Three of the four networks that rose to dominance, NBC, CBS, and ABC, were corporations that were based in the business center of New York City; the fourth was the Mutual Broadcasting System, a cooperative of radio stations that, though its member stations entered television individually, never had a counterpart television network.
Film studios and independent television producers had only three possible places to sell their media, so they were forced to comply with the practices established by the networks.
However, after the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s had exposed the danger of such a business model, the networks eliminated that format and changed to multiple corporations purchasing commercials.
While initially the single-sponsorship system worked, it soon became clear that this advertising strategy could not afford to pay for the continuous production cost.
The viewers were receptive to the fact that there was limited programming choices and had to base their daily duties around the television schedule that the networks had mandated.
Despite obvious setbacks, the television was cutting-edge technology that created a huge demand for everyone in the United States to purchase one.
Distribution windows were numbered as a result of producers reselling original-run episodes to international markets, independent stations and broadcast affiliates to combat the costs of deficit financing.
Without personal recording capabilities and few alternative ways to receive programming, viewers had little opportunity to rescreen content on their own terms.
[2] Networks selected programs that would reach a wide range of people, such as family sitcoms, police procedurals, and game shows.
Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, the growing ubiquity of technologies such as the remote control, videocassette recorders (VCRs), cable television, and fiber-optic networks weakened the distribution bottleneck by offering viewers easier access to a wider variety of content than was previously available.
Niche programmers no longer needed to produce enough content to fill a channel all day, and can now put any amount of it on a server, from one program to hundreds, and charge viewers as much as the market will bear.