Ruining sentimental moments, one badly timed joke after another
/ To the Moon: Steam Release
on September 8, 2012
We made it! To the Moon is finally on Steam!
[EN | GE | FR | IT | + More incoming]
The original soundtrack is also available, including in a bundled option. It includes the
plus two bonus tracks that are not in game: a happy piano version of For River, and a beautiful
by Laura Shigihara ().
If you’ve purchased the game from this website before, you can redeem your Steam code by emailing (with your order ID #):
reives.freebird&at&gmail&dot&com
I’ll need to manually send them out one by one (and am still waiting on the codes from Valve, though they should be ready within a couple of days), so please be patient. c:
It’s been quite a journey, and I am so thankful for all the kind support everyone has given. This was my first commercial project, and there’s still such a long way to
but I feel so fortunate to have a chance at making what I love to do what I live to do — and that is all thanks to you folks. Thank you for giving I know how rare of a privilege that is, and I promise to stay true in making and sharing what genuinely means a lot to me, and hopefully to you too.
There’s a lot more planned for the future, including the second episode of To the Moon’s series (featuring Dr. Watts & Rosalene and a new patient), as well as a short game set in the same universe before that. I’m looking forward to announcing these projects, but for now, here’s a preview to one of the songs:
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page. c: I’m looking forward to sharing what’s up ahead with y’all.
Thanks again, everyone. Please try to help spread the word, as it makes all the difference. And hey,
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Coincidence? I think not!History of Television - Mitchell Stephens
History of Television
From Grolier
Encyclopedia
Article by
Few inventions have had
as much effect on contemporary American society as television. Before 1947 the
number of U.S. homes with television sets could be measured in the thousands.
By the late 1990s, 98 percent of U.S. homes had at least one television set,
and those sets were on for an average of more than seven hours a day. The typical
American spends (depending on the survey and the time of year) from two-and-a-half
to almost five hours a day watching television. It is significant not only that
this time is being spent with television but that it is not being spent engaging
in other activities, such as reading or going out or socializing.
EXPERIMENTS
Electronic television was
first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system
was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived
in a house without electricity until he was 14. While still in high school,
Farnsworth had begun to conceive of a system that could capture moving images
in a form that could be coded onto radio waves and then transformed back into
a picture on a screen. Boris Rosing in Russia had conducted some crude experiments
in transmitting images 16 years before Farnsworth's first success. Also, a mechanical
television system, which scanned images using a rotating disk with holes arranged
in a spiral pattern, had been demonstrated by John Logie Baird in England and
Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States earlier in the 1920s. However,
Farnsworth's invention, which scanned images with a beam of electrons, is the
direct ancestor of modern television. The first image he transmitted on it was
a simple line. Soon he aimed his primitive camera at a dollar sign because an
investor had asked, "When are we going to see some dollars in this thing, Farnsworth?"
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
RCA, the company that dominated
the radio business in the United States with its two NBC networks, invested
$50 million in the development of electronic television. To direct the effort,
the company's president, David Sarnoff, hired the Russian-born scientist Vladimir
Kosma Zworykin, who had participated in Rosing's experiments. In 1939, RCA televised
the opening of the New York World's Fair, including a speech by President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to appear on television. Later
that year RCA paid for a license to use Farnsworth's television patents. RCA
began selling television sets with 5 by 12 in (12.7 by 25.4 cm) picture tubes.
The company also began broadcasting regular programs, including scenes captured
by a mobile unit and, on May 17, 1939, the first televised baseball game&Nbetween
Princeton and Columbia universities. By 1941 the Columbia Broadcasting System
(CBS), RCA's main competition in radio, was broadcasting two 15-minute newscasts
a day to a tiny audience on its New York television station.
