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It's possible that I invented this and it doesn't really exist.

What I remember: one character is proudly showing off facets of their dystopia. They say that they've successfully reduced the number of TV channels to [some small number] and the goal is to soon reduce it to three, with an ultimate goal of only one.

I thought it was Nineteen Eighty-four, but my Google-foo has been inadequate to locate the scene. Other prime candidates are the major dystopias: Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World. I most likely encountered it (if I didn't invent it in a dream) in a book during my school days, a little over a decade ago.

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    Until the 1980s, most of the UK only had three channels
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 19, 2022 at 14:59
  • 2
    This sounds very strongly like 1984 - "The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final shape—the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050"
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 19, 2022 at 15:05
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    @Valorum Similar for Germany. There were three publicly operated channels. The first is a joint channel by the regional public radio broadcasters, which to this day calls itself "Das Erste", "The First (program)". The second was started in the 60s and is still called ZDF - "Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen", "Second German TV". And then there was one regional channel for each area, operated by the aforementioned radio broadcasters. Those were collectively called "Die Dritten", "The Thirds". Only in 1981 the highest German court ruled that private channels were legal, and 1984 the first one started.
    – Henning Kockerbeck
    Commented Feb 19, 2022 at 17:09
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    Australia in the 1970s?
    – Dale M
    Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 4:05
  • 1
    The past a generation or two ago.
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 18:59

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