Jane and I got mixed up with a television show -- or as we call it back
east here: TV -- a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible
Vaudeville. However, it is our latest medium -- we call it a medium
because nothing's well done. It was discovered, I suppose you've heard,
by a man named Fulton Berle, and it has already revolutionized social
grace by cutting down parlour conversation to two sentences: "What's on
television?" and "Good night".
-- Goodman Ace, letter to Groucho Marx, in The Groucho
Letters, 1967