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Variety Show

Variety show

A variety show is a show with a variety of acts, often including music and comedy skits, especially on television. The format is basically television's version of the Music Hall format. Variety in the UK evolved in theatres and Music Halls, and later in Working Men's Clubs. Most of the early top performers on television and radio did an apprenticeship either in stage variety, or during World War II in ENSA. In the UK, the ultimate accolade for a variety artiste for decades was to be asked to do the annual Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium theatre, in front of the monarch. In the 1960s, even the Beatles undertook this ritual. In the US, shows featuring Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope and Dean Martin also helped to make the Golden Age of Television successful. From 1948 to 1971, The Ed Sullivan Show was one of CBS's most popular series. Using his no-nonsense approach, Ed Sullivan allowed every known act possible from every known medium to get their "fifteen minutes of fame." Sullivan was also partially responsible for bringing Elvis Presley and The Beatles to US prominence, while in the UK The Good Old Days, which ran from 1953 to 1983, featured modern artistes performing dressed in late Victorian-early Edwardian costume, either doing their own act or performing as a Music Hall artiste of that period. The audience was also encouraged to dress in a similar fashion. On television, variety reached its peak during the period of the 1960s and 1970s. With a turn of the television dial, viewers in the US and UK could variously have seen shows featuring Andy Williams, Julie Andrews, Sonny and Cher, Bob Monkhouse, Carol Burnett, Rod Hull and Emu, Flip Wilson, Leslie Crowther, Lawrence Welk, Don Estelle, Glen Campbell, Max Wall, Donny & Marie, Danny La Rue, or The Muppets. The last major network attempt at a traditional variety show was Dolly, featuring Dolly Parton, which ran on ABC during the 1987-88 season. By that time, the format had fallen out of fashion (due largely to changing tastes and the advent of MTV), and the series was not successful. A contemporary version of the variety show format, NBC's Saturday Night Live, which made its debut in 1975, is still airing today, with its combination of comedy sketches and musical performances. In 2004, ABC's The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour attempted to revive the prime-time variety hour as a special for today's generation. The first show was a ratings success, and it was followed by Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas in early December of that year. One of today's variety shows in Asia is Variety Big Brother. Many television specials continue to resemble the variety show format to this day. Category:Theatrical genres
- ja:バラエティ番組

Television

: Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. The term has come to refer to all the aspects of television programming and transmission as well. programming ]]

History

The development of television technology can be partitioned along two lines: those developments that depended upon both mechanical and electronic principles, and those which are purely electronic. From the latter descended all modern televisions, but these would not have been possible without discoveries and insights from the mechanical systems. The word television is a hybrid word, created from both Greek and Latin. Tele- is Greek for "far", while -vision is from the Latin visio, meaning "vision" or "sight". It is often abbreviated as TV or the telly.

Electromechanical television

The German student Paul Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1885. Nipkow's spinning disk design is credited with being the first television image rasterizer. However, it wasn't until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology made the design practical. Meanwhile, Constantin Perskyi had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on August 25, 1900. Perskeyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others. 1900 In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Kosma Zworykin achieved a television system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the electronic Braun tube (cathode ray tube) in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy." Zworykin later went to work for RCA to build a purely electronic television, the design of which was eventually found to violate patents by Philo Taylor Farnsworth. On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave a demonstration of televised silhouette images at Selfridge's Department Store in London. But if television is defined as the transmission of live, moving, half-tone (grayscale) images, and not silhouette or still images, Baird achieved this privately on October 2, 1925, and gave the world's first public demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter on January 26, 1926 at his laboratory in London. Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disc embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face. In 1928 Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company / Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore to ship transmission. He also demonstrated an electromechanical colour, infrared (dubbed "Noctovision"), and stereoscopic television, using additional lenses, disks and filters. In parallel he developed a video disk recording system dubbed "Phonovision"; a number of the Phonovision[http://www.tvdawn.com/tvimage.htm] recordings, dating back to 1927, still exist. In 1929 he became involved in the first experimental electromechanical television service in Germany. In 1931 he made the first live transmission, of the Epsom Derby. In 1932 he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's electromechanical system reached a peak of 240 lines of resolution on BBC television broadcasts in 1936, before being discontinued in favor of a 405 line all-electronic system. In the U.S., Charles Francis Jenkins was able to demonstrate on June 13, 1925, the transmission of the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion from a naval radio station to his laboratory in Washington, using a lensed disc scanner with 48 lines per picture, 16 pictures per second. AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted half-tone images of transparencies in May 1925. But Bell Labs gave the most dramatic demonstration of television yet on April 7, 1927, when it field tested reflected-light television systems using small-scale (2 by 2.5 inches) and large-scale (24 by 30 inches) viewing screens over a wire link from Washington to New York City, and over-the-air broadcast from Whippany, New Jersey. The subjects, which included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, were illuminated by a flying spot beam and scanned by a 50-aperture disc at 16 pictures per second.

Electronic television

Herbert Hoover Although the discoveries of Nipkow, Rosing, Baird and others were extraordinary, little of their technology is used in modern television. By 1934, all electromechanical television systems were outmoded, although electromechanical broadcasts continued on some stations until 1939. A.A. Campbell-Swinton wrote a letter to Nature on the 18 June 1908 describing his concept of electronic television using the cathode ray tube, which had been invented in 1897 by the German physicist and Nobel prize winner Karl Ferdinand Braun. He proposed using an electron beam in both the camera and the receiver, which could be steered electronically to produce moving pictures. He lectured on the subject in 1911 and displayed circuit diagrams, but no one, including Swinton, knew how to realize the design. Although his system was never built, the cathode ray tube did come to be used to display images in almost all television sets and computer monitors until the invention of the LCD panel. A fully electronic system was first achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth on September 7, 1927, although the low-resolution, light-insensitive camera tube limited the image to a plate of glass painted black, with a straight line etched across it, rotated in front of a bright carbon arc lamp. Seven years later, on August 25, 1934, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of a working, all-electronic television system, with 220 lines per picture, 30 pictures per second. Over a three week period, vaudeville acts, athletic and sports demonstrations, politicians, and hundreds of ordinary citizens were captured on Farnsworth's cameras in the open air and simultaneously shown on his receiving sets. Farnsworth, a Mormon farm boy from Rigby, Idaho, first envisioned his system at age 14. He discussed the idea with his high school chemistry teacher, who could think of no reason why it would not work (Farnsworth would later credit this teacher, Justin Tolman, as providing key insights into his invention). He continued to pursue the idea at Brigham Young Academy (now Brigham Young University). At age 21, he demonstrated a working system at his own laboratory in San Francisco. His breakthrough freed television from reliance on spinning discs and other mechanical parts. All modern picture tube televisions descend directly from his design. Vladimir Kosma Zworykin is also sometimes cited as the father of electronic television because of his invention of the iconoscope in 1923 and his invention of the kinescope in 1929. His design was one of the first to demonstrate a television system with all the features of modern picture tubes. His previous work with Rosing on electromechanical television gave him key insights into how to produce such a system, but his (and RCA's) claim to being its original inventor was largely invalidated by three facts: a) Zworykin's 1923 patent presented an incomplete design, incapable of working in its given form (it was not until 1933 that Zworykin achieved a working implementation), b) the 1923 patent application was not granted until 1938, and not until it had been seriously revised, and c) courts eventually found that RCA was in violation of the television design patented by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, whose lab Zworykin had visited while working on his designs for RCA. The controversy over whether it was first Farnsworth or Zworykin who invented modern television is still hotly debated today. Some of this debate stems from the fact that while Farnsworth appears to have gotten there first as an inventor, RCA brought television sets to market before Farnsworth, and it was RCA employees who first wrote the history of television. Even though Farnsworth eventually won the legal battle over this issue, he was never able to fully capitalize financially on his invention.

