Rural America Turns On to TV in the 1940s TV Turns On In the 1940s, television started, stopped, started again and then took off. In the process, the new medium turned on the lives of rural residents connecting them to the rest of the world even more than newspapers or radio. The first practical TV sets were demonstrated and sold to the public at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. The sets were very expensive and New York City had the only broadcast station. When World War II started, all commercial production of television equipment was banned. Production of the cathode ray tubes that produced the pictures was redirected to radar and other high tech war uses. After the war television was something few had heard of. 1950s Television. Time Machine. During the early years, most network shows originated from New York or Chicago. Beginning in 1949, a few shows were also produced in Los Angeles. The soap opera format also made the transition from radio to television in the. That changed quickly. In 1945, a poll asked Americans, 'Do you know what television is?' But four years later, most Americans had heard of television and wanted one! According to one survey in 1950, before they got a TV, people listened to radio an average of nearly five hours a day. Within nine months after they bought a TV they listened to radio, but only for two hours a day. They watched TV for five hours a day. In 1947, President Harry Truman's state of the union address and the baseball World Series were televised. A year later, CBS and NBC networks started 15-minute nightly newscasts. In the late 1940s there were 98 commercial television stations in 50 large cities. By 1949, prices of TV sets had gone down. Americans were buying 100,000 sets every week. Farm families were not far behind their city brethren. Entrepreneurs hurried build television stations to reach every part of the country. Even if there was only one, snowy, black and white station on the air, farmers and their children wanted that TV set. The first family in the neighborhood to get a TV would invite friends and neighbors to come over and watch. Tekken 7 windows 10. Early Tv Shows 1940s 1950s ShowsThe 1940s TVs didn't look like today's televisions. Most had picture screens between 10 and 15 inches wide diagonally, inside large, heavy cabinets. And, of course, color broadcasts and sets didn't arrive until much later, in 1954. Looking back now, Mildred Hopkins is surprised at her own excitement for their first TV. 'The picture was little bitty,' she says. 'And we thought that was wonderful. Isn't that something?' 'We take it for granted today,' he says.
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