User:Bailey7027/sandbox

= The Freeze of 1948 = The Freeze of 1948 was a freeze that was put on all television station license by the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) on September 30th, 1948. This was because so many stations wanted television license that it was causing signal issues and overwhelmed the FCC. The FCC first stated that the freeze would last 6 months as it would give them time to fix the issues and create standards. Those 6 months that the FCC initially stated, turned into a 4 years, as other national issues occurred like the Korean War. The FCC didn't lift the freeze until 1952, where they began to give out television licenses again. The FCC already granted more than 100 licenses, so stations who had already acquired a television license, were allowed to continue operations. When the freeze happened there was over 700 applications on hold, with most cities only having one television stations. There was only a total of 24 cities that had two stations.

Origin
The FCC is a Government branch under independent agencies. What the FCC does is they regulate interstate and international communications through cable, radio, television, satellite, and wire. The FCC wants to promote connectivity and ensure a robust and competitive market. The FCC was established in 1934 after the Communications Act of 1934 was created to ensure organized federal regulation on telephone, telegraph, and radio. As technology advanced the FCC was in charge of regulating more like TV and satellite. The first time that practical TV broadcasting was available to the public was after the World's Fair in 1939, where they demonstrated and sold TV sets to the public. Overall, the FCC is a crucial part in regulating the media, creating rules, ensuring a competitive market and being up to date as technology advances. The FCC declared the freeze in hopes to slow down the increase of TV stations license requests, which will allow them time to work through all their current issues they had. Too many TV stations wanted licenses because it was a booming industry once TV sets were in almost all American household. Airwaves is what was used to transmit the audio and visuals for TV, and that was becoming overcrowded and overused because of the increase in TV usage and stations all over the country. This resulted in the public receiving a lot of interference when watching TV as there were no clear signals because they were being overpowered and overused. FCC decision to freeze broadcasting allowed them not only to fix the airwaves overcrowding issue but to also have time to make a plan to pursue color TV. Over the 4 years the FCC declared the freeze, they continually made reports about their progress with all their issues and planning for color TV. There was a total of six reports, with the sixth report being their final report, which included FCC's statement to lift the freeze. Throughout all the six reports there was a total of 500 typed pages, including documents, 2,053 channel assignments in 1,291 cities, and 242 UHF channels being allocated to non-commercial educational stations. Some of the changes that were included in the reports were an amendment to Section 3.606, an amendment to the FCC's rules and regulations, and a change in engineering standards associated with broadcasting and frequencies. Although, because the freeze lasted so long the FCC declared a temporary process that stations will have to do through to get their TV licenses. This was needed because the FCC was planning for an abundance of applications for TV licenses since the freeze was getting lifted after 4 years.