I do know a bit about American TV channels like local afffiliate stations and subchannels. But according to rabbitears com there are only 2 places in America to have a channel 1 and they are not even owned or affiliated to the major broadcasting companies (one is a catchycomedy affiliate)and the other is a translator to an independant channel 45)
In simple terms, everywhere you go it starts at channel 2, why is this? and even channel 3 is only in some places like major cities, there are also places that skip lots of numbers even in the first 10
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Back in my day *Hack, Wheeze*, channel 2 was for the VHS and channel 3 was for the Nintendo.
[It was removed from the TV spectrum due to interference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_1_(North_American_TV)).
There was a former “news” program aimed at high school students called “Channel 1”, but I don’t think it was broadcast over the air.
Started off as an actual news broadcaster but it gradually devolved into little more than a backdoor marketing avenue to teenagers.
A lot of cable/satellite services use channel 1 for On Demand.
NY1 is a news station in Manhattan. It’s on channel 1.
I don’t think Kalamazoo would ever qualify as a “major city” but there’s been a channel 3 there my entire life.
Channel three is more common than you think, on comcast it’s ion.
So all things that use radio transmission will operate on a certain frequency or frequencies. Because of physics, some frequencies work better than others for certain use cases. For example, long range radio telescopes might need a frequency that travels better through clouds and long distances without degrading than a walkie-talkie does. Music might sound awful when transmitted on a certain frequency vs another. Etc. This makes some frequency bands more desirable and competitive to use, while others are not. Which could make things chaotic.
As a result, government, regulates what kind of uses cases can operate in certain frequency bands, and who the users are. Meaning, a block of the spectrum might be reserved for FM radio, say 88.0MHz to 108.0MHz, and then everyone in a given region who wants to broadcast an FM radio station has to figure out amongst themselves how to split it up with the government’s help. So who is going to broadcast on 88.3 mHz and who is going to broadcast on 101.7mHz.
To avoid interference, each of these broadcasters would get a range of frequencies. The station centered on 101.7 would also be slipping into 101.6 and 101.8, so they are assigned those frequencies too. But despite those efforts, it’s still possible that someone tuning in on 101.5, depending on how close they are to the tower broadcasting on 101.7 or how strong the signal is, might start to hear interference from the next station up.
Furthermore, if you’re the broadcaster at that the bottom of the range, say 88.1, your broadcast might interfere with whatever non-FM radio stuff is going on on 87.9 mHz. And depending on what use the government has assigned to the block containing 87.9 mHz, that could be no big deal (say if it’s amateur radio-controlled cars), or it could be a VERY BIG DEAL (if it’s a radio beacon for air traffic control).
TV broadcasting was initially assigned the range of 50mHz to 108mHz. That was split into 7 chunks of 6 mHz each (with a couple of quirks/gaps), to allow room for both the picture and sound. Those chunks corresponded to Channel 1, Channel 2, … to Channel 6. But Channel 1 had the same problem as radio above; just below their frequency was another use case, mostly land mobile radios! That’s things like radios in ambulances, walkie talkies for mountain rescuers, etc. This could be very bad. Both TV and two-way communicators have audio signals. So if a TV station is broadcasting on Channel 1, a forest ranger whose equipment is set to the top of the band might hear the tv show instead of a warning from the fire watchtower. That’s worse than the possibility of a few tv customers hearing occasional conversations coming through their TV audio on the channel.
So Channel 1 was abandoned, with the government opting not to issue broadcast licenses for it. And soon after TV manufacturers stopped including Channel 1 on tuner dials, because it would be pointless and cost more to manufacture. Despite frequency reallocations that came later, it became self-reinforcing that there would be no Channel 1. If most TVs don’t have a dial for it, it would be a waste of money to broadcast on it. If no one’s broadcasting on it, why add it to the TV dials? And so on.
As far as why some channels get skipped in some markets but not others, this has to do with conflicts from nearby cities. For example, a station in New York and one in Los Angeles could both broadcast on Channel 4 without interfering with one another, because unless they’re drawing a gargantuan amount of power, their signals won’t reach each other’s markets. But this isn’t true for closer city pairs. San Francisco, CA and San Jose, CA might have totally different news, weather, and traffic, but maybe they’re close enough that two stations can’t both broadcast on Channel 2 at the same time without the signals being unwatchable.
Regulators try their best to space regional channel assignments in different cities to avoid these clashes. Which might result in one city having a broadcaster on Channel 2, and another city not. Philadelphia had a channel 6 for its local ABC channel, but New York didn’t. Instead it had channel 7.
Philadelphia – https://6abc.com/
NY – https://abc7ny.com/
Los Angeles – https://abc7.com/
The actual frequency allocations have changed a lot over time, with bands being shrunk or added. The channels 7/8 at the upper end of the original allocation went away to make room for more FM radio channels, whose businesses were growing faster at the time, and then were added to whole new, separate frequency bands allocated to make room for more tv channels later. Channels 1-6 in 44mhz-88mhz (VHF band I) 7-13 in 174mhz-216mhz (VHF band II), and later 14-36 and beyond in UHF.
Today, though, with channels being delivered via cable, or digital broadcast, things get muddier. A cable provider can put something on its version of “Channel 1” straight through a shielded wire, and not have to worry too much about interference one way or the other. So in NY, there is a NY1 cable-only news channel that is run by the cable company itself that can be found on channel 1, but not over the air. And if some city doesn’t have a broadcaster on, say Channel 8? The local cable provider could put something there too. Whether their own channel, or rebroadcast someone else’s.
The frequency for channel 1 was reassigned by the FCC in the ’40s for other purposes, and rather than renaming the channels, they just dropped channel 1 from TV.
As for channel 3: stations on the same channel number have to be a certain mileage apart to avoid interference with each other when received by antenna. So a city like New York gets VHF channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, while Philadelphia gets 3, 6, 10 and 12. Channel 8 was assigned to Lancaster, northwest of Philly, and is its market’s only VHF station. But aside from quirks like that, the pattern alternates pretty much the same way all around the country.
Back when tvs where deeper then wide and cable tv was for the rich kids, there would be two dials – one dial went 2-12 with a U where the one would be. The other dial was 13 up to 70? The U activated the second dial. With the right combination of wire coat hanger, tin foil and finesse, we would have channels 2,4,5,7 and 25,38 and 56.
I am more interested in British television broadcasting. You guys don’t have affiliates or call signs. The idea of a nationwide channel is completely foreign to us. Yes, we have national networks, but the channel one tunes to for each network affiliate varies by the Designated Market Area. Plus, network programming only happens at certain times.