Events: Televising Europe and the Nation

The history of television has been closely intertwined with different kinds of events. The early development of television itself has been characterised by the complex interplay between technological innovation, novelty and the public interest in large events. One of the earliest demonstrations of television in the UK, for example, was when John Logie Baird transmitted live 30-line images of the Derby, a major annual horse race, to audiences in a cinema in the West End of London in 1932. Four years later, in 1936, live coverage of the Berlin Olympic games was transmitted on a 180-line service to audiences in public booths around the city.

This relationship between early television broadcasts and public events was not accidental. The people who were experimenting with both the technological and the communicative potentialities of the new medium understood that major live public events were an important means of attracting viewers and subsequently buyers of the new television receivers. Over thirty years later this was also true when the BBC began its first official colour transmissions with the televised coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships in 1967. This was at time when audiences had to be persuaded to spend more money on the new technology of colour television.

Television Events:

In the early history of television the ability to see far away public events at the same time as they were happening was itself a major novelty (see Technology). Television often made a big fuss of its own broadcasting breakthroughs, such as the first live transmission across the English Channel from France to the UK in 1950. The broadcast featured a torchlight procession and fireworks from Calais, with commentary by the veteran British broadcaster Richard Dimbleby and Alan Adair. In 1962 Dimbleby also provided the commentary on a live programme about the first satellite transmission from the USA via Telstar. Television firsts, however, were just not technological. They also related to major institutional developments such as the opening nights of new television channels or anniversaries dedicated to the launch of television services. So television has often attempted to make its own services and programmes into events in their own right: events that stand out from the ordinary and attract large numbers of viewers. In the 1950s this included the specific creation of large televised events such as the Eurovision Song Contest, and today the ‘finals’ of series such as Dancing on Ice or Big Brother are also considered to be large television events (see Programmes).

National Events and Holidays:

These events often constitute part of the annual cycle of scheduling and broadcasting, which are themselves in tune with the calendar of state and national institutions, holidays and events (see Institutions and Watching). Television closely follows, for example, the political round of conferences and elections. There has also long been a close association between national broadcasters and seasonal holidays such as Christmas and New Year. In the UK the Queen has given a Christmas address every year since 1957. In Germany at New Year it is also traditional to show the short comedy play Dinner for One (Der 90. Gerburstag) by the English comic Freddie Frinton. These programmes have increasingly come to be a traditional part of the seasonal festivities. This alliance between the national broadcasters, holidays and state events is further replicated throughout the year, such as Queen’s Day in the Netherlands and the Trooping of the Colour in the UK. Indeed, in many European countries there has been a close link between national television and the monarchy and royal events. Sporting events too are part of the fabric of the national broadcasting schedules. These events take on a more international colour, however, during the UEFA championships, the football World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Historical Events:

Television does not just carry and constitute events that punctuate calendrical cycles and the long run of history it has also increasingly brought into the home the major historical events of recent times. Television in Europe, over its history, has brought news of the Prague Spring in 1968, the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, and the civil war in the Balkans in the 1990s. As television technologies have developed over the last sixty years, the speed at which news is delivered from abroad has increased tremendously. In the 1950s and 1960s film footage about European colonial and post-colonial conflicts in Algeria, Congo and Aden could take days to be airlifted to the television station. Today, in the age of 24 hour news services, electronic news gathering techniques and satellite communications, news coverage of terrorists attacks is almost instantaneous and major ceremonial events such as the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales and Pope John Paul II are transmitted live to global audiences.

The history of television in Europe therefore has been closely tied to the history of Europe itself. Not only has television brought news of the events and developments that have shaped European political history, its very schedules have connected in different ways to different national audiences at different times in the state and sporting calendar. It has also marked its own evolution from being a new medium in the 1930s that depended on the cultural validity of large national and international sporting events to one whose own broadcasting schedules valorise constructed television events as major cultural phenomena in their own right. The ways it has done this have varied according to the different political, economic, social and cultural circumstances of television broadcasting across the nations of Europe.

Rob Turnock