Early printed circuits were CRAP. Brittle paper-based phenolic material, and the foil would fall off as soon as you touched it with a soldering iron. The large mass and high heat output of tube era components took their toll as well, causing the boards to crack and delaminate.
Lack of printed circuits was used as a selling point by some manufacturers (particularly Zenith), well after the initial "teething problems" were solved, and PC boards started to mature. Many of Zenith's "hand crafted" TV chassis were actually wave soldered, though. The components were mounted on the underside of the chassis as usual, but the leads were inserted into rows of insulated metal "spikes" that stuck out the top of the chassis. Once all the components were stuck into place, the chassis was inverted and run through a wave solder bath to secure the component leads to the metal spikes. The exposed metal connections then did double duty as test points for the serviceman...