How Uncle Sam invented television

The first in a four part series exploring the major transition that television is currently undergoing.

Broadcast TV station owners can sit on their licenses and discuss "current marketplace realities" with the Federal Communications Commission because, seventy years ago, Congress created that marketplace for them. To be sure, the United States didn't "invent" TV itself. That honor goes to John Logie Baird, Philo Farnsworth, and Vladimir Zworykin, among other innovators. But the government literally created the business model and framework in which broadcast TV flourished. In fact, for a crucial period of time, politicians protected over-the-air broadcasters from other business models, most notably the telephone company and cable TV. Now, regulators face the challenge of uninventing that framework. Here's a history of what they built -- the story of the government invention of television up to the present, one that begins even before television really got underway.