
Whatever happened to Channel 1? - NN88
http://www.tech-notes.tv/History&Trivia/Channel%20One/Channel_1.htm
======
ams6110
Another historical note, within a locality it was almost always the case that
only every other broadcast channel was used, e.g. 2-4-6-8... or 3-5-7-9... to
reduce interference from adjacent channels.

That's why old VCRs, DVD players, home computers, and other devices that used
an RF modulator to connect to a TV display could typically be set to transmit
on channel 3 or channel 4, because one of those was almost always unused in a
given area.

~~~
electrum
The Kansas City area has channel 4 (WDAF) and channel 5 (KCTV).

------
oneJob
I thought for a moment this was about the propaganda "Channel 1" I was forced
to watch every morning in home class in my Texan middle-school.

~~~
michael_h
Propaganda?

~~~
ams6110
Maybe not so much propaganda as being fairly heavy on advertising.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_News#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_News#Controversy)

Though I would not be surprised to learn that it has the same sort of biased
reporting we see in other news media.

~~~
gherkin0
> Though I would not be surprised to learn that it has the same sort of biased
> reporting we see in other news media.

I remember it as not being very biased, just watered down, often with some
kind of "teen" angle.

Channel 1 was basically a vehicle to deliver captive audiences of teenage
schoolchildren directly to advertisers. They bribed schools with TVs and
justified the programming with the minimum proportion of educational news
content, so they could use school to force feed teenagers Clearasil ads. The
news content was just the sugar coating on the pill to make it palatable to
schools and teachers.

IIRC, Anderson Cooper (of CNN) got his start there in the 90s.

~~~
tsuru
Yep, Anderson Cooper constantly talking about his flak jacket and Lisa Ling.
And the force feeding worked. I still remember the damn Pepsi Clear
commercials and some big vote for a new m&m's color. ugh.

~~~
mlucero
You are probably right about the forced advertising but I have mostly positive
memories of Channel 1. I actually think those programs/TVs probably help peak
a lot of kid's interest in media. The school I went to had their own news
broadcast that came on every Friday. It was entirely produced by the students
and everyone really enjoyed it. A good friend of mine was a part of that
program and went on to become a TV camera man. It wasn't all bad and we
probably could have used some Clearasil.

------
dougmwne
Really, the title is just a teaser. I thought this was a rewarding read and I
just learned a hell of a lot about the history of radio.

I don't suppose anyone has any book recommendations on the subject besides the
ones mentioned in the article?

~~~
thomnottom
Agreed. I found the breakdown of how the NTSC standards were formed very
interesting.

------
Animats
Not all the channels were usable in one area. Tuners were not very good at
rejecting harmonics back then.

Today, we have phones with four or five radio receivers and three transmitters
operating without interference. It's amazing that works. Receivers are far,
far better than they were in the tube era.

~~~
frozenport
Doesn't a more sensitive receiver make the harmonic issue worse? In one case
it fades out into background in the other you precisely measure it!

~~~
jzwinck
It's not that modern receivers are more _sensitive_ , but that they are more
_selective_. Harmonic or "image" rejection can achieve 20 to 60 dB in
commercial applications today. The first and last sections of this paper may
help explain:
[http://www.plextekrfi.com/images/pdfs/RF_mixer_design.pdf](http://www.plextekrfi.com/images/pdfs/RF_mixer_design.pdf)

------
firebones
A long, long time ago when there were only 4 channels to watch on our B&W TV,
I asked my dad this question. He said something about it interfering with
radio traffic but his apocryphal speculation was that it was so that no one
network would get to be "#1".

------
empressplay
Australia even had channel 0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATV_(Australia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATV_\(Australia\))

~~~
twic
As did Public Enemy:

[http://genius.com/Public-enemy-she-watch-channel-zero-
lyrics](http://genius.com/Public-enemy-she-watch-channel-zero-lyrics)

------
earless1
The FCC seemed extremely responsive and considerate back then. I wonder how
long things would have taken now-a-days to get consensus and authorizations

~~~
jychang
WWII had a big influence on making the public a stomach more direct orders and
not complain as much.

------
mozumder
Project idea: Make a television system from vacuum tubes that broadcasts in
the unlicensed home bands (2.4GHz & 5GHz). It could be either digital or
analog, but it needs to use vacuum tubes. I'd like to see if such technologies
would have been possible back in the 40's. Bonus points if they could transmit
hi-def signals (1+ megapixels)

~~~
xellisx
You "might" be able to do transmissions that high with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron)

------
rmason
Although I can't find it in his online bio former FCC commissioner James
Quello was an early television pioneer at Michigan State University in the
early thirties.

The campus ham station, W8SH, has pictures in their archives of Quello's setup
which could only transmit pictures the length of the engineering lab.

------
tjohns
I always wondered why cable networks couldn't have a Channel 1, even though it
wasn't allowed on broadcast. After all, there's no other radio traffic in a
coax cable to compete with.

