TV invented by the time World War 2 starts, impact on public perception?

Admiral Bloonbeard

Admiral Bloonbeard

For premise of the POD, please read https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...zer-4s-and-stug-3s-during-world-war-2.499580/

The widespread use of TV was originally supposed to happen earlier than OTL. TV was demonstrated in the 1939 New York’s fair and mass production and mass adoption was supposed to begin soon. World War 2 delayed development, production, and widespread use of the television, and it wasn’t until the late 40s when TV became widespread. Building on the POD above, how would the public reaction be towards World War 2 on TV? How would public opinion change and how would the public react when they see atrocities on TV?
 
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marathag

marathag

Banned
Admiral Bloonbeard said:
How would public opinion change and how would the public react when they see atrocities on TV?
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They would only have film stock to show, and that would be censored, as all newsreels had been.

But the US TV guided drones and bomb program, would be a lot advanced over OTLs TDR and GB-4 efforts
 

Expat

I’m not sure TV gets more access to the war than newsreels and other documentarians did. Perception is still probably dominated by those cooperating with governments.

Now that said, I think people were maybe more willing to tolerate at least a degree of inhumanity when it came to killing Nazis. Track down The Liberation of Paris, where Noel Coward lightly narrates as the French burn car-fulls of Germans to the delight of all!
 

The Historian

Admiral Bloonbeard said:
Didn’t TV play a part in the unpopularity of the Vietnam war?
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No. Vietnam was unpopular because it was 9 years long and had no end in sight with young men across the country drafted during peacetime. From Tonkin in ‘64 to ‘73 was a long time, during which there was significant civil unrest to begin with.

TV certainly showed off the conflict, but the popular opinion of WW2 will always be higher due to the double whammy of Japanese Attack and Nazi Declaration. It was a very just conflict with clear goals and a national effort. For the US population it was both existential, and only 4 years long.
 

Johnrankins

The Historian said:
No. Vietnam was unpopular because it was 9 years long and had no end in sight with young men across the country drafted during peacetime. From Tonkin in ‘64 to ‘73 was a long time, during which there was significant civil unrest to begin with.

TV certainly showed off the conflict, but the popular opinion of WW2 will always be higher due to the double whammy of Japanese Attack and Nazi Declaration. It was a very just conflict with clear goals and a national effort. For the US population it was both existential, and only 4 years long.
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You also have to admit that the media was highly censored and that probably would have been true of TV if it existed in WW2.
 

Crowbar Six

TV was available in the UK before WW2 and Germany had experimental broadcasting before the outbreak of war. The biggest issue with TV was the expense of the sets and limited coverage - it was not really broadcast outside of the South East of England, pretty much Greater London in fact. It was also turned off during the war due to fears it could be use as a homing beacon for Luftwaffe attacks.

In addition even if it was available it would have limited impact, people got their news mainly via radio, newspapers and news reels shown in local cinema's.
 

Kammada

The TV news wouldn't be much different from weekly newsreels, only more frequent and delivered directly to your dining room, given that all the belligerents, even those with the free press like the UK or the US, let alone the ones like the USSR, Germany, Japan or Italy, would have heavily censored the TV production in the event of an all-out war, and in many cases, wouldn't have allowed the camera crews at the front lines. Whatever spontaneous reporting might happen, it would have been stomped down. As for the opinion talk shows and investigative journalism, even if it had been a thing in democratic countries, it would have been no different in impact from the printed press and the radio.

Perhaps, though (although I'm unsure if it was technically viable with the late 40s-early 50s technologies you are mentioning), TV broadcasting behind the enemy lines (like the BBC for most of the occupied Europe and, in a rather futile way, in Japanese-occupied Burma, Singapore and Malaysia, or like the pirate stations set by the Nazis and broadcasting to the UK that mostly were a waste of time, too), might have a slightly bigger effect on the morale, especially if it was possible for it to hijack the official frequencies and start sending pictures deliberately selected by the other side.

EDIT: Both the VHF and UHF waves used by the television have a short range of propagation, so the TV broadcasting on the enemy and occupied territory isn't going to happen.
 
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Johnrankins

Kammada said:
The TV news wouldn't be much different from weekly newsreels, only more frequent and delivered directly to your dining room, given that all the belligerents, even those with the free press like the UK or the US, let alone the ones like the USSR, Germany, Japan or Italy, would have heavily censored the TV production in the event of an all-out war, and in many cases, wouldn't have allowed the camera crews at the front lines. Whatever spontaneous reporting might happen, it would have been stomped down. As for the opinion talk shows and investigative journalism, even if it had been a thing in democratic countries, it would have been no different in impact from the printed press and the radio.

Perhaps, though (although I'm unsure if it was technically viable with the late 40s-early 50s technologies you are mentioning), TV broadcasting behind the enemy lines (like the BBC for most of the occupied Europe and, in a rather futile way, in Japanese-occupied Burma, Singapore and Malaysia, or like the pirate stations set by the Nazis and broadcasting to the UK that mostly were a waste of time, too), might have a slightly bigger effect on the morale, especially if it was possible for it to hijack the official frequencies and start sending pictures deliberately selected by the other side.
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Any "broadcast behind enemy lines" would have first been sent back to London or New York as film, censored and then reshown later.
 

Kammada

Johnrankins said:
Any "broadcast behind enemy lines" would have first been sent back to London or New York as film, censored and then reshown later.
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Definitely, but I mostly mean the impact peculiar to the visual media which audio can't have. It's one thing listening to the announcer talking about thousands of dead, wounded and taken prisoner, but if they are shown to you, even in a deliberately arranged scene, it may impact your morale in a bigger way.
 