Early television was quite
primitive. All the action at that first televised baseball game had to be captured
by a single camera, and the limitations of early cameras forced actors in dramas
to work under impossibly hot lights, wearing black lipstick and green makeup
(the cameras had trouble with the color white). The early newscasts on CBS were
"chalk talks," with a newsman moving a pointer across a map of Europe, then
consumed by war. The poor quality of the picture made it difficult to make out
the newsman, let alone the map. World War II slowed the development of television,
as companies like RCA turned their attention to military production. Television's
progress was further slowed by a struggle over wavelength allocations with the
new FM radio and a battle over government regulation. The Federal Communications
Commission's (FCC) 1941 ruling that the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
had to sell one of its two radio networks was upheld by the Supreme Court in
1943. The second network became the new American Broadcasting Company (ABC),
which would enter television early in the next decade. Six experimental television
stations remained on the air during the war&None each in Chicago, Philadelphia,
Los Angeles, and Schenectady, N.Y., and two in New York City. But full-scale
commercial television broadcasting did not begin in the United States until
THE BEGINNING OF COMMERCIAL
TELEVISION
By 1949 Americans who lived
within range of the growing number of television stations in the country could
watch, for example, The Texaco Star Theater (1948), starring Milton Berle,
or the children's program, Howdy Doody (1947Ð60). They could also
choose between two 15-minute newscasts&NCBS TV News (1948) with
Douglas Edwards and NBC's Camel News Caravan (1948) with John Cameron
Swayze (who was required by the tobacco company sponsor to have a burning cigarette
always visible when he was on camera). Many early programs&Nsuch as Amos
'n' Andy (1951) or The Jack Benny Show (1950Ð65)&Nwere
borrowed from early television's older, more established Big Brother: network
radio. Most of the formats of the new programs&Nnewscasts, situation comedies,
variety shows, and dramas&Nwere borrowed from radio, too (see radio broadcasting
and television programming). NBC and CBS took the funds needed to establish
this new medium from their radio profits. However, television networks soon
would be making substantial profits of their own, and network radio would all
but disappear, except as a carrier of hourly newscasts. Ideas on what to do
with the element television added to radio, the visuals, sometimes seemed in
short supply. On news programs, in particular, the temptation was to fill the
screen with "talking heads," newscasters simply reading the news, as they might
have for radio. For shots of news events, the networks relied initially on the
newsreel companies, whose work had been shown previously in movie studios. The
number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million
by 1951. No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white
by 1955 half of all U.S. homes had one.
McCARTHYISM
In 1947 the House Committee
on Un-American Activities began an investigation of the film industry, and Sen.
Joseph R. McCarthy soon began to inveigh against what he claimed was Communist
infiltration of the government. Broadcasting, too, felt the impact of this growing
national witch-hunt. Three former members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) published "Counterattack: The Newsletter of Facts on Communism," and in
1950 a pamphlet, "Red Channels," listed the supposedly Communist associations
of 151 performing artists. Anti-Communist vigilantes applied pressure to advertisers&Nthe
source of network profits. Political beliefs suddenly became grounds for getting
fired. Most of the producers, writers, and actors who were accused of having
had left-wing leanings found themselves blacklisted, unable to get work. CBS
even instituted a loyalty oath for its employees. Among the few individuals
in television well positioned enough and brave enough to take a stand against
McCarthyism was the distinguished former radio reporter Edward R. Murrow. In
partnership with the news producer Fred Friendly, Murrow began See It Now,
a television documentary series, in 1950. On Mar. 9, 1954, Murrow narrated a
report on McCarthy, exposing the senator's shoddy tactics. Of McCarthy, Murrow
observed, "His mistake has been to confuse dissent with disloyalty." A nervous
CBS refused to promote Murrow and Friendly's program. Offered free time by CBS,
McCarthy replied on April 6, calling Murrow "the leader and the cleverest of
the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose
Communist traitors." In this TV appearance, McCarthy proved to be his own worst
enemy, and it became apparent that Murrow had helped to break McCarthy's reign
of fear. In 1954 the U.S. Senate censured McCarthy, and CBS's "security" office
was closed down.
THE GOLDEN AGE
Between 1953 and 1955,
television programming began to take some steps away from radio formats. NBC
television president Sylvester Weaver devised the "spectacular," a notable example
of which was Peter Pan (1955), starring Mary Martin, which attracted
60 million viewers. Weaver also developed the magazine-format programs Today,
which made its debut in 1952 with Dave Garroway as host (until 1961), and The
Tonight Show, which began in 1953 hosted by Steve Allen (until 1957). The
third network, ABC, turned its first profit with youth-oriented shows such as
Disneyland, which debuted in 1954 (and has since been broadcast under
different names), and The Mickey Mouse Club (1955Ð59; see Disney,
The programming that dominated
the two major networks in the mid-1950s borrowed heavily from another medium:
theater. NBC and CBS presented such noteworthy, and critically acclaimed, dramatic
anthologies as Kraft Television Theater (1947), Studio One (1948),
Playhouse 90 (1956), and The U.S. Steel Hour (1953). Memorable
television dramas of the era&Nmost of them broadcast live&Nincluded
Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955), starring Rod Steiger (Ernest Borgnine
starred in the film), and Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men (1954). By
the 1955Ð56 television season, 14 of these live-drama anthology series were
being broadcast. This is often looked back on as the "Golden Age" of television.
