About Stan Bartkus Expertise History of TV as it developed from Network Radio to the present. Started doing Radio & TV in 1976, with "Happy Birthday America, 200". With a total of 30 years experience as a Communications Technician.
Experience Past/Present clients..All the Stations listed along the left side column of any TV Guide, makes a good customer/client list.
Expert: Stan Bartkus Date: 9/26/2002 Subject: History of Primetime Television
Question Hi...I'm trying to find out the history of Central Time in Primetime television. In other words, why are Eastern Time and Central Time linked in one feed. The two possibilities I can think of are: (1) Midwest agriculture required people to get up early, so they wanted primetime to begin earlier than 8pm, so it was linked with the East coast. OR (2) Networks didn't want to spend the money creating a separate feed for the Central time market. OR Initially the first reason, then reinforced by the second....OR Factors I haven't yet considered. Thanks in advance for any insight you might have. Sincerely, Evan Feldman
Answer The History you seek is actually the History of the Technolgy that sends "live" TV pictures as far as they can go with a "Broadcast" quality level. Beyond that distance a program would be sent to the west coast as a kinescope.
Once upon a time when TV was new and black & white:
Any TV studio in New york would connect to "the cable". Which was a coaxial cable connected to a telco line, connected to A.T & T Long Distance circuits. Those circuits could send a image (with broadcast quality) only as far as Chicago, then down to Atlanta, then over to Washington, and a "Net Return" back to New York.
That's it for live TV, everyone else in the country got a kinescope by delay, instead of a "live program". So an 8pm ET show got to the central time zone "live" at 7pm CT.
If you want to read more about the Technology; it's the developement of L carrier and TD-2 and TD-3 radio in the 3,000 MGZ range with the necessary repeaters.