Color television

Most television researchers appreciated the value of color image transmission, with an early patent application in Russia in 1889 for a mechanically-scanned color system showing how early the importance of color was realized. John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first color transmission on July 3, 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination. Color television in the United States had a protracted history due to conflicting technical systems vying for approval by the Federal Communications Commission for commercial use. Mechanically scanned color television was demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 using three complete systems of photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into one full color image. In the electronically scanned era, the first color television demonstration was on February 5, 1940, when RCA privately showed to members of the FCC at the RCA plant in Camden, New Jersey, a television receiver producing images in color by a field sequential color system. CBS began non-broadcast color experiments using film as early as August 28, 1940, and live cameras by November 12. The CBS "field sequential" color system was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue, and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set. RCA's later "dot sequential" color system had no moving parts, using a series of dichroic mirrors to separate and direct red, green, and blue light from the subject through three separate lenses into three scanning tubes, and electronic switching that allowed the tubes to send their signals in rotation, dot by dot. These signals were sorted by a second switching device in the receiver set and sent to red, green, and blue picture tubes, and combined by a second set of dichroic mirrors into a full color image. The first field test (i.e., broadcast) of color television was by NBC (owned by RCA) on February 20, 1941. CBS began daily color field tests on June 1, 1941. These color systems were not compatible with existing black and white television sets, and as no color television sets were available to the public at this time, viewership of the color field tests was limited to RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. The War Production Board halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from April 1, 1942 to October 1, 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color television to the general public. The post-war development of color television was dominated by three systems competing for approval by the FCC as the U.S. color broadcasting standard: CBS's field sequential system, which was incompatible with existing black and white sets without an adaptor; RCA's dot sequential system, which in 1949 became compatible with existing black and white sets; and CTI's system (also incompatible with existing black and white sets), which used three camera lenses, behind which were color filters that produced red, green, and blue images side by side on a single scanning tube, and a receiver set that used lenses in front of the picture tube (which had sectors treated with different phosphorescent compounds to glow in red, green, or blue) to project these three side by side images into one combined picture on the viewing screen. After a series of hearings beginning in September 1949, the FCC found the RCA and CTI systems fraught with technical problems, inaccurate color reproduction, and expensive equipment, and so formally approved the CBS system as the U.S. color broadcasting standard on October 11 1950. An unsuccessful lawsuit by RCA delayed the world's first network color broadcast until June 25 1951, when a musical variety special titled simply Premiere was shown over a network of five east coast CBS affiliates. Viewership was again extremely limited: the program could not be seen on black and white sets, and Variety estimated that only thirty prototype color receivers were available in the New York area. Regular color broadcasts began that same week with the daytime series The World Is Yours and Modern Homemakers. While the CBS color broadcasting schedule gradually expanded to twelve hours per week (but never into prime time), and the color network expanded to eleven affiliates as far west as Chicago, its commercial success was doomed by the lack of color receivers necessary to watch the programs, the refusal of television manufacturers to create adaptor mechanisms for their existing black and white sets, and the unwillingness of advertisers to sponsor broadcasts seen by almost no one. In desperation, CBS bought a television manufacturer, and on September 20, 1951, production began on the first and only CBS color television model. But it was too little, too late. Only 200 sets had been shipped, and only 100 sold, when CBS pulled the plug on its color television system on October 20, 1951, and bought back all the CBS color sets it could to prevent law suits by disappointed customers. Starting before CBS color even got on the air, the U.S. television industry, represented by the National Television System Committee, worked in 1950-1953 to develop a color system that was compatible with existing black and white sets and would pass FCC quality standards, with RCA developing the hardware elements. When CBS testified before Congress in March 1953 that it had no further plans for its own color system, the path was open for the NTSC to submit its petition for FCC approval in July 1953, which was granted in December. The first publicly announced experimental TV broadcast of a program using the NTSC-RCA "compatible color" system was an episode of NBC's Kukla, Fran and Ollie on August 30, 1953. NBC made the first coast-to-coast color broadcast when it covered the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1 1954, with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers. A few days later Admiral brought out the first commercially made color television set using the RCA standards, followed in March by RCA's own model. Television's first prime time network color series was The Marriage, a situation comedy broadcast live by NBC in the summer of 1954. NBC's anthology series Ford Theatre became the first color filmed series that October. NBC was naturally at the forefront of color programming because its parent company RCA manufactured the most successful line of color sets in the 1950s. CBS and ABC, which were not affiliated with set manufacturers, and were not eager to promote their competitor's product, dragged their feet into color, with ABC delaying its first color series (The Flintstones and The Jetsons) until 1962. The Du Mont network, although it did have a television-manufacturing parent company, was in financial decline by 1954 and was dissolved two years later. Thus the relatively small amount of network color programming, combined with the high cost of color television sets, meant that as late as 1964 only 3.1 percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set. NBC provided the catalyst for rapid color expansion by announcing that its prime time schedule for fall 1965 would be almost entirely in color (the exception being I Dream of Jeannie). All three broadcast networks were airing full color prime time schedules by the 1966–67 broadcast season. But the number of color television sets sold in the U.S. did not exceed black and white sales until 1972, which was also the first year that more than fifty percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set. In Mexico, Guillermo González Camarena (1917–1965), invented the early color television transmission system. He received patents for color television systems in 1940 (U.S. Patent 1942 (2296019), 1960 and 1962. The 1942 patent was for a mechanically scanned color filter adapter for an existing monochrome electronic transmission system. In August 31, 1946 he sent his first color transmission from his lab in the offices of The Mexican League of Radio Experiments in Lucerna St. #1, in Mexico City. The video signal was transmitted at a frequency of 115 MHz. and the audio in the 40 metre band. European color television was developed somewhat later and was hindered by a continuing division on technical standards. Having decided to adopt a higher-definition 625-line system for monochrome transmissions, with a lower frame rate but with a higher overall bandwidth, Europeans could not directly adopt the U.S. color standard, which was widely perceived as wanting anyway, because of its tint control problems. There was also less urgency, since there were fewer commercial motivations, European television broadcasters being predominantly state-owned at the time. As a consequence, although work on various color encoding systems started already in the 1950s, with the first SECAM patent being registered in 1956, many years had passed till the first broadcasts actually started in 1967. Unsatisfied with the performance of NTSC and of initial SECAM implementations, the Germans unveiled PAL (phase alternating line) in 1963, staying closer to NTSC but borrowing some ideas from SECAM. The French continued with SECAM, notably involving Russians in the development. The first regular colour broadcasts in Europe were by BBC2 beginning on July 1, 1967, using PAL. Germans did their first broadcast in September (PAL), while the French in October (SECAM). PAL was eventually adopted by West Germany, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, much of Africa, Asia and South America, and most Western European countries except France. In addition to France and Luxembourg, SECAM was adopted by Soviet Union, much of Eastern Europe, much of Africa and of the Middle East. Both systems broadcast on UHF frequencies, the VHF being used for legacy black and white, 405 lines in UK or 819 lines in France, till the beginning of the eighties. It should be noted that some British television programmes, particularly those made by or for ITC Entertainment, were made in colour before the introduction of colour television to the UK, for the purpose of sales to US networks. The first British show to be made in colour was the drama series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956-57), which was initially made in black and white but later shot in colour for sale to the NBC network in the United States. In Japan, NHK introduced color television in the year 1960.

