Lesson 8. The Distinctly American Style of Broadcast Television
150 Years of American Telecommunications: The Online Course
Join Section A for FreeA pause in new television licenses, ordered by the Federal Communications Commission in 1948 and meant to last six months, ran nearly four years. Stations already on the air used that time to build audiences and sign with networks while more than 700 applicants waited. The 1952 channel plan that ended the pause opened 70 new channels on the UHF (ultra high frequency) band, but most television sets in American homes could not receive them. Those licensing choices, together with the money and programs they already had, helped NBC, CBS and ABC become the three dominant networks.
DuMont, a fourth network owned by a television set maker, ran on the profits of one Pittsburgh station with no rival on the older VHF (very high frequency) band. It sold that station in 1954 and ended network broadcasts in 1956. The same plan set aside 242 channels for educational television but no money to build stations on them. Federal rules in the 1960s then limited the stations that cable systems could import from other cities, protecting local broadcasters and, critics argued, the big networks as well.
