“Laughs and legends,” or the furniture that glows? Television as history

2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of broadcast television in Australia. It was launched in Sydney and Melbourne in 1956, just in time for the Melbourne Olympic Games. This anniversary has provoked a flurry of events, including a national conference, a number of exhibitions, and a spate of celebratory television specials and newspaper articles. Now seems a particularly fruitful time, then, to look at the ways in which television itself has become a historical object; to consider some of the ways in which television is memorialised. This paper is concerned not so much with the events of this history as much as with the way in which it is written; with television as history rather than the history of television.

John Hartley, Joshua Green & Jean Burgess (2007) ‘“Laughs and Legends,” or the Furniture that Glows? Television as History.’ Australian Cultural History, 26, 15-36