Broadcast television

NHK The first regularly scheduled television service in the United States began on July 2, 1928. The Federal Radio Commission authorized C.F. Jenkins to broadcast from experimental station W3XK in a suburb of Washington, D.C. But for at least the first eighteen months, only silhouette images from motion picture film were broadcast due to the narrow 10kHz bandwidth allotted by the FRC. General Electric's experimental station in Schenectady, New York, on the air sporadically since January 13, 1928, was able to broadcast reflected-light, 48-line images via shortwave as far as Los Angeles, and by September was making four television broadcasts weekly. CBS's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the United States on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system. The first broadcast included Mayor Jimmy Walker, the Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The service ended in February 1933. By 1935, electromechanical television broadcasting had ceased in the United States except for a handful of stations run by public universities that continued to 1939. The Federal Communications Commission saw television in the continual flux of development with no consistent technical standards, hence all such stations in the U.S. were granted only experimental and not commercial licenses, hampering television's economic development. Just as importantly, Philo Farnsworth's 1934 demonstration of an all-electronic system pointed the direction of television's future. On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a month-long demonstration of all-electronic television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL) with a 300-line image from motion picture film. RCA demonstrated in New York City a 343-line electronic television broadcast, with live and film segments, to its licensees on July 7, 1936, and made its first public demonstration to the press on November 6. By April 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts were available in New York City and Los Angeles, and by November on General Electric's station in Schenectady. With the adoption of NTSC television engineering standards in 1941, the FCC saw television ready for commercial licensing, with the first such licenses issued to NBC and CBS owned stations in New York on July 1, 1941, followed by Philco's station in Philadelphia. Electromechanical broadcasts began in Germany in 1929, but were without sound until 1934. Network electronic service started on March 22, 1935, on 180 lines using only telecine transmission of film or an intermediate film system. Live transmissions began on January 15, 1936. The Berlin Summer Olympic Games were televised, using both direct television and intermediate film cameras, to 28 public television rooms in Berlin and Hamburg in August 1936. The Germans had a 441-line system on the air in February 1937, and during World War II brought it to France, where they broadcast off the Eiffel Tower. The first British television broadcast was made by Baird Television's electromechanical system over the BBC radio transmitter in September 1929. Baird provided a limited amount of programming five days a week by 1930. On August 22, 1932, BBC launched its own regular service using Baird's 30-line electromechanical system, continuing until September 11, 1935. On November 2, 1936 the BBC began broadcasting a dual-system service, alternating on a weekly basis between Marconi-EMI's 405-line standard and Baird's improved 240-line standard, from Alexandra Palace in London, making the BBC the world's first regular high-definition television service. The corporation decided that Marconi-EMI's electronic picture gave the superior picture, and the Baird system was dropped in February 1937. The outbreak of the Second World War caused the BBC service to be suspended on September 1, 1939, resuming from Alexandra Palace on June 7, 1946. The Soviet Union began offering 30-line electromechanical test broadcasts in Moscow on October 31, 1931, and a commercially manufactured television set in 1932. The first experimental transmissions of electronic television took place in Moscow on March 9, 1937, using equipment manufactured and installed by RCA. Regular broadcasting began on December 31, 1938. The first regular television transmissions in Canada began in 1952 when the CBC put two stations on the air, one in Montreal, Quebec on September 6, and another in Toronto, Ontario two days later. two days later The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco, California from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference on September 4, 1951. In 1958, the CBC completed the longest television network in the world, from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia. Reportedly, the first continuous live broadcast of a breaking news story in the world was conducted by the CBC during the Springhill Mining Disaster which began on October 23 of that year. Programming is broadcast on television stations (sometimes called channels). At first, terrestrial broadcasting was the only way television could be distributed. Because bandwidth was limited, government regulation was normal. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission allowed stations to broadcast advertisements, but insisted on public service programming commitments as a requirement for a license. By contrast, the United Kingdom chose a different route, imposing a television licence fee on owners of television reception equipment, to fund the BBC, which had public service as part of its Royal Charter. Development of cable and satellite means of distribution in the 1970s pushed businessmen to target channels towards a certain audience, and enabled the rise of subscription-based television channels, such as HBO and Sky. Practically every country in the world now has developed at least one television channel. Television has grown up all over the world, enabling every country to share aspects of their culture and society with others. By the late 1980s, 98% of all homes in the U.S. had at least one TV set. On average, Americans watch four hours of television per day. An estimated two-thirds of Americans got most of their news about the world from TV, and nearly half got all of their news from TV. These figures are now estimated to be significantly higher.

Technology

Broadcasting

There are many means of distributing television broadcasts, including both analogue and digital versions of:
- Terrestrial television
- Stratovision (From aircraft flying in a loop)
- Satellite television
- Cable television
- MMDS (Wireless cable)

Receiving

Television sets

In television's electromechanical era, commercially made television sets were sold from 1928 to 1934 in the United Kingdom, United States, and Russia. The earliest commercially made sets sold by Baird in the U.K. and the U.S. in 1928 were radios with the addition of a television device consisting of a neon tube behind a mechanically spinning disk (the Nipkow disk) with a spiral of apertures that produced a red postage-stamp size image, enlarged to twice that size by a magnifying glass. The "televisor" was also available without the radio. The Baird televisor sold in 1930-1933 is considered the first mass-produced set, selling about a thousand units. The first commercially made electronic television sets with cathode ray tubes were manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934, followed by other makers in Britain (1936) and America (1938). The cheapest of the pre-War World II factory-made American sets, a 1938 image-only model with a 3-inch (8 cm) screen, cost US$125, the equivalent of US$1,732 in 2005. The cheapest model with a 12-inch (30 cm) screen was $445 ($6,256). An estimated 19,000 electronic television sets were manufactured in Britain, and about 1,600 in Germany, before World War II. About 7,000-8,000 electronic sets were made in the U.S. before the War Production Board halted manufacture in April 1942, which resumed in October 1945. Television usage in the United States skyrocketed after World War II with the lifting of the manufacturing freeze, war-related technological advances, the gradual expansion of the television networks westward, the drop in set prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income. While only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set in 1946, 55.7% had one in 1954, and 90% by 1962. In Britain, there were 15,000 television households in 1947, 1.4 million in 1952, and 15.1 million by 1968. For many years different countries used different technical standards. France initially adopted the German 441-line standard but later upgraded to 819 lines, which gave the highest picture definition of any analogue TV system, approximately four times the resolution of the British 405-line system. Eventually the whole of Europe switched to the 625-line PAL standard, once more following Germany's example. Meanwhile in North America the original NTSC 525-line standard from 1941 was retained. NTSC Television in its original form involves sending images and sound over radio waves in the VHF and UHF bands, which are received by a television set. Over-the-air broadcast television requires an antenna (aerial). This can be an outdoor Yagi antenna. In strong signal areas the antenna can be indoors, attached to or near the receiver, such as an adjustable dipole antenna called "rabbit ears" for the VHF band and a small loop antenna for the UHF band.

