TV programming was not free back in the day. You stilled paid for it with the gasoline you bought, the laundry detergent you bought, and anything else you bought. The price of the product was higher because the advertising was factored into it.
Who paid for program? The advertisers! Who paid the advertising agencies to create those TV ads? The product manufacturers. How did the manufacturers pay for those ads? By adding it to the cost of the manufacture of the product(s) which you and I paid for.
See?
Plus, you have to pay for electricity to power the darn thing.
There’s still no thing as a free lunch. Never has been, never will be.
So tell us, since you clearly know so much. I wasn’t there or anywhere when the Honeymooners was on prime TV, that as you insist wasn’t free, because as you wholly original thought informs us “there is no free lunch”. If someone was there in 1955, owned a TV, so let’s subtract the price of the TV set from the equation, but did not watch it, then would he find additional cash in this pocket, because TV was not free? And let us say that he used generic laundry detergent which didn’t advertise, or made his own, didn’t smoke cigarettes, etc, would The Honeymooners not be free for him? We’ve got to carry our Captain Obvious philosophical treatise to their logical conclusion. Yes, TV was free in 1955, and everyone already understands that advertising paid for it, and that GASP! TV sets cost money. The broadcasts over the air were still free to receive.