Early television commanded trance-like, immersive attention rivaling cinema.

Evidence

Given TV’s novelty and limited offerings, early audiences were not fickle channel surfers. Contemporary accounts suggest something much more like the deeply immersive experience of motion pictures. Indeed, the lights were usually turned off for viewing, and there was little or no conversation. One only got up to change the channel. “We ate our suppers in silence, spilling food, gaping in awe,” said one woman in 1950. “We thought nothing of sitting in the darkness for hours at a stretch without exchanging a word except ‘who’s going to answer that confounded telephone?’ ” We have, to this point, treated all attention paid as more or less the same, which is a reasonable way to broach a complex subject. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 438

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates sustained attention as distinct from the transitory attention later television would cultivate — a key concept for the book.
• XREF: connects to: Television’s felt immediacy stems from transmission velocity, not image quality — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 198; Ambient TV’s defining aesthetic is its dispensability of attention — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 592; The computer screen commands even more focused attention than television — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 665 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Ambient TV’s defining aesthetic is its dispensability of attention #contradicts (0.80) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 592
• Mid-1950s television achieved the largest simultaneous shared attention in history #corroborates (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 453
• Television’s felt immediacy stems from transmission velocity, not image quality #complicates (0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 198
• The computer screen commands even more focused attention than television #expands (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 665
• Immediacy cinema transforms spectators into accomplices through adrenaline-torrent immersion #expands (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 191
• Television’s attention capture drove 1950s conformity without state enforcement #expands (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 457