How many TV nationwide stations were in USA in 1955 or 1956 ?

How many TV nationwide stations were in USA in 1955 or 1956 ? If you know
any sources in web please sent links.

et472...

What kind of question is that?

Patty Winter (patty1...

The kind asked by someone posting from a non-English-speaking country.
There's no need to be snippy toward him. I'll wager that his English
is a heck of a lot better than your or my Polish.

There were no satellites, and cable was just barely starting. NO tv station
can have much coverage beyond local. Hence no station was "nationwide".

Patty Winter (patty1...

From the context, I suspect that Luka wants to know how many stations

Luka...

Guys! Thank you very, very much! You give me so many informations - now I
get everything what I was looking for.

Patty Winter (patty1...

Thank you, too, Luka. I didn't even realize there *were* TV remotes
in the mid-50s!

Luka...

Me too. I found it a few days ago. Thank's again.

Kevrob...

Good luck, Luka!

Luka

were operating in the entire nation, not that any were "nationwide."
Here's the best info I've been able to find so far:

Specifically:

"Commercial VHF stations grew from 233 in 1954 to 458 in 1962. Commercial
UHF stations stood at 121 in 1954, and struggled against the lack of
UHF receivers. Many UHFs went dark and returned their licenses for
cancellation, and by 1962 their numbers had shrunk to 83. In total,
the commercial station universe as it grew roughly from 350 to 550 was
adequate to support approximately two-and-a-half national networks."

Hope that helps, Luka.

Kevrob...

As Luka is writing about remotes, he probably needs to know which
channels TVs were equipped to receive. A city might only have a
limited number of stations on the VHF band (2 through 13). When I was
a kid living east of New York City, we had channels 2,4,5,7,9,11 and
13. Across Long Island Sound, in Connecticut, there were stations
operating on channels 3 and 8, and in Rhode Island they used channels
6, 10 and 12. If you lived far enough east and north on Long Island,
and you had a rotating attenna, and perfect weather conditions, you
could pick up all 12 of them. In practice, East Enders often couldn't
get the NYC stations before the advent of cable, and when we lived on
the South Shore we could only ever count on receiving the New York
signals, with the exception of channel 8 out of New Haven. I could
tune that one in if I fiddled with the dials a bit, and it was always
"snowy." They ran the ABC Evening News with Howard K. Smith a half-hour
earlier than channel 7 (WABC, New York), which was sometimes convenient
in those pre-VCR days.

In 1962, the Congress passed the All-Channel Receiver Act, which
required TV manufacturers to equip new sets sold from 1964 on with the
ability to receive stations which operated on the UHF band, originally
channels channels 14-83. Those stations were rare and mostly unwatched
in the 50s and early 60s, and only really took off once cable came in,
allowing their signals to look as good as their VHF "older brothers."
Channels 70-83 have since been converted to the use of various
radiotelephony technologies, and 52-69 are due to be auctioned off once
the conversion to all-digital TV transmission is completed.

Here's a cool web page on the history of the remote:

Luka...

Luka: Sorry - I'am not good in this theme. I'am writing an article about
history of remote control. They started produce it in 1956 (wireless -
Zenith "Fash-matic"). That's way I am interesting how useful it was. So my
question is: what could be the biggest number of the channels watching in
one place (city) in the USA that time.

altec3220...

Probably six or seven at the most and only in the largest cities
(meaning New York City in New York and Los Angeles in California).
DuMont had gone under by 1955 so there were only three broadcast
networks -- larger cities would have one television station affiliated
with each network and a handful of independent/educational stations as
well. According to this website:

In 1952, Los Angeles had seven stations and New York City had six. By
1958, many cities had five, six or seven stations, according to the
same site:

Thus, I would say the most channels anyone in the United States had
access to in the mid-1950s would be six or seven. Another great
resource for early television is:

Hope these links help.

What you had were networks, where the same programming was broadcast
from those local stations all over the country.

The only way you could have a "nationwide" tv station is when there
was cable and a specific local station with original programming was
carried on many of those cable systems. Same once satellite tv came
along. But in both cases, the only reason the stations could be
seen by people all over the country was because the cable or satellite
systme was delivering the station to all the different locations.