A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United States, multichannel video programming distributors. Until the mid-1980s, broadcast programming on television in most countries of the world was dominated by a small number of terrestrial networks. Many early television networks such as the BBC, CBC, PBS, PTV, NBC or ABC in the US and in Australia evolved from earlier radio networks.
Overview In countries where most networks broadcast identical, centrally originated content to all of their stations, and where most individual television transmitters therefore operate only as large "repeater stations", the terms "television network", "television channel" (a numeric identifier or radio frequency) and "television station" have become mostly interchangeable in everyday language, with professionals in television-related occupations continuing to make a differentiation between them. Within the industry, a tiering is sometimes created among groups of networks based on whether their programming is simultaneously originated from a central point, and whether the network master control has the technical and administrative capability to take over the programming of their affiliates in real-time when it deems this necessary – the most common example being during national breaking news events.
In North America in particular, many television networks available via cable and satellite television are branded as "channels" because they are somewhat different from traditional networks in the sense defined above, as they are singular operations – they have no affiliates or component stations, but instead are distributed to the public via cable or direct-broadcast satellite providers. Such networks are commonly referred to by terms such as "specialty channels" in Canada or "cable networks" in the U.S.
A network may or may not produce all of its own programming. If not, production companies (such as Warner Bros. Television, Universal Television, Sony Pictures Television and TriStar Television) can distribute their content to the various networks, and it is common that a certain production firm may have programs that air on two or more rival networks. Similarly, some networks may import television programs from other countries, or use archived programming to help complement their schedules.
Some stations have the capability to interrupt the network through the local insertion of television commercials, station identifications and emergency alerts. Others completely break away from the network for their own programming, a method known as regional variation. This is common where small networks are members of larger networks. The majority of commercial television stations are self-owned, even though a variety of these instances are the property of an owned-and-operated television network. The commercial television stations can also be linked with a noncommercial educational broadcasting agency. Some countries have launched national television networks, so that individual television stations can act as common repeaters of nationwide programs.
Cable television has also brought major changes to television networks related to cultural programming. The emergence of cable made possible new channels in major media markets, including programs aimed at bicultural Latino audiences in the United States. This expanded the range of audiences that networks and affiliates could target with programming.
This is explained by media historian Tim P. Vos in his 2010 journal article "A Cultural Explanation for Early Broadcast Policy," where he examines targeted-group and non-targeted-group representations as well as the cultural specificity employed by television networks. Vos notes that policymakers did not expressly intend to create a broadcast order dominated by commercial networks. In fact, legislative attempts were made to limit the network's preferred position.
As to individual stations, modern network operations centers usually use broadcast automation to handle most tasks. These systems are not only used for programming and for video server playout, but use exact atomic time from Global Positioning Systems or other sources to maintain perfect synchronization with upstream and downstream systems, so that programming appears seamless to viewers.
Global A major international television broadcaster is the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is perhaps most-well known for its news agency BBC News. Owned by the Crown, the BBC funds itself in two ways. UK services branded under BBC are funded by the television license paid by British residents, as a result no advertising appears on these services. The advertising-funded arm (BBC Studios) employs 23,000 people worldwide including the operation of broadcaster UKTV in the UK itself. Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1929, using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by John Logie Baird. Limited regular broadcasts using this system began in 1934 and an expanded service (now known as BBC Television) started from Alexandra Palace in November 1936.
History
Electronic television was made and demonstrated in San Francisco, on September 7, 1927, it was designed by Philo Taylor Fransworth who has been working on it since 1920.
United States
Television in the United States had long been dominated by the Big Three television networks, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), CBS (formerly the Columbia Broadcasting System) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC); however, the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox), which launched in October 1986, has gained prominence and is now considered part of the "Big Four". The Big Three provide a significant number of programs to each of their affiliates, including newscasts, prime time, daytime and sports programming, but still reserve periods during each day where their affiliate can air local programming, such as local news or syndicated programs. Since the creation of Fox, the number of American television networks has increased, though the amount of programming they provide is often much less: for example, The CW only provides fifteen hours of primetime programming each week (along with three hours on Saturdays), while MyNetworkTV only provides ten hours of primetime programming each week, leaving their affiliates to fill time periods where network programs are not broadcast with a large amount of syndicated programming. Other networks are dedicated to specialized programming, such as religious content or programs presented in languages other than English, particularly Spanish.