Specifications

Modern displays

Starting in the 1990s, modern television sets diverged into three different trends:
- standalone TV sets;
- integrated systems with DVD players and/or VHS VCR capabilities built into the TV set itself (mostly for small size TVs with up to 21" screen, the main idea is to have a complete portable system);
- component systems with separate big-screen video monitor, tuner, audio system which the owner connects the pieces together as a high-end home theater system. This approach appeals to videophiles who prefer components that can be upgraded separately. There are many kinds of video monitors used in modern TV sets. The most common are direct view CRTs for up to 40in (100cm) (in 4:3) and 46in (115cm) (in 16:9) diagonally; most big screen TVs (up to over 100 inch (254 cm)) use projection technology. Three types of projection systems are used in projection TVs: CRT-based, LCD-based, and DLP(reflective micromirror chip)-based. Modern advances have brought flat panels to TV that use active matrix LCD or plasma display technology. Flat panel LCDs and plasma displays are as little as 4in (10cm) thick and can be hung on a wall like a picture or put over a pedestal. They are multifunctional, because they are used like computer monitors too (VGA and DVI or HDMI connections). Some TVs integrate a pair of ports to connect computer cases and peripherals to it or to connect the set to an A/V home network (HAVI) (USB port for cord connection and BlueTooth/WiFi for wireless). Today, some LCD and Plasma sets have SD Card slots, so users can view pictures from a digital camera. On the new Panasonic LCDs and Plasmas (Viera), users have the capability to record onto SD card and then play it back on a hand-held PC or digital camera (anything that allows MPEG4). With SD cards now available with 1G of memory (soon 2GB, and Panasonic is also working on one that contains over 30GB of memory), a user can record over 1,000 minutes at low quality, and around 80 minutes on the highest quality. The playback of the recording is not brilliant, but these are the first generation. They will get better with time.

Signal connections

The number of ways to connect a video device to a television has increased over the years: WiFi
- HDMI - a compact 19 to 29 pin connector that carries digital video and digital audio signals. Essentially an enhanced version of DVI that includes digital audio. This is the most advanced form of connection currently available. DVI
- DVI - a 17 to 29 pin connector that carries digital video signals, designed to carry HDTV but also used in current DVD players and latest digital displays. Copy protection is available using HDCP. HDCP
- Component video - three separate RCA jacks (colored red, green and blue) carry three video signals, one brightness (luminance) and two colors (chromas), and is usually referred to as "Y, B-Y, R-Y", "Y Cr Cb" (interlaced) or "Y Pr Pb" (progressive), or YUV. Audio is not carried on this cable. This connection provides for picture quality superior to S-Video and is typically used in home theater for DVDs, satellite and analogue HDTV; less common in Europe but is starting to become more widely available. Europe
- SCART - a large 21 pin connector that may carry: one video signal composite video; or two video signals S-Video; or for picture quality similar to component video, three signals of separate red, green and blue or RGB; or for best picture quality, four video signals of separate red, green, blue and sync or RGBS; plus right and left line-level audio channels; along with a number of control signals including an aspect-ratio flag (e.g. widescreen). This system has been standard in Europe since mid-1980s for all consumer electronics, which meant that RGBS was available on even the earliest PAL DVD players and satellite receivers. Japan uses a 21 pin RGB connector which is visually similar to SCART but with different pin configurations. Japan
- S-Video - small round connector with two separate video signals, one carrying brightness (luminance), the other carrying color (chroma). Also referred to as Y/C video. Provides most of the benefit of component video, with slightly less color fidelity. Use started in the 1980s for S-VHS, Hi-8, and early NTSC DVD players to relay high quality video before component was available. Audio is not carried on this cable. Hi-8
- Composite video - The most common form of connecting external devices, putting all the video information into one signal. Most televisions provide this option with a yellow RCA jack. Audio is not carried on this cable, though two separate cables with similar red and white RCA jacks for right and left line-level audio are commonly bonded to composite video cables.
- Coaxial RF - All audio channels and picture components are transmitted through one coaxial cable and modulated on a radio frequency. Most TVs manufactured during the past 15–20 years accept coaxial connection, and the video is typically "tuned" on channel 3 or 4. This is the type of cable usually used for cable television. Most modern DVD players and other video devices no longer modulate RF output, so very old TV sets made before composite video jacks became commonplace will need a modulator.

Aspect ratios

Mechanically scanned television as first demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1926 used a 7:3 vertical aspect ratio, oriented for the head and shoulders of a single person in close-up. Most of the early electronic TV systems from the mid-1930s onward shared the same aspect ratio of 4:3 which was chosen to match the Academy Ratio used in cinema films at the time. This ratio was also square enough to be conveniently viewed on round cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), which were all that could be produced given the manufacturing technology of the time. (Today's CRT technology allows the manufacture of much wider tubes, and the flat screen technologies which are becoming steadily more popular have no aspect ratio limitations at all.) The BBC's television service used a more squarish [http://tcc.members.beeb.net/tchistory.html 5:4] ratio from 1936 to circa 1949, when it too switched to a 4:3 ratio. In the 1950s, movie studios moved towards widescreen aspect ratios such as Cinerama in an effort to distance their product from television. Although this was initially just a gimmick widescreen is still the format of choice today and square aspect ratio movies are rare. Some people argued that widescreen is actually a disadvantage when showing objects that are tall instead of panoramic, others would say that natural vision is more panoramic than tall, and therefore widescreen is easier on the eye. The switch to digital television systems has been used as an opportunity to change the standard television picture format from the old ratio of 4:3 (approximately 1.33:1) to an aspect ratio of 16:9 (approximately 1.78:1). This enables TV to get closer to the aspect ratio of modern widescreen movies, which range from 1.78:1 through 1.85:1 to 2.35:1. There are two methods for transporting widescreen content, the better of which uses what is called anamorphic widescreen format. This format is very similar to the technique used to fit a widescreen movie frame inside a 1.33:1 35mm film frame. The image is squashed horizontally when recorded, then expanded again when played back. The anamorphic widescreen 16:9 format was first introduced via European PAL-Plus television broadcasts and then later on "widescreen" DVDs; the ATSC HDTV system uses straight widescreen format, no image squashing or expanding is used. Recently "widescreen" has spread from television to computing where both desktop and laptop computers are commonly equipped with widescreen displays, and it remains to be seen whether Work or movie enjoyment will take over. There are some complaints about distortions of movie picture ratio due to some DVD playback software not taking account of aspect ratios; but this will subside as the DVD playback software matures. Furthermore, computer and laptop widescreen displays are in the 16:10 aspect ratio both physically in size and in pixel counts, and not in 16:9 of consumer televisions, leading to further complexity. This was a result of widescreen computer display engineers' uninformed assumption that people viewing 16:9 content on their computer would prefer that an area of the screen be reserved for playback controls or subtitles, as opposed to viewing content full-screen.

