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September 7, 2027 will mark 100 years from the day when electronic television made its first appearance on Earth.  To generate interest in the Centennial,  this website and accompanying podcast is going to Count Down the Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television over 100 weeks until September 7, 2027.
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When RCA began its experimental television broadcasts in the spring of 1939, the pictures were transmitted using a standard of RCA’s own design: 441-lines-per-frame at 30-frames-per-second.  Since the rest of the fledgling  industry had yet to adopt that or any other signal standard, RCA was on its own and lobbying mightily to make theirs the national standard.  

Despite RCA’s imperious influence, the Federal Communications Commission was not inclined to act hastily.  

Although RCA was the dominant player in the nascent field, it was not the only player.  Among its competitors was the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), under the direction of its own high-powered founder and CEO, William S. Paley.   

As early as 1931, CBS began experimenting with television under the leadership of Dr. Peter Goldmark, who had his own ideas for television.  

By 1940, Goldmark had developed a color television system, but it used a mechanical component – a spinning wheel of red, green, and blue filters that scanned the image sequentially to encode color into the video signal. Given that it was a mechanical throw-back, Goldmark’s system was not remotely compatible with the receivers RCA was starting to sell to the public. 

This emergence of at least two competing, incompatible systems made clear that a unified national standard was essential before television could proceed as a mass medium.

RCA lobbied heavily for the adoption its  441-line standard.  The company was, after all, heavily invested in the format, selling receivers to well-heeled first adopters, building out infrastructure and staging high-profile demonstrations.  Sarnoff and Co. waged a pragmatic argument: Let’s just get commercial television broadcasting started with the technology and audience base we have now. 

What Sarnoff did not bargain on, though, was one James L. Fly – President Roosevelt’s appointee to chair the FCC starting in 1939 – not long after RCA’s little show at the World’s Fair. 

James Fly was a lawyer, not an engineer, which made him less susceptible to RCA’s dazzlements. More importantly, Fly was the kind of New Deal-era trustbuster who took a dim view of monopoly power.  His first instinct was to resist Sarnoff’s advocacy of the RCA standards, rightfully anticipating that the extension of RCA’s control over radio patents and infrastructure would lead to yet another private monopoly over television.

Sarnoff, though not overtly partisan, was seen as an ally of conservative business interests, and quite publicly conducted himself as a corporate empire-builder.  He was already accustomed to operating a quasi-monopoly over radio, and showed every determination to expand his empire.

In this a contentious climate, FCC Chairman Fly froze the rollout of television, insisting that the industry adopt a universal standard before any commercially sponsored broadcasting could begin.  

In March 1940, the FCC announced the formation of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) to confer with the various interests and negotiate toward the kind of nationwide hardware compatibility television would need to proceed.  

Standards arrived on March 1, 1941, with the formal adoption of the system henceforth known by the acronym for the Committee’s name, NTSC. The new, official, nationwide standard called for a television signal comprised of 525 lines and 30-frames-per-second – not the 441 that RCA was already propagating into the market. 

The format was chosen in part to work within the United States standard 60 Hz AC power cycle.  To minimize interference between television signals and the electrical grid, the NTSC’s engineers synchronized the frame rate with the power frequency. 

To conserve bandwidth and reduce flicker, the NTSC  adopted interlaced scanning, in which each frame is divided into two interwoven fields, displayed at 60 fields per second to align with the 60 Hz power cycle. The signal was assigned 6 MHz of bandwidth for each of 13 (later 12) television picture-and-sound channels in a technically elegant system that harmonized television with the rhythm of the nation’s electric infrastructure.

Of course, the new standard had an immediate impact on the existing equipment base.  Companies who had invested prematurely in RCA’s 441-line format were forced to retool to match the new 525-line standard. Experimental receivers became outdated overnight, but the reset finally cleared the path for the first licensed commercial broadcasts to begin later that year. 

In 1953, the NTSC reconvened to add color to the system, remarkably doing so in a way that preserved compatibility with the black-and-white standard adopted twelve years earlier.

The NTSC’s 1941 framework proved to be much more than a technical achievement.  It laid  the foundation for a new medium that would shape American culture for generations, in everything from the nightly news to sitcoms, drama, sports, and entertainment. 

The NTSC standard remained in place for over four decades, defining the look and structure of American television until the advent of digital broadcasting in the late 1990s.

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