Television in the United States

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Television of the United States
American family watching TV in 1958
Timeline Networks
History Prewar broadcasting Golden Age Network era Multi-channel transition New Golden Age Post-network era Streaming wars History by decade History of: Sports broadcasting Public broadcasting Children's television TV animation: (Network era · Modern era)
Genres Daytime Sitcoms News (Cable news)
Networks Over-the-air Pay channels
Programming and Ratings Most Watched
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Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets;^[1] about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August 2013.^[2] Most households have more than one set. The percentage of households owning at least one television set peaked at 98.4%, in the 1996–1997 season.^[3] In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did.^[4] In 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households had cable television subscriptions.^[5]

As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for American networks are the most widely syndicated internationally.^[6] Because of a surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series in the 2000s and the 2010s, many critics have said that American television has entered a modern golden age;^[7][8] whether that golden age has ended or is ongoing in the early 2020s is disputed.^[9]