However, by 1960 only one of these series was still on the air. Viewers apparently
preferred dramas or comedies that, while perhaps less literary, at least had
the virtue of sustaining a familiar set of characters week after week. I
Love Lucy, the hugely successful situation comedy starring Lucille Ball
and Desi Arnaz, had been recorded on film since it debuted in 1951 (lasting
until 1957). It had many imitators. The Honeymooners, starring Jackie
Gleason, was first broadcast, also via film, in 1955 (lasting until 1956 with
the original cast). The first videotape recorder was invented by Ampex in 1956
( video technology). Another format introduced in
the mid-1950s was the big-money quiz show. The $64,000 Question (1955Ð58)
and Twenty-One (1956Ð58) quickly shot to the top of the ratings.
In 1959, however, the creator of The $64,000 Question, Louis C. Cowan,
by that time president of CBS television, was forced to resign from the network
amid revelations of widespread fixing of game shows (see Van Doren, Charles).
TELEVISION AND POLITICS
Television news first covered
the presidential nominating conventions of the two major parties, events then
still at the heart of America politics, in 1952. The term "anchorman" was used,
probably for the first time, to describe Walter Cronkite's central role in CBS's
convention coverage that year. In succeeding decades these conventions would
become so concerned with looking good on television that they would lose their
spontaneity and eventually their news value. The power of television news increased
with the arrival of the popular newscast, The Huntley-Brinkley Report,
on NBC in 1956 (see Huntley, Chet, and Brinkley, David). The networks had begun
producing their own news film. Increasingly, they began to compete with newspapers
as the country's primary source of news (see journalism).
The election of a young
and vital president in 1960, John F. Kennedy, seemed to provide evidence of
how profoundly television would change politics. Commentators pointed to the
first televised debate that fall between Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for
president, and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, the Republican's nominee. A
survey of those who listened to the debate on radio indicated that Nixon had
however, those who watched on television, and were able to contrast Nixon's
poor posture and poorly shaven face with Kennedy's poise and grace, were more
likely to think Kennedy had won the debate. Television's coverage of the assassination
of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, and of the events that followed, provided
further evidence of the medium's power. Most Americans joined in watching coverage
of the shocking and tragic events, not as crowds in the streets, but from their
own living rooms. A newscast that would soon surpass the popularity of Huntley-Brinkley,
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, debuted in 1962 (and was broadcast
until 1981). By the end of the decade Cronkite had become not just a highly
respected journalist but, according to public opinion surveys, "the most trusted
man in America." His role in coverage of the Vietnam War would be important.
While the overwhelming majority of television news reports on the Vietnam War
were supportive of U.S. policy, television news film of the fighting sometimes
gave Americans back home an unfamiliar, harsh, and unromantic view of combat.
Many believed it contributed to growing public dissatisfaction with the war.
And some of the anger of those defending U.S. policy in Vietnam was leveled
against television news. In 1965, CBS reporter Morley Safer accompanied a group
of U.S. Marines on a "search and destroy" mission to a complex of hamlets called
Cam Ne. The Marines faced no enemy resistance, yet they held cigarette lighters
to the thatched roofs and proceeded to "waste" Cam Ne. After much debate, Safer's
filmed report on the incident was shown on CBS. Early the next morning the president
of CBS received an angry phone call from the president of the United States,
Lyndon B. Johnson, accusing the network of a lack of patriotism. During the
Tet offensive in 1968, Cronkite went to Vietnam to report a documentary on the
state of the war. That documentary, broadcast on Feb. 28, 1968, concluded with
what Cronkite has described as "a clearly labeled editorial": "It is increasingly
clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate,"
he said. President Johnson was watching Cronkite's report. According to Bill
Moyers, one of his press aides at the time: "The president flipped off the set
and said, `If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America.'"
THE THREE NETWORKS AT
THE HEIGHT OF THEIR POWER
In 1964 color broadcasting
began on prime-time television. The FCC initially approved a CBS color system,
then swung in RCA's favor after Sarnoff swamped the marketplace with black-and-white
sets compatible with RCA color (the CBS color system was not compatible with
black-and-white sets and would have required the purchase of new sets). During
the 1960s and 1970s a country increasingly fascinated with television was limited
to watching almost exclusively what appeared on the three major networks: CBS,
NBC, and ABC. These networks purchased time to broadcast their programs from
about 200 affiliates each&Nstations in each of the major cities or metropolitan
areas of the United States. In the larger cities, there might also be a few
independent stations (mostly playing reruns of old network shows) and perhaps
a fledgling public broadcasting channel. Programming on each of the three networks
was designed to grab a mass audience. Network shows therefore catered, as critics
put it, to the lowest common denominator. James Aubrey, president of CBS television,
doubled the network's profits between 1960 and 1966 by broadcasting simple comedies
like The Beverly Hillbillies (1962Ð71). In 1961, Newton Minow, then
chairman of the FCC, called television a "vast wasteland." Programming became
a little more adventurous with the arrival of more realistic situation comedies,
beginning with CBS's All in the Family in 1971 (broadcast until 1979).
