You can count on broadcast TV to have little relationship to reality, but you can’t count on it to count. It starts with the number two. That’s because there is only a limited amount of broadcast bandwidth to go around. The part that would be used by channel one was long ago allocated to mobile radios, as in Citizen’s Band, or CB.
And who can say that it isn’t more useful to have that part of the band used by truckers to warn colleagues of a speed trap (“Smokey up ahead!”) than have it used to promote lemon mousse-flavored dog biscuits?
Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams
