In 1950 NBC dominated early television with all five top-rated shows.

Evidence

And in 1950, Mr. Nielsen’s new ratings made it official: the National Broadcasting Company ruled the new medium, with exclusive ownership of the five top-rated shows … On Tuesdays at 8 p.m., 61.6 percent of the 10 million families with a television were tuned to Texaco Star Theater. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 432

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the concrete scale of early TV viewership — 10 million families, 61.6 percent on one show — anchoring what ‘television platform dominance’ first meant.
• XREF: connects to: CBS used a quality-brand strategy to challenge NBC’s ratings dominance. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 442

Broader Connections

• CBS used a quality-brand strategy to challenge NBC’s ratings dominance. #responds-to (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 442