Along with situation comedies&Nusually a half-hour focused on either a
family and their neighbors or a group of co-workers&Nthe other main staple
of network prime-time programming has been the one-hour drama, featuring the
adventures of police, detectives, doctors, lawyers, or, in the early decades
of television, cowboys. Daytime television programming consisted primarily of
soap operas and quiz shows until the 1980s, when talk shows discussing subjects
that were formerly taboo, such as sexuality, became popular.
The three major networks
have always been in a continual race for ratings and advertising dollars. CBS
and NBC dominated through the mid-1970s, when ABC, traditionally regarded as
a poor third, rose to the top of the ratings, largely because of shrewd scheduling.
PUBLIC BROADCASTING
A Carnegie Commission report
in 1967 recommended the creation of a fourth, noncommercial, public television
network built around the educational nonprofit stations already in operation
throughout the United States (see television, noncommercial). Congress created
the Public Broadcasting System that year. Unlike commercial networks, which
are centered in New York and Los Angeles, PBS's key stations, many of which
produce programs that are shown throughout the network, are spread across the
country. PBS comprises more than 300 stations, more than any commercial network.
Some of the most praised programs on PBS, such as the dramatic series Upstairs,
Downstairs (1971), have been imports from Britain, which has long had a
reputation for producing high-quality television. Perhaps the most influential
of PBS's original contributions to American television were the educational
program for preschoolers, Sesame Street, which first appeared in 1969&Nand
is still a popular program&Nand a thoughtful news program called The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (1995; originally The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,
first broadcast in 1975&Nsee MacNeil, Robert and Lehrer, Jim). Among the
many special series produced for public broadcasting, The Civil War (1990),
a five-part historical documentary, was particularly successful and won some
of the largest audiences ever achieved by public TV. PBS funds come from three
major sources: congressional appropriations (which suffered substantial cuts
beginning in 1982), viewer donations, and private corporate underwriters. None
of these types of contributions are problem-free. Government funding brings
the possibility of government interference. Conservatives, dating back to the
Nixon administration, have pressured PBS to make its programming less liberal.
The search for viewer donations has led to long on-air fundraising campaigns.
And some critics contend that the need to win corporate support discourages
programming that might challenge corporate values.
THE RISE OF CABLE
The force that would challenge
the dominance of the three major television networks and offer Americans the
choice of dozens and potentially hundreds of television channels&Ncable
TV&Nbegan quietly in a few geographically isolated towns. Large antennas
erected in high places gave everyone connected the chance to receive all the
channels available in the nearest city. By 1960 the United States had about
640 such CATV (community antenna television) systems. It soon became apparent,
however, that the "television deprived" were not the only viewers who might
want access to additional channels and additional programming. In New York City,
cable operators contracted to broadcast the home games of the local basketball
and hockey teams. By 1971 cable had more than 80,000 subscribers in New York.
Then networks specifically designed to be distributed by the cable system began
to appear: Time Inc.'s Home Box Office (HBO) in 1975; Ted Turner's "superstation,"
soon renamed WTBS, in 1976; C-SPAN (live broadcasts of the House of Representatives),
ESPN (sports), and Nickelodeon (children's programming), all in 1979. Turner
followed with the Cable News Network (CNN) the next year.
INTERNATIONAL GROWTH
Television's development
followed different patterns in other countries. Often government, not private
corporations, owned some, most, or all of the major networks. In Great Britain
the British Broadcasting Corporation, the country's dominant radio broadcaster,
established and retained dominance over television. The BBC, funded by a tax
on the sale of television sets, established a worldwide reputation for producing
quality programming. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also freed by government
support from many commercial pressures, was praised by some observers for the
seriousness of much of its news and public-affairs programming. France's major
television networks were also support however, in France
that support was seen as encouraging a tilt in news coverage toward the side
of whatever party happened to be in power. By the late 1980s and 1990s, as cable
and direct-satellite television systems increased the number of channels, the
hold of these government-funded networks began to weaken. Most countries around
the world began moving more toward the U.S. model of privately owned, advertiser-supported
television networks.
