As film emerged as one of the dominant media of the twentieth century, critics often challenged its artistic credentials by alleging that it was nothing more than canned not an autonomous artform, but merely surrogate theater served up in celluloid. As a result, film theorists spilled a great deal of ink trying to prove that the medium of film is essentially different from that of theater and that, in consequence, the possibility that film could be an artform with equal standing as regards not only theater, but with respect, as well, to its other five sister arts had to be acknowledged. Undoubtedly, this theoretical debate was underwritten by the fact that film and theater were economic competitors for the same audiences. But whatever its material motivation, the debate was conducted in the philosophical idiom of essential differentiae rather than in terms of more lowly considerations, such as product differentiation. Similarly, the appearance of television (henceforth referred to as TV) engendered comparable anxieties of influence. Theoretical spokespersons for the new medium were at pains to differentiate TV from film to show that TV was not just an ersatz form of cinema. TV, it was claimed, had its own unique features, features distinct from those of cinema, which, at least in principle, opened up the possibility of an autonomous art of TV. As in the debate about theater and film, this discussion was frequently cast in terms of essential or ontological distinctions. And, of course, the Film/TV debate was probably, in part, also motivated economically by the fact that the two media were in competition for roughly the same audiences. Thus, throughout its history, ontological speculation about the essential differences between film and TV has had a certain pragmatic urgency. In this essay, I intend to review some of the leading proposals concerning the putative ontological differences between TV and film. I will then go