Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television

2: Pioneering Efforts (1930s–1952)

2 Pioneering Efforts (1930s–1952) We started with three channels, then went to five, then to seven and then we went to thirteen. I remember when we went to seven channels. There was no doubt in our mind that was all we were ever going to need. I mean, who wants more than seven? —Cable Pioneer, Milton Shapp1 T he young man was focused and busy. He was clinging to the top of a power pole in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, on a sunny autumn day, working on the coaxial line for the community aerial that the Shen-Heights TV Association was running through town. He was new with the small company, just learning the tricky business of connecting cables, and he didn’t need unnecessary interruptions. He was a bit frustrated , therefore, when a couple from the neighborhood began shouting at him from the street below. They were spirited and didn’t look as if they would go away soon. His initial thought was that they were complaining about something, or perhaps just curious about his activities. In fact, turning his attention away from his work and toward the vocal pair, he quickly discovered the focus of their interest. It was the cable. How quickly, they asked, could he get the TV line into their home? He tried to explain that the company was installing service as quickly as it could. The couple was insistent, however. Couldn’t he get them TV now? When he tried politely to disengage, they asked if perhaps they could pay him a little extra to run a line into their house; he wouldn’t need to tell anyone. It was clear to the young man that they were serious about their desire for television. And he would soon discover that they were not alone. Similar scenes unfolded across town in the next few months, and across the nation over the next few years. In various forms it would become a common story told by CATV pioneers years later. People would accost CATV installers as they worked, even, in some anecdotes, chasing CATV 38 / Chapter 2 trucks down the street. The offer of a little extra money under the table to get moved up on the installation schedule was not at all unheard of.2 Embedded within the tales, and those like it, are several deeper points about the evolution of cable television. In the first instance, the demand was substantial, but, importantly, it was not demand for CATV, it was demand for television. Driving adoption of cable through 50-plus years has been a seemingly insatiably hunger for television. CATV has been only one method for satisfying that hunger, albeit an important one. Many different types of technological solutions have been attempted over the years to perform the function of delivering video. In the evolutionary metaphor, CATV was one of the more successful forms; many others have faded into historical obscurity. It is additionally important to note that the Shenandoah couple would never have been standing on that street corner shouting up at the CATV installer if a reasonable broadcast signal had been available to them in 1953. CATV was not simply about demand, it was also about supply, or rather, the lack thereof. Television, at least until the 1990s, had been conceived of primarily as a broadcast technology. But despite public appetite, the supply of broadcast television, especially in the early 1950s, was severely limited, and it was this key condition that helped give the CATV industry its foothold in U.S. homes. The evolution of this state of affairs and its impact on the start of cable engages the triple themes of technology, policy, and economics and is the subject of this chapter, which traces the development of television broadcasting in the United States from the 1930s to the early 1950s and considers the consequent first efforts to extend the broadcast signal via local coaxial cable. Setting Standards: Politics and Profits For both community antenna and broadcast television, 1948 was a landmark year. In 1948 television figuratively exploded into popular consciousness. Radio and Television News hailed it as the “Year of Television.” The number of television stations tripled that year. Sales of TV sets skyrocketed, and the first attempts to develop community antenna television began. One might fairly ask the question, however, why 1948? It is widely understood that World War II stalled the introduction of television, but experimental stations had been in operation since the late 1920s. Despite the war, it...