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History of Cable TV

The Early Days
In the 1940's and 1950's Cable television originated in the United States.  Cable television, started out as a service to relay TV stations to people that could not receive TV with an antenna thus the name Community Antenna Television or CATV came into existence. There are several claims to being the first CATV system.  Arkansas, Oregon and Pennsylvania all had system start about the same time. One of the first was in the mountains of Pennsylvania in the late 1940's. During this time, there were only a few television stations, located mostly in larger cities like Philadelphia.  People who didn't live in a city, or in a location where signals could be received easily, were unable to see television.  John Walson, an appliance store owner in the small town of Mahanoy City, had difficulty selling television sets to local residents because reception in the area was so poor.  The problem was his location.  The town was in a valley and nearly 90 air miles from the Philadelphia television transmitters.  The signal could not pass through the mountains, and clear reception was virtually impossible, except on the ridges outside of town.  Mr. Walson put a TV antenna on top a large utility pole on top of the nearby mountain.  Television signals were received, and transported over twin lead antenna wire down to his store.  Once people saw the TV picture, interest in buying a TV set soared, but he had to get the signal to his TV set buyers.  It became his responsibility to improve the picture quality by using coaxial cable and self manufactured "boosters" (amplifiers) to bring CATV to the homes of customers who bought television sets.  So, one of the first cable television systems was born in June 1948.

In the early 1950's television was still fairly new.  The FCC had finally after 3 years of freezing new TV station construction, assigned a nationwide television broadcasting plan and new stations were starting up rapidly.  Though it had not yet become popular, city department stores displayed many different models of TV's for sale.  With the sale of TV sets also came the sale of TV antennas.  Each home or apartment resident had his or her own television antenna and the roofs of some large apartment complexes were beginning to resemble forests of TV antennas.

Milton Jerrold Shapp, who later became governor of Pennsylvania, developed a system so that one master antenna (MATV) could be used for all televisions in the building.  His secret: the coaxial cable and signal boosters capable of carrying multiple signals at once.  At about the same time in the nearby town of Lansford, another appliance salesman named Robert (Bob) Tarlton, experienced the same problem as Mr. Walson.  He read about Mr. Shapp's new system and thought if it worked for apartment houses and department stores, it could work for his own town as well.  Cable television in a form similar to today was born when he wired Lansford using coaxial cable and commercially manufactured boosters.  Among the early pioneers were entrepreneurs like Bill Daniels, Martin Malarkey and Jack Kent Cooke.

By 1952, 70 "cable" systems served 14,000 subscribers nationwide.


Cable Develops
With the help of Milton Shapp's innovation, cable television spread quickly throughout the country to remote and rural areas far from broadcast origination in cities.  For many years, cable was simply a way to improve reception so people could see network broadcasts. It served as the "community's antenna".  It didn't stay that way for long.  In the late 1950's cable operators began to take advantage of microwave and other technologies to pick up broadcast signals from stations hundreds of miles away.  The ability to "import" signals from distant stations changed the focus of the cable television industry, from CATV to one providing new programming choices.

The cable systems that only had three channels (one for each network) soon had seven or more channels as operators imported programs from independent stations hundreds of miles away. Because of the variety it offered viewers, cable became more and more attractive and quickly moved into cities as people wanted more viewing choice.

By 1962, almost 800 cable systems serving, some 850,000 subscribers, were in business.  Cox, TelePrompTer and Westinghouse were the leaders.  Many were expanding into multiple cities.  Thus began the MSO, multiple system operator.

The growth of cable by importing distant stations caused concern among many local broadcasters who did not like the competition cable was creating for them so the asked the Government to stop cable from importing signals.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) responded and placed restrictions on the ability of cable systems to import signals from distant stations.  This "freeze" had an effect on the cable industry that lasted until 1972 when the FCC started to relax its signal importation rule.

The biggest event since cable began, and what many say is responsible for the rapid growth in the cable industry during the last two decades, was the development of satellite and pay TV programming.


Pay Services and Satellite
Pay television was launched in November, 1972 when Service Electric offered Home Box Office or HBO, over its cable system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  This represented the first successful pay cable service in the nation.  Despite the fact that HBO was only viewed by a few hundred people that first night, it has gone on to become the world's largest pay cable service.  With the success of HBO many other programming services followed.

HBO was the first programming service to use a satellite to distribute its programming.  The way it works is a signal is beamed from earth to a satellite in a stationary orbit some 22,300 miles over the equator and bounced back to receivers on earth.

The second service to use the satellite was a local television station in Atlanta that broadcast primarily sports and classic movies.  The station, owned by R.E. "Ted" Turner, was distributed by satellite to cable systems nationwide, and soon became known as the first "superstation," WTBS.

