This paper analyses the meaning of newness in television history by focusing on the French film Télévision: Oeil de demain (J. K. Raymond-Millet, 1947). It argues that the film’s futurist depiction of television veils the medium’s longue durée, and exemplifies a discursive strategy to conceal most recent technological and institutional developments, in particular those linking French television to National-Socialist occupation. The novelty discourse is instrumental to mask the many continuities between the National-Socialist Fernsehsender Paris and postwar French television, and helps to conceive of television as new media unburdened by recent history.
