I looked through tonight’s live TV schedule while writing the first paragraph, and it’s amazing both how many options there are and how few I’m even remotely interested in watching. — Dan

Today is Thursday, October 9, 2025, and if you’re in the United States this evening, there’s plenty to do — even from your couch. Thanks to the magic of television, we can watch a football game, two Major League Baseball playoff games, lots of different cable news programs, a bunch of reruns in syndication, and a whole lot more. And what’s even more amazing is that there’s nothing particularly special about this date in television history — it’s just a regular Thursday.

But if you were in Iceland before October 1, 1987, none of the above would be true. Because on Thursdays in Iceland at the time, there was no television.

(I’ll leave aside whether that’s a good thing.)

Television became a household norm shortly after it was invented — the allure of being able to watch the news and get high-quality entertainment from the comfort of your home was too much for most to pass up on. That was as true for Icelanders as it was for anyone else. But in the early days of TV history, TV didn’t exist much, if at all, in Iceland. Being rather remote, the small island nation didn’t pick up TV signals from abroad, and until the 1950s, there weren’t any local broadcasters. That changed when the U.S. military, in partnership with Icelandic officials, reopened an old World War II naval base at Keflavik International Airport in the southwest of Iceland. (Here’s a map.) The Americans stationed there were used to TV, so the military began broadcasting English-language programming — and that programming was able to be watched by Icelanders with TV in nearby Reykjavik. Icelanders became increasingly interested in having locally-produced TV shows (and in Icelandic). The government explored the possibility and, in 1966, launched RÚV, a public broadcasting station.

But RÚV wasn’t immediately a 24/7, 365-day a year broadcaster — hardly. For the first year, most likely for budgetary reasons, RÚV only offered programming on Wednesdays and Fridays. And when RÚV hit its one-year anniversary, it expanded dramatically, but not fully. Thursdays remained TV-free.

The reason was a mix of low demand combined with an effort to stave off couch potato-ness. While much of the world had adopted a culture of TV dinners, allowing families to gather around the tube while eating their evening meal, Icelanders took the opposite approach — per Wikipedia’s editors, “Icelandic viewers wouldn't watch television during traditional dinner time, and that the Thursday break was justified due to the social norms at the time; had there been any television broadcasts on Thursdays at the time, it would have meant insufficient financing and staffing that wouldn't justify such broadcasts.” Further, per Smithsonian, the Icelandic government didn’t want people to eschew going outside or seeing friends in favor of watching TV: “the ban was in place so residents would get out and socialize instead of staring at a box.” To further these efforts, RÚV also stopped broadcasting for the entire month of July — the whole station got the month off, saving the broadcaster on a lot of costs and giving Icelanders more incentive to enjoy the warm summer month. While the rest of the world was watching Star Trek, the Olympics, and giving MTV a try, Icelandic viewers were, well, not viewing.

These TV-free periods lasted until the 1980s. Public pressure for year-round and everyday TV mounted, and in 1983, RÚV finally began broadcasting in July. It took a few years more, until 1987, before RÚV brought programming to its airwaves on Thursdays. By then, the Thursday-free TV had become part of the culture — through risqué humor. As one Icelandic blog notes, “many Icelanders born before 1987 joke that they were most likely conceived on a Thursday.”

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Today’s Bonus fact: Wild polar bears aren’t allowed in Iceland, and violently so. Despite Iceland’s name, it’s not all that icy there, and polar bears aren’t native to the island. Rarely, one will get caught on a chunk of ice from Greenland and float all the way to Iceland — and when that happens, it’s a big problem. The long trip isn’t a pleasant one and the bear will almost certainly will be impossible to manage. Per the BBC, “it is national policy to kill polar bears on sight as they are inevitably hungry after their sea voyage, and a danger to residents and livestock.” Efforts to potentially subdue the animals have been rejected as impractical — as one expert told a local newspaper (as shared by the BBC), “These are dangerous animals, not some cute teddy bear.”

From the Archives: Why Harriet and Duncan Weren't Allowed in Iceland: The people are fine, but their names are not.

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And thanks! — Dan