By distributing on satellite, a stations signal is available to cable operators throughout North America.  Because it is so widely available, it had a huge advantage over earth-bound, microwave distributed services.  Today almost all cable broadcasting is distributed by satellite.

By the end of the 1970's cables growth had resumed and nearly 16 million households were cable subscribers.


The 1980s
The 1984 Cable Act established a more favorable regulatory framework for the industry, stimulating investment in cable plant and programming on an unprecedented level.

Deregulation provided by the 1984 Act had a strong positive effect on the rapid growth of cable services.  From 1984 through 1992, the industry spent more than $15 billion on the wiring of America, and billions more on program development.  This was the largest private construction project since World War II.

Satellite delivery, combined with the federal governments relaxation of cable's restrictive regulatory structure, allowed the cable industry to become a major force in providing high quality video entertainment and information to consumers.  By the end of the 1980's, nearly 53 million households subscribed to cable, and cable program networks had increased from 28 in 1980 to 79 by 1989.


The 1990s
In the late 80's and early 90's consumers began to complain about the price of cable TV and the cable companies price increases.  In 1992, Congress responded to cable price increases and other market factors with legislation that once again hampered cable growth and opened heretofore “exclusive” cable programming to other competitive distribution technologies such as “wireless cable” and the emerging direct satellite broadcast (DBS) business.

In spite of the effect of the 1992 Act, the number of satellite networks continued their explosive growth, based largely on the alternative idea of targeting programming to a specific "niche” audience.  By the end of 1995, there were 139 cable programming services available nationwide, in addition to many regional programming networks.  By the spring of 1998, the number of national cable video networks had grown to 171.

By that time, the average subscriber could choose from a wide selection of quality programming, with more than 57 percent of all subscribers receiving at least 54 channels, up from 47 in 1996.  And at the end of the decade, approximately 7 in 10 television households, more than 65 million, had opted to subscribe to cable.


Cable Today and Tomorrow
The new millennium brought with it hopes and plans for acceleration of advanced services over cable's broadband networks.  Cable companies are now offering video services that could change the way people watch television.  Among these: Internet Service, Video on Demand, Pay-Per-View on demand, and Interactive TV.

Lower cost digital set-top boxes, that started to become the norm in customer homes in the mid 1990s, proved effective in accommodating the launch of many of the new video services.  Using compression technology a cable system was able to offer up to 10 digital channels in the place of one standard analog channel.  Thus greatly increasing the channel capacity of a system.  The cable industry now provides delivery of advances such as digital services and high definition television services.  Also being introduced is reception of off-air high definition local broadcast stations as well as by cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, Discovery, Universal and ESPN.

Cable operators with upgraded two-way plant have been witnessing dramatic growth in “broadband” data.  Cable has quickly become the technology of choice for such services, outpacing rival technologies, such as digital subscriber line (DSL) service, offered by phone companies, by a margin of 2 TO 1.  Cable modem use climbed 30% in 2004 to 21.4 million lines according to a FCC report released in July 2005.  To accommodate accelerating demand, cable programmers are rapidly expanding their menu of digital cable offerings.  The 500 channel universe talked about by TCI's John Malone in the early 90's is now a reality.

As of 2005 the cable television advertising bureau estimated that
84% of All Television Homes Receive Cable Programming--about 92 million subscribers.

At less than 60 years old, cable television is still a very young industry. Nearly 92 million households currently subscribe to cable, with technological advancements allowing cable to reach hundreds of new subscribers every day.  Thanks to the work of cable industry pioneers like Mr. Walson, Mr. Tarlton and Mr. Shapp, and the foresight of HBO to deliver their signal by satellite, cable television today provides American viewers with the greatest variety in programming available.  Because programming services available to cable are delivered via satellite, millions of Americans, including you, a resident at Kansas State University, have access to:

  • 24 hour music channels
  • 24 hour sports channels
  • 24 hour movie channels
  • 24 hour news channels
  • 24 hour weather channels


...and more, including regional stations from New York, Atlanta and Chicago, children's programming, religious networks, and foreign language channels.

With the end of over the air analog broadcasting in December 2009 (Subject to change by the FCC) the cable industry will fill the void. Providing programming for the tens of millions of standard TV's still in peoples homes across the nation.

The cable industry will continue to provide standard analog programming to its subscribers while offering a wide variety of digital and other video services.

 

To Learn More about Cable TV

Contact your local library and ask if they carry any cable trade magazines, such as Broadcasting & Cable, MultiChannels News or CableVision.

See these web sites
http://www.onetvworld.org/
http://www.ncta.com/
http://cable.doit.wisc.edu/
http://www.cablecenter.org/
http://www.bcapa.com/

Information for the above article came primarily from these sites.

Your local library may also have books about cable television. If you have a specific question, email cts-cabletv@ksu.edu

 

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