董亚芬大学英语精读(第三版)第1册教案Unit4.docVIP

Unit 4 Turn Off TV: A Quiet Hour I. Background Information 1. TV: Past and Present A demonstration of television was held at the New York Worlds Fair in 1939, and during the 1940s networks were established and television sets began to be sold. But, for a while, radio still had complete control of the entertainment industry. In the early 1950s, the television started to take the place of radio in the United States. But television was only on in the evenings with few choices of stations and in less than one-third of American homes. In the early 1960s, over 750 TV stations were telecasted to about 52 million sets with the result that the American TV audience included almost every family. But today, virtually every American home has TV and two-thirds of American families have two or more sets, two-thirds have cable. There are a thousand stations with a choice of five or six channels all over the country, not counting in the cable programs one can buy. The Big Three of the networks are: the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Besides networks, there are also another two TV broadcasting, one is cable TV, community antenna television (CATV); the other is pay TV, also known as toll TV or subscription TV. The latter is different from the former in that it originates its own programs and charges a fee for viewing each program. But since the first modern home TV set was marketed in 1939, TVs influence on America, for both good and bad has become a major force in determining how people relax and behave. The consequences are staggering. Studies show that the lives of Americans, from their selection of food to their choices of political leaders, are deeply affected by TV, and that influence is growing. It is clear that television has become one of the worlds most important sources of information, opinion, and entertainment. We can learn about places we shall never visit, we see important ev