CBS Celebrates 75 Years Of Broadcasting On Channel 2 In New York City

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Friday marked 75 years since CBS first started broadcasting on Channel 2 in New York City.

The first broadcast on what was then known as WCBW-TV hit the air on July 1, 1941, in the middle of a heat wave. Only a few thousand homes across the Tri-State Area had TV sets at the time.

That first broadcast was a 15-minute display of famous paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The director of the Met Museum hailed television as a miracle at the time, saying it would make Rembrandt, Monet and Degas as familiar to the average home as a toaster, former CBS2 anchorman Jim Jensen recalled in a 1991 special.