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A Two Minute History of Television
Michael Beach
May 01, 2025
Eight big questions re: the history of television:
1) When was TV invented?
2) When did the first TV station launch?
3) What was the first remote control?
4) When did color TV arrive?
5) When did the first TV ad air?
6) When did cable TV start?
7) When did we start streaming TV?
8) What role has distribution played?
📣 Must read: Thanks to the team at TripleLift for quoting me in their report on the century of television.
When was TV invented?
📺 1927: Philo Farnsworth, age 21, created the first electronic TV.
🚀 1939: RCA showed off “the living room of tomorrow” at the World’s Fair. Demand for TV starts to take off.
When did the first TV station launch?
📡 1928: W3XK in Washington, DC, was the first to go on air.
What was the first remote control?
🕹️1956: Zenith’s Lazy Bones was the first, but it had a wire people tripped on. They fixed it with a wireless version.
💡 Fun fact: Nikola Tesla demoed a remote in 1898 — decades earlier!
When did color TV arrive?
1954: The Rose Bowl became the first coast-to-coast color broadcast. RCA sold the first 14-inch color TV sets for $800 ($9,500 in 2025 dollars).
When did the first TV ad run?
💰1941: A 10-second Bulova watch ad aired before a baseball game. The ad cost less than $10, and ≈ 1% of U.S. households had a TV.
Quote from Ad Age in 1941:
“Evidence is mounting that [TV] will gain little headway for 'the duration.'"
When did cable TV start?
📦 1948: John Walson, a local appliance salesman in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, installed a large antenna on top of New Boston Mountain and ran a cable down into town. That single cable grew into the most powerful economic model in TV.
A word from our sponsor: In my book, Screen Wars: Win the Battle for Attention with Convergent TV, I explore the origins of TV and its implications for its next chapter.
When did we start streaming?
🌐 2007: Netflix launched “Watch Now” and streaming was born.
🚚 Big role: Without distribution, none of this works. For example, Netflix streamed through pipes laid a decade earlier.
Key dates for the distribution of television:
1) 1936 - Berlin Olympics: first live broadcast
2) 1948 - Cable TV starts
3) 1951 - Truman gives first nationwide speech
4) 1954 - Rose Bowl: first color broadcast
5) 1975 - RCA launches Satcom I satellite. Ali-Frazier boxing match is broadcast live from Manila.
6) 1996 - Telecom Act sparks $165B in broadband investment
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