Desi Arnaz devised the three-camera method for sitcoms

‘The Larry Sanders Show’ redefined the American sitcom by cutting the laughs

"The Larry Sanders Show" avoided both live studio audiences and canned laughs, implying viewers didn’t need to be told when to react. That was not common at the time—TV’s most popular live-action sitcoms, “Seinfeld” and “Cheers,” both relied on the more traditional approach—but the choice had a profound effect.

2 'Simpsons' producers break down the show's turning points

Longtime director David Silverman and showrunner Matt Selman walk you through some of the show's biggest turning points, from the early days on "The Tracey Ullman Show" through its biggest guest stars and eerily accurate predictions.

Ed Sabol's vision of NFL Films impacted how sports were filmed

When the NFL put out a bid to film the 1962 NFL Championship Game, Ed Sabol promised NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle his higher price tag would be worth it. Sabol’s style of fixed high shots, close-ups of players, and fans in the stands revolutionized how sporting events are filmed, influenced moviemakers like Ron Howard, and gave birth to NFL Films.

Spinal Tap began as a sketch on a short-lived TV show

The fake band might be best known for "This is Spinal Tap," 1984 movie that effectively created the comedy mockumentary, but the premise began with an appearance on a short-lived ABC show called "The TV Show."

The ‘three-martini lunch’ was popularized on Madison Avenue

Advertising executives working on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and ’70s popularized the so-called “three-martini lunch” between businesspeople during the work week. Admen of the time supposedly believed alcohol brought more creativity to the second half of their workday. This article explains why three-martini lunches are no longer commonplace.

Soaps often air every day, leading to frantic production schedules

Unlike more typical primetime or streaming shows, soap operas often air every weekday. That means writers and actors often work every day to complete a new episode, making for a grueling schedule. It also explains why some of the dialogue and performances might seem a bit off-the-cuff.

Revelations about quiz show ‘Dotto’ led to a larger scandal across the industry

The show, which aired on both CBS and NBC in slightly different iterations in 1958, followed a fairly standard question-and-answer format, with correct answers slowly revealing an image that contestants needed to solve. Despite its popularity, the show was canceled after it was revealed that one contestant had been provided with answers to the questions. That revelation led to similar scandals with four more shows over the next few months.

Exploring how directors decide where to place the camera

The seamless experience of watching a film is the result of countless aesthetic decisions, one of the most important of which is the placement of the camera taking the shot. In this 8-minute video, directors and actors weigh in on the factors that shape the angles of cinematography, using famous scenes to demonstrate their observations. Watch it here.

IFA 1931 hosted the first public TV demonstration

In 1931, Manfred von Ardenne presented his cathode ray tube television to the public for the first time, marking the first public demonstration of fully electronic TV. This article examines his breakthrough and the evolution of television technology since.

Thomas Edison inadvertently spurred the film industry's move to Hollywood

The inventor's patent on the motion picture camera included several stipulations that required independent movie studios to work with Edison's Motion Picture Patents Co., making the East Coast undesirable for aspiring filmmakers.

'I Love to Eat' was the first nationally televised cooking show

Beard’s show, cohosted with Julia Child, debuted in 1946. It was invaluable in setting the stage for today’s massive trove of televised and online cooking content.

Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' blended slapstick and satire

The 1936 film thrust Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp character into the Industrial Revolution, satirizing how mass production was dehumanizing individuals. The movie was not only a hit, but it was also the product of a burgeoning Hollywood: Chaplin had founded his own company (United Artists) in 1919.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Irna Phillips is the ‘the queen of the soaps’

She was responsible for “Painted Dreams,” the first radio soap, as well as “These Are My Children,” the first to appear on television. Later, she launched the shows “Guiding Light,” “As the World Turns,” and “Another World.”

Liza Minnelli did all her own stunts on the cult sitcom 'Arrested Development'

Minnelli played the character of Lucille Austero, a frenemy to the show's matriarch, Lucille Bluth. Her character often fell from the sensation, and in this interview, Minnelli shares that she performed these stunts herself, thanks to tips she picked up from stuntmen in Hollywood as a child.

Telenovelas evolved alongside technology

Like soap operas, telenovelas began as radio programs and then transitioned to television as the medium became widely available in Latin American countries.

Disney funded his first theme park by agreeing to host a weekly show on ABC

Walt Disney was determined to open a theme park, but had numerous issues with funding. A break came when ABC offered to cover a signifcant portion of the construction, though it came with a catch: Walt would host a weekly Disneyland TV show (and provide them part-ownership of the park).

The concept of 'screen time' was invented in 1991

Mother Jones magazine coined the term in an essay called "Primal Screen" about children's television habits. Writer David Engelhardt wrote that they were watching “screens within screens within screens,” and that even babies were averaging an “hour and a half of screen time a day...the typical older child, about four hours."

The Gold Dust Trio brought spectacle to wrestling

In the early 1900s, as wrestling gained in popularity on the carnival circuit, keeping the audience’s attention became an issue. The Gold Dust Trio—Billy Sandlow, Ed “The Strangler” Lewis, and Joseph “Toots” Mondt—revolutionized things by integrating boxing, theater, and Greco-Roman wrestling in a hybrid called “Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling.”

Digital re-aging and de-aging of faces in film and TV has become increasingly common

Traditional techniques for accomplishing this process were slow and labor-intensive, and often required manual frame-by-frame edits, forcing them to be reserved for "hero characters" and close-up shots. Deep learning methods used by Disney and other production companies now provide fully-automatic and production-ready methods to produce such deepfakes for entertainment purposes.

The common 'Three Sisters' mound-planting system used by natives

In the 17th century, Native Americans cultivated a three-plant combination of corn, beans, and squash—a symbiotic tradition dating back hundreds of years. The corn allowed the beans to climb, the beans fertilized the plants by extracting nitrogen from the air, and the squash leaves protected the soil and preserved moisture. Learn more about the tradition here.

The 'golden age' studio system often controlled actors' personal lives

The "Big Five" studio system minted stars, but it also tightly controlled their personal lives. Homosexuality, in particular, was seen as a liability. One example is Rock Hudson, a major star in the 1950s and '60s, who was forced into an arranged marriage with his agent's secretary.

Watch the 'Star Wars Holiday Special,' a 1978 spin-off that became a cult classic

The CBS television special is a hokey variety show that was widely panned after it aired and, as a result, was never officially released on home video. George Lucas had little involvement, though it did feature the original cast alongside guest stars like Bea Arthur. Interestingly, it also features Boba Fett's first appearance.

Nixon secretly recorded nearly 3,700 hours of conversations

The White House taping system was secretly installed on Feb. 16, 1971, beginning with the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, and later expanded to Nixon's offices, Camp David, and telephones.

The complex production machine behind Eurovision

This short Wall Street Journal documentary goes behind the scenes at Eurovision to show how the elaborate stage show—which features a production manager, speedy run crews, and a digital floor outlining the location of every prop for every performance—hums along so smoothly.

Picasso is known as one of the creators of cubism

In the early 1900s, cubism redefined modern art by breaking objects into geometric shapes and showing multiple perspectives at once. Developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, it challenged the idea that art should mirror reality, and laid the foundation for many movements that followed.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.