Aspect ratio incompatibility

The television industry changing aspect ratios is not without teething difficulties, and can present a considerable problem. Displaying a widescreen aspect (rectangular) image on a conventional aspect (square) display can be shown:
- in "letterbox" format, with black horizontal bars at the top and bottom
- with part of the image being cropped, usually the extreme left and right of the image being cut off (or in "pan and scan", parts selected by an operator)
- with the image horizontally compressed A conventional aspect (square) image on a widescreen aspect (rectangular) display can be shown:
- in "pillarbox" format, with black vertical bars to the left and right
- with upper and lower portions of the image cut off
- with the image horizontally distorted A common compromise is to shoot or create material at an aspect ratio of 14:9, and to lose some image at each side for 4:3 presentation, and some image at top and bottom for 16:9 presentation. Horizontal expansion has advantages in situations in which several people are watching the same set, as it compensates for watching at an oblique angle.

Sound

Television add-ons

Today there are many add-ons for the television set. A few add-ons include Video Game Consoles, VCRs, Cable Boxes, Satellite Boxes, DVD players, or Digital Video Recorders, the television add-on market is ever growing.

New developments

- Broadcast flag
- CableCARD™
- Digital Light Processing (DLP)
- Digital Rights Management (DRM)
- Digital television (DTV)
- Digital Video Recorders
- Direct Broadcast Satellite TV (DBS)
- DVD
- Flicker-free (100Hz)
- High Definition TV (HDTV)
- High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI)
- IPTV
- Internet television
- LCD and Plasma display Flat Screen TV
- Pay Per View
- Picture-in-picture (PiP)
- Video on-demand (VOD)
- Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV)
- Web TV

Geographical usage

Content

Advertising

Since their inception in the USA in 1941, TV commercials have become one of the most effective, most pervasive, and most popular methods of selling products of many sorts, especially consumer goods. U.S. advertising rates are determined primarily by Nielsen ratings. The exception to this is the publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation.

Programming

Getting TV programming shown to the public can happen in many different ways. After production the next step is to market and deliver the product to whatever markets are open to using it. This typically happens on two levels: #Original Run or First Run - a producer creates a program of one or multiple episodes and shows it on a station or network which has either paid for the production itself or to which a license has been granted by the producers to do the same. #Syndication - this is the terminology rather broadly used to describe secondary programming usages (beyond original run). It includes secondary runs in the country of first issue, but also international usage which may or may not be managed by the originating producer. In many cases other companies, TV stations or individuals are engaged to do the syndication work, in other words to sell the product into the markets they are allowed to sell into by contract from the copyright holders, in most cases the producers. In most countries, the first wave occurs primarily on FTA television, while the second wave happens on subscription TV and in other countries. In the U.S. however, the first wave occurs on the FTA networks and subscription services, and the second wave travels via all means of distribution. First run programming is increasing on subscription services outside the U.S., but few domestically produced programs are syndicated on domestic FTA elsewhere. This practice is increasing however, generally on digital only FTA channels, or with subscriber-only first run material appearing on FTA. Unlike the U.S., repeat FTA screenings of a FTA network program almost only occur only on that network. Also, affiliates rarely buy or produce non-network programming that isn't intensely local.

Social aspects

Alleged dangers

Paralleling television's growing primacy in family life and society, an increasingly vocal chorus of legislators, scientists and parents are raising objections to the uncritical acceptance of the medium. For example, the Swedish government imposed a total ban on advertising to children under twelve in 1991 (see advertising). In the U.S., the [http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_tveffect.shtml National Institute on Media and the Family] (not a government agency) points out that U.S. children watch an average of 25 hours of television per week and features studies showing it interferes with the educational and maturational process. A February 23 2002 article in [http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0005339B-A694-1CC5-B4A8809EC588EEDF Scientific American] suggested that compulsive television watching was no different from any other addiction, a finding backed up by reports of withdrawal symptoms among families forced by

