The Media Juggernaut that is Cable TV

When we think of Cable TV, we generally think of the following: big networks such as CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX, if we have more HBOs than our neighbor, how the last season of GOT ended, or how much is all of this gonna cost me. To fully understand how Cable TV took off and became the industry it is, we need to go back to the beginning. Cable TV started back in 1948 in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Arkansas. By 1952, there were about 14,000 cable subscriptions across the nation. That number grew to around 850,000 subscriptions by the 1960s. In 1972, HBO became the first pay network, meaning that you could have 5 HBOs, 3 HBOs, or no HBOs depending on how much you are paying.

Also in 1972, the FCC began regulation on cable. The Cable Act of 1984 helped the industry grow even more. Today, we have around 800 programing networks following the advent of HDTV in the early 2000s. People can watch their shows whenever they want now with DVR, which allows them to record episodes that they may miss and watch them later, with the added bonus of being able to skip the commercials. Video on Demand allows the user to do this also, however they may not be able to skip commercials.

Cable has became a major source of entertainment today. The most watched sporting event every year, the Super Bowl, is cycled between NBC, CBS, and ABC every year, with companies competing for 30 second commercial slots by bidding millions of dollars. However, with as popular as cable is in today's world, streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are becoming more mainstream. Subscribers can watch shows or movies wherever they want, whenever they want.

https://www.calcable.org/learn/history-of-cable/

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/makeemlaugh/featured/history-cable-television/33/

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