POLITICS ADAPTS TO TELEVISION
By the 1980s politicians
and government leaders were familiar enough with the workings of television
to be able to exploit the medium to their own ends. This seemed particularly
apparent during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, himself formerly the host of
a television show (General Electric Theater, 1954Ð62). Reagan's skilled
advisors were masters of the art of arranging flags and releasing balloons to
place him in the most attractive settings. They also knew how to craft and release
messages to maximize positive coverage on television newscasts. The Persian
Gulf War in 1991 provided further proof of the power of television, with pictures
of U.S. bombs falling on the Iraqi capital broadcast live in the United States.
Both Iraqi and U.S. leaders admitted to monitoring CNN to help keep up with
news of the war. However, the U.S. Defense Department, armed with lessons learned
in Vietnam, succeeded in keeping most reporters well away from the action and
the bloodshed. Instead, pictures were provided to television by the military
of "smart" bombs deftly hitting their targets.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
In the 1980s, home videocassette
recorders became widely available. Viewers gained the ability to record and
replay programs and, more significantly, to rent and watch movies at times of
their own choosing in their own homes. Video games also became popular during
this decade, particularly with the young, and the television, formally just
the site of passive entertainment, became an intricate, moving, computerized
game board. The number of cable networks grew throughout the 1980s and then
exploded in the 1990s as improved cable technology and direct-broadcast satellite
television multiplied the channels available to viewers. The number of broadcast
networks increased also, with the success of the Fox network and then the arrival
of the UPN and WB networks. The share the broadcast networks attracted continued
to erode, from well over 90 percent in the early 1980s to under 50 percent by
1997. Although the population of the United States has continued to grow, the
Nielson Media Research company estimated that fewer people watched the highly
publicized final episode of Seinfeld in 1998 (first aired in 1990; see
Seinfeld, Jerry) than watched the final episode of MASH in 1983 (first
aired in 1972). The trial of former football star O. J. Simpson in 1994 for
the murder of his wife (he was acquitted) further demonstrated the hold that
cable networks had on American audiences. Some stations carried almost every
minute of the lengthy trial live and then filled the evening with talk shows
dissecting that day's developments. The effects of television on children, particularly
through its emphasis on violence and sex, has long been an issue for social
scientists, parents, and politicians (see children's television). In the late
1980s and 1990s, with increased competition brought on by the proliferation
of cable networks, talk shows and "tabloid" news shows seemed to broaden further
frank or sensational on-air discussion of sex.
In response to government
pressure, the television industry decided to display ratings of its programs
in 1996. The ratings were designed to indicate the age groups for which the
programs might be suitable: TV-G (for general audiences), TV-PG (parental guidance
suggested), TV-14 (unsuitable for children under 14), and TV-MA (for mature
audiences only). In response to additional complaints, all the networks except
NBC agreed the next year to add V (for violence), S (for sex), L (for course
language) and D (for suggestive dialogue) to those ratings. Also, the "V-chip"
imbedded in new television sets, in accordance with a provision of a telecommunications
bill passed in 1996, gave parents the power to automatically prevent their children
from watching television programs with inappropriate ratings. Critics of the
ratings saw them as a step toward censorship and questioned whether a TV-14
rating would make a program seem more, not less, attractive to an inquisitive
child. In 1997 the federal government gave each U.S. television broadcaster
an additional channel on which to introduce high definition television, or HDTV.
Initial transmissions of this high-resolution form of television, in which images
appear much sharper and clearer, began in 1998. Standard television sets cannot
pick up HDTV and will presumably have to be replaced or modified by 2006, when
traditional, low-definition television broadcasts are scheduled to end and broadcasters
are scheduled to return their original, non-HDTV channel to the government.
The HDTV format approved in the United States calls for television signals to
be transmitted digitally. This will allow for further convergence between computers,
the Internet, and television.
In 1998 it was already
possible to view video on the World Wide Web and to see and search television
broadcasts on a computer. As computers become more powerful, they should be
able to handle video as easily as they now handle text. The television schedule
may eventually be replaced by a system in which viewers are able to watch digitally
stored and distributed programs or segments of programs whenever they want.
Such technological changes, including the spread of new cable networks, have
been arriving slower in most other countries than in the United States. Indeed,
according to one survey, it was only in the 1990s that the spread of television
transmitters, television sets, and electricity made it possible for half of
the individuals in the world to watch television. However, television's attraction
globally is strong. Those human beings who have a television set watch it, by
one estimate, for an average of two-and-a-half hours a day.
Mitchell Stephens
Bibliography: Barnouw,
Erik, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2d ed. (1990);
Fisher, David E. and Marshall J., Tube: The Invention of Television (1997);
Stephens, Mitchell, Broadcast News, 3d ed. (1993), A History of News
(1996) and The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word (1998); Watson,
Mary A., Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience since 1945}