Theatre

:For other usages see Theatre (disambiguation) Theatre is that branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime.
Overview of theatre
"Drama" (literally translated, is defined as: Action) is that branch of theatre in which speech, either from written text (plays), or improvised is paramount. "Musical theatre" is a form of theatre combining music, songs, dance routines, and spoken dialogue. However, theatre is more than just what one sees on stage. Theatre involves an entire world behind the scenes that creates the costumes, sets and lighting to make the overall effect interesting. There is a particularly long tradition of political theatre, intended to educate audiences on contemporary issues and encourage social change. Various creeds, Catholicism for instance, have built upon the entertainment value of theatre and created (for example) passion plays, mystery plays and morality plays. There is an enormous variety of philosophies, artistic processes, and theatrical approaches to creating plays and drama. Some are connected to political or spiritual ideologies, and some are based on purely "artistic" concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as an event, some on theatre as a catalyst for social change. According to Aristotle's seminal theatrical critique Poetics, there are six elements necessary for theatre. They are Plot, Character, Idea, Language, Song, and Spectacle. The 17th-century Spanish writer Lope de Vega wrote that for theatre one needs "three boards, two actors, and one passion". Others notable for their contribution to theatrical philosophy are Konstantin Stanislavski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Orson Welles, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski. The most recognisable figures in theatre are the directors, playwrights and actors, but theatre is a highly collaborative endeavour. Plays are usually produced by a production team that commonly includes a scenic or set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, sound designer, dramaturg, stage manager, and production manager. The artistic staff are assisted by technical theatre personnel who handle the creation and execution of the production.
Styles of theatre
technical theatre (1909).]] There are a variety of genres that writers, producers and directors can employ in theatre to suit a variety of tastes:
- Musical theatre: A theatrical genre in which the primary means of performance is through singing and music.
- Rock opera: Same style as opera, except that the musical form is rock music.
- Comedy: Comes from the Greek word komos which means celebration, revel or merrymaking. It does not necessarily mean funny, but more focuses on a problem that leads to some form of catastrophe which in the end has a happy and joyful outcome.
- Farce: A comic dramatic piece that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, extravagant exaggeration, and violent horseplay.
- Pantomime: A form of musical drama in which elements of dance, puppetry, slapstick and melodrama are combined to produce an entertaining and comic theatrical experience, often designed for children.
- Romantic comedy: A medley of clever scheming, calculated coincidence, and wondrous discovery, all of which contribute ultimately to making the events answer precisely to the hero's or heroine's wishes, with the focus on love.
- Comedy of situation: A comedy that grows out of a character's attempt to solve a problem created by a situation. The attempt is often bumbling but ends up happily.
- Comedy of manners: Witty, cerebral form of dramatic comedy that depicts and often satirises the manners and affectations of a contemporary society. A comedy of manners is concerned with social usage and the question of whether or not characters meet certain social standards.
- Commedia dell'arte: Very physical form of comedy which was created and originally performed in Italy. Commedia uses a series of stock characters and a list of events to improvise an entire play.
- Musical comedy: Comedy enacted through music, singing and dance.
- Black comedy: Comedy that tests the boundaries of good taste and moral acceptability by juxtaposing morbid or ghastly elements with comical ones.
- Melodrama: Originally, a sentimental drama with musical underscoring. Often with an unlikely plot that concerns the suffering of the good at the hands of the villains but ends happily with good triumphant. Featuring stock characters such as the noble hero, the long-suffering heroine, and the cold-blooded villain.
- Tragedy: A drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual.
- Tragicomedy: A drama that has a bitter/sweet quality, containing elements of tragedy and comedy.
- Domestic drama: Drama in which the focus is on the everyday domestic lives of people and their relationships in the community that they live in.
- Fantasy: The creation of a unique landscape on a which a hero goes on a quest to find something that will defeat the powers of evil. Along the way, this hero meets a variety of weird and fantastic characters.
- Morality play: A morality play is an allegory in which the characters are abstractions of moral ideas.
- Physical theatre: Theatrical performance in which the primary means of communication is the body, through dance, mime, puppetry and movement, rather than the spoken word.
- Theatre of the Absurd: Term coined by Martin Esslin, theatre in which characters are engaged in an absurd, that is meaningless, activity or life. Related to existentialism.
- Meta-Theater: A genre of theater made popular with mostly modern audiences, although it did start back in the Elizabethan Era. Meta-Theater is when a play often completely demolishes the so called "fourth wall" and completely engages the audience. Often times about a group of actors, a director, writer and so on. It usually blurs the line between what is scripted and what goes on by accident. This list is not only somewhat incomplete and eurocentric, but none of the genre listed are actually mutually exclusive. The richness of live theatre today is such that its practitioners can borrow from all of these elements and more, and present something that is a multi-disciplinary melange of pretty much everything.
Theatre or Theater?
The traditional spelling of this word in Commonwealth English is theatre. In the United States, the alternative spelling theater has become more common. The general consensus of most American style guides is to use this spelling unless the word is part of the proper name of a performing arts facility or company, as some venues are branded with "theatre" [http://www.newpaltz.edu/styleguide/editorial/t.html] [http://www.buffalostate.edu/collegerelations/x593.xml] [http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/tricky.html]. However, both spellings are in widely accepted when referring to the branch of the arts. For some people in the U.S., the two spellings carry different meanings. In this case, "theatre" denotes a branch of the performing arts, whereas "theater" refers to the building in which performances or other entertainments are presented. However, among theatre professionals in the U.S., "theatre" is common for both the art and the building.
Theatre venues and styles

- Broadway and the West End
- Off-Broadway and the London fringe
- Off-Off-Broadway
- Regional theatre
- Repertory theatre
- Summer stock theatre
- Community theatre
- Improvisational theatre
- Fringe festival
- Postmodern theater
- Proletcult Theatre
- Street theatre
- Physical theatre
- Temple dance
Awards in theatre

- European Theatre Award
- Laurence Olivier Awards (United Kingdom)
- Tony Award (USA)
- Golden Mask Award (Russia)
- Molière Award (France)
- Hans-Reinhart-Ring (Switzerland)
- Lucille Lortel Award (USA)
- Drama Desk Award (USA)
See also

- List of theater terms
- Theater in the United States
- History of theatre
- Theatre technique
- Suspension of disbelief
- Stagecraft
- Epic Theater
- Irish theatre
- Movie theater
- Puppet theater
- Tableaux vivant
- Mask Sound & Dance Theater
- Digital theatre
- Theater in architecture
- Opera house
- Dramatist
- List of playwrights
- List of theatre directors
- List of Irish dramatists
- :Category:Stage terminology
External links

- [http://webcdi.com/theater/theatre.php Theatre or theater?]
- [http://www.mugss.org/useful/dictionary/ Theatre terms dictionary]
- [http://www.bris.ac.uk/theatrecollection/ University of Bristol Theatre Collection]
- [http://www.ibdb.com/ Internet Broadway Database] ko:연극 ja:演劇 simple:Theater

Music Hall

Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to: # A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts; # The theatre or other venue in which such entertainment takes place; # The type of popular music normally associated with such performances.

Origins

Music Hall in London had its beginnings in the entertainments provided at summer fairs such as the Bartholomew Fair from the 17th century onward. Many of these were suppressed under the strict puritan rule of the Commonwealth. Upon the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, restrictions on public entertainment were relieved by patents for play-acting granted to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant by Charles II. The fairs, much cheaper entertainment within the reach of poor working people, were also tolerated again. The patentees had commodious new playhouses built at Drury Lane and Dorset Garden, well-equipped for specialty entertainment and offering music, dancing, and circus-type entr'actes from the first, as well as plays. By the early 18th century, Londoners' interest in music, dancing, singing, jugglers, rope-dancers, high-kickers, and fair-booth burlesque, had all but driven out legitimate drama. Inns and taverns developed into independent places of amusement and laid the foundations of the middle-class and lower middle-class institution of the music hall, originally evolving from the "song and supper" rooms of the 1850s. The heyday of Music Hall lasted from the 1850s to the Second World War, when other forms of popular music evolved and Music Hall began to be replaced by films as the most popular form of entertainment. British Music Hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term vaudeville referred to more lowbrow entertainment that would have been termed burlesque in the United States.

History of the songs

The musical forms most associated with Music Hall evolved from traditional folk song, becoming by the 1850s a distinct musical style. Subject matter became more contemporary and humorous, and accompaniment was provided by larger house-orchestras as increasing affluence gave the lower classes more access to commercial entertainment and to a wider range of musical instruments, including the piano. The consequent change in musical taste from traditional to more professional forms of entertainment arose in response to the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of previously rural populations during the industrial revolution. The newly created urban communities, cut off from their cultural roots, required new and readily accessible forms of entertainment. Music Halls were originally bar rooms which provided entertainment, in the form of music and speciality acts, for their patrons. By the middle years of the nineteenth century the first purpose-built music halls were being built in London. The halls created a demand for new and catchy popular songs that could no longer be met from the traditional folk song repertoire. Professional songwriters were enlisted to fill the gap. The emergence of a distinct music hall style can be credited to a fusion of musical influences. Music hall songs needed to gain and hold the attention of an often jaded and unruly urban audience. In America from the 1840s Stephen Foster had reinvigorated folk song with the admixture of Negro spiritual to produce a new and vibrant form of popular song. Songs like Golden Slippers and The Old Folks at Home spread round the globe, taking with them the idiom and appurtenances of the minstrel song. Other influences on the rapidly-developing music hall idiom were Irish and European music, particularly the jig, polka, and waltz. Typically a music hall song consists of a series of verses sung by the performer alone, and a repeated chorus which carries the principal melody, and in which the audience is encouraged to join. In Britain, the first music hall songs often promoted the alcoholic wares of the owners of the halls in which they were performed. Songs like Glorious Beer, and the first major music hall success, Champagne Charlie, in 1854, had a major influence in establishing the new art form. Champagne Charlie is often credited with inspiring an exasperated William Booth to form the Salvation Army, eliciting his famous quotation: "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" By the 1870s the songs had cut themselves free from their folk music roots, and particular songs also started to become associated with particular singers, often with exclusive contracts with the songwriter, just as many pop songs are today. Towards the end of the style the music became influenced by ragtime and jazz, before being overtaken by them. Music Hall songs were often unashamedly aimed at their working class audiences, reflecting the experiences and humour in their daily lives. Songs like My Old Man (said Follow the Van), Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road, and Waiting at the Church, expressed in melodic form situations that the urban poor were very familiar with. Music Hall songs could be romantic, patriotic, humorous or sentimental, as the need arose. The most popular Music Hall songs became the basis for the Pub songs of the typical Cockney "knees up".

