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John Walson (pcta.com)The second television boom took place in the late 1940s. The Federal Communications Commission, following the explosion of television stations that arose in the 1940s, froze licenses to new stations in 1948. As a result, homes in rural locations that were outside of the reach of a television station's air signal were out of luck. What changed this was the development of Community Antenna Television.
The development is traced back to Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, which sits deep in the Lehigh River Valley, more than 90 miles away from Philadelphia. Because of its geography, the city was unable to pick up any television signals from Philadelphia, home of the closest broadcaster. A local appliance store owner, John Walson, rigged up a television antenna at the top of a nearby mountain and ran lead cabling to his store, allowing him to market televisions to the community. From there, Walson used a system of shielded cable, called coaxial cable, and signal amplifiers to distribute the signal to paying customers in Mahanoy City. The result was an increase in sales for Walson and the creation of the first cable television network in June 1948. -
A 1970-80s era Jerrold television remoteWalson's creation led to similar networks in Arkansas and Oregon. At the beginning, these networks were about providing access to rural and underserved populations. In the case of Mahanoy City, it was extending the reach of Philadelphia's television stations to a city that sits in a valley. Since then, cable television has morphed into a mechanism to deliver a range of programming, from public access to news to entertainment. - Cable customers pay providers for the packages of channels and access to them, as well as the delivery of those channels and the equipment to receive them. In return, the companies pay networks for access to their programming. For instance, cable companies pay ESPN $2.90 per subscriber to carry their channel. Due to its popularity, networks like ESPN can demand top dollar for their programming.
- Cable companies are required by law to carry local channels. In the 1997 case Turner Broadcasting v. FCC, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that cable companies must carry locally licensed television stations. Prior to the ruling, cable companies typically carried major network (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, etc.) affiliates, but smaller network (WB/CW, UPN/My Network) independent channels would often times be refused. This ruling mandated their carriage, with the caveat that the station must not be a low-powered station and must make their signal available to the company.
- In the mid-1990s, cable companies like Time Warner used the extra broadband available on its networks to provide high-speed internet. The conversion to digital cable signals freed up space over cable lines, providing more space for internet services. One of the latest innovations has been the integration of voice over internet phone service, which uses the the internet to transmit phone calls.
- The rapid growth of cable television in the 1980s led to the development of direct broadcasting satellites in the 1990s. PrimeStar entered the market in 1991, followed by DIRECTV in 1994 and Dish Network in 1996. In 2006, Verizon introduced its FIOS service, which utilizes fiber optic cable to carry cable channels in addition to telephone and high speed Internet.
