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Although years in the making, the television explosion seemed to come out of nowhere &endash; suddenly, what was once an expensive novelty, was now a necessity. One source even notes that some families, to "keep up with the Joneses," installed faux exterior antennas on their TV-less homes. In mid-1947, approximately ten stations were on the air and only 160,000 television sets were produced annually. By December, 1948, there were 127 stations, receiver orders were piling up, movie attendance waned, and even some businesses closed on Tuesday nights &endash; Milton Berle "Texaco Star Theater" night &endash; customers were glued to the set. 1948 is often considered the benchmark year &endash; the year limited local broadcasting was supplanted by network programming. The familiar test-pattern-nothing-on-yet, soon gave way to the shows that launched what historians call "television's golden age." In fact, one irony of the boom was recorded by the Archive during Mel Tolkin's (who, with Lucille Kallen, was headwriter for "Your Show of Shows") interview. Their first show, the popular "The Admiral Broadway Revue" starring Sid Caesar, Mary McCarty and Imogene Coca aired from January 1949 to June 1949. Why did the sponsor, Admiral, a television manufacturer cancel the show? Tolkin claims Admiral had so many orders for new sets, that the company chose to allocate its advertising funds to increase production facilities! With increased production and heavy competition between manufacturers, set prices fell to affordable ranges. By 1952, a set could be had for almost half of its 1948 price.
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