There's nothing about Fred Smith's tone on that first Television album that makes me think it involved anything more exotic than a bog-stock Fender Precision Bass into a generic DI and split into an Ampeg B15 fliptop or Fender Bassman 50 amp, probably mic'd with an Electro-Voice RE20 or Sennheiser MD421 ...iow, practically a clichéd recipe for rock'n'roll bass tone in the 1970s
...not that there's anything wrong with that.