The two eras

Music Hall entertainment is sometimes divided by era into Victorian Music Hall and Edwardian Music Hall. Toward the end of its heyday the terms theatrical variety or revue began to be used. Music Hall began as a largely working class entertainment, and its association with beer halls and gin palaces led to it being initially shunned by polite society. As Music Hall grew in popularity and respectability, the original arrangement of a large hall with tables at which drink was served, changed to that of a drink-free auditorium. The acceptance of Music Hall as a legitimate cultural form was sealed by the first Royal Variety Performance before King George V in 1912. The pressure for greater rewards for music hall songwriters led to the application of copyright law to musical compositions. This in turn boosted the music publication industry, and the sale of music in printed form. The term Tin Pan Alley, for the music publication industry gained currency from the practice of rival publishers of banging together pots and pans in order to disrupt their competitors' musical auditions. World War I is considered by many to have been the high-water-mark of Music Hall popularity. Music Hall artists and composers threw themselves into rallying public support and enthusiasm for the war effort. Patriotic Music Hall compositions like Keep the Home Fires Burning, Pack up Your Troubles, It's a Long Way to Tipperary and We Don't Want to Lose You (but we think you ought to Go), were sung by the soldiers in the trenches and by audiences at home. After the war, Music Hall suffered in the reaction against the high casualties and apparent pointlessness of the conflict. To some, Music Hall seemed tainted by the way in which it had been used to encourage recruitment and bolster the war. Music Hall continued through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, but no longer as the single dominant form of popular entertainment in Britain. It now had to compete with Jazz, Swing and Big Band dance music, as well as with cinema. Even so, it gave rise to such major stars as George Formby, Gracie Fields, Max Miller, and Flanagan and Allen during this period. After World War II, competition from television and other musical idioms, including Rock and Roll, led to the slow demise of the British music halls. The final blow came when Moss Empires, the largest British Music Hall chain, closed the majority of its theatres in 1960. Stage and Film musicals, however, continued to be influenced by the music hall idiom. Oliver!, Dr Dolittle, My Fair Lady, and many other musicals continued to retain strong roots in music hall. The BBC series The Good Old Days, which ran for thirty years, recreated the Music Hall for the modern audience, and the Paul Daniels Magic Show allowed several speciality acts a television presence from 1979 to 1994. Aimed at a younger audience, but still owing a lot to the music hall heritage, was the Muppet Show.

Music Hall songwriters

- George Le Brunn, writer of Oh! Mr Porter!
- Harry Champion, composer of Boiled Beef and Carrotts
- Harry Dacre, composer of Daisy Bell
- Noel Gay, writer of Lambeth Walk, There's Something About a Soldier, Leaning on a Lamppost.
- Harry Lauder, writer of Stop your Tickling Jock, I Love A Lassie.
- Fred Gilbert, composer of The Man that Broke the Bank At Monte Carlo
- Fred W Leigh, composer of Don't Dilly Dally and The Army of Today.
- Arthur Lloyd, over 100 songs.
- Lionel Monckton, composer of Moonstruck, Soldiers in the Park, The Pipes of Pan
- Felix Powell, writer of Pack up Your Troubles
- Joseph Tabrar, writer of Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow

Music hall comedy

The typical music hall comedian was a man (much less commonly a woman), dressed in a striped suit or other attention-attracting garb, perhaps in a double act and interrupted by another. The phrases 'I don't wish to know that!' and 'kindly leave the stage!' come from this period. Stand-up comedy started in this period, and many of today's habits such as heckling, finishing on a song, as well as character comedy, date back to music hall. Early radio programmes such as The Goons made extensive use of the tradition. The television variety show picked up some of the pieces, but at a time when music hall was already on its last legs.

Speciality Acts

Besides straightforward music and comedy, a plethora of weird and wonderful acts were commonly enjoyed in Music Halls. These were known collectively as speciality acts, and included:
- Lions Comiques: essentially, men dressed as a 'toff', who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an Aristocrat.
- Male and female impersonators, perhaps more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen.
- Aerial acts, of the sort usually seen at the Circus
- Adagio: essentially a sort of cross between a dance act and a juggling act, consisting usually of a male dancer who threw a slim, pretty young girl around. A lot of the moves in modern choreography were evolved in Adagio acts.
- Magic acts and escapologists, such as Harry Houdini.
- Cycling Acts: again, a development of a Circus act, consisting of either a solo or a troupe of trick cyclists. There was even 7 piece a cycling band called Seven Musical Savonas, who played 50 instruments between them, and Kaufmann’s Cycling Beauties, a troupe of girls in Victorian swim wear.
- Ventriloquists, or Vent acts as they were called in the business.
- Electric acts, using the newly discovered phenomena of static electricity to produce tricks such as lighting gas jets and setting fire to handkerchiefs through the performers fingertips.
- Knife throwing and sword swallowing. The most spectacular of its time was the Victorina Troupe, who swallowed a sword fired from a rifle.
- Juggling and plate spinning acts. Another variation was the Diabolo.
- Fire eaters and other eating acts, such as eating glass, razor blades, goldfish etc.
- Mentalism acts. Commonly a male mentalist, blindfolded on stage, and an attractive female assistant passing among the audience. The assistant would collect objects from the audience, and the mentalist would identify each by 'reading' the assistants mind. This was usually accomplished by a clever system of codes and clues from the assistant.
- Mime artists and Impressionists.
- Balloon modelling acts.
- Trampoline acts.
- Animal acts: Talking dogs, Flea circuses, and all manner of animals doing tricks.
- Stilt walkers.
- Puppet acts, including human puppets and living doll acts.
- Comic pianists.
- Cowboy/Wild West acts.

