| 1944 |  Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| | Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year | |
| January 1 | African Journey is the first feature-length foreign film shown on American television. | |
| January 15 | Patent is granted for theEidophor television projection system. | >1955 |
| February 10 | BBC adopts a voluntary code not to broadcast any discussion of issues for two weeks before scheduled parliamentary debates—the so-called Fourteen Day Rule. | |
| February 20 | First appearance of theBatman cartoon strip in US newspapers. | |
| February 21 | NBC starts itsWar as It Happens news programme in New York. | |
| March 2 | Academy Awards ceremony is held at Graumann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood for the first time, hosted by Jack Benny. | |
| | Golden Globe Awards are instituted by theHollywood Foreign Press Association. | |
| April 10 | Three US television stations link to transmit a programme,Patrolling the Ether, simultaneously. | |
| May 2 | Television station WABD begins transmissions on channel 5 in New York. It becomes part of the DuMont network, later WNEW and then WNYW (part of the Fox network). | |
| June 6 | BBC starts broadcastingWar Report to mark the D-Day landings. | |
| June 7 | AEF Programme, a joint British, Canadian and US radio service, begins broadcasting to the Allied Expeditionary Forces now beginning the liberation of Europe. Its signature tune isOranges and Lemons. | >1945 |
| June 30 | Bush House, headquarters of the BBC European services, is hit by a German flying bomb. | |
| August 12 or 16 | Probably the last day on which the German television studios in Paris were in use. As later reported after the Allied liberation, the site included four studios: one for a six-camera set-up and seating for 250, another about 130 ft x 60 ft an 25 ft high and two smaller ones of about 30 ft x 15 ft. | |
| August 16 | J L Baird demonstrates hisTelechrome colour all-electronic television receiver, with a 600-line three-gun tube comprising a fluorescent two-sided mosaic screen in a glass envelope, one side blue-green, the other side orange-red. Images of 600-line definition are triple-interlaced, requiring six scans (fields) to form one frame. A smaller Telechrome tube (now held by the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford, Yorkshire) was subsequently made with one electron beam perpendicular to the screen. |  NMPFT |
| August 28 | BBC begins broadcasting in Dutch to Indonesia and French to South-east Asia. These are the last foreign language services set up during wartime. | |
| September | Following liberation on September 9-10, Radio Luxembourg, which had been damaged by enemy action, is used by the Allies for psychological warfare, for a short time called 'The Voice of the United Nations on the Frontiers of Germany'. Station Twelve-Twelve (the frequency being 1212 metres) begins broadcasting what are ostensibly reports from regional underground operations within Germany. | |
| September 28 | Boys from Boise is the first musical comedy shown on US television. | |
| autumn | Allied agents in occupied Europe begin to use 'Joan-Eleanor', a two-way radio communications system devised byAl Gross, operating at 250 MHz—beyond German frequency detection capability—and with a range of 30 miles. The Eleanor unit is housed in Mosquito aircraft but the Joan unit is small enough to fit in a pocket. | |
| October 1 | French television transmissions re-commence from studios in the rue Cognacq-Jay, now under Allied control. | |
| October 8 | First episode ofAdventures of Ozzie & Harriet on CBS radio. | |
| late | J L Baird demonstrates the first facsimile television system, using scanned film as the source, with a transmission rate of 25 newspaper pages a second. | |
| late | British Lion Film Corporation buys Worton Hall Studios at Isleworth, west London, from Criterion Film Productions. The first British Lion production isThe Shop at Sly Corner. | |
| November 4 | In his regular broadcast for CBS radio, Edward R Murrow reports that television development continued in Paris during the Nazi occupation. | |
| • | CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood reports on a visit to the laboratories of Compagnie des Compteurs at Montrouge, near Paris, where research under René Barthélemy has continued during the occupation. A system of 819 lines is completed. A high definition 1015- and 1042-line systems has been under development since 1940 at an R&D cost of more than Ffr 10m. Compagnie des Compteurs has formed a subsidiary called Compagnie Francaise de Télévision.
Collingwood also reports on a visit to the former German television studios in Paris. | |
| November 11 | American Federation of Musicians lifts its ban on recording by its members when RCA Victor and Columbia agree terms. | |
| November | American Forces Network (AFN) establishes its French headquarters in the Herald Tribune building in the rue de Berry, Paris. The French government provides a 15 kW transmitter. | |
| December 8 | First issue of French film trade magazineLe Film Français, founded by Jean-Bernard Derosne et Jean-Placide Mauclaire. | |
| December 15 | Aircraft carrying bandleader Major Glenn Miller is lost over the English Channel. | |
| December | British Decca Record Company issues first recordings made by ffrr (full-frequency-range recording). The techniques employed have been developed by a team under chief engineer Arthur Haddy as part of a secret war research project for RAF Coastal Command to make recordings illustrating the subtle differences in the sounds of British and German submarines. | >1945 |
| • | Film cameras are used to record television pictures from cameras aboard US aircraft and guided missiles. | |
| • | Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC), the leading French film school, is founded in Paris. | |
| • | Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM) is founded in Morocco to develop and promote the country's film industry. | |
| • | UK: Odeon chain now comprises 619 cinemas, ABPC has 442—between them they control about one-third of all seating capacity. The ‘duopoly’ that will dominate UK cinema for over 40 years is born. | |
| • | Teddington Studios receives a direct hit by a flying bomb, causing suspension of production for four years. | > 1948 |
| • | Advisory Council on Children's Entertainment Films is set up in England. The first chairman is Lady Allen of Hurtwood (1897-1972). | |
| • | BBC General Forces Programme introduced. | |
| • | By now over half of all US advertising agencies have television departments. | |
| • | Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) in US begins experimentation with magnetic coatings. | |
| • | Rise of disc-jockey radio programming in the USA. | |
| • | Frank Sinatra has the highest earned income for the year of any individual in the US: $1.4m. | |
| • | Alexander M Poniatoff founds Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company in San Carlos, California. | |
| • | Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals is founded. | Statement of principles |
