Chapters authored
Television Reception and Technological Convergence in the 1950s: The Case of Mexico City
The aim of this chapter is to characterize and analyze the television audience in Mexico in the 1950s through the confluence of three audiovisual communications technologies: cinema, radio, and television. This research understands the convergence as a context and a social and cultural experience that changed roles, routines, perceptions, and stereotypes of the contemporary societies. How did the TV audiences of the Mexico City react to the technological convergence? How did cinema, radio, and television become interrelated? What elements mediated in television reception in the 1950s? To answer these questions, this research used the national press and specialized magazines of the time, oral history, and photographic archives as primary information sources. The chapter argues that the audience established a bond with TV from its past experience with cinema and radio. With the reference of the moving image, the immediately transmission and the domesticity, the viewers recognize themselves and react to screen contents. In 1950s, the audiences are active and interactive. This research concludes that technological convergence, from a historical point of view, constitutes a context of transformations and a set of assimilation, integration, and interaction practices. Likewise, it considers that in the middle of the XX century, the world experiments a “early convergence” of contents and technology, where the television is main characters.
Part of the book: The Future of Television