Music Hall performers

- Arthur Askey
- Fred Barnes
- Kate Carney
- Harry Champion
- Charlie Chaplin (more famous as a silent film star)
- Sydney Chaplin
- Albert Chevalier
- G. H. Chirgwin
- Charles Coborn
- Daisy Dormer
- Clive Dunn
- Gus Elen
- Gracie Fields
- Flanagan and Allen
- Florrie Forde
- George Formby
- Jenny Hill
- Fred Karno
- Marie Kendall
- Hetty King
- Harry Lauder
- Stan Laurel (more famous as a Hollywood star)
- Dan Leno
- George Leybourne
- Violet Loraine
- Little Tich
- Arthur Lloyd
- Marie Lloyd
- G. H. McDermott
- Denise Orme
- Arthur Roberts
- George Robey
- Mark Sheridan
- Eugene Stratton
- Harry Tate
- Vesta Tilley
- Peter Ustinov
- Alfred Vance
- Vesta Victoria
- Max Wall
- Wilson, Keppel and Betty

Music Hall in literature, drama, and screen

The Victorian era was celebrated by the 1944 film Champagne Charlie while J. B. Priestley's 1965 novel Lost Empires evokes the world of Edwardian music hall just before the start of World War I; the title is a reference to the Empire theatres (as well as foreshadowing the decline of the British Empire itself). It was recently adapted as a television miniseries, shown in both the UK and in the U.S. as a PBS presentation. Priestley's 1929 novel The Good Companions, set in the same period, follows the lives of the members of a "concert party" or touring "Pierrot troupe." Between 1978 and 1984 BBC television broadcast two series of programmes called [http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/o/oldboynetworkthe_1299002400.shtml The Old Boy Network.] These featured a star (usually a Music Hall performer, but also some younger turns like Eric Sykes) performing some of their best known routines while giving a slide show of their life story. Artistes featured included Arthur Askey, Tommy Trinder, Sandy Powell, and Chesney Allen. John Osborne's play The Entertainer portrays the life and work of a second-rate music hall comedian. A very brief impression of a "current" show can be obtained from the film The Fourth Angel, where Jeremy Irons' character uses a visit to a music hall show at the Players' Theatre Club to create an alibi.

Surviving Music Halls

- An outstanding example of the late Music Hall period is the Hackney Empire. This has been restored to its moorish splendour and now provides an eclectic programme of events from opera to Black Variety Nights.
- A mile to the south is Hoxton Hall - an 1863 example of the saloon-style, unrestored but maintained in its original layout, and currently used as a community centre and theatre.
- Collins Music Hall still stands on the North side of Islington Green, sadly it currently forms part of a bookshop.
- The Grand, in Clapham, has been restored, and is used as a music venue.
- Greenwich Theatre was originally (1855) the Rose and Crown Music Hall, later Crowder's Music Hall and Temple of Varieties. The building has been extensively modernised and little of the original layout remains.
- In the nondescript Grace's Alley, off Cable Street, Stepney survives Wilton's Music Hall. This 1858 building survived use as a church, fire, flood and war intact, but vitually derelict. It has been rescued by the Broomhill Opera and is used for opera and theatrical productions.
- The Venue is a basement theatre, located beneath Notre Dame Church in Leicester Place, off the north side of Leicester Square. Every Sunday afternoon, the Players' Theatre Club performs a Victorian style Music Hall show in this theatre. Many of the above buildings can be seen as part of the annual London Open House event. Outside London, music halls include the following examples:
- the Leeds City Varieties
- The Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man
- the Britannia Music Hall, Glasgow (still standing, but there is a restoration appeal). One of the only (if not the only) fully functional music hall including dinner and music hall performances is at the Brick Lane Music Hall which has relocated to an old church in the east end of London (ie: no longer on Brick Lane). For information, go to [http://brick-lane-music-hall.co.uk/]

World War II

, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. From top going counterclockwise: Allied landing on D-Day 1944, the Nuremberg Rally 1936, the Nagasaki atom bomb 1945, the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin 1945 and the Gate of Auschwitz.]] World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th Century conflict that engulfed much of the globe and is accepted as the largest and deadliest continuous war in human history. It was the first time that a number of newly developed technologies, including nuclear weapons, were used against either military or civilian targets. World War II resulted in the direct or indirect death of anywhere from 50 to 60 million or more people, over 3% of the world population at that time. It is estimated to have cost more money and resources than all other wars combined: about 1 trillion US dollars in 1945 (adjusted for inflation; roughly 10.5 trillion in 2005), not including subsequent reconstruction [http://www.historychannel.com/worldwartwo/?page=triumph5]. The outcomes of the war, including new technology and changes to the world's geopolitical, cultural and economic arrangement, were unprecedented. The conflict began by most Western accounts on September 1 1939 with the German invasion of Poland (the Pacific war is taken to have started on July 7 1937 with the Japanese attack on China) and lasted until mid-1945, involving many of the world's countries. Virtually all countries that participated in World War I were involved in World War II. Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 and Canada followed on September 10, 1939. The United States entered the conflict in December of 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Summary

Attributed in varying degrees to the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, and the rise in nationalism, racism, fascism, National socialism, Japanese imperialism, and militarism, the causes of the war are a matter of debate. The war was fought between the Axis Powers and the Allies. The Axis initially consisted of an alliance between Germany and Italy, which later expanded to include Japan and Eastern European countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. Some of the nations that Germany conquered sent military forces, particularly to the Eastern front. Among the expeditionary forces that joined Germany were forces from Vichy France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain (though Spain was itself a neutral country) and armies of Russians and Ukrainians under the command of the general Andrey Vlasov. The Allies were initially the United Kingdom, including the Commonwealth, France and Poland, later joined by the USSR, the United States of America and China. Fighting occurred across the Atlantic Ocean, in Western and Eastern Europe, in the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, the Middle East, in the Pacific and South East Asia, and it continued in China. In Europe, the war ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945 (V-E and Victory Days), but continued in Asia until Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 (V-J Day). At least 50 million people died as a result of the war. This figure includes acts of genocide such as the Holocaust and General Ishii Shiro's Unit 731 experiments in Pingfan, incredibly bloody battles in Europe and the Pacific Ocean, and massive bombings of cities, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and the firebombing of Dresden (and even worse but less known) of Pforzheim in Germany. Few areas of the world were unaffected; the war involved the "home front" and bombing of civilians to a new degree. Atomic weapons, jet aircraft, rockets and radar, the blitzkrieg, or "lightning war", the massive use of tanks, submarines, torpedo bombers and destroyer/tanker formations, are only a few of many wartime inventions and new tactics that changed the face of the conflict. Post–World War II Europe was partitioned into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the latter becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union. This partition was, however, informal; rather than coming to terms about the spheres of influence, the relationship between the victors steadily deteriorated, and the military lines of demarcation finally became the de facto country boundaries. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact countries, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to Japan's democratisation. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The war sparked a wave of independence for colonies of European powers, who were exhausted from fighting the war. There was a fundamental shift in power from Western Europe to the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, though there were few actual boundary changes. __TOC__

Causes

People's Republic of China]] Main articles: Causes of World War II, Events preceding World War II in Europe, Events preceding World War II in Asia The causes of World War II are naturally a debated subject, but a common view, particularly among the allies in the early post-war years, ties them to the expansionism of Germany and Japan: Germany had lost wealth, power and status following the First World War and the expansion was to make Germany great again.
- In Germany there was a strong desire to escape the bonds of the World War I Treaty of Versailles, and eventually,