Fun Facts About Broadcast Radio and Cable TV in America

Since its debut at the World's Fair in 1939, television has changed the way we learn, interact, and live.
Information could now spread at speeds previously unimaginable to the rest of the world.
With the advent of cable, the technological world changed even more.
Here are a few fun facts about the history of broadcasting, TV and cable that you probably didn't know.

- Ever wonder where those negative political ads we see around election time every year started? The Republican Party spent $2 million on radio ad time in 1936 to air the first negative campaign ads.
- Perhaps you've heard of the famous Nielsen ratings company. Nielsen began measuring radio ratings in 1936.
At that time there were 33 million radios in the country.
- We take live news coverage for granted these days, but programming got very interesting in the 1930s. In 1937, people got a taste of live reporting through coverage of the Hindenburg explosion.

The next year, listeners panicked when they heard the fictional broadcast of War of the Worlds and assumed it was a live report. - World War II had a huge effect on broadcasting. Radio networks changed the way they aired war coverage, aiming to present only factual content while minimizing horror stories and sensationalism. President Roosevelt declared war on December 9, 1941 to an audience of 90 million people - the largest audience in radio history at that time. Networks cut down the amount of time spent on commercials during war coverage. When baseball games aired, they didn't talk about weather conditions to avoid giving the enemy too much information about conditions in US cities.

- Those channel numbers we're so used to seeing were created by the FCC in 1945, using channels 2 through 13.

- Broadcasting in the 1940s and 50s looks more familiar to us.
Meet the Press, a show that still airs today, debuted in 1947.

Sitcoms got their start in 1951 with the premier of I Love Lucy.
NBC presented the first morning show the next year when they aired Today. By 1954, more than half of American households owned TVs! - The first remote control was created in 1956.

It had only four buttons: power on/off, volume on/off, channel up and channel down.

We've come a long way since then! - Americans got their first taste of space in the 1960s, with John Glenn's space flight in 1962, Gordon Cooper's pictures from space in 1963, and the moon landing in 1969. - The Beatles invaded the US on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. - Monday Night Football debuted in 1970, changing the world for sports fans. - The Betamax video cassette recorder debuted in 1975, and VHS was introduced the next year. Satellite TV became prominent during this time as well.

- The 1980s were another huge decade for TV, as AT&T ran fiber-optic cable service from Boston to Washington, beginning cable television as we know it in 1984.
Pay-Per-View debuted soon after, and The Oprah Winfrey Show is seen by a national audience via syndication in 1986. - A classic favorite cartoon, The Simpsons, aired in 1987.
By the end of the 80s, nearly all American families owned a TV set.