# How did very early television broadcasts work, financially?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 10, 2015, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277 "2015-02-10T04:26:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/1 "2015-02-10T04:26:14Z")
I remember the advent of cell phones. They were status symbols for the wealthy, who would justify them by saying that they needed to be reached at a moments notice (A surgeon, for example)
But TV? There’s no one that really needs that as it is a one way communication. I’m pretty sure that the 1936 Olympics were the first major television broadcast, but who were they broadcasting to? Party Hacks excepted. I understand the '_gee-wow_’propaganda nonsense;.
Still, I can’t reconcile why anyone bought or broadcast TV when there was literally nothing out there.
---
### Author:  [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/2 "2015-02-10T04:42:02Z")
I vaguely recall reading that the first broadcasters were the radio companies. They already had a lot of the prerequisites, in tech areas (equipment etc) and content (shows, actors).
As far as the purchasers of the tv sets, there have always been well-to-do “early adopters”, even if that terms wasn’t used yet.
---
### Author:  [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/3 "2015-02-10T05:05:07Z")
> [@Keeve](#):
>
> there have always been well-to-do “early adopters”, even if that terms wasn’t used yet.
It was only used by the people who started using that term before everyone else did.
---
### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/4 "2015-02-10T05:17:18Z")
The BBC first scheduled broadcasts in 1936. They used 2 systems, alternating weekly to see which was best: yes, you needed two TVs to pick everything up and one of them would be dropped in 3 months.
Different cities in the US had competing standards until agreements were made in 1941.
> **[Early Electronic TV](http://earlytelevision.org/prewar.html)**
>
> early television
> **[History of television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television)**
>
> The concept of television is the work of many individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-varying signal that could be reconstructed at a receiver back into an approximation of the original image. Development of television was interrupted by the Second World War. After the end of the war, all-electronic methods of scanning and displaying images...
So yeah, early adopters. Sort of like the laser disk, betamax, super fast internet, and [one hour shipping](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-launches-1-hour-shipping-in-manhattan/), available in selected cities.
---
### Author:  [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/5 "2015-02-10T05:21:19Z")
the tv networks were the same companies that were the radio networks.
sets were operated in stores and store windows (with speakers outside) to show the product.
technology and economics brought about broadcasting after WW2. earlier stuff was development.
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/6 "2015-02-10T16:27:04Z")
Some of the earliest regular television broadcasts in the US – LONG before the 1936 Olympics – were made by Hugo Gernsbach – the same guy after whom the Hugo Awards in Science Fiction are named. He made them so that people who built their own TV receivers would have something to receive. Gernsbach published a magazine on Electronics and his advertisers sold electronics parts and kits. Having a TV signal to receive meant there was a market for people to buy his magazine and purchase from his advertisers, so they could then build their own interociters/TV sets. It was TV supported by advertising, but in a roundabout way.
\*The Science Fiction stuff was aN OUTGROWTH OF gERNSBACH’S ROUNDABOUT ADVERTISING, TOO.
> **[Hugo Gernsback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Gernsback)**
>
> Hugo Gernsback (/ˈɡɜːrnzbæk/; born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was a Luxembourgish–American editor and magazine publisher, whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named t
> **[WRNY (New York City)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRNY_(defunct))**
>
> WRNY was a New York City AM radio station that began operating in 1925. It was started by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company to promote his radio and science magazines. Starting in August 1928, WRNY was one of the first stations to make regularly scheduled experimental television broadcasts. Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt in early 1929 and the station was purchased by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to promote aviation. WRNY was deleted in 1934, as part of a consoli...
See here aboiut halfway down:
[http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-DFG/Complete-Radio-and-Television.pdf](http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-DFG/Complete-Radio-and-Television.pdf)
---
### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/7 "2015-02-10T17:20:45Z")
In the very early days of radio, manufacturers like Westinghouse and General Electric built the sets and operated the stations to give their customers something to listen to. Universities, local governments and churches also built stations, so there was always something to listen to.
It was much the same with television. As early as 1928, General Electric and Westinghouse were operating experimental TV stations, along with a couple of radio stations, Charles Jenkins (an inventor) and, as noted upthread, Hugo Gernsbach.
In 1946, before the TV networks had even been organized, there were [an estimated 15,000 televisions in Washington, DC](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanradiohistory.com%2Fhd2%2FArchive-Television-Magazine-IDX%2FIDX%2F40s%2F1946%2FTelevision-1946-Feb-Page-0032.pdf%23search%3D%2522nbc%20revenue%2522), with corresponding numbers in other cities, so there was always an audience for TV.
---
### Author:  [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/8 "2015-02-10T19:50:12Z")
> [@chacoguy](#):
>
> I’m pretty sure that the 1936 Olympics were the first major television broadcast, but who were they broadcasting to? Party Hacks excepted. I understand the '_gee-wow_’propaganda nonsense;.
As far as Nazi Germany is concerned, the main purpose of broadcasting the 1936 Olympics was indeed propaganda. There was a very limited number of households that had private TV sets, but in many cities across the country there were public TV rooms where people could go to watch Olympic coverage. Of course, the whole concept was not commercially viable, but that’s of little concern if a totalitarian regime pumps in a lot of money to have something with which it can tell its own population about how fabulous the system is.
---
### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-very-early-television-broadcasts-work-financially/712277/9 "2015-02-10T21:22:50Z")
In the US, TV was seen as a loss leader. The three major TV networks lost money until the late 50s (or later for ABC); they only stayed afloat because they owned as many stations as the FCC allowed, which did make money from local advertising. The Dumont network went under in part because they didn’t own any stations themselves.\*
The early TV stations were usually connected to radio stations, so the radio revenue kept them afloat until TV started paying for itself. They saw that TV was going to be big, so it was worth taking a loss for a few years until it caught on.
\*It was complicated, but the FCC said that since Paramount owned a large chunk of Dumont, the Paramount stations counted against Dumont’s limit.