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Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; [1] about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August 2013. [2] Most households have more than one set. The percentage of households owning at least one television set peaked at 98.4% ...
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Television in the United States, the body of television programming created and broadcast in the United States. American TV programs, like American popular culture in general in the 20th and early 21st centuries, have spread far beyond the boundaries of the United States and have had a pervasive influence on global popular culture.
Until the fall of 1948, regularly scheduled programming on the four networks—the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS; later CBS Corporation), the National Broadcasting Co. (NBC), and the DuMont Television Network, which folded in 1955—was scarce. On some evenings, a network might not offer any programs at all, and it was rare for any network to broadcast a full complement of shows during the entire period that became known as prime time (8–11 pm, Eastern Standard Time). Sales of television sets were low, so, even if programs had been available, their potential audience was limited. To encourage sales, daytime sports broadcasts were scheduled on weekends in an effort to lure heads of households to purchase sets they saw demonstrated in local appliance stores and taverns—the venues where most TV viewing in America took place before 1948.
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Although a television set cost about $400—a substantial sum at the time—TV was soon “catching on like a case of high-toned scarlet fever,” according to a March 1948 edition of Newsweek magazine. By autumn of that year, most of the evening schedules on all four networks had been filled, and sets began appearing in more and more living rooms, a phenomenon many credited to comedian Milton Berle. Berle was the star of TV’s first hit show, The Texaco Star Theatre (NBC, 1948–53), a comedy-variety show that quickly became the most popular program at that point in television’s very short history. When the series debuted, fewer than 2 percent of American households had a television set; when Berle left the air in 1956 (after starring in his subsequent NBC series The Buick-Berle Show [1953–55] and The Milton Berle Show [1955–56]), TV was in 70 percent of the country’s homes, and Berle had acquired the nickname “Mr. Television.”
Between the 1940s and 2000s, commercial television had a profound and wide-ranging impact on American society and culture. It influenced the way that people think about such important social issues as race, gender, and class.
The late Golden Age. By the mid-1950s, television programming was in a transitional state. In the early part of the decade, most television programming was broadcast live from New York City and tended to be based in the theatrical traditions of that city.
By 1952, television broadcasts were reaching 15 million television sets in 64 cities. the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), NBC, and DuMont offered a wide variety of programming choices, though DuMont ceased operations in August 1956.
TV was always one of the most popular media activities in the United States. However, estimates suggest that the number of hours per day watching television will considerably decline and in...
TV Guide hits the newsstands for the first time in 1953, and goes on to become the largest circulation periodical in the United States. Fifty-three percent of American households have televisions.
