In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place
Check any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
First phrase: Cable television first became available in the United States in1948.
The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
So far I’m the only one providing sources, an anecdote of when you were a kid isn’t reliable.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable. Cable exclusive channels weren’t a thing before 1970 (when there’s was 10m subscribers already) and ads on a cable exclusive channel first started in 1977 with nearly all of them having ads in the in the 80s.
7 years of commercial free cable exclusive channels that were a minority of channels available at the time. No, people weren’t paying not to see adverts and no it wasn’t the point of cable TV like you said, the point of creating cable TV was to allow people to reliably watch TV by broadcasting the signal in a way that wasn’t affected by all sorts of elements out of the control of the broadcasters.
Again, how old are you? Do you actually remember this time? I gave one anecdote, but ask literally anyone my age and they’ll say the same. You certainly know people my age, don’t take my word for it, ask them what sleepovers were like before and after cable tv became a thing. Everyone my age remembers a massive shift, especially with Showtime.
With/without cable wasn’t an easy change. Lots of people didn’t accept it easily because it seemed technically complex. That’s part of why my family was an early adopter: my dad was an aerospace engineer, so it was a no-brainier.
The televisions sold in the late 70s were not set up for cable, so you needed a cable box and to configure your tv a certain way – typically by setting one of your two dials to channel 2, 4, or I think UHF 12 (?it’s been a while, but it depended on your tv, and you’d have an auxiliary dongle, too), you had to plug a cable box into your tv (which was nowhere near as simple as now), and then maybe sacrifice a goat. I joke, but the wiring out of the back of those things wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clear ports with matching inputs, but more like in the back of old school audio speakers, but more of them.
That doesn’t sound hard, but for most people the tv was a magic box that pictures came out of. These were your grandparents, they weren’t good at technology.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable.
In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about the era of Nickelodeon and the height of Showtime/Cinemax porn. I’m talking about more than a decade before that.
Yes, by that point, cable had settled into the subscription + ad model I’m saying was the down slide. I’m talking about way before that, when it hadn’t yet devolved.
Again, I’m not making this up, and I kinda wonder what you think my motivation would be to do so, but I’m very curious how old you are and if you’re just going on things you’ve read or if you were alive for this.
Can confirm, lol. And for cable you had to have coax from the wall to the cable box, and again from the cable box to an adapter that went into one of the existing ports. Later, you plugged your cable box coax straight into the TV, but that was late 80s if I remember correctly. Waaaaay before “Skinemax”, lol.
And even then not everyone had cable. It was an added expense, and there was a LOT more going out for entertainment because it was cheap and affordable. For example, I saw The Police in 1983 for $15 general seating (still prevalent in the southeast even after The Who thing in Ohio in 1979) and I saw many shows in exactly the same way: Asia, Loverboy, even the Stones. In the 70s dance was HUGE, as were bicycles and skateboards, and then later in the 80s you had malls and bowling and mini golf and whatever blew your skirt up. Pandemic aside, this thing where everyone stays inside and never goes out is the exact opposite of how it was then, so you saved your money for what YOU wanted to do, which was rarely sit home and watch TV. In my group of friends, among a dozen of us or so, maybe two had cable in the early 80s, but that grew, especially with MTV.
As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.
. As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.
I was a weird nerd, and some of my fondest memories are helping my dad do engine work on our wood-sided station wagon (I was such a cliché) and going with him to the tv shop to pick up vacuum tubes for the tv after a loud pop and faint waft of smoke, then shimmying ass-upwards on the wall like spider man to hold the flashlight at the correct angle whilst my dad pulled the particle-board (I think, maybe cardboard) back off the television and taught me what every single part inside did.
Best time of my young life, hands down.
e: I’ve never been afraid of technology or learning things in my adult life. Thanks, dad.
(And if you’re raising your child like this, thank you. You’re helping to make good people that way.)
No, I’m talking about before the 70s when cable exclusive didn’t exist, the only “exclusives” that existed before then was signal from far away local stations that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible with regular antennas, but they were still channels available without cable in their local community. Heck, the FCC ended up forcing cable companies to carry local stations!
Also the number of subscribers might have been lower, but the number of TVs too. Cable subscribers before the 70s still represented a high enough portion of TV watchers that local stations put pressure on the FCC to regulate it.
HBO launched in 72, in 1980 there was 28 cable exclusive networks vs a multitude of local stations.
Why are you so bent about this?
Because I’m tried of seeing people who were kids or not even born back then pretend that it was better than it truly was. Facts are important and “the point of cable TV was to not have ads” isn’t a fact, it’s a lie that started from people who remember wrong (or only watched the few ads free channels because they were kids and uninterested in local TV or didn’t live it at all) when it’s extremely easy to prove the contrary. Heck, your parents would be the ones who could say considering they were the ones who decided to subscribe, not you.
However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
And it’s funny that you’re talking about “the early days” since it started in 1948 and I’m willing to bet that you weren’t born.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.
e: also
This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken placeCheck any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/the-complete-history-of-cable-tv
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.I provided a source with more sources, no it wasn’t.
Need more? There:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States
First phrase:
Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948.The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
How old are you?
I don’t need links to tell me what this was like when I vividly remember.
Yea, cable television first became available in 1948. Regular middle class families did not have cable television for a long time after that.
