On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, we look ahead at plans for Variety’s TV Week celebration in a conversation with Variety’s Emily Longeretta. And we take a Vintage Variety look back at the momentous launch of television in the U.S. on the opening day of the New York World’s Fair in 1939, some 87 years ago today.
Happy anniversary, television. April 30, 1939, the opening day of the landmark New York World’s Fair, is generally considered the launch date for commercial television in the U.S. RCA and NBC boss David Sarnoff flipped the switch and NBC broadcast three and a half hours of live material from the sprawling World’s Fair site in the Flushing Meadows area of Queens. (It’s now home to the Queens Art Museum.)
That day also marked the launch of NBC’s first regular television schedule, beamed out of a giant antenna stuck on top of the Empire State Building. The initial reach of NBC’s TV signal was about 55 miles in all directions from the Midtown landmark.
Advertisement from the June 14, 1939, edition of Variety
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Television was revved up and ready to go — until the onset of World War II in Europe with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Shortly thereafter, all of the engineering and technological work that had been devoted to the development of television since the mid-1920s was diverted to military purposes to support the war effort. The birth of the medium (in America) would have to wait until 1946 before television sets were generally available at a reasonable price for everyday consumers.
Our look back through Variety‘s pages confirms that the New York World’s Fair was a Super Bowl-level marketing platform for the country’s biggest brands, media included. RCA already owned the nation’s most powerful radio network, NBC. RCA’s leader, David Sarnoff, drove the launch of television through sheer force of will, as RCA intended to profit through sales of TV sets while NBC would clean up as the pioneer in regular programming. The initial TV schedule was hardly a 24/7 feed. It was a patchwork quilt of an hour here and a two-hour block there, some of it in daytime and some in the evening hours.
“The World’s Fair was was RCA’s introduction to the public of television. They’d been working on television going back to the 20s. David Sarnoff waited until 1939 because he thought television was too expensive and too complicated for release to the public,” says Steve McVoy, founder of the Early Television Museum based in Hilliard, Ohio. “By 1939, he felt that they were finally there, and the World’s Fair was the perfect venue to introduce it.”
In addition to looking back at a milestone of the medium’s past, the episode looks ahead to Variety‘s upcoming celebration of all things television and Emmy Awards with next week’s slate of events that we’re calling TV Week. From our long-running “Night in the Writers Room” event to an afternoon tea celebrating female directors, next week will be a busy one for Variety‘s TV team.
“FYC season is very crowded. There’s a big landscape, there’s a lot of TV. It’s no secret. And so that means there’s a lot of events,” says Emily Longeretta, Variety’s director of features. “So we decided that this would be a dynamic, invite-only slate of events, three days in a row, spotlighting all the voices that are making the best TV today.”
Advertisement from the June 14, 1939, edition of Variety
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