Watch TV from the 90s and earlier

Why the static between changing channels. Analog TVs would change channels instantly.

In my experience, it was fairly common for there to be (as an example) a channel 3 and a channel 5 but no 4, so if you were flipping through the channels on certain TV's you'd see static.

Except here, there is static before the content appears on the channel. Which is not the same as stumbling upon an empty channel.

Very old TV's did not have memorized channels, and so you had to tune to find the next channel, which would give you a progression to static and back.

Then TV had a memory for the channel frequency. It would switch instantaneously the video. So fast that sometimes you could see the first frame in black and white. Then color info would come (color TV is atop of black and white and spread over frames if I recall). Then mono sound would come in. Then stereo (like color, the stereo signal is an augmentation). Still all of that faster than any modern technology.

Then came digital TVs (still receiving analog TV signal) which could have a second or two of digital lag during channel change, but it wouldn't display static, simply a blank (dark) screen.

By the 90s everyone in the Northerhn hemisphere got a decent TV with instant tuning. Once you tuned the channel and set it up to a button on the remote or the TV front panel, things went as fast as Linux switching TTY's todays. No joke.

Yes, I remember well when in 1990 they went door to door handing out brand new TVs...

Ahem. In the 80s I remember struggling with a set my grandparents must have bought in the late 60s to try to watch TV. It was like holding a seance for sitcoms. I expect plenty of people were still watching TV in the 90s on sets sold in the 70s and 80s. Maybe not the majority, but I wouldn't assume "everyone" had the current goodness.