Television (Attack Machines)

At the time of the Purge of late December 1946, television was still in its infancy. There were few countries offering a television service, and those were the United States (three stations in New York, one in Albany, one in Philadelphia and one in Chicago, before the Purge there already was a network, as evidenced in the picture to the right), the United Kingdom (London), France (Paris) and the Soviet Union (Moscow). Serices in Europe had just resumed from the chaos of the war, but there was a massive lack of manpower.

Only the survivors of New York - this time as a cell - had the resources to restore television on January 8 - no less than two weeks after the Purge - at the time, the NY government decided to ration the services to just WNBT-TV and three radio stations. Initially WNBT was owned by the "reformed" NBC - as Newyorker Broadcasting Company - but after privatizations in 1949, it was renamed National Broadcasting Company.

Television still had a rather slow development until 1963 at best, when methods to record live television broadcasts were achieved. By this time, survivors and their descendants were mostly producing programming aimed at children while showing, on occasion, pre-Purge cartoons. Television did not even have the same impact in the rest of the world, although a few waves of interchange between the rump British government in London and the surprisingly surviving Radio Corporation of America led to the reopening of the BBC's service in London in 1960 - more than twenty years after it was switched off.

North America, acting mainly as a "new Silk Road", was highly problematic for television to extend on such a high level. Already, the restored Floridian government had set up a powerful radio network upon learning from supposed miraculous acts of reverse engineering.

The television monopoly in New York - by then the provisional government of the Reformed United States of America (RUSA - renamed back to USA in 1976) - was broken in 1955 when CBS and DuMont were authorized to return to the airwaves. Disgruntled, DuMont had left television in 1958 and handed it over to a new operator, ABC. By 1965, television had reached OTL 1950 levels. Expansion campaigns led to the reopening of television stations in Albany and Philadelphia, while eventually giving a new license over to New Jersey. Upon the discovery and reclaiming of Washington DC - by then an impoverished slum, the American government decided to build a new television station, set up with the agreement that the government would be seated there by 1976.

The internationalization of television was a process that was starting to get hold in the coming years. The BBC, with its knowledge and surveillance of surviving European city-states, set on expeditions to test whether or not a television service would be viable. Reports had emerged in Frankfurt and Zurich, acting as the rump governments of Germany and Switzerland respectively, that television was a viable option.

Meanwhile in Asia, knowledge of American progress has been blocked as no superstate has emerged in the Pacific. Knowledge of television was limited, and was mostly in the Japanese cells, dating as far back as 1960. With their knowledge of "reverse engineering" and taken into account the pre-war developments in Japanese television, the NHK managed to set up a television service in Kyoto in 1965, broadcasting for half an hour a week, on Friday evenings.

Following the rebuilding of Washington, DC, and the rise in television production (even for a small country), there was a growing cause of concern for the creation of a government-funded television network, whose purpose wasn't to compete with the other channels but to educate the viewers. When NBC was owned by the government of the RUSA, it still acted like its pre-Kraventhorn counterpart in many ways, including management.

United States
Television frequencies are just channels 2-6 for terrestrial services, and the services initially remained unchanged from before 1946. There are two television networks, ABC and CBS. NBC can only be seen in New York. Television runs daily from 6pm to 10pm on weekdays and 4pm to 11pm on weekends. The stations before 2020 were:
 * WRGB-TV, channel 6, Albany (CBS)
 * WCBW-TV, channel 2, New York (CBS)
 * WNBT-TV, channel 4, New York (NBC)
 * WABD-TV, channel 5, New York (ABC)
 * WPTZ-TV, channel 3, Philadelphia (CBS)
 * WTTG-TV, channnel 5, Washington DC (CBS)
 * WBBM-TV, channel 4, Chicago (CBS)

All the stations in the North East broadcast by coaxial lines and first-run syndication of CBS programming outside of New York is widespread.

WBBM broadcasts two hours a day and some programming arrives on a delay of up to six weeks.

Color broadcasting started in 2000 on WNBT, CBS followed in 2002 and ABC in 2003. It wasn't until 2015 that all TV stations broadcast in color, and when color TV sets became more affordable.

Canada
The CBC started a television service, with help from the USA, in 2007, on channel 2 in Toronto; broadcasts extended over to the remainder of the country in the coming years.

Florida
Reverse-engineering led to the opening of FBC TV in 1990. A company initially owned by the government, it was sold off in 1996.

United Kingdom
The BBC's television service had been on air again for more than half a year at the time of the Purge, only to be restored in 1960. Just before the second attacks by Dead Atlantis, the BBC had grown its network of television stations and started feeding its programs to the British Midlands.

An average day's worth of television started at 17:00 with an hour of programming aimed at children, with an intermission between 18:00 and 20:30. Regular programming for adults ran from 20:30 to 22:00.

Africa
Only Nigeria, Angola and South Africa have tested television successfully.

Asia
There are television stations in India, Japan, Taiwan (+Hong Kong) and Singapore.

Oceania
A television station opened in Sydney in 2005 with aid from the BBC.