Satellite Tv Service

Cable Television is almost as old as broadcast television and arose because of the one major factor that limits access to broadcast TV; the signal is line of sight. If there is something substantial between the broadcast antenna and the receiving antenna, there will be no signal or so weak a signal that the picture quality is affected.

In 1948 an appliance salesman by the name of John Walson of Mahoney City, PA decided to expand his business and include televisions in his product line. Unfortunately, the surrounding mountains got in the way of the signals from the three Philadelphia television stations that were closest broadcasters. To get around this problem he erected an antenna on a local mountaintop and ran cable from the antenna to his store. With the aid of a signal booster that he built in his shop, he got good reception with which to demonstrate his new TVs. When he started to allow his customers to tap the signal from that cable the first Community Antenna Television (CATV) System was born.

In urban areas many people living in high-rise apartment buildings had similar problems with television reception, poor picture quality due to buildings between the apartment and the local TV station. To solve this problem most people ran antenna wire to a rooftop antenna. With more and more apartment dwellers doing this, downtown roof tops started to look like forests of hurricane stripped trees. Milton Shapp developed the Master Antenna Television (MATV) system to reduce the forest to a single antenna on each roof top. CATV and MATV were the early cable television systems.

By 1950 there were 70 CATV systems serving over 10,000 people. The 50s saw the technology supporting cable television become more sophisticated. The Casper, Wyoming CATV system became the first to use Microwaves (from the Denver, Colorado television stations) to receive their signals. Broad band cable converter boxes were introduced in 1958 by the Jerrold Electronics Corp.

By 1962 there were over 800 CATV systems nationwide serving over ¾ of a million people. The first CATV industry association was formed in New Jersey in 1965, the New Jersey Cable Television Association. Telephone companies started to get involved in the construction and operations side of CATV. By 1969 there were over 2200 CATV systems with over 3.5 million homes.

The 1970s saw the introduction of television programming not available over broadcast TV. First on the scene in 1972 was HBO, the first pay per TV Network. The first Superstation (WTCG. Atlanta, GA) went on nationwide distribution in 1976 followed by WGN (Chicago, IL) and WOR (New York, NY) in 1979.

By the 1980s the amount of programming delivered to Cable systems via satellite grew at an astounding pace. Networks like the Disney Channel, the Weather Channel, CNN, MTV, the Discovery Channel and many more started broadcasting programming via satellite for segments of the cable audience. By 1989 there were 79 cable networks stations being delivered to over 50 million households by local cable television system.

The 1990s brought competition from the small dish based satellite direct broadcast industry. The rise of these services and the deregulation movement later in the decade brought a new set of technological advances. Fiber-optic cable led the way to digital TV, cable modems for high speed internet access, and video on demand.

There is no telling where the cable television industry will be by 2010. One thing is for sure, people are not going to return to relying on over-the-air broadcasting for the television entertainment.