In 2019 Jared Diamond observed in his “Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change” as “for that political polarization of American society as a whole, one explanation frequently suggested is niche information”. And he explained: “when I was a teenager, cable TV didn’t exist; the first TV program of any sort didn’t come to my city of Boston until 1948; and for years thereafter, we Americans got our news from just three big TV networks, three major weekly newsmagazines, and newspapers.