Well, I Sure Didn't See THAT Coming!

Did anybody else see the Emmy Awards last night?

I thought I’d tune in this time because I’ve been working all summer on this Countdown to The Centennial . I actually thought I’d tune in just to see if I could find a candidate (or two) who might consider serving as some kind of ‘celebrity spokesperson’ for the Celebration of 100 Years of Television in 2027.

I tried to prepare for the telecast by taking a subscription to Paramount+, which I thought was going to air the whole thing starting at 7PM CDT. Alas, the appointed time hour came and… nada. I don’t know what the issue was, if I needed to subscribe to some higher level of Paramount + or what… just one more indication that the whole streaming / television universe is entirely FUBAR1 right now.

About 2 minutes into the frustration of trying to find the show, my phone started to light up with text messages:

I finally wound up taking a second (trial)2 sub to Paramount+ via Amazon Prime and managed to watch the rest of the show that way.

And the opening – with host Nate Bargatze portraying “Philo T. Farnsworth – Inventor of Television” in a replication of his now famous “George Washington” SNL sketches – started showing up on YouTube within an hour of its airing on CBS:

I’m inclined to think this might be some kind of a big deal.

It’s the first time the Academy has just come out cold like this with the statement:

The only other time they came close was during an Emmys telecast was back in 2002 when Conan O’Brien observed the 75th anniversary of television’s arrival (on September 7, 1927) with the qualifier “electric television” when he introduced Farnsworth’s widow, who was present in the theater for the occasion:

Of course, that recognition couldn’t be allowed to air without dragging David Sarnoff into it, but that’s a different windmill joust for now. )

And, yes, Farnsworth was inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame in 2013.

Still, just seeing…

… tells me that somebody at the Academy – not least of all, apparently, Nate Bargatze – knows that something notable is racing down the pike in another (checks Countdown Calendar)… 721 days.

The actual “Countdown” - 100 Milestones from The First 100 Years of Television – starts October 5 – 100 weeks until the actual Centennial in 2027.

I got some pushback last week to my contention that “every video screen on the planet can trace its origins to the sketch that Farnsworth drew for his high school science teacher in 1922” – because obviously the screens we’re using today bear little resemblance to the cathode ray tubes that dominated the industry for most of the 20th century.3

My point is that none of the advanced video technology we enjoy today – from the enormous 4K flat panels in our living rooms to the tiny gizmos in our pockets – would exist without the first iteration of all-electronic video.

That moment – on September 7, 1927 – represents a turning point in human civilization, when much of what came before (i.e. all the mechanical television systems) became obsolete and everything that came after (like the screen you’re looking at now) became possible.

We’ve got a little less than two years now to recognize the ‘universe of magical things’ that all this came from, and celebrate everything that has happened since.

And yes, there will be cake!