Television

According to Variety, Broadway box-office grosses slip this time every year, but apparently "The Farnsworth Invention’s" box-office drop could be construed as more than just "seasonal." The seasonal slowdown on Broadway continued last week, with B.O. slipping by around $1.2 million to an estimated $14.3 million for 31 shows on the boards. Receipts dropped for […]

I don’t know why we (?) are even having this debate about Farnsworth -v- Sarnoff, RCA, Zworykin, etal, when anybody who is even remotely familiar with the subject knows that Scotsman John Logie Baird really invented television, as this clip clearly demonstrates:

Link: Top 100 most influential people in History # 28 Nicolas Copernicus # 29 Socrates (just because of his reputation) # 30  Philo T. Farnsworth (invented electronic television that most closely resembles contemporary ones) And BEFORE Moses, no less (#32).

Link: ‘Farnsworth Invention’ Hits Best Week Yet at Music Box Broadway’s The Farnsworth Invention celebrated its best week yet at the Music Box Theatre.  The new play by Aaron Sorkin grossed $346,739.00 for the week ending December 30, 2007. For those in the cast and crew, this is certainly good news. But, then, in light

Yeah, I know, it’s "just a play."  But like I keep saying, too many people — like this one — leave the theater thinking what they’ve just seen is an accurate portrayal of history, and then arrive at all kinds of wrong conclusions based on what they’ve just seen: What brings Philo T. Farnsworth down,

….for those of you on drugs: Here, again, we see why ultimately this play serves the RCA party line, as yet another viewer who doesn’t know the real story comes away from the theater thinking they’ve just  seen its genuine re-enactment: Even though Farnsworth sued Sarnoff and RCA, he eventually lost his patent claims on

The Village Voice has posted it’s review of The Farnsworth Invention: Farnsworth never explores any aspect of the story deeply. From the sources of the stirrings that made a rural potato-farmer’s kid an electronics whiz by high-school age to the seismic shift in social patterns caused by the mass success of radio and then TV,

Back on November 5th, I posted an entry here entitled "The Great Deception Continues" which cited a blog by Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at the New York Law School, who saw an early preview of The Farnsworth Invention as it prepared for its opening on Broadway.   I noted then how Mr. Leonard had reiterated

Here’s a review from somebody in the cheap seats: Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention got pretty roundly panned by Ben Brantley, but my assessment of it is far more kind. The first question is whether Sorkin has learned from the failings of Studio 60, and the answer is mostly yes. What’s more interesting are the

More reviews that slipped through the net earlier today: New York Press (Stan Friedman):  Sometimes showing off (“Music is what Mathmatics does on a Saturday night”), sometimes using his familiar ironic understatement (“You’re going to want to not screw this up”), Sorkin delivers what his established fans and critics have come to expect: a showcase