Television in the United States
Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. As of 2011[update], household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%,[1] with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013.[2] The majority of households have more than one set. The peak ownership percentage of households with at least one television set occurred during the 1996–97 season, with 98.4% ownership.[3] In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television while 75 percent did by 1955,[4] and by 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households received cable television subscriptions.[5]
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As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for US-based networks are the most widely syndicated internationally.[6] Due to a recent surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series during the 2000s and the 2010s to date, many critics have said that American television had entered a modern golden age around the beginning of the 21st century;[7][8] whether that golden age has ended or is ongoing in the early 2020s is disputed.[9]