Television Stations

Forget Monday Night Football, forget MSNBC, forget the Weather Channel, forget pay-per-view, forget cable. Before any of that could happen, there had to be a TV station. At least one. The very first TV station was W3XK in Wheaton, Maryland. It went on the air in 1928 and it broadcast a remarkable resolution of just 48 lines. If conditions were right, you could bring it in as far away as Columbus, Ohio. It stayed on the air five nights a week until 1932.

The owner, a Charles Francis Jenkins, also became the first person to broadcast a television commercial, for which he was appropriately convicted and fined.

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