The invention: A system for connecting households in isolated areas to common antennas to improve television reception, community antenna television was a forerunner of modern cable-television systems.
The people behind the invention:
Robert J. Tarlton, the founder of CATV in eastern Pennsylvania Ed Parsons, the founder of CATV in Oregon Ted Turner (1938- ), founder of the first cable superstation, WTBS
Growing Demand for Television
Television broadcasting in the United States began in the late 1930′s. After delays resulting from World War II, it exploded into the American public’s consciousness. The new medium relied primarily on existing broadcasting stations that quickly converted from radio to television formats. Consequently, the reception of television signals was centralized in large cities. The demand for television quickly swept across the country. Ownership of television receivers increased dramatically, and those who could not afford their own flocked to businesses, usually taverns, or to the homes of friends with sets. People in urban areas had more opportunities to view the new medium and had the advantage of more broadcasts within the range of reception. Those in outlying regions were not so fortunate, as they struggled to see fuzzy pictures and were, in some cases, unable to receive a signal at all.
The situation for outlying areas worsened in 1948, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented a ban on all new television stations while it considered how to expand the television market and how to deal with a controversy over color reception. This left areas without nearby stations in limbo, while people in areas with established stations reaped the benefits of new programming. The ban would remain in effect until 1952, when new stations came under construction across the country.
Poor reception in some areas and the FCC ban on new station construction together set the stage for the development of Community Antenna Television (CATV). CATV did not have a glamorous beginning. Late in 1949, two different men, frustrated by the slow movement of television to outlying areas, set up what would become the foundation of the multimillion-dollar cable industry.
Robert J. Tarlton was a radio salesman in Lansford, Pennsylvania, about sixty-five miles from Philadelphia. He wanted to move into television sales but lived in an area with poor reception. Together with friends, he founded Panther Valley Television and set up a master antenna in a mountain range that blocked the reception of Philadelphia-based broadcasting. For an installation fee of $125 and a fee of $3 per month, Panther Valley Television offered residents clear reception of the three Philadelphia stations via a coaxial cable wired to their homes. At the same time, Ed Parsons, of KAST radio in Astoria, Oregon, linked homes via coaxial cables to a master antenna set up to receive remote broadcasts. Both systems offered three channels, the major network affiliates, to subscribers. By 1952, when the FCC ban was lifted, some seventy CATV systems provided small and rural communities with the wonders of television. That same year, the National Cable Television Association was formed to represent the interests of the young industry.
Early systems could carry only one to three channels. In 1953, CATV began to use microwave relays, which could import distant signals to add more variety and pushed system capability to twelve channels. A system of towers began sprouting up across the country. These towers could relay a television signal from a powerful originating station to each cable system’s main antenna. This further opened the reception available to subscribers.
Pay Television
The notion of pay television also began at this time. In 1951, the FCC authorized a test of Zenith Radio Corporation’s Phonevision in Chicago. Scrambled images could be sent as electronic impulses over telephone lines, then unscrambled by devices placed in subscribers’ homes. Subscribers could order a film over the telephone for a minimal cost, usually $1. Advertisers for the system promoted the idea of films for the “sick, aged, and sitterless.” This early test was a forerunner of the premium, or pay, channels of later decades.
Network opposition to CATV came in the late 1950′s. RCA chairman David Sarnoff warned against a pay television system that could soon fall under government regulation, as in the case of utilities. In April, 1959, the FCC found no basis for asserting jurisdiction or authority over CATV. This left the industry open to tremendous growth.
By 1960, the industry included 640 systems with 700,000 subscribers. Ten years later, 2,490 systems were in operation, serving more than 4.5 million households. This accelerated growth came at a price. In April, 1965, the FCC reversed itself and asserted authority over microwave-fed CATV. A year later, the entire cable system came under FCC control. The FCC quickly restricted the use of distant signals in the largest hundred markets.
The FCC movement to control cable systems stemmed from the agency’s desire to balance the television market. From the onset of television broadcasting, the FCC strived to maintain a balanced programming schedule. The goal was to create local markets in which local affiliate stations prospered from advertising and other community support and would not be unduly harmed by competition from larger metropolitan stations. In addition, growth of the industry ideally was to be uniform, with large and small cities receiving equal consideration. Cable systems, particularly those that could receive distant signals via microwave relay, upset the balance. For example, a small Ohio town could receive New York channels as well as Chicago channels via cable, as opposed to receiving only the channels from one city.
