In-Vision Continuity Announcers: Performing an Identity for Early Television in Europe

Female in-vision continuity announcers have played central – yet understudied and ‘hidden’– roles in early television history. Through their performances on and off the screen, they mediated the identity of the televisual medium in the 1950s and 1960s, popularizing it as a medium of sound and vision, a domestic and gendered medium as well as a national and transnational institution. Focusing primarily on Dutch and Romanian female in-vision continuity announcers in the 1950s and 60s and making comparisons with other countries in Europe, this article illustrates how these early professionals of television performed as part of a European-wide phenomenon, defining the identity of the new televisual medium.