Did most Americans have televisions when JFK was assassinated?

[customerserviceguy]

47. In urban areas

and especially the first ring of suburban areas, yes. My family lived in Gary, Indiana at the time, and we could get all of the Chicago stations, so having a TV was a part of the good life then. Areas that were outside of broadcast station range had to either buy an expensive antenna mounted high on a pole in the yard, or wait for cable to come.

And the TV was focused heavily on the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. I remember being a kid playing Monopoly on the living room floor when Oswald was shot, all on live TV. Up until that point, we labeled the cartoon man in "Jail" as Oswald for a couple of days before that.

I don't have any recollection of radio in those days, but if there were primarily news-based stations in those days, I'm sure that there would have been fairly continuous coverage. The Kennedy assassination and the space program really brought TV news to maturity, and that's probably when they surpassed radio as a means of getting news. The visuals were so compelling.