Before you all sit in front of the television (TV) this week, I have an answer to last week's question, which was: "When was the first stock market report broadcast by radio waves?" It was 1923, and the pioneers were from Reuters. They used long-wave radio waves to transmit price quotations and exchange rates in Morse code to Europe. You probably know Reuters for their news flashes and, if you work for a newspaper, you know their news wires intimately. They provide the bedrock for many international news stories today. These stories are also used on TV, where we now have stations that broadcast these blips and bytes 24/7.

I'm not going to ask you when TV news began broadcasting twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because I'm going to tell you all about this as Cora and I tackle the medium of TV. Last week, we left off shortly after WWII, when radio became second-base to the home-run hit provided by TV. Even though the first years of TV were relegated to black and white visions, America quickly became addicted to the moving images, especially since they didn't have to dress up to go to the theatre.

Before we even go there, let's go back to the beginning. If we don't count the early experiments with electromagnetism (1831), then we can travel directly to 1862, smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, when Abbe Giovanna Caselli sent a still image over the wires with his "pantelegraph." From here, the New York Post fills us in on the next few decades:

• 1873: Inventors experimented with turning images into electronic signals.
  
  
• 1876: George Carey of Boston drew what he called a selenium camera. This allowed people to see images by using electricity.
  
  
• 1880: Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison experimented with using telephone devices to transmit images and sound. They were already famous for their inventions of the telephone and light bulb, respectively.
  
  
• Jan. 26, 1926: John Baird gave the world's first public demonstration of his mechanical television machine, the "televisor," which transmitted images of living human faces, complete with tones and shadows.
  
  
• 1928: The first trans-Atlantic transmission was made from England to New York. The idea had legs and was off and running.
  
  
• 1936: 200 sets were in use.

With this list, we can see that more than one person was responsible for the creation of the television before 1940. Even more people got in on the act after that date, as Hollywood and other studios in other locations began to envision how their actors and actresses might look on a smaller screen (they had to wear black lipstick and green makeup, because the TV had trouble with the color white). Even more important was the number of companies that got in on this deal. We could probably compare it to 1989, when home computers hit the market. The manufacture of new components and designs became major industries.

Not surprisingly, politicians also viewed this medium with interest. Although President Roosevelt was not the first president to utilize radio, he was the first president to televise a speech. His face was broadcast at the opening of New York's World Fair in 1939. After listening to this president's "Fireside Chats" on the radio for years, millions of people were probably fascinated to watch the man talk. About a decade later, millions of kids watched "Howdy Doody" and their parents watched Edward R. Murrow expose McCarthyism. When McCarthy responded, he gave politicians their first lesson on what to avoid when on the air. TV was not kind. It still isn't forgiving. Most live shows are just that - live. What a person says and how they look cannot be erased, unless it's a pre-taped show.

During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, TV became more graphic in visuals and in content. Even though war news was aired on radio and TV, during the 1960s we traveled to the Vietnam jungles to watch the action firsthand. This could be seen in color as well as in black and white (color TVs debuted in the mid-1950s). One other bit of messy news was that political convention in Chicago in 1968. This last event was probably more than a news anchor could ask for in unlimited live drama. In fact, news anchors carried so much weight by this time that presidents were very concerned about their opinions.

Of course, once the news was over we could all entertain ourselves with "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Three Stooges," and, later, "All in the Family." These comedies are now showing in your neighborhood college history curriculums. They're great fodder for further discussion on this period of American life. Between all this humor and drama was a little 60- to 120-second visual byte called the "commercial." Commercials were often entertaining, not only because they were novel but because they won awards. Of course, commercials win awards today, but can you really get that "pop, pop, fizz, fizz," song out of your head? Sorry. Even Cora sings that song, and she wasn't here yet when that commercial was popular.

We'll talk a bit more about commercials in another article. In the meantime, let's think about this scenario: "What if," one hypothetical politician thought, "I appeared on television, and I was more handsome, better-spoken, and wore a more expensive suit than my challenger?" And the politician's public relations person agreed. While this politician was sprucing up his appearance and his speeches, a few more things happened to make this medium look absolutely stunning, especially to investors. We'll go there next week.

The question this week is: Until 1967, there were three major broadcasting companies, but in that year a fourth company appeared. What were (and are) the full names of the three primary broadcasting companies and their call letters, what is the fourth company, and what makes it so different than the other three?

That should be too easy to answer.

Until Next Week,
Linda Goin

BUYandHOLD does not recommend any securities. The securities mentioned above are being used for illustrative purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer to sell or as a solicitation of an offer to buy.