Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV

Paul Schatzkin
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Over 100 weeks, we're going to countdown to the Centennial on Sept 7, 2027 by recounting the 100 Top Moments in the First 100 Years of Television.

  1. 2d ago

    E65: Where No TV Has Gone Before

    In November 1968, *Star Trek* took television into uncharted territory when Captain James T. Kirk kissed Lieutenant Nyota Uhura—the first interracial kiss deliberately written into an American network drama. But that historic moment almost never happened. This milestone traces the unlikely journey of *Star Trek* from Gene Roddenberry’s clashes with the Pentagon to two rejected pilots, a near-fatal showdown with Desilu’s board of directors, and Lucille Ball’s decisive intervention that kept the Enterprise flying. It explores the series’ treatment of race, war, and gender, William Shatner’s ingenious sabotage of alternate takes of the famous kiss, and the unexpected college-campus reruns that transformed a struggling three-season series into one of television’s most enduring franchises. It took a former bomber pilot with a grudge against the Pentagon, a determined studio executive, and a cast willing to challenge convention to take television where it had never gone before. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction and countdown setup(00:01:21) - The Kirk-Uhura kiss and Star Trek's milestone(00:02:52) - Gene Roddenberry's early life and career(00:05:21) - From Pentagon clashes to Star Trek's creation(00:06:20) - Casting and pilot episodes(00:09:01) - Budget battles and Lucille Ball saves Star Trek(00:11:45) - Launch, ratings struggles, and critical reception(00:13:01) - Race and diversity on the Enterprise(00:14:00) - Plato's Stepchildren airs and show's cancellation(00:15:46) - Syndication success and lasting legacy(00:17:30) - Closing and next episode teaser

    E65: Where No TV Has Gone Before

  2. Nov 1

    E64: "Julia" – Color Adds Black

    On September 17, 1968, NBC premiered Julia, a sitcom starring Diahann Carroll as a Black widowed nurse raising her young son. For the first time since Amos ’n Andy and Beulah disappeared in 1953, a Black character occupied the lead role in a network television series. The show's creator, Hal Kanter, had been inspired by a speech from NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins challenging Hollywood's failure to portray Black Americans fairly. Kanter imagined a show that depicted Black people simply as people—not as stereotypes defined by their race. The timing was urgent. The urban uprisings of 1967 and the Kerner Commission's blistering criticism of the news media had exposed television's own role in perpetuating racial inequality. Julia offered a different image: a professional Black woman, raising a child, navigating everyday life in a predominantly white world. The show became a ratings hit. But its success came with complications. Some Black critics—and Carroll herself—questioned whether Julia's comfortable lifestyle and largely frictionless experience of white society amounted to a sanitized portrait of Black life. Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised would later capture the skepticism. Julia was a breakthrough, but not a revolution. Its legacy lies in both what it accomplished and what it left out. It opened a door that Good Times, The Jeffersons, Roots, and generations of television that followed would walk through. Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro and countdown setup(00:00:47) - Hal Cantor's inspiration from NAACP event(00:02:40) - America's unrest and the Kerner Commission(00:04:40) - Primetime's limited portrayal of Black characters(00:05:45) - Developing the Julia concept(00:07:21) - Casting Diahann Carroll as Julia(00:09:34) - Naming the show Julia(00:10:32) - Julia premieres: scene with Dr. Chegley(00:12:22) - Ratings success and criticism of Julia's portrayal(00:13:53) - Gil Scott-Heron's critique and Julia's decline(00:15:16) - Julia's legacy and influence on later shows(00:15:54) - Closing and outro

    E64: "Julia" – Color Adds Black

  3. Oct 25

    E63: The Whole World Is Watching | Countdown #45

    In August 1968, television became the front line of a political battle. As the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, thousands of antiwar protesters confronted Mayor Richard Daley’s police force outside the convention hall, while chaos and confrontation erupted inside.  The protesters understood something the political establishment was only beginning to grasp: you didn’t march past a television camera. You marched toward it. When CBS correspondent Dan Rather was shoved and punched while covering the convention, Walter Cronkite called the security personnel “a bunch of thugs.” Then, as police violence spilled into the streets, television cameras captured the images and rushed them into millions of American living rooms. “The whole world is watching” became the chant—and a description of the new reality. Television had become the fulcrum of America’s political levers, giving protesters an audience of tens of millions and making the convention one of the defining televised spectacles of the 1960s.  Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro and Countdown Setup(00:01:13) - Hoffman's TV Thesis and the 1968 DNC Setup(00:03:18) - Factions Converge on Chicago(00:04:01) - Daley's Camera Control and Early Convention Unrest(00:05:11) - Violence in the Streets and Delegate Credentials Fights(00:06:14) - Dan Rather Incident and Police Buildup(00:07:12) - Vietnam Plank Vote and Floor Protests(00:09:08) - Police Riot and 'The Whole World Is Watching'(00:11:02) - Humphrey's Nomination and Aftermath(00:12:25) - Nixon's Win and Closing Notes

  4. Oct 18

    E62: The First Living Room War: When Cronkite Broke Ranks

    By 1967, half a million American troops were fighting in Vietnam, and the casualty figures had become a nightly fixture in American living rooms. But for most of the war's early years, television largely reflected the official story coming from Washington and the Pentagon. Then came the Tet Offensive. On February 27, 1968, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a reporting trip to Vietnam and delivered something extraordinary on television: an editorial assessment of the war. After witnessing the devastation of Tet firsthand, Cronkite concluded that the war was "mired in stalemate" and that negotiations offered the only realistic way out. It was an extraordinary moment—not simply because Cronkite was America's most trusted television journalist, but because millions of Americans were watching the war unfold, night after night, in their own living rooms. This episode of Countdown to the Centennial examines the rise of television's "Living Room War," the Tet Offensive, Cronkite's decision to break with the official narrative, and the remarkable claim that President Lyndon Johnson watched the broadcast and realized he had lost the confidence of the American people. Television had brought the war home. Now, for the first time, television itself was helping turn the nation against it. Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro and episode setup(00:00:47) - Origins of the Vietnam War(00:03:14) - America's growing military commitment(00:04:48) - Escalation and the rise of TV war coverage(00:06:18) - Combat footage reaches American living rooms(00:08:28) - Television fuels the anti-war movement(00:10:29) - The Tet Offensive shatters official narratives(00:12:16) - Cronkite travels to Vietnam(00:13:56) - Cronkite's stalemate broadcast(00:15:11) - Johnson's reaction and withdrawal from the race(00:16:46) - The war's end and reunification of Vietnam(00:17:44) - Legacy and memorial(00:18:21) - Closing and next episode preview

    E62: The First Living Room War: When Cronkite Broke Ranks

  5. Oct 11

    E61: All You Need Is Love: The Night Television Went Global | Countdown #47

    In 1945, a young British radar instructor named Arthur C. Clarke imagined satellites orbiting high above the Earth, relaying radio and television signals around the world. Twenty-two years later, the idea became reality. On June 25, 1967, hundreds of producers and technicians connected more than a dozen countries across five continents for Our World, the first live global satellite television broadcast. Viewers watched events unfold from around the planet in real time, connected by an electronic web of satellites, ground stations, and control rooms. Then came the grand finale. From Abbey Road Studios in London, the Beatles performed John Lennon's newly written anthem, “All You Need Is Love,” before an audience that included some of the biggest names in British rock. An estimated 400 million people around the world watched as the world's first global television broadcast closed with a song whose message needed no translation. This episode of Countdown to the Centennial tells the story of how a science-fiction vision became the Global Village—and how the Beatles gave it a soundtrack. Chapters (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: A Countdown to the Super Bowl(00:01:10) - Arthur C. Clarke's Satellite Communications(00:11:05) - The Beatles(00:13:44) - 100 Years of Television

    E61: All You Need Is Love: The Night Television Went Global | Countdown #47

  6. Oct 4

    E60: The First Super Bowl: The Game Television Built | Countdown #48

    In the beginning, there was baseball. But by the 1960s, television had discovered that football was almost perfectly designed for the small screen. From the first televised football game in 1939 to the legendary 1958 NFL Championship Game, television helped turn professional football from a cultural backwater into a national obsession. Then came the AFL, the rivalry between CBS and NBC, and a merger that created the ultimate championship game between the two leagues. The first Super Bowl was more than just another football game. It was arguably the first major sporting event created and staged entirely for television. In fact, when NBC was still in a commercial break at the start of the second half, the officials made the teams kick off again so viewers on both networks could see the play. In this episode of Countdown to the Centennial, we trace the unlikely rise of the Super Bowl—from its half-empty first game to Joe Namath's guarantee, Super Bowl parties, prime-time television, and its eventual displacement of the World Series as America's biggest sports broadcast. Chapters (00:00:00) - countdown: 100 Years of Television(00:00:46) - The Making of the Super Bowl(00:13:27) - 100 Years of Television

    E60: The First Super Bowl: The Game Television Built | Countdown #48

  7. Sep 27

    E59: Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Message | Countdown #49

    In 1964, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and gave the television age a way to understand itself. McLuhan argued that television was far more than a machine for delivering programs. It was changing the way people thought, experienced time and space, and related to one another. His famous phrase — “the medium is the message” — suggested that the technology itself could be more consequential than the content it carried. He also predicted the emergence of a “global village,” as electronic media collapsed distances and created shared experiences among millions of people. The Kennedy assassination and the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show had already demonstrated the extraordinary power of television to make people everywhere see and experience the same thing at the same time. McLuhan's ideas could seem baffling, even mystical. But decades later, his insights would take on new meaning in the age of the internet, smartphones and social media. The television screen changed the world. McLuhan helped us understand why. Chapters (00:00:00) - Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media(00:09:36) - Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media'(00:13:41) - 100 Years of Television

    E59: Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Message | Countdown #49

  8. Sep 20

    E58: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! The Night Beatlemania Came To America | Countdown to the Centennial #50

    On February 9, 1964, more than 70 million Americans tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show to see four young musicians from Liverpool who had already conquered Britain but were only beginning to make their mark in America. The Beatles arrived at exactly the right moment. Just months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a generation raised in front of television was ready for something joyful—and John, Paul, George and Ringo delivered it with ringing guitars, sparkling harmonies, floppy haircuts, and the screams of thousands of teenage girls. This episode of Countdown to the Centennial traces the unlikely path that brought The Beatles to Ed Sullivan's stage—from Sullivan's encounter with Beatlemania at Heathrow Airport and Capitol Records' initial reluctance, to a Washington disc jockey who helped turn I Want to Hold Your Hand into an American sensation. Then came the television appearance that inspired countless young Americans to pick up guitars and start bands of their own. Television didn't create The Beatles. But on one extraordinary Sunday night, it introduced them simultaneously to an entire nation—and gave America a glimpse of the cultural upheaval that was about to come. Chapters (00:00:00) - Ed Sullivan: The Beatles(00:09:12) - The Beatles

    E58: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! The Night Beatlemania Came To America | Countdown to the Centennial #50
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Over 100 weeks, we're going to countdown to the Centennial on Sept 7, 2027 by recounting the 100 Top Moments in the First 100 Years of Television.

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