Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television

Preface

Preface T he number of books, articles and reports written on cable television is well beyond anyone’s count.1 Scholars, lawyers, engineers and journalists began a producing a torrent of paper on cable in the early and mid-1960s. Voluminous governmental reports date back to the late 1950s. The material covers every manner of cable-related issue from pressing policy and financial questions, to problems in technology, law, culture and international relations. Given the massive literature of cable television, it is reasonable to wonder why another text on the topic is necessary. This book is, in part, the natural product of the author’s own curiosity , both about the development of cable television and about the larger issue of the evolution of communications technology in society. The book also is a response to a surprising gap in the literature. Despite the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of studies, articles and books that have been written on cable, there have been few attempts to write a full history of the industry. Because of the nature of cable television and its role in pushing forward the horizon of communications, much of what has been written has dealt with cable television’s future, how its development might impact existing telecommunications systems, the political process or even social norms and values. Far fewer works have examined cable’s past. The earliest book on the development of cable appears to have been published in 1972 by Mary Alice Mayer Phillips. CATV: A History of viii / Preface Community Antenna Television2 was the product of Phillips’ masters’ thesis and for many years was the only book on the early history of community antenna TV. It was the source of information for numerous subsequent published descriptions and offers a good description of several of the early systems and the major legal problems that confronted CATV in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1980, cable engineer Kenneth Easton published a book on the development of cable in Canada. That work, Thirty Years in Cable TV, drew from his personal experience in the industry and included accounts of some of the first work with community antenna systems in Great Britain.3 An updated version of the book was released in 2000.4 Also in 2000, pioneering cable engineer and consultant Archer Taylor published a book on the early engineering aspects of cable TV. Taylor’s History Between Their Ears was the culmination of a special program of oral histories with cable engineers conducted by the National Cable Television Center and Museum.5 The early 2000s brought a small surge in book publishing on specific aspects of cable development in the 1980s and 1990s, many of them featuring the industry’s leading personalities. Such works included profiles or biographies of members of the cable pantheon, including John Malone,6 Ralph and Brian Roberts,7 and Ted Turner.8 Because of their focus on a given industry figure or time period, these books typically provide less information on the earliest days of cable or the wider industry history. A number of more general texts on cable television, both scholarly and popular, have been written over the past several decades. While looking at a wide range of cable topics—technology, economics, policy and social impact—their treatment of cable history usually is relegated to a chapter or only a few pages.9 Most typical in the literature is a brief discussion of cable’s overall development, generally as it relates to the specific subject of the book or article, such as the regulation of cable,10 its social or economic implications,11 the rise of a prominent industry figure,12 or general reviews of cable and broadcasting.13 The best, perhaps the only, contemporary work to examine the full scope of cable TV history is Thomas Southwick’s Distant Signals, published in 1999.14 Southwick was a founder of CableWorld magazine and reported on the industry for many years. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the business, CableWorld published a series of historical retrospectives by Southwick, adding them as supplements to the magazine throughout 1998. The detailed and engaging collection subsequently was printed as a full text and provides a rich and sometimes personal narrative on the rise of the industry. Southwick’s work is the exception rather than the rule, however, and with most of the population of the United States watching cable television, or programming that derives from the cable industry, there is arguably great room for additional...