The top dial on the TV had the VHF (lower number) stations. The bottom had the UHF( higher number) stations. In spite of all those channels being available, many places only had three, maybe four that had a station in range to be received intelligibly.
AM radio and shortwave could go far beyond line-of-sight by skipping off the ionosphere, which was primarily a nighttime thing, but that wasn't really a thing with vhf (or higher) - unless it was just because there was less interference than during the day...