The original TV Dinner sold for 98 cents in 1954 and had a first production estimate 5,000 dinners for the first year. Swanson ended up selling more than 10 million of the dinners the first year they were in production.
In 1962, Swanson stopped calling these frozen dinners "TV Dinners," and several other companies had entered the market. The name, however, has stuck. Modern day TV dinners tend to come in microwave-safe containers, and also tend to have a larger selection of dinner types. These dinners can be purchased at almost every supermarket, and several companies still sell them for about $1.
TV Dinners were later celebrated in a song of the same name by ZZ Top on their album Eliminator.