Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting

Chapter 1 The Moms ’n’ Pops of CATV

Chapter 1 The Moms ’n’ Pops of CATV Megan Mullen Inasmuch as the early 1950s origins of the U.S. cable television industry have been documented at all, the story tends to be one of “mom ’n’ pop” entrepreneurship. In other words, media historians—and others affiliated with the modern cable industry—readily herald the small-town inventors and businessmen who devised ways to bring the television signals of large metropolitan areas into the nation’s hinterlands. Most people enjoy hearing an “American Dream” type of story, especially when contrasted with a broadcast television industry headquartered in major cities and dominated by established corporations. There is merit in this approach to cable history. The early cable industry —better known as community antenna television (CATV)—began around 1950 in towns too small and remote for residents to receive broadcast signals using set-top (“rabbit ear”) or rooftop antennas. People across the country were well aware of television at this point, even if they lacked access to it. CATV drew from an eclectic combination of makeshift technologies that captured broadcast signals from high places (such as mountaintops ) and transmitted them to television sets in lower elevations. The pioneers of these technologies were loosely if at all affiliated with existing broadcast television interests. Most were appliance dealers wishing to sell television sets. Some were radio operators, familiar with broadcast technologies . A few were simply residents of the small, remote towns with a fascination for technology. Some had backgrounds in consumer electronics , and some had technical training from military service. Virtually all of the earliest cable television pioneers held strong business, civic, and family ties to their small communities. Yet explaining their operations as simple “mom ’n’ pop” ventures is an extreme oversimplification. They actually represent, in one way or an24 other, a complex industry that was in formation almost from the day the first person thought to connect a tall receiving antenna by wire to a television set. Many CATV businesses—indeed the majority, if one is counting number of systems rather than subscribers—did continue to be run locally and for relatively little profit well into the 1990s (with a fair number existing even today). And in many cases the operators of these systems were married couples, with the husband managing day-to-day operations and interacting with other professionals and the wife running the office and keeping the books. Yet the most forward-looking and professionally run of the very early systems tended to differ from this model—a little in some cases and a great deal in others. The leaders of the emerging CATV industry did more than simply sustain their own local businesses; they built (or helped build) other systems, developed new technologies and services, and worked through legal and policy issues at every level. These were individuals who perceived the potential of the infant industry and made the critical technological and business innovations that kept it from being a simple retransmission or utility service. Those systems that moved the industry forward represented a great deal more technical expertise and business savvy that the term “mom ’n’ pop” alone would imply. One goal of this chapter is to discuss how the earliest CATV systems in the United States were founded and developed. The other is to show how those CATV operators who chose to work together formed a cohesive industry that would grow and develop, rather than serve merely as a stopgap technology until more of the nation’s residents had better broadcast television service. Let’s begin with a look at five CATV systems that have been cited as “firsts.” The First Wave: Cable Pioneers Davidson’s Claim Probably the least known CATV“first”is the story of James Y. (“Jimmy”) Davidson of Tuckerman, Arkansas—a small town ninety miles northwest of Memphis. As a young adult in the 1930s, Davidson managed the local movie theater and in his spare time ran a radio repair business, using skills he had learned as a teenage hobbyist. Davidson served in the Navy’s Signal Corps during World War II and, in a story strikingly similar to those of The Moms ’n’ Pops of CATV 25 other community antenna pioneers, returned to Tuckerman to run an appliance store. Shortly after his return, in late 1947, Davidson found out that Memphis television station WMCT would soon be starting operations. He was disappointed that Tuckerman was...