Walk the Walk…

When audiences sit down to enjoy the feature Don Juan in 1926, none of them know they are attending the first sisomoment in the world. They may have already seen silent movies with piano accompaniment–sisomo-lite–but for the first time, Don Juan integrates music and sound effects with the action on screen.

sisomo apparently also inspires love. Reviews are quick to observe that the great Lionel Barrymore recorded the most kisses ever seen in a single film, embracing his co-stars Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor 127 times!

...And Talk the Talk

If Don Juan marks the birth of sisomo, sisomo takes a giant step a year later when The Jazz Singer adds synchronized voices.

And what did Al Jolson, the first voice of sisomo, have to say for himself?

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain’t heard nothin’! Do you wanna hear ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie!’? All right, hold on, hold on. (To the band leader) Lou, listen. Play ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie!’ Three choruses, you understand. In the third chorus I whistle. Now give it to ‘em hard and heavy. Go right ahead!”

Animated cartoons will take another year to go sisomo with Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie in 1928. Willie’s sisomoment was (in Walt’s own voice) “Hotdogs! Hotdogs!” Now you know.

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” – Anonymous
       
FIRST daily television broadcast – the BBC in 1936.

FIRST televised sporting event – the 1936 Olympics broadcast to a limited number of sets in Germany.

“There’s a good deal in common between the mind’s eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boob tube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

FIRST television commercial – for Bulova clocks – broadcast in New York between a Dodgers and Phillies game in 1941.

Cleaning up with Soaps
In 1950, Procter & Gamble extend their sponsorship of radio soap operas onto television. The first televised US soap opera was the P&G-sponsored The First Hundred Years. Other great P&G television soaps have survived to this day, including Guiding Light and the second-longest-running US soap, As the World Turns. It was this show that gave Meg Ryan and Julianne Moore their first screen breaks.

Hot Shots
Western fever strikes 1950s television with Maverick, Lawman and the start of the 50-year run of Gunsmoke.

“Country music has three chords and the truth.” – Harlan Howard

FIRST color television broadcast in the United States in 1951.

FIRST commercial in color featuring Castro Decorators in 1954.

I Got Game
FIRST video game, Tennis for Two, is created by William Higinbotham in 1958.

FIRST time a helicopter is used for television news-sent up by KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles in 1958.

FIRST couple to be shown together in the same bed on prime time is Wilma and Fred Flintstone in 1960.

FIRST instant replay – Army-Navy football game; first slow-motion playback: The World Series of Skiing in Vail, Colorado, in 1967.

Go to Hell
In 1968, Star Trek broadcasts the first spoken use of the word “hell” on television. Check out the The City on the Edge Forever episode and watch William Shatner say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Over the Moon
Television is right there in 1969 when Neil Armstrong takes the first small step on the moon. More than 500 million people share the moment on screens around the world.

Cut and Print
The standard length of a television commercial drops from 60 seconds to 30 seconds in 1971.

FIRST home-use video cassette recorder – launched in 1972.

Guess Where I’m Calling From
The statement may be apocryphal, but the first portable mobile phone call made by Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola still reverberates. From a research idea in 1973 to projections of 3 billion users by 2010, mobile screens are transforming communications, gaming and marketing. And they’re just getting started. Emerging markets are leapfrogging to explosive growth, with the number of mobile phone users in 2005 reaching 358 million in China and 82 million in Africa.

The Thriller in Manila
A satellite link brings the 1975 Ali-Frazier fight to cable and launches HBO, with Ali playing “dope on a rope” before his spectacular win.

FIRST music video – Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in 1975.

“When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.” – Victor Hugo

FIRST reported drop in the number of people watching television since its introduction is noted by a Roper study in 1977.

Music Television
With supreme irony, MTV launches in 1981 with the British group, The Buggles, performing Video Killed the Radio Star.

“If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.” – Zimbabwean proverb

Half-time
Apple launches the Macintosh computer at the 1984 Super Bowl and inspires the imaginations of millions. The 60-second commercial puts screens in the spotlight as a young woman wielding a sledge-hammer smashes the image of “Big Brother.”  For the record, the actor was Anya Major.

“Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”
Script for Chiat/Day’s Apple Computer 1984 commercial, written by Steve Hayden and directed by Ridley Scott

So, What’s New?
The first website goes online on August 6, 1991 at http://info.cern.ch. Built by Tim Berners-Lee, the site looks ahead to: “What’s New In ‘92.”

Cut to the Chase
It’s 1994, and 95 million viewers watch O.J. Simpson flee police on a Los Angeles freeway. In real time.

Let Your Fingers Do the Shopping
Starting with Pizza Hut’s first tests of online ordering in Santa Cruz in 1994, online shopping becomes part of life in the United States, accounting for 6.5 percent of total retail sales by 2004.

The Toys are Back in Town
In 1995, Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody star in the first digital feature film, Toy Story. The film was directed by John Lasseter and created by Pixar Animation Studios, founded by Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull.

What’s in a Name?
Jorn Barger first uses the word, weblog, in 1997. Two years later it is shortened to the sexier blog by Peter Merholz. One in 20 people in the United States claim to have created blogs by 2005. 

sisomovies
The DVD format is unleashed in 1997, and rapidly makes itself central to the home entertainment experience. By 2004, consumers in the United States are spending more than $21 billion renting and buying DVDs, and by 2005 the average household owns more than 40 movies on DVD.

Keep Smiling
The first mobile phone with a camera is manufactured in Japan by Sharp for J-Phone in 2000. Who knew we needed one? Now more camera phones are sold than digital cameras. In the same year, the first full-length feature is produced for distribution on the Internet. Its title: Quantum Project.

Unreal!
Final Fantasy, a movie based on the popular computer game, becomes the first life-like computer-generated feature.

Some of the People All of the Time
Two years into the new millennium, the total number of television viewers (four years old and up) in China has reached a gigantic 1.115 billion. That’s 93.9 percent of the population.

FIRST year that more DVDs are rented than videotapes in the United States is 2003.

Hear Me!
Eamon’s F**k It. (I Don’t Want You Back) tops the first MEF Official UK Ringtone Charts in June, 2004.

Live 8
In a spectacular global sisomo event in June, 2005, Bob Geldof calls to the young people of the world. He asks them to put pressure on the leaders of the world’s richest countries to attack the structures of poverty by doubling aid, fully canceling debt, and delivering trade justice to Africa. Geldof tells them, “It is your voice we are after, not your money.” The Live 8 concert is a global jukebox created from events in eight cities. In London alone, 12 giant screens are used to cover an area of 472 square meters. The shows are broadcast to 140 countries.

Google It
In June, 2005, Google becomes the world’s most highly-valued media company, with stock worth $80 billion. Since it was founded in 1998, the search phenomenon has not only grown larger, more profitable and more valuable, it has become more sisomoed. Google Video was also launched in June, so you can search for video and play it in your browser. The ultimate sisomo search engine.

Web TV
sisomo on the Internet comes of age in the United States. Faster connections are the key, with Nielsen projecting that more than 60 percent of Americans will have high-speed access by the end of 2005. Media companies stampede online and consumers settle back to enjoy the best of sisomo – the engagement of television, the interactivity of online and huge choice and innovation from both.

The look and feel of sisomo…

The emotional tug of a soap opera in a handful of heartbeats.

sisomo – the fastest way to engage people to think with their hearts and feel with their brains.

sisomo taking the magic of storytelling straight to the heart.

The adrenaline rush of a game at your fingertips.