ABSTRACT
Television stations licensed in 1941 were crude with low resolution pictures even compared to the 525-line, analog standard recently replaced. World War II stopped nearly all development, and only six stations were still broadcasting after the war. The FCC completely revised the transmission system after the war with the introduction of electronic encoding. Yet, post-war confusion led to more delays as the FCC was inundated with new applications, and it was clear that the original very high frequency (VHF) band would not provide enough space. After granting 107 licenses with 700 more to process, the FCC initiated a freeze on television applications in 1948 (Whitehouse, 1986). Initially, it was a short pause in processing, but the technical demands were daunting. Thus, from 1948 to 1952, there were only about 100 stations on the air nationally.