I suppose it could have posed a problem if there was any RF leakage from the
cable network.

~~~
bhousel
Probably because by time cable came out, TVs were not manufactured that could
tune to channel 1.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You didn't select cable channels with the tuner, though. My recollection is
that you attached the cable box to the TV, tuned the TV to whatever channel
was used to display hardline input, then selected channels on the cable box.

Eventually cable-ready TVs came out with the cable selector built-in, but they
still weren't using the radio tuning mechanism to select hardline cable
channels.

~~~
pwg
> You didn't select cable channels with the tuner,

That heavily depended upon what the CATV provider did in your area. In many
areas, TV channels 2-13 were transmitted verbatim on the coax, and could be
tuned by a NTSC TV just by hooking up the coax (usually via an impedance
matching transformer) to the antenna inputs of the TV.

This, of course, did create a 'leakage' problem. If the coax leaked somewhere,
people without cable got ghosting. But worse, if the TV picked up some of the
over the air signal (quite common actually) that was on the identical
frequency, you got ghosting even with CATV.

~~~
joezydeco
CATV started as a long-distance antenna for communities where signal was bad
or impossible to receive (hilly areas, etc).

The addition of premium channels, etc came much later.

------
doug1001
channel 1 in the United Kingdom

~~~
fredoralive
For the sort of "channels" discussed in the article, the UK hasn't used a
channel 1[1] for TV since 1985, as VHF was only used for the older 405 line TV
system. Newer 625 line analogue TV[2] was and digital terrestrial TV is UHF
only in the UK, and UHF channels are numbered from 21.

For convenience most TVs mapped the channels onto buttons 1/2/3/4 for analogue
but behind the scenes they would be something like channels 27/29/31/33\.
Modern DTT channel numbers are also completely separate from what radio
channel each TV channel is actually being carried on.

[1] The definition of "channel 1" is different in different countries.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_channel_frequencies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_channel_frequencies)

[2] BBC2 was UHF / 625 only at launch in 1964, BBC1 and ITV started in 1969
when they introduced colour. Analogue ended late 2012.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Indeed, if you're in the UK and you set up a new analogue TV (a few years ago
when the transmitters still ran) or a new digital TV (still possible now
obviously), the first thing it does is scan the entire UHF and VHF bands
detecting channels, assigning them channel numbers in the order it finds them
(analogue) or by some other algorithm I don't know (digital - it's not as
simple as just a fixed number).

------
ryaneager
Answer starts in the last section.

 _1946-1948 Manufacturers quickly began producing television receivers,
transmitters, antennas, etc. New television stations were built all over the
United States. The FCC had identified the top 140 metropolitan cities and
assigned each at least one channel; a total of 400 were to be allotted. The
FCC received many more applications than it had available channels. In an
effort to provide with as many channels as possible, the FCC routinely threw
away the "safety factor" of mileage between licensed transmitters.

But problems began to appear. So, even with just 50 stations on the air,
interference problems were beginning to appear. Meanwhile, the FCC had reduced
the minimum distance between stations using the same channel to just 80 miles.
An engineering study released by the FCC warned of interference problems if
immediate action wasn't taken. That lead to an FCC report issued on may 5,
1949, that rules that television could no longer share its frequencies with
fixed and mobile services, and that the 72 to 76 MHz band could be used for
fixed radio services only.

But where could the mobile services be located if they could no longer share
the television allocations, and could no longer be used for use the 72 to 76
MHz band? There was only one place to go -- the television industry would have
to give up another television channel. But which channel would that be? The
American Radio Relay League (an association of amateur radio operators) urged
that Channel 2 be deleted so that the second harmonics of the 28-29.7 MHz
amateur radio band would not interfere with television reception. The
television industry, although not pleased about losing yet another television
channel, agreed that 12 clear channels were preferable to 12 shared channels.
If they had to lose a channel, they preferred that it be Channel 1, because
its absence would have the least impact on commercial television.

The FCC went along with the television industry's position, and on June 14,
1948, Channel 1 was deleted from the allocation plan. Channel 1"s frequencies
were assigned to the land and mobile services. At the same time, the FCC
decided not to renumber the channels -- that is what happened to Channel 1._

~~~
dandrews
Apologies - I fat-fingered a mobile downvote instead of the upvote you
deserved. Aargh.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't know if I would say a quote of the last section 'deserves' an upvote.

------
zzalpha
tl;dr as more spectrum was used in the late 1940s a channel had to be freed up
to deal with interference issues so they picked channel 1 and simply choose
not to renumber.

You'd think the article would explore why they didn't renumber, but nope.

Legacy hardware and possible consumer confusion seem like the most likely
speculation.

~~~
teen
you tl;dr people are doing the lord's work. thank you

~~~
sethkontny
So instead of reading. --> fast paced audio.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I can read faster than any human can speak intelligibly. Also, it's much
easier to skip ahead with text.

------
sethkontny
Great share. Important data transmissions.

