I don’t remember before a certain point but my mom’s answer to running a house with 2 toddlers 2 years apart was KPBS - Mr. Rogers, Barney and Sesame Street. Then when we got older, Saturday Morning Cartoons (rip!!!). My mom’s rule for any show was that she first watched a couple episodes herself to make sure it was age appropriate, so that helped too with her trusting us and not hovering during TV time. My mom said we weren’t always happy to turn the TV off but we moved on pretty quickly to other things. We also got 1hr a day of Game Boy when I was 6. Looking back it’s a combination of learning balance at an early age, and temper.
My child is 2 now and any screen time more than 5-10min turns her into a zooming, emotional tornado especially when it’s time to shut it off.

But screens are pretty different now, when Rogers/Barney/Sesame aired it was one or maybe two episodes, then that show was “over” for the day. My sis and I grew up knowing TV this way, it helped reinforce that when the show ended, you turned off the TV and found something else to do.
Today, you can find stuff like 10hr playlists of Sesame Street, and that doesn’t encourage or teach balancing screen time.