Admiral Bloonbeard

Admiral Bloonbeard

Kammada said:
The TV news wouldn't be much different from weekly newsreels, only more frequent and delivered directly to your dining room, given that all the belligerents, even those with the free press like the UK or the US, let alone the ones like the USSR, Germany, Japan or Italy, would have heavily censored the TV production in the event of an all-out war, and in many cases, wouldn't have allowed the camera crews at the front lines. Whatever spontaneous reporting might happen, it would have been stomped down. As for the opinion talk shows and investigative journalism, even if it had been a thing in democratic countries, it would have been no different in impact from the printed press and the radio.

Perhaps, though (although I'm unsure if it was technically viable with the late 40s-early 50s technologies you are mentioning), TV broadcasting behind the enemy lines (like the BBC for most of the occupied Europe and, in a rather futile way, in Japanese-occupied Burma, Singapore and Malaysia, or like the pirate stations set by the Nazis and broadcasting to the UK that mostly were a waste of time, too), might have a slightly bigger effect on the morale, especially if it was possible for it to hijack the official frequencies and start sending pictures deliberately selected by the other side.
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It was originally supposed to happen earlier than OTL. World War 2 delayed a lot of civilian inventions, such as recorded sound technology. The LP record and 45 rpm record was originally supposed to be developed and released much earlier, both Columbia and RCA Victor began research before World War 2, World War 2 delayed research and it wasn’t until the late 40s when they were available. Early TV in the late 40s and early 50s felt more like cinema at your home, the improvement of technology was what allowed TV to be so sophisticated by the time Vietnam started. For more information on premise of the POD, please visit link above.
 
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Johnrankins

Kammada said:
Definitely, but I mostly mean the impact peculiar to the visual media which audio can't have. It's one thing listening to the announcer talking about thousands of dead, wounded and taken prisoner, but if they are shown to you, even in a deliberately arranged scene, it may impact your morale in a bigger way.
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No different than the huge number of war films and newsreels.
 
Catsmate

Catsmate

Crowbar Six said:
TV was available in the UK before WW2 and Germany had experimental broadcasting before the outbreak of war. The biggest issue with TV was the expense of the sets and limited coverage - it was not really broadcast outside of the South East of England, pretty much Greater London in fact. It was also turned off during the war due to fears it could be use as a homing beacon for Luftwaffe attacks.

In addition even if it was available it would have limited impact, people got their news mainly via radio, newspapers and news reels shown in local cinema's.
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This. The OP seems to be limiting matters to the USA, who came late to television. There were around twenty thousand TV sets in the UK before the war began.
 

Kammada

Johnrankins said:
No different than the huge number of war films and newsreels.
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I mean TV stations trying to broadcast for the enemy and occupied populations. I doubt that they had screenings of Deutsche Wochenschau in London or British Pathé Journal in Berlin. With the TV, though, there's a remote possibility for something like this.

Upon further checking, though, the direct range of a VHF signal used for the TV is roughly 100 miles, as it doesn't bounce from the ionosphere like the HF. This makes the whole possibility of broadcasting to the enemy rather niche one. You may have a TV station somewhere in Kent that covers, at least theoretically, the coastal strip across the Channel from Le Havre to Ostende but not much further inland. The utility of such an enterprise would be pretty nil, so I would rather retire the second paragraph of my post altogether and assume that the late 40s-early 50s (by the technology level and the level of adoption) TV during the WW2 will change even less that I thought.
 
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Don Corleone

Kammada said:
I mean TV stations trying to broadcast for the enemy and occupied populations. I doubt that they had screenings of Deutsche Wochenschau in London or British Pathé Journal in Berlin. With the TV, though, there's a remote possibility for something like this.

Upon further checking, though, the direct range of a VHF signal used for the TV is roughly 100 miles, as it doesn't bounce from the ionosphere like the HF. This makes the whole possibility of broadcasting to the enemy rather niche one. You may have a TV station somewhere in Kent that covers, at least theoretically, the coastal strip across the Channel from Le Havre to Ostende but not much further inland. The utility of such an enterprise would be pretty nil, so I would rather retire the second paragraph of my post altogether and assume that the late 40s-early 50s (by the technology level and the level of adoption) TV during the WW2 will change even less that I thought.
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Successfully broadcasting into enemy territory is most useful as a means of making the enemy government look weak - "look, they can't stop us".

But wven if TV is more advanced you're not going to have all that many people who own one, and in occupied Europe those people will be the regime's friends.

In OTL we pulled off a low tech operation for the same purpose. The Nazis monitored and censored the mail and didn't make it a secret. So the Allies printed a batch of counterfeit German postage stamps. Then we "accidentally" hit a mail train during a bombing raid and added anti-Nazi propaganda letters to the rubble so they would enter the mailstream, appearing to have already been vetted.

Stamp collectors love the counterfeit stamps (regular German stamps are too common to be worth much, and you can tell the difference by looking at the perforation along the edges).
 

Guilherme Loureiro

Gukpard said:
@Guilherme Loureiro how Vargas would react to the TV?
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During the Estado Novo? DIP is the name(or the acronym, as it were). Expect the new medium to be heavily co-opted by the regime, just as radio was historically - not only for directly showing propaganda of the regime, but in the more indirect manner of 'influencing' as well(I know of at least one song that had its lyrics altered - inverting the original meaning - because exalting the 'malandro' was at odds with the worker ethic the Estado Novo wanted to teach the people).
 
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