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HBO was the first true premium cable (or "pay-cable") network as well as the first television network intended for cable distribution on a regional or national basis; however, there were notable precursors to premium cable in the pay-television industry that operated during the 1950s and 1960s (with a few systems lingering until 1980), as well ...
A cable channel (sometimes known as a cable network) is a television network available via cable television. Many of the same channels are distributed through satellite television . Alternative terms include non-broadcast channel or programming service , the latter being mainly used in legal contexts.
1940: The American Federal Communications Commission, (), holds public hearings about television; 1941: First television advertisements aired. The first official, paid television advertisement was broadcast in the United States on July 1, 1941, over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies.
While pay television systems existed as early as the late 1940s, until the early 1970s, cable television only served to distribute distant over-the-air television stations to rural areas not served by stations that are based locally. This role was reflected in the original meaning of the CATV acronym, "community antenna TV". In that decade ...
In the United States, subscription television began in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the form of encrypted analog over-the-air broadcast television which could be decrypted with special equipment. The concept rapidly expanded through the multi-channel transition and into the post-network era. [5]
PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, was in operation by October 1970; however, schedules were set by each affiliated station. In April 1970, Congress passed a law banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio, effective January 2, 1971. This season would be the last one for the traditional 3½-hour prime time schedule.
Early television evolved from the network organization of radio in the early 1940s. Three of the four networks that rose to dominance, NBC, CBS, and ABC, were corporations that were based in the business center of New York City; the fourth was the Mutual Broadcasting System, a cooperative of radio stations that, though its member stations entered television individually, never had a ...
Channel 100 was a pay television channel company run by Jeff Nathanson, Alan Greenstadt, and Elaine Paris. Also called Optical Systems, it was one of the first all pay-per-view cable TV channels. It used a box manufactured by TRW, in which a user inserted separately purchased punched plastic cards for access. In 1972, Mission Cable in San Diego ...