The Hill News

Eyes were wide when television was unveiled at the 1939 World’s Fair. Incredulous onlookers were so suspicious of the technology that a glass TV set had to be constructed, an attempt to convince skeptics that the product was not a hoax. But the awestruck were right to be wary. Social upheaval was soon to follow.

Television signals traveled the path then efficient: terrestrial broadcasting. That drew in regulators to supervise airwave use. They seized the opportunity to police not simply the mundane conflicts of overlapping emissions, but to design the market. The TV Allocation Table of 1952 defined a paradox: huge bandwidth was set aside for broadcasting, but very few licenses were issued. Competitive forces were quashed. Indeed, when a fledgling fourth national broadcast network - DuMont - challenged NBC, CBS and ABC, it was extinguished by 1955. Cause of death: regulation.  

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