Mobile phone service was available in 1959. Guess how many people had it? A good friend of my family had a car phone in the mid 70s. Guess how common that was?
You can’t go by invention dates on stuff like this. You’ll be amazed at how long some things take to gain market acceptance.
I think the best one is Electric Cars, which were invented in the 1800s, before the Internal Combustion Engine.
So far I’m the only one providing sources, an anecdote of when you were a kid isn’t reliable.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable. Cable exclusive channels weren’t a thing before 1970 (when there’s was 10m subscribers already) and ads on a cable exclusive channel first started in 1977 with nearly all of them having ads in the in the 80s.
7 years of commercial free cable exclusive channels that were a minority of channels available at the time. No, people weren’t paying not to see adverts and no it wasn’t the point of cable TV like you said, the point of creating cable TV was to allow people to reliably watch TV by broadcasting the signal in a way that wasn’t affected by all sorts of elements out of the control of the broadcasters.
Why are you so bent about this?
Again, how old are you? Do you actually remember this time? I gave one anecdote, but ask literally anyone my age and they’ll say the same. You certainly know people my age, don’t take my word for it, ask them what sleepovers were like before and after cable tv became a thing. Everyone my age remembers a massive shift, especially with Showtime.
With/without cable wasn’t an easy change. Lots of people didn’t accept it easily because it seemed technically complex. That’s part of why my family was an early adopter: my dad was an aerospace engineer, so it was a no-brainier.
The televisions sold in the late 70s were not set up for cable, so you needed a cable box and to configure your tv a certain way – typically by setting one of your two dials to channel 2, 4, or I think UHF 12 (?it’s been a while, but it depended on your tv, and you’d have an auxiliary dongle, too), you had to plug a cable box into your tv (which was nowhere near as simple as now), and then maybe sacrifice a goat. I joke, but the wiring out of the back of those things wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clear ports with matching inputs, but more like in the back of old school audio speakers, but more of them.
That doesn’t sound hard, but for most people the tv was a magic box that pictures came out of. These were your grandparents, they weren’t good at technology.
In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about the era of Nickelodeon and the height of Showtime/Cinemax porn. I’m talking about more than a decade before that.
Yes, by that point, cable had settled into the subscription + ad model I’m saying was the down slide. I’m talking about way before that, when it hadn’t yet devolved.
Again, I’m not making this up, and I kinda wonder what you think my motivation would be to do so, but I’m very curious how old you are and if you’re just going on things you’ve read or if you were alive for this.
e: clarification
Can confirm, lol. And for cable you had to have coax from the wall to the cable box, and again from the cable box to an adapter that went into one of the existing ports. Later, you plugged your cable box coax straight into the TV, but that was late 80s if I remember correctly. Waaaaay before “Skinemax”, lol.
And even then not everyone had cable. It was an added expense, and there was a LOT more going out for entertainment because it was cheap and affordable. For example, I saw The Police in 1983 for $15 general seating (still prevalent in the southeast even after The Who thing in Ohio in 1979) and I saw many shows in exactly the same way: Asia, Loverboy, even the Stones. In the 70s dance was HUGE, as were bicycles and skateboards, and then later in the 80s you had malls and bowling and mini golf and whatever blew your skirt up. Pandemic aside, this thing where everyone stays inside and never goes out is the exact opposite of how it was then, so you saved your money for what YOU wanted to do, which was rarely sit home and watch TV. In my group of friends, among a dozen of us or so, maybe two had cable in the early 80s, but that grew, especially with MTV.
As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.
I was a weird nerd, and some of my fondest memories are helping my dad do engine work on our wood-sided station wagon (I was such a cliché) and going with him to the tv shop to pick up vacuum tubes for the tv after a loud pop and faint waft of smoke, then shimmying ass-upwards on the wall like spider man to hold the flashlight at the correct angle whilst my dad pulled the particle-board (I think, maybe cardboard) back off the television and taught me what every single part inside did.
Best time of my young life, hands down.
e: I’ve never been afraid of technology or learning things in my adult life. Thanks, dad.
(And if you’re raising your child like this, thank you. You’re helping to make good people that way.)
In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about.https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/rise-cable-television
https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/the-complete-history-of-cable-tv
https://www.ncta.com/cables-story
No, I’m talking about before the 70s when cable exclusive didn’t exist, the only “exclusives” that existed before then was signal from far away local stations that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible with regular antennas, but they were still channels available without cable in their local community. Heck, the FCC ended up forcing cable companies to carry local stations!
Also the number of subscribers might have been lower, but the number of TVs too. Cable subscribers before the 70s still represented a high enough portion of TV watchers that local stations put pressure on the FCC to regulate it.
HBO launched in 72, in 1980 there was 28 cable exclusive networks vs a multitude of local stations.
Why are you so bent about this?Because I’m tried of seeing people who were kids or not even born back then pretend that it was better than it truly was. Facts are important and “the point of cable TV was to not have ads” isn’t a fact, it’s a lie that started from people who remember wrong (or only watched the few ads free channels because they were kids and uninterested in local TV or didn’t live it at all) when it’s extremely easy to prove the contrary. Heck, your parents would be the ones who could say considering they were the ones who decided to subscribe, not you.
According to the wiki article that you linked:
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.