Susan Murray, Bright Signals: A History of Colour Television

Abstract

Bright Signals: A History of Colour Television by Susan Murray charts the development of colour television between 1928 and 1970 – the period in which the technology was invented, standardized and widely disseminated. The book adopts a media archaeological approach, depicting a broad yet integrated network of visual culture with colour television at its centre. Murray impressively draws upon the work of colour theorists, market researchers, psychologists, social scientists and film scholars to support and contextualize her arguments. Bright Signals offers a rich cultural, social, industrial and political context for the history of colour television, which has hitherto been lacking. The book is structured into six main chapters, the first two of which focus on early experimentation with colour television technology and the growing standardization of colour across several nationwide industries. The following three chapters focus predominantly on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Through the prism of CBS and NBC, these chapters address the technical refinement of colour television, its transformation into a commercially viable medium, colour aesthetics and programming strategies. The final chapter focuses on the global expansion of colour television, contextualizing it within the rhetoric of the Cold War and US imperialism.