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CHAPTER TWO ■ 29 Community Antenna Television, 1948–1968 In his influential 1964 book, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan observed that “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium.” McLuhan’s statement reminds us that new media do not enter society as tabulae rasae; instead they are introduced to improve upon the functions already performed by existing media. It is only after the newer media have been in use for a while that their own unique capabilities are discovered or revealed. An especially good demonstration of this point is the historical relationship between broadcast and cable television in the United States. As I argue throughout this book, although cable television was first used to improve the function and reach of broadcast television, cable also, over time, developed its own distinguishing attributes. The present chapter shows that cable already had begun to forge its own path during its first two decades of existence. Cable’s technological predecessor was broadcast television, and by the late 1940s that medium had become a noticeable presence in the United States. At the beginning of 1948, 19 stations were operating in 12 cities, and approximately 100 more had been licensed.1 Also by that year, television programming had coalesced in the form of complete daily and weekly schedules with distinct genres and regularly scheduled programs . Four television networks were in operation at that point: NBC, CBS, DuMont, and ABC. And people with access to television had begun to watch such now-classic programs as Kraft Television Theatre, Texaco Star Theatre, Toast of the Town, and Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. Broadcast television was well on its way to becoming America’s dominant entertainment and information medium. During the 1950s and 1960s producers, sponsors, and audiences all began to develop certain expectations for the medium. By the early 1950s television had adapted most programming conventions of its corporate and technological predecessor , radio, to appeal to audiences visually as well as aurally. Fa02 -T2408 1/29/03 11:43 AM Page 29 miliar television genres, including the situation comedy and the quiz show, were in place. Production styles, such as the telefilm and proscenium styles, were becoming industry standards. And television networks were replacing radio’s single-sponsor advertising format with the “magazine ” format, in which interchangeable “spot” commercials (similar to the ads found in magazines) allow several advertisers to contribute to the production costs of a program. The 1950s also saw the rise of both telefilm (as opposed to live) program production and its complement, program syndication (both firstrun and off-network). The use of telefilm was advantageous to the networks because it allowed them to retain control of production and content while shifting the financial risk over to outside producers. Furthermore , telefilms benefited their producers since the filmed programs could be retained and rerun an indefinite number of times, generating revenues far into the future. This shelf-life was extended considerably by the introduction of videotape during the late 1950s. The degree of flexibility telefilm and videotape production techniques brought to television programming complemented the flexibility of magazine-format sponsorship . By the 1960s virtually every component of the television schedule was both interchangeable and recyclable—traits that have defined the economic fortunes of virtually every form of television since. It must be noted that the early and rapid coalescence of broadcast television owes a great deal to that medium’s ability to reach the majority of potential viewers throughout the country. It did not accomplish this alone. Operating alongside broadcast television during the 1950s and 1960s, though receiving much less fanfare, were some other new communication technologies that extended its reach. Most notable of these was community antenna television, or CATV, the retransmission medium that was to evolve into modern cable television. Many people do not even realize that cable existed before the 1970s; in fact, a number of important technological, business, regulatory, and programming developments occurred during that medium’s first two decades. By the late 1960s and early 1970s cable already had various services and capabilities that distinguished it from broadcast television. These were the remarkable result of research and experimentation within an industry operating quietly in America’s rural areas and dominated by small-town entrepreneurs. As this chapter will make apparent, familiarity with cable ’s community antenna years is essential to understanding cable programming in the modern satellite era. This chapter traces how and why sociocultural factors leading to a demand for CATV in the...

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