Television in the United States

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Television of the
United States
American family watching TV in 1958
History


History of:

Genres
Networks
Programming and Ratings

Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets;[1] about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August 2013.[2] Most households have more than one set. The percentage of households owning at least one television set peaked at 98.4%, in the 1996–1997 season.[3] In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did.[4] In 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households had cable television subscriptions.[5] However, this number has fallen to 40% in 2024.[6]

As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for American networks are the most widely syndicated internationally.[7] Because of a surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series in the 2000s and the 2010s, many critics have said that American television has entered a modern golden age;[8][9] whether that golden age has ended or is ongoing in the early 2020s is disputed.[10]

  1. ^ "Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S." The New York Times. May 3, 2011.
  2. ^ Robert Seidman (August 23, 2013). "List of How Many Homes Each Cable Networks Is In – Cable Network Coverage Estimates As of August 2013". TV by the Numbers. Zap2it (Tribune Digital Ventures). Archived from the original on August 25, 2013. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  3. ^ "U.S. Television Households by Season". TV by the Numbers. August 28, 2007. Archived from the original on June 13, 2013.
  4. ^ Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 217. ISBN 978-0684832838.
  5. ^ "The Rise of Cable Television". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
  6. ^ "Cable TV Statistics 2024". evoca.tv. Retrieved September 11, 2024.
  7. ^ "FCC V-Chip Fact Sheet". Federal Communications Commission. July 1, 1999.
  8. ^ "Barely Keeping Up in TV's New Golden Age". The New York Times. March 10, 2014. Retrieved July 9, 2014.
  9. ^ "Welcome to TV's Second Golden Age". CBS News. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 9, 2014.
  10. ^ Holmes, Linda (May 3, 2022). "There's too much TV to keep up. Have we hit the limit?". NPR. Retrieved May 6, 2022.