Answer starts in the last section. 1946-1948 Manufacturers quickly began producing television receivers, transmitters, antennas, etc. New television stations

Answer starts in the last section. 1946-1948 Manufacturers quickly began producing television receivers, transmitters, antennas, etc. New television stations were built all over the United States. The FCC had identified the top 140 metropolitan cities and assigned each at least one channel; a total of 400 were to be allotted. The FCC received many more applications than it had available channels. In an effort to provide with as many channels as possible, the FCC routinely threw away the "safety factor" of mileage between licensed transmitters. But problems began to appear. So, even with just 50 stations on the air, interference problems were beginning to appear. Meanwhile, the FCC had reduced the minimum distance between stations using the same channel to just 80 miles. An engineering study released by the FCC warned of interference problems if immediate action wasn't taken. That lead to an FCC report issued on may 5, 1949, that rules that television could no longer share its frequencies with fixed and mobile services, and that the 72 to 76 MHz band could be used for fixed radio services only. But where could the mobile services be located if they could no longer share the television allocations, and could no longer be used for use the 72 to 76 MHz band? There was only one place to go -- the television industry would have to give up another television channel. But which channel would that be? The American Radio Relay League (an association of amateur radio operators) urged that Channel 2 be deleted so that the second harmonics of the 28-29.7 MHz amateur radio band would not interfere with television reception. The television industry, although not pleased about losing yet another television channel, agreed that 12 clear channels were preferable to 12 shared channels. If they had to lose a channel, they preferred that it be Channel 1, because its absence would have the least impact on commercial television. The FCC went along with the television industry's position, and on June 14, 1948, Channel 1 was deleted from the allocation plan. Channel 1"s frequencies were assigned to the land and mobile services. At the same time, the FCC decided not to renumber the channels -- that is what happened to Channel 1.