Broadcast (i.e. using radio waves)?

Or cable? (distributed by fiber or by coaxial cable)?

@elbanditoroso Both.

I live in the Los Angeles area, and my TV provider carries about 1,800 channels.

The US has about 5% of the world’s population, but probably has the highest concentration of TV viewers.

Based on that, I’d say there are about 30,000 TV stations in the world.

Well this only accounts for broadcast stations, and some of the info may be out of date, but here you go.

Wow, the Russians like their TV, whereas India doesn’t have that many, relatively speaking.

Well Russian TV also has a lot of land area (6.5 million square miles) to cover. Broadcast stations’ signals only carry so far, so it makes sense that there would be a shit-ton of stations to cover that area (probably with varying degrees of localized content).