This six-minute clip is the newly completed opening number from "TV, The Musical!," our original stage (or could be film/TV series) musical inspired by the true story behind the invention of television.

The visuals were created using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and professional film-editing software. (NOTE: If this sequence were produced with live actors, physical sets, costumes, lighting, and period staging, it would cost millions of dollars—making AI an essential creative tool for bringing this story to life at this stage.)

The visuals and lyrics were created by me and the music was composed by Ryan McQuinn, who also engineered/mixed everything, though I added a few minor sounds to enhance things like the electrical buzzing and so forth.

The opening number, “The World of Tomorrow,” takes its name from the theme of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where television was formally unveiled to the public by RCA, the company that would go on to create NBC. TV, The Musical! spans the years 1920–1969 and is rooted in real historical events. It explores the personal and professional sacrifices behind the birth of television, focusing on two towering figures:

• Philo T. Farnsworth, the brilliant farm-boy inventor from Idaho

• David Sarnoff, the ambitious corporate leader of RCA and immigrant, from NYC

Their rivalry—and the toll it took on their families—helped shape television into both a powerful medium and a global industry.

The clip opens with a layered black-and-white montage and immersive soundscape (best experienced with headphones), blending early 20th-century imagery and audio: Morse code, data signals, trains and crossings, desert wheels, bells, early television, and the dawn of the Space Age.

The scene then transports us to the gates of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where barkers welcome crowds by the thousands to a dazzling vision of the future. Alongside television, visitors encounter other technological marvels—air conditioning, early robots, and ambitious corporate promises of what tomorrow would bring.

Notably, this extraordinarily optimistic celebration of progress opened just three months before the start of World War II. The sequence closes with a brief reprise of “The World of Tomorrow” and the credits—setting the stage for the story that follows. This is the opening number of TV, The Musical!—a historically grounded, visually imaginative project created with AI and contemporary storytelling tools, and a tribute to the people who turned television from an idea into a force that changed the world.

(Swedlow - Lyrics & Direction / McQuinn - Music and Audio Production/Editing)