Timeline of the introduction of television in countries

This is a list of when the first publicly announced television broadcasts occurred in the mentioned countries. Non-public field tests and closed circuit demonstrations are not included.

The map should not be interpreted to mean the whole of a country had television service by a certain date. For example, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the former Soviet Union all had operational television stations and a limited number of viewers by 1939. However, in those countries only a few cities, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles in the United States, London in Great Britain, Berlin in Germany, and Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the Soviet Union had television service; outside of these metropolitan areas, television broadcasts were not yet available. Furthermore, only a very limited number of people owned or had access to a television set. There are also cases in which smaller countries were completely covered by broadcasts from larger neighbours, sometimes long before they introduced their own service. For example Liechtenstein received broadcasts from Switzerland for 58 years and from Austria for 52 years.

See also

• Oldest television station
• Timeline of the introduction of color television in countries

Notes and citations

1. See WRGB History, How Television Came to Boston: The Forgotten Story of W1XAY, W3XK: America's first television station, and "WRNY to Start Daily Television Broadcasts," New York Times, August 13, 1928, p. 13.
2. See J.L. Baird: Television in 1932
3. See Museum of Broadcast Communications: Germany
   and Berlin 1936: Television in Germany
4. See The Evolution of TV: A Brief History of TV Technology in Japan: “Can you see me clearly?”; Public TV Image Experiments.
5. See Early Television in Italy
6. See [1]; Czechoslovakia became two separate states, namely the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in 1993.
7. Television was introduced in Hong Kong when it was a British crown colony.
8. This is the year when television was introduced in Mainland China. Hong Kong and Macau was not part of the People's Republic of China.
9. This is the year when television was introduced in territories under its administration. After the Chinese Civil War, the government of the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan and other islands, and Mainland China was controlled by the People's Republic of China.
10. See Mongolia, multimedia memories, and me
11. Television came to Fiji part-time for the 1991 Rugby World Cup. It arrived full-time in 1994.
12. See History of DR
13. See International Federation of Television Archives: Albania.
14. R. W. Burns, Television: An International History of the Formative Years. IET, 1998, p. 488. ISBN 0-85296-914-7.
15. See The Birth of Live Entertainment and Music on Television, November 6, 1936, and 1937 RCA Publicity Photographs. "Eighty-seven video programs were telecast by NBC last year," "Where Is Television Now?", Popular Mechanics, August 1938, p. 178. Regularly scheduled electronic broadcasts began in April 1938 in New York (to the second week of June, and resuming in August) and Los Angeles. "Telecasts Here and Abroad," The New York Times, April 24, 1938, Drama-Screen-Radio section, p. 10; "Early Birds," Time, June 13, 1938; "Telecasts to Be Resumed," The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1938, Drama-Screen-Radio section, p. 10; Robert L. Pickering, "Eight Years of Television in California," California — Magazine of the Pacific, June 1939. Also note that many rural areas of the Southern United States didn't receive television until the late 1950s and early 1960s.
16. See The Warsaw Voice: What's On? and Historia Przemysłowego Instytutu Telekomunikacji przed II wojną światową (in Polish, Web Archive copy).
17. Off from 1939 to 1946 for the Second World War.
18. Service existed only in Moscow and Leningrad until 1950. The Soviets introduced television broadcasting in Ukraine (1951), Latvia (1954), Armenia and Estonia (1955), Georgia (1956), and Lithuania (1957).
19. Television service existed in the Bahamas prior to 1977. Before then, they were received from the United States.
20. Although 180-line cathode ray tube receivers were manufactured in France in 1936, a mechanical scanning camera was still used at the transmitter in Paris until 1937.
21. Television broadcasts had also been received from Argentina.
22. Despite the Vatican receiving a television service of its own in 1983, the Vatican (being inside the city of Rome) has been able to receive Italian broadcasts since 1954, which is still the case today.
23. The Israeli Ministry of Education in cooperation with the Rothschild Fund started limited broadcasts to schools in March 1966. A public state-owned TV channel started broadcasting in May 1968. Broadcasts were black and white (with a few exceptions) until the early 1980s.
24. All of the countries that established their first commercial television station after 1988 have been listed. This is according to statistics from sources including the CIA World Factbook.
25. Malta and San Marino had also received television broadcasts from Italy.
26. Gibraltar had also received television broadcasts from Spain.
27. Grenada had also received television broadcasts from Trinidad and Tobago since 1962.
28. Flemish-language BRT used the Belgian 625-line standard and French-language RTB used the Belgian 819-line standard (abandoned in 1963). Early Belgian sets were very expensive because they could receive 4 different standards: Belgian 625, European 625, Belgian 819, French 819. Later a 5th standard was added with the French 625-line standard.
29. See How Philippines introduced their TV system
30. [2] (Finnish)
31. Test service available only in Yangon in 1979. Formal launch in 1981. See [3]
32. The date refers to the launch of the first TV channel of the federation, RTV Zagreb, in Croatia. Gradually, television was introduced in Slovenia (1957), Serbia (1958), Macedonia (1964), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1969), and Montenegro (1971). In Kosovo, it was introduced in 1975.
33. [4] (swedish)

External links

• Start of television services