 Adding to DuMont 's troubles was the FCC 's 1948 " freeze " on television license applications . This was done to sort out the thousands of applications that had come streaming in , but also to rethink the allocation and technical standards laid down prior to World War II . It became clear soon after the war that 12 channels ( " channel 1 " had been removed from television broadcasting use because storms and other types of interference could severely affect the quality of signals on this channel ) were not nearly enough for national television service . What was to be a six @-@ month freeze lasted until 1952 , when the FCC opened the UHF spectrum . The FCC , however , did not require television manufacturers to include UHF capability . In order to see UHF stations , most people had to buy an expensive <unk> . Even then , the picture quality was marginal at best . <unk> to this was a decision to restrict VHF <unk> in <unk> and smaller @-@ sized markets . Television sets were not required to have all @-@ channel tuning until 1964 . 
