Broadcasting uses a highly limited resource, local TV freqiencies. Especially until recently, these were really limited to a dozen or so channels per metro area.
There are far more than a dozen websites out there.
That's not true in some ways, TV requires a huge number of transmitters and is limited to a few channels, where the internet has a virtually infinite number of channels.
Even now it's digital here in the UK I believe each of the 5(?) muxes can only support tens of channel each.
Airwaves TV might scale easily but can only send a proportionally small amount of information, but the internet send a vastly larger amount of data per second, but struggles when everyone wants the same data at once.
Sure, but those options varied between small regions. For instance, while some television programs would be distributed nationally or internationally, others were filmed at the local stations, and stayed local.
You got 6 channels? What luxury that must have been?
We only got 3 reliably - the ABC and CBS affiliates, and an independent UHF station. That's right, we couldn't even get NBC programming. Once in awhile it would come through, and rarely the indie Channel 5 from NYC.
There was a small city several towns over, maybe a 25-30 minute drive, that had a daily paper. Locally we only had a weekly.
There are far more than a dozen websites out there.
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