's high-definition public television service.
Pre-1900 Televised documentary finds its roots in the media communication modes of film, photojournalism and radio. Specifically, televised documentary can be traced to the origins of cinematic
documentary film. Documentary film emerged in prominence within non-fiction filmmaking as an account of historical and contemporary events. In 1898,
Bolesław Matuszewski, a Polish cinematographer suggested documentary film to be a "new source of history". The widespread evolution of documentary filmmaking led
James Chapman to consider its origins as a largely "international process" involving nations such as the United States of America, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Following this initial broadcast, the BBC's television service continued, albeit in limited capacity, until 1939 with the onset of the
Second World War. This suspension lasted throughout the six-year wartime period. Regular television broadcasting was resumed in 1946. Subsequent expansion of the BBC's network throughout the coming years toward nationwide coverage, additional channels, as well as the introduction of novel competition into the television network market (notably
Independent Television) spurred opportunities for the emergence of televised documentary. In line with the British conception of a publicly televised broadcasting network, television documentary also finds its origins in British media. It is of common belief that the widespread televised revolution, particularly within documentary filmmaking, was an inevitable construct. Duncan Ross and Ramsay Short became early pioneers of the televised documentary format, prominently embedding existing filmmaking techniques within this new broadcasting vehicle. Ross, in 1950, noted that documentary media was "perfectly at home in television." At this time, Ross and his contemporaries considered television documentary as an extension beyond traditional documentary filmmaking – particularly in celebrating
John Grierson's defining notion that documentary exists as "the creative treatment of actuality." These early television documentarists advocated for the potential influence of television documentary within educational, social and cultural mediums. During the 1950s, prominent commercial broadcasting networks, such as
NBC,
ABC and
CBS, centred their televised documentaries around historical, military, wartime and event-related genres. The 1960s are frequently celebrated as the "Golden Age" of television documentary within the United States. At this time, television documentaries began to hold increasing importance within both journalistic and political realms. Notably, the
Kennedy administration believed that televised documentaries could contribute towards the American efforts to constrain the growth of
communism.
1970–2000 The latter decades of the twentieth century saw television documentary decline in popularity on commercial broadcasting networks, rather screening primarily via
cable television networks. This saw the rise of several specialised documentary channels, such as
The History Channel and
National Geographic, in the early 2000s. During this period in the United States,
PBS continued to screen investigative television documentaries.
Contemporary television documentary A new medium for documentary broadcasting emerged in the 2000s and continued to rise to prominence in the 2010s.
Interactive documentaries, otherwise known as i-docs or web documentaries, often accompany traditionally broadcast television documentaries, featuring interactive hyper-links, audio, text and images. Interactive documentaries have been recognised in recent film festivals, such as the
Tribeca Film Festival and the
Sundance Film Festival, largely for their success in educational and historical media productions. The current trajectory of television documentary productions is widely suggested to transit towards streaming services such as
Netflix and
Stan. This trend coincides with the emergence of
brand-sponsored documentaries. For instance,
Johnson & Johnson commissioned the production of
5B, depicting several nurses who founded an
AIDS ward at the San Francisco General Hospital. The documentary aligns with Johnson and Johnson's brand focus on "care" and "touch". Tim Stevenson indicates that brand-sponsored documentaries allow marketers to access widespread audiences through mediums that traditional advertising methods cannot. ==Production techniques==