Film, Radio, and Television

Abstract

The history of science in cinema and on radio and television reveals a continual tension between scientists' desire for authenticity and media producers' need for entertainment. Many scientists saw the promise of universal education in each medium because illiterate audiences could still understand content. But, the commercialized frameworks that developed around these media led to the foregrounding of drama and spectacle over education. Cinema first emerged as a tool for scientific research, but it evolved into a medium for entertainment and medical propaganda. As the first broadcast medium, radio seemed to be an ideal medium for popularizing science. Yet, scientists' naïve attempts to create entertaining radio programs showed how little they understood about broadcasting as a process. Television combined cinema's visuality with radio's narrative structures, but television producers needed to develop their own codes and conventions for science to be successful on television.

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