The balance was further upset with the creation of a new communications satellite, COMSAT, in 1963. This technology allowed a signal to be sent to the satellite, retransmitted back to Earth, and then picked up by a receiving station. This further increased the range of cable offerings and moved the transmission of television signals to a national scale, as microwave-relayed transmissions worked best in a regional scope. These two factors led the FCC to freeze the cable industry from new development and construction in December, 1968. After 1972, when the cable freeze was lifted, the greatest impact of CATV would be felt.
Ted Turner
“The whole idea of grand things always turned me on,” Ted Turner said in a 1978 Playboy magazine interview. Irrepressible, tenacious, and flamboyant, Turner was groomed from childhood for grandness.
Born Robert Edward Turner III in 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was raised by a harsh, demanding father who sent him to military preparatory schools and insisted he study business at Brown University instead of attending the U.S. Naval Acad-
emy, as the son wanted. Known as “Terrible Ted” in school for his high-energy, maverick ways, he became an champion debater, expert sailor, and natural leader. When the Turner Advertising Company failed in 1960, and his father committed suicide, young Turner took it over and parlayed it into an empire, acquiring or creating television stations and revolutionizing how they were broadcast to Americans.
From then on he acquired, innovated, and, often, shocked. He bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team and Hawks basketball team, often angering sports executives with his recruiting methods, earning the
nicknames “Mouth of the South” and “Captain Outrageous” for his assertiveness. He won the prestigious America’s Cup in 1977 at the helm of the yacht Courageous. He bought Metro-Golden-Mayer/United Artists and incensed movie purists by having black-and-white classics “colorized.” In 1995 he concluded a $7.5 billion merger of Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner and set about an insult-slinging business war with another media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch. Meanwhile, he went through three marriages, the last to movie star Jane Fonda, and became the largest private landholder in the nation, with luxury homes in six states.
However, Turner’s life was not all acquisition. He started a charitable foundation and sponsored the Olympics-like Goodwill Games between the United States and the Soviet Union to improve relations, for which Time magazine named him its man of the year in 1991. However, Turner’s grandest shocker came in 1997 when he promised to donate $1 billion—$100 million each year for a decade—to the United Nations to help in feeding the poor, resettling refugees, and eradicating land mines. And he publicly challenged other super-rich people to use their vast wealth similarly.
Impact
The founding of cable television had a two-tier effect on the American public. The immediate impact of CATV was the opening of television to areas cut off from network broadcasting as a result of distance or topographical obstructions. Cable brought television to those who would have otherwise missed the early years of the medium.
As technology furthered the capabilities of the industry, a second impact emerged. Along with the 1972 lifting of the ban on cable expansion, the FCC established strict guidelines for the advancement of the industry. Issuing a 500-page blueprint for the expansion of cable, the FCC included limits on the use of imported distant signals, required the blacking out of some specific programs (films and serials, for example), and limited pay cable to films that were more than two years old and to sports.
Another component of the guidelines required all systems that went into operation after March, 1972 (and all systems by March, 1977), to provide public access channels for education and local government. In addition, channels were to be made available for lease. These access channels opened information to subscribers that would not normally be available. Local governments and school boards began to broadcast meetings, and even high school athletics soon appeared via public access channels. These channels also provided space to local educational institutions for home-based courses in a variety of disciplines.
Cable Communications Policy Act
Further FCC involvement came in the 1984 Cable Communications Policy Act, which deregulated the industry and opened the door for more expansion. This act removed local control over cable service rates and virtually made monopolies out of local providers by limiting competition. The late 1980′s brought a new technology, fiber optics, which promised to further advance the industry by increasing the quality of cable services and channel availability.
One area of the cable industry, pay television, took off in the 1970′s and early 1980′s. The first major pay channel was developed
by the media giant Time-Life. It inaugurated Home Box Office (HBO) in 1975 as the first national satellite interconnected network. Early HBO programming primarily featured films but included no films less than two years old (meeting the 1972 FCC guidelines), no serials, and no advertisements. Other premium movie channels followed, including Showtime, Cinemax, and The Movie Channel. By the late 1970′s, cable systems offered multiple premium channels to their subscribers.
