Television as an industry, a technology, and a cultural object is currently experiencing a period of accelerated change. Despite the accelerated nature of this change and its amplification through social media discussions, understanding television's history will help us to understand television's present. This is a history course with American television as its subject. By exploring the history of television, we also must study the history of radio as television's precursor medium and television through the digital transition. Thus, the course covers the late 19th century through to the present. While the focus is on American television and its related media, the forms these media take occur in the context of other nations, particularly Great Britain, creating their own broadcasting structures. The nature of this particular history is heavily reliant on cultural, social, industrial, and political histories, so those will be the foci through which we will study the history of each "new" media--radio and television were once new media, too--as it emerged, stabilized, interacted with other media, was regulated and deregulated, and was shaped by and shaped the culture around it. Moreover, in light of current television practices, we will be exploring television's national mass-medium foundations and how the origins of broadcasting created an environment that eventually led to today's fragmented media environment.