Location, Location, Location

[bgadow]

It makes sense that the really old stuff would only be found where the earliest TV stations were on the air-the coast, basically, and then the other principal cities. Large swaths of America were out of TV range for a lot of years.

I live in a rural area, and it was much more rural back around 1947-yet a good rooftop antenna could pick up D.C.

Some areas had homes with more storage than others. With farmsteads and big houses, basements and attics, you can store all those old radios and tv sets. Big difference at the other extreme, an apartment in the city. But maybe easier to get rid of a set in the country, too, as you could just haul it to the dump pile in the woods.