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According to Murray Bolen in his book The Fundamentals of Television, published in 1950, it depended on what level of service you were going to provide, which in effect meant how much original programming you were going to do. He gives estimates for several different levels of service, and they run from about $140,000 to $425,000. The hardware costs are based on the average of the two largest suppliers at the time (he doesn't name them, but presumably RCA was one), and labour estimates are based on the experience of stations on the air at the time. He specifically leaves out, however, the purchase of the real estate, the payment of royalties for the programming, and a few other things.
He gives a very detailed breakdown of the costs, which is too long to quote here; let me see if I can extract the relevant pages and send them along. Or, if you like, I believe the entire book is in pdf format on earlytelevision.org.
Hope this helps.
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