21 November: United Nations World Television Day

Each 21 November is commemorated as United Nations (UN) World Television Day.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of television.

Although it is usually taken for granted, television, as TU students know, is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in black and white or color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.

Television became available in an experimental forms in the late 1920s, but would not be widely marketed to consumers until after World War II.

By 2013, almost 80 percent of all households in the world contained a television set.

The UN website explains:

Television continues to be the single largest source of video consumption. Though screen sizes have changed, and people create, post, stream and consume content on different platforms, the number of households with television sets around the world continues to rise. The interaction between emerging and traditional forms of broadcast creates a great opportunity to raise awareness about the important issues facing our communities and our planet.

In the 21st century, what is the purpose of a TV? It’s not just a one-way channel for broadcast and cable content anymore. Modern televisions offer a wide range of multimedia and interactive content, such as streaming videos, music, and internet browsing.

Linear TV vs Streaming

Despite the shift in audiovisual content consumption to different platforms and the constantly evolving technology, TV remains an important communication tool. The biggest divide, however, has been in how we receive these images. Traditional over-the-air TV channels, a form of broadcasting transmitted via radio waves to antennas in our homes, appear to be in slow decline in favor of streaming companies whose TV signal is received through bandwidth internet connections.

It remains to be seen whether the decline of traditional television will increase as the years go by, or whether the two formats will co-exist and compete for viewers’ attention in parallel.

UN Multimedia Products and Services

The United Nations provides a suite of multimedia products and services covering the work of the United Nations both at Headquarters and around the world, to reach audiences and support the work of the international news media.

Live streaming and broadcasts

UN WebTV is the Organization’s official streaming video platform for live and on-demand coverage of United Nations meetings and events. UNTV provides live feeds and HD broadcast-quality files on demand.

UN Video

UN Videos are produced for news and social media platforms, as well as for broadcast partners in the six official languages of the UN (French, Spanish, English, Chinese, Arabic, Russian), as well as Hindi, Kiswahili, and Portuguese.

UN Video producers report from locations around the world to bring you the latest content on the work of the United Nations and its agencies. From peacekeeping missions and humanitarian crises to international events and summits, UN Video tells stories that inform and inspire audiences across the globe.

Explore the series Global Lens.

UNifeed — Breaking News Footage

Footage of breaking news and events in field missions and UN agencies are shared with partners in raw news packages by UNifeed, which enables news providers to cover important global issues by offering timely broadcast-quality video from throughout the UN system. Stories come from the global network of UN specialized agencies, funds and programmes, peacekeeping operations and UN Headquarters. New stories are posted on the UNifeed website as soon as they become available.

UN AV Library

The UN Audio-Visual Library has a treasure trove of archival video and audio, marking iconic and historic moments from the last 70 years.

Background

In recognition of the increasing impact television has on decision-making by bringing world attention to conflicts and threats to peace and security and its potential role in sharpening the focus on other major issues, including economic and social issues, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 21 November as World Television Day (through resolution 51/205 of 17 December 1996).

World Television Day is not so much a celebration of the tool, but rather the philosophy which it represents. Television represents a symbol for communication and globalization in the contemporary world.

On 21 and 22 November 1996 the United Nations held the first World Television Forum, where leading media figures met under the auspices of the United Nations to discuss the growing significance of television in today’s changing world and to consider how they might enhance their mutual cooperation. That is why the General Assembly decided to proclaim 21 November as World Television Day.

This was done in recognition of the increasing impact television has on the process of decision-making. Television was thus acknowledged as a major tool in informing, channelling and affecting public opinion. Its impact and presence and its influence on world politics could not be denied.

Here are some thoughts on television from authors, most of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:

The rockets that have made spaceflight possible are an advance that, more than any other technological victory of the twentieth century, was grounded in science fiction… . One thing that no science fiction writer visualized, however, as far as I know, was that the landings on the Moon would be watched by people on Earth by way of television.

  • Isaac Asimov, in Asimov on Physics (1976)

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.

    • W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

The luminous screen in the home carries fantastic authority. Viewers everywhere tend to accept it as a window on the world… It has tended to displace or overwhelm other influences such as newspapers, school, church, grandpa, grandma. It has become the definer and transmitter of society’s values.

  • Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes On a Modern Potentate (1978)

First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society.

    • Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Television enjoys a de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the population and what they think.

  • Pierre Bourdieu (1998)

You don’t have to concentrate. You don’t have to react. You don’t have to remember. You don’t miss your brain because you don’t need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the poor man’s nirvana.

  • Raymond Chandler on watching television
  • In the days before machinery, men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.
    • Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)

Television may represent a threat to our culture analogous to the threat of atomic weapons to our civilization.

  • Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)