A Review of the History of Live Shows Projected in Movie Theatres - Text 1
The “live transmission” in movie theatres is part of a history of programming practices and of the evolution of transmission technology, a history longer than that of the digitalizing of movie theatres, for which it has often been one of the major promotional defences. In reality, this “new” versatility of the movie theatre is a return to the origins of the film show, which long co-existed with other stage or screen “programs” or “attractions.” In this long history, the arrival of television as a new technology in the quest for ubiquity was a decisive turning point. When television transmission was still at a very early stage, there were already several competing projects around how the technology should be used: living-room television (domestic reception) and television in projection halls (collective reception). In the 1920s and 30s the pioneering companies in the field of television technology (RCA, General Electric, Baird Television, Scophony, Marconi-EMI, Telefunken, etc.) saw the movie theatre as a potential outlet. With the first public demonstrations in the 1930s there also emerged the first prescriptive discourses, all of them centred on the possibility of simplifying movie theatre programming (by doing away with physical film prints) and of expanding this programming in order to attract new audiences through the transmission of current events, theatre, opera and music hall performances, and sporting events simultaneous to their occurrence.
The earliest attempts to market large screen television or theatre television on the North American market date from the early 1940s, but it would not be until after the war that a number of venues were so equipped.[1] By the early 1950s there were some sixty in all, primarily in large cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
