In this paper, we identify the effect of preschool exposure to television on adolescent cognitive skills by exploiting variation in the timing of television’s introduction to . cities. 2 Most cities first received television between the early 1940s and the mid- 1950s. The exact timing was affected by a number of exogenous events, most notably a four-year freeze on licensing prompted by problems with the allocation of broadcast spectrum across cities. Once it was introduced, television was adopted rapidly by fami- lies with children. Survey evidence suggests that young children who had television in their homes during this period watched as much as three and a half hours per day, and.
