In the early to mid-1940s when television was in its infancy how was it filmed and broadcast to the viewer? Was it predominately live or was it recorded on film? Did mostof the early TV show recordings survive (if so, how)? Just curious.
In Italy, television - or, better, radiovision as it was known back then - made its first debut on 4 June 1939 and the programmes were produced by the EIAR (the State agency tasked with radio broadcasts). Pre-existing structures were adapted for TV broadcasting, a few ones were created from scratch and most (if not all) of the programming was done live with a conventional - actually, an early variant of - analog broadcasting; there was little recording going on and this also why almost nothing has survived to this day. The TV service was hastily suspended after the country's entry in WW2 (10 June 1940) and the few archives were either scattered or lost during the war.
There's a book on the matter, Diego Verdegiglio's excellent essay La TV di Mussolini.
