Watching the birth of CBS (and wishing it was a bit shorter)

If you're looking for a plot, you're looking in the wrong place. This is just a broadcast from 1931, a time when people thought television was probably just a fad that would go away if we ignored it long enough. 📺

Should you watch it? Honestly, only if you're the kind of person who enjoys reading old manuals for appliances that don't exist anymore. If you want a story, go watch The Cowboy and the Lady instead. It’s much more coherent.

Bill Schudt is our guy here. He looks like he’s trying to hold a conversation with someone who isn't there, mostly because he’s talking into a camera that was probably the size of a small car. The audio is piped through a shortwave station, which explains why it sounds like it’s being broadcast from inside a tin can at the bottom of the ocean.

There’s this weird, frantic energy to the whole thing. It’s not polished. It’s not even really "produced." It feels like a science experiment where the scientist accidentally invited the public to watch him break things. Sometimes the picture just sort of... drifts. It makes The Master Crook look like a modern blockbuster by comparison.

The pacing is non-existent. You can feel the silence stretching out, the kind of silence that happens when the person on screen realizes they have three more minutes of airtime and nothing left to say. It’s awkward. It’s fascinating in a 'why is this happening' kind of way.

I found myself wondering if they knew they were making history. Probably not. They were just trying to get the image to stay in the center of the frame for more than ten seconds. There’s a strange beauty in that failure, I guess. It reminds me a bit of the technical stumbles in No Parking, where you can see the effort fighting the technology.

It’s definitely not for everyone. You won't find any sweeping emotional arcs here. You’ll just find a man in a suit, a very expensive camera, and the ghost of a medium that hadn't quite decided what it wanted to be yet.

I didn't finish it in one sitting. I don't think you're meant to. It’s more of a artifact than a film. 📻