Why is there no channel 1?

It turns out there was a Channel One once upon a time--in 1945, to be precise, when the Federal Communications Commission first allocated broadcast television frequencies.

Later, however, the FCC repented its generosity and decided that TV was hogging too much of the broadcast spectrum. (Each TV channel requires a bandwidth 600 times as wide as an individual radio station does.) So the Channel One band (44 to 50 MHz) was reassigned for use by people with mobile radios.