Superstations were another component of the cable industry that boomed in the 1970′s and 1980′s. The first, WTBS, was owned and operated by Ted Turner and broadcast from Atlanta, Georgia. It emphasized films and reruns of old television series. Cable systems that broadcast WTBS were asked to allocate the signal to channel 17, thus creating uniformity across the country for the superstation. Chicago’s WGN and New York City’s WOR soon followed, gaining access to homes across the nation via cable. Both these superstations emphasized sporting events in the early years and expanded to include films and other entertainment in the 1980′s.
Both pay channels and superstations transmitted via satellites (WTBS leased space from RCA, for example) and were picked up by cable systems across the country. Other stations with broadcasts intended solely for the cable industry opened in the 1980′s. Ted Turner started the Cable News Network in 1980 and followed with the all-news network Headline News. He added another channel with the Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1988. Other 1980′s additions included The Disney Channel, ESPN, The Entertainment Channel, The Discovery Channel, and Lifetime. The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) enhanced the cable industry’s presence in Washington, D.C., by broadcasting sessions of the House of Representatives.
Specialized networks for particular audiences also developed. Music Television (MTV), featuring songs played along with video sequences, premiered in 1981. Nickelodeon, a children’s channel, and VH-1, a music channel aimed at baby boomers rather than MTV’s teenage audience, reflected the movement toward specialization. Other specialized channels, such as the Sci-Fi Channel and the Comedy Channel, went even further in targeting specific audiences.
Cable and the Public
The impact on the American public was tremendous. Information and entertainment became available around the clock. Cable provided a new level of service, information, and entertainment unavailable to nonsubscribers. One phenomenon that exploded in the late 1980′s was home shopping. Via The Home Shopping Club and QVC, two shopping channels offered through cable television, the American public could order a full range of products. Everything from jewelry to tools and home cleaning supplies to clothing and electronics was available to anyone with a credit card. Americans could now go shopping from home.
The cable industry was not without its competitors and critics. In the 1980′s, the videocassette recorder (VCR) opened the viewing market. Prerecorded cassettes of recent film releases as well as classics were made available for purchase or for a small rental fee. National chains of video rental outlets, such as Blockbuster Video and Video Towne, offered thousands of titles for rent. Libraries also began to stock films. This created competition for the cable industry, in particular the premium movie channels. To combat this competition, channels began to offer original productions unavailable on videocassette. The combined effect of the cable industry and the videocassette market was devastating to the motion picture industry. The wide variety of programming available at home encouraged the American public, especially baby boomers with children, to stay home and watch cable or rented films instead of going to theaters.
Critics of the cable industry seized on the violence, sexual content, and graphic language found in some of cable’s offerings. One parent responded by developing a lockout device that could make certain channels unavailable to children. Some premium channels developed an after-hours programming schedule that aired adult-theme programming only late at night. Another criticism stemmed from the repetition common on pay channels. As a result of the limited supply of and large demand for films, pay channels were forced to repeat programs several times within a month and to rebroadcast films that were several years old. This led consumers to question the value of the additional monthly fee paid for such channels. To combat the problem, premium channels increased efforts aimed at original production and added more films that had not been box-office hits.
By the early 1990′s, as some eleven thousand cable systems were serving 56.2 million subscribers, a new cry for regulation began. Debates over services and increasingly high rates led the FCC and Congress to investigate the industry, opening the door for new guidelines on the cable industry. The non-cable networks—American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and newcomer Fox—stressed their concerns about the cable industry. These networks provided free programming, and cable systems profited from inclusion of network programming. Television industry representatives expressed the opinion that cable providers should pay for the privilege of retransmitting network broadcasts.
The impact on cable’s subscribers, especially concerning monthly cable rates, came under heavy debate in public and government forums. The administration in Washington, D.C., expressed concern that cable rates had risen too quickly and for no obvious reason other than profit-seeking by what were essentially monopolistic local cable systems. What was clear was that the cable industry had transformed the television experience and was going to remain a powerful force within the medium. Regulators and television industry leaders were left to determine how to maintain an equitable coexistence within the medium.
See also Color television; Communications satellite; Fiber-optics; Telephone switching; Television.
