Saturday 10 April 2021

screen-time

We rather enjoyed this glossary of television related terms entering into the lexicon, prompted by the statistic that the average American family consumes five hours and seventeen minutes per day of TV. One really needs to zoom in on this newsprint from 1964 (sponsored content I guess from W-CBS for its home town newspaper and sourced from Nielsen polling) to appreciate the illustrations and terms defined that were once novel but now naturally seem commonplace and needing no introduction to today’s home audiences.  The audio portion, distinct from the video, synchronised and part of the experience.
Further, there’s lick for an ad-libbed musical phrase not appearing in the score, viewer for those watching a television programme, net as an abbreviation for network—that is, multiple television stations linked by coaxial cables or microwave, pan as in following the action of any scene to the left or right by tracking or the above directed zoom, an effect created by a variable focus lens to make the subject appear to move to or from the camera.