Hell, used to be just the one pone in the house, & it was possibly a party line. One television per family, as a rule; black & white, rabbit ears, no remote &, between VHF & UHF, if you were in a major market, tops 8-10 stations total, & many were off the air by midnight! Test pattern time!
I remember all of that. For a while I was in a place in the country where the phone was on a party line and we could get 1 TV channel. Sometimes. But I was young, partying with my friends, and I had a stereo, so I didn't care.