re: #146 ipsos

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.

Looking back it’s just a marvel on how much change there had to be from 1955 to 1965 when tvs were beginning to be common everyday expectations in a home. No such thing as a satellite yet when all the planning and innovation and investment started.

Closest recent thing is smartphones (iPhone introduced in 2007) but that really was just built on repackaging of an existing communications infrastructure unlike what broadcast TV had to go through.