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| ▲ | afavour 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > point of paying for cable instead of getting TV for free via broadcast was no ads No, the point of paying for cable was to get more TV. Most cable stations have always had ads. You're probably thinking of HBO, which is a tiny subset of overall cable output. |
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| ▲ | LocalH 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The original point of cable was Community Antenna TV, where you'd get a much better quality signal (and often even additional out-of-market but nearby channels). Then broadcasters decided to go into specifically seeking nationwide coverage (Ted Turner was a pioneer in this area). They also decided, due to the sports leagues, that cable should only deliver local stations in the same market as your location through blackouts (through my childhood I went from getting three ABC affiliates and two CBS affiliates, to one of each). It became unprofitable to manage blacking out the out-of-market station any time they were both running network or sports programming, so the out-of-market stations were generally removed (I also wouldn't be surprised if negotiations for retransmission consent included terms preventing carriage of out-of-market stations). |
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| ▲ | neaden 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I don't think there was a time Cable didn't have ads, certain channels like HBO yeah, but never cable as a whole. The attraction was just having way more content. |
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| ▲ | stonemetal12 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In the 1950s when Cable started in the US, there were no Cable channels. Cable was literally renting a pipe to a big antenna instead of your own small antenna in your house, so you got broadcast with better signal strength. The first Cable channel was HBO. The second was TBS, it had ads from the beginning. |
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