The largest television network in the United States, however, is the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), a non-profit, publicly owned, non-commercial educational service. In comparison to the commercial television networks, there is no central unified arm of broadcast programming, meaning that each PBS member station has a significant amount of freedom to schedule television shows as they consent to. Some public television outlets, such as PBS, carry separate digital subchannel networks through their member stations (for example, Georgia Public Broadcasting; in fact, some programs airing on PBS were branded on other channels as coming from GPB Kids and PBS World).
This works as each network sends its signal to many local affiliated television stations across the country. These local stations then carry the "network feed", which can be viewed by millions of households across the country. In such cases, the signal is sent to as many as 200+ stations or as little as just a dozen or fewer stations, depending on the size of the network.
With the adoption of digital television, television networks have also been created specifically for distribution on the digital subchannels of television stations (including networks focusing on classic television series and films operated by companies like Weigel Broadcasting (owners of Movies! and Me-TV) and Nexstar Media Group (owners of Rewind TV and Antenna TV), along with networks focusing on music, sports and other niche programming).
Cable and satellite providers pay the networks a certain rate per subscriber (the highest charge being for ESPN, in which cable and satellite providers pay a rate of more than $5.00 per subscriber to ESPN). The providers also handle the sale of advertising inserted at the local level during national programming, in which case the broadcaster and the cable/satellite provider may share revenue. Networks that maintain a home shopping or infomercial format may instead pay the station or cable/satellite provider, in a brokered carriage deal. This is especially common with low-power television stations, and in recent years, even more so for stations that used this revenue stream to finance their conversion to digital broadcasts, which in turn provides them with several additional channels to transmit different programming sources.
History Television broadcasting in the United States was heavily influenced by radio. Early individual experimental radio stations in the United States began limited operations in the 1910s. In November 1920, Westinghouse signed on "the world's first commercially licensed radio station", KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Other companies built early radio stations in Detroit, Boston, New York City and other areas. Radio stations received permission to transmit through broadcast licenses obtained through the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), a government entity that was created in 1926 to regulate the radio industry. With some exceptions, radio stations east of the Mississippi River received official call signs beginning with the letter "W"; those west of the Mississippi were assigned calls beginning with a "K". The number of programs that these early stations aired was often limited, in part due to the expense of program creation. The idea of a network system which would distribute programming to many stations simultaneously, saving each station the expense of creating all of their own programs and expandingus transmitted from station to station to listeners across the United States. Other companies, including CBS and the Mutual Broadcasting System, soon followed suit, each network signed hundreds of individual stations on as affiliates: stations which agreed to broadcast programs from one of the networks.
As radio prospered throughout the 1920s and 1930s, experimental television stations, which broadcast both an audio and a video signal, began sporadic broadcasts. Licenses for these experimental stations were often granted to experienced radio broadcasters, and thus advances in television technology closely followed breakthroughs in radio technology. As interest in television grew, and as early television stations began regular broadcasts, the idea of networking television signals (sending one station's video and audio signal to outlying stations) was born. However, the signal from an electronic television system, containing much more information than a radio signal, required a broadband transmission medium. Transmission by a nationwide series of radio relay towers would be possible but extremely expensive.
Researchers at AT&T subsidiary Bell Telephone Laboratories patented coaxial cable in 1929, primarily as a telephone improvement device. Its high capacity (transmitting 240 telephone calls simultaneously) also made it ideal for long-distance television transmission, where it could handle a frequency band of 1 MHz."Coaxial Cable", Time, 14 October 1935. German television first demonstrated such an application in 1936 by relaying televised telephone calls from Berlin to Leipzig, away, by cable.Television in Germany , Berlin, 1936.