Cool Medium

                    TV is a medium that rejects the sharp personality and favors the presentation of process rather than of products. It is a cool participant medium. The TV image is of low intensity or definition, and, therefore, unlike film, it does not afford detailed information about objects.

                    The TV producer will point out that speech on television must not have the careful precision necessary in the theater. The TV actor does not have to project either his voice or himself. Likewise, TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or “closing” of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star.

                    Newscasters and actors alike report the frequency with which they are approached by people who feel they’ve met them before. Joanne Woodward in an interview was asked what was the difference between being a movie star and a TV actress. She replied: When I was in the movies I heard people say, “There goes Joanne Woodward.” Now they say, “There goes somebody I think I know.”

                    The movie is a hot, high-definition medium. The old movie-fan tourists had wanted to see their favorites as they were in real life, not as they were in their film roles. The fans of the cool TV medium want to see their star in role, whereas the movie fans want the real thing.

Marshall McLuhan
Understanding Media