re: #84 dat_said

I could go on at page length about all the reasons why TV was so sparse on that 1950 map (it happens to be one of my specialty areas), but:

The coaxial cable that carried network programming was still very limited in 1950. If you weren’t in the northeast or midwest or along parts of the west coast, a TV station had to originate its own programming with whatever local talent and old films were available. It was a heavy load.

The FCC goofed when it made up the original VHF allocation table in the 1940s and didn’t realize how much interference its spacing standards created. There were stations on channel 4 in Boston, NYC and Washington (and still are), but there were also channel 4s in Schenectady and Lancaster PA. They had to pull back from allocating new stations until they could figure out how to rearrange the existing ones, which happened around 1952 in most areas.

As a result, there was a freeze on new TV licenses that went into effect in late 1948 (though it took until 1950 to build out all 108 stations that had already been authorized) and wasn’t lifted until 1952, delayed in part by the Korean War and materials shortages.

When it lifted, there was a boom in new VHF stations and a very brief boom in new UHF stations, too, though most of those early UHF stations failed quickly because nobody had receivers. It took until the early 1960s for the FCC and Congress to figure out there needed to be an all-channel receiver act to mandate inclusion of UHF tuners.