With a great many Americans, sometimes even a majority, watching the same programs, exposed to the same information, every day—or if not exactly the same, the same theme with slight variations—a kind of convergence was inevitable. Sitting in silence, everyone would “receive the same impulses and impressions, find themselves focused on the same centers of interest, experience the same feelings, have generally the same order of reactions or ideas, participate in the same myths—and all this at the same time.” That there were three channels to choose from hardly mattered.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 454