Television

Television (TV) comes from the Greek τελε (tele), meaning “distant” or “far,” and the Latin visio, meaning “sight” or “vision.” It is a mode of (tele) [Page 1583]communication typically used for transmitting moving (color) images (and potentially sound) to audiences. Although the technology was commercially available since the late 1920s in very limited amounts and at a very high price, TV has since become a common household good. It is also used by businesses and institutions particularly as a vehicle for advertising, entertainment, and news broadcasting. From around the 1950s onward, TV increasingly became the primary medium in the Western world for shaping public opinion, because of the saturation of TV in society. Color TV sets became widely available from the 1960s, and because of ...