodgers and Hart's Too Many Girls. ...

In 1950, MIT’s Whirlwind computer quietly changed the future of television, computing, and every screen that followed. Originally designed for U.S. Navy flight simulation, Whirlwind became the first real-time digital computer — and the first to display data on a cathode-ray tube. This milestone marks the moment when computing met video, launching the technological lineage that leads from radar dis...

...but it did build Disneyland.  ____________ For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ Before 1950, Walt Disney regarded television with the same suspi...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ When a serious injury put aspiring real estate mogul Jay Ward in bed for several months, he made the obvious c...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ By the time Americans stopped staring at their radios and started gazing at glowing cathode ray tubes, the A.C...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ As a youngster, Isaac Sydney Caesar spent many hours behind the counter at his parents kosher restaurant in Yo...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ When CBS broadcast the premiere of The Goldbergs On February 7, 1949, one of the comedy's's most enduring form...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ There are three reasons why the name of Philo T. Farnsworth is not more familiar, despite his having invented...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ Irna Phillips was the youngest of ten children born into a large Jewish family in Chicago in 1901.  Her girlho...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ Though he is largely forgotten in the public imagination, it is genuinely intriguing how the legacy of Philo T...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented. ____________ In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs moved the newspaper's headquarters into the newly constructed Tim...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ Before Survivor, before The Real World , before all The Real Housewives and The Celebrity Apprentice , there w...

When he was only 12 years old, an aspiring vaudeville performer named Mendel Berlinger decided he needed a more ethnically palatable stage name.  In 1920, he changed his name to Milton Berle and continued to refine his comic persona on radio.  Milton Berle was a fairly well known when NBC started migrating much of its radio programming to television.  In the summer of 1948, when Texaco Star Theate...

For one hundred weeks that started in October, 2025 this podcast is going to recall the “Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television and Video.”  The Countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented.  ____________ In 1947 Ed and Grace Parsons, the owners of a radio station in Astoria, Oregon, attended the convention of the...