WEBVTT - Evolution of Watching TV 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:12.080 With technology with tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.800 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.840 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.920 and I love all things tech. And today we're gonna 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:24.279 talk a bit about the evolution of how we get 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:29.160 television content. Now, I've already done episodes specifically about the 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.440 early days of television and the birth of cable, but 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.760 today we're going to take a step back and look 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:37.680 at general trends and how they've changed over the decades. 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.560 So kind of how we went from broadcast to cable 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:47.200 and satellite to internet delivered television, And what are the 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:52.080 various not just technological challenges, but the legal challenges that 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:56.240 exist in this world, the business challenges, And why is 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.440 it that you can't just have alah cart I know 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:04.720 that's the dream for everybody about getting a package where 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.160 you have just the channels you want and none of 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.520 the ones you don't want, because it seems like every 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:13.399 service out there it comes with a bundle, right, and 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.680 you have channels that you might really like, and there 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:18.399 might be a few channels that you really like, but 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.240 they're not included in that bundle, And then there's a 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.120 whole bucket load of channels that have stuff that you 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.640 either have no interest in or you would actively avoid 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.640 with every fiber of your being. You would never even 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.040 dream of just channel surfing because it would mean going 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.240 through too many channels of stuff what you do not want. 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.800 So we're gonna take a look at why that is, 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.840 Why are we in that world? And it's not just 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.120 about finding new ways to watch the latest episode of 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:53.160 Supernatural though those when Chester Boys are indeed dreamy. The 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.280 changes affect other important factors as well, like how is 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:01.280 television monetized and how do we as consumers pay for 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:06.120 that television. Now, for this episode, I'm largely focusing on 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:10.560 the United States as the model, which is because I 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:14.200 live there. I'm I live in the United States. A 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.160 lot of what I'll talk about also pertains to other nations, 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:21.519 but there are particulars that will be different. So, for example, 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.480 in the United Kingdom, any place that has a television 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.800 that is either being used to watch television live or 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:34.160 to record TV transmissions, no matter how those transmissions are sent, 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:39.519 whether it's over broadcast, cable, satellite, whatever, you gotta pay 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.480 a television licensing fee. I mean like individual households pay 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.120 a license fee for their TVs. Now, for those folks 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:47.840 over in the UK, you're all listening to this and 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.720 you're saying, well, yeah, that's true. But here in the 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.760 United States that would be really unheard of. So Americans, 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:59.560 if you head over to the UK and you decide, hey, 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:01.160 I'm going to live here, now, you would actually need 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.440 to purchase a television license to watch your own TV 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.280 in your own home. But then in the UK, the 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:11.600 British Broadcasting Company uses those license fees to fund their work. 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:16.399 So without the TV license you lose your precious doctor who, 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:20.480 So just keep that in mind. But that's an aside. 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.480 I want to talk about the evolution from broadcast TV 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.360 to cable and satellite, to time shifting technologies, to internet 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.600 delivery and place shifting options as well. Now, later in 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.280 this episode, we're gonna have a discussion with Jim shade 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.760 Chatari of Sling TV to talk about how their approach 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.440 is guiding us closer to that heavily desired a la 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:45.160 carte strategy for getting television content, So that will come 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.600 up a little bit later in this episode. Now, broadcast 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:52.920 television starts before anyone outside of research and development labs 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.480 or enterprising inventors even had a TV set. Generally, most 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.960 scholars agree that General Electric created the first broadcast station 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:07.520 in January. Originally, they broadcasted under the channel designation to 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.960 x B using a seven killer hurts frequency. Now, their 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:19.000 broadcast was for mechanical television, not not electronic television. It's 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.520 not the televisions that we know today, but the predecessors, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:26.240 the mechanical models that actually did use mechanical elements to 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.159 transmit pictures. And if that just blew your mind, you 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:31.560 need to go back and listen to my podcasts called 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.479 The TV Story. It was actually a three part series. 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.840 So there's TV Story Story Part one, Part two, and 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.039 Part four. Because you know we always skip part three. No, 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.479 that's a lie. There's also part three. The first two 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.880 parts really focus on the invention and development of television. 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.320 The first part came out on April and the second 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:55.160 part came out on April, So check those out if 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.359 you want to hear more about the development on the 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.080 television set side, but let's focus more on just the 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:06.200 concept of broadcasting. In September nine, General Electric behind to 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:10.080 broadcast the first television drama on their station, which at 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:14.360 that point was called W two x B. The actual 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:19.120 drama's name was The Queen's Messenger, and it was described 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.880 as a quote blood and thunder, play with guns, daggers 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.279 and poison end quote. And that I actually pulled from 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:31.479 a website for the Early Television Museum. So great website 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:33.240 if you want to learn more about some of the 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:37.839 earliest forms of TV and broadcast. And frankly, that description 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.640 makes it sound like The Queen's Messenger was a precursor 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:42.919 to shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, But 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.920 according to the website, it was not exactly high drama. 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.239 Most reports made it sound like the program was perhaps 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.719 a little bit more ambitious and the technology could technically support. 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.440 Some people said it was proof that quote radio moving 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.480 pictures end quote weren't quite ready for the home. And yeah, 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.279 that is what some people referred to television as early on, 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.240 was radio moving pictures. After all, you were broadcasting these 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:14.080 signals over radio waves, and the closest analog really to 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.279 TV at that point was the radio. So not that 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.560 unusual or at least not that surprising. W two XB 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:25.480 would broadcast its first electronic television signal a decade later, 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.760 in nineteen thirty nine. Electronic televisions had been pioneered in 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.839 the late nineteen twenties. Farnsworth. You probably have heard that name, 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:39.320 Filo Farnsworth. He actually created electronic TVs and he features 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.440 heavily in the TV story series that I mentioned a 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:47.680 second ago. Our c A was heavily invested in electronic television. 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.440 In the early days. The company had been a dominant 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:55.479 force in radio and owned two NBC radio networks. The 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.800 company wanted to establish a dominant position in the burgeoning 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:03.800 world of broad cast television, and so they invested millions 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.360 of dollars to do so. That was a significant investment. 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.320 I mean it would be today, but even more so 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.360 back then because I think fifty million dollars in nineteen 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.800 twenties money nineteen thirties money. That's that's a huge chunk 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.400 of change. Meanwhile, there was a competitor that was also 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:22.800 interested in getting in the game. That would be Columbia 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:27.080 Broadcasting System or CBS. There was another powerhouse in the 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:30.440 radio world, and they were jumping into early TV broadcasts 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.600 and created two newscasts a day. Each of those newscasts 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.480 lasted about fifteen minutes, so this was quite some time 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.680 before the twenty four hour news cycle, and these broadcasts 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.440 weren't coast to coast. They reached a relatively small audience, 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.680 primarily in New York City. So these early early broadcast 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:51.840 networks were very much local in nature, and in fact, 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.640 that's how we would see television evolved at first, lots 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.640 of little islands of broadcast TV that were mostly centered 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.240 around cities, and if you didn't live near one of 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.120 those cities, it became very challenging for you to get 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.480 any sort of content. There was a very little reason 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:09.920 for you to go out and get a television because 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.160 chances are you wouldn't have an antenna strong enough to 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.760 pick up the signals, or the broadcast antenna wouldn't be 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:18.920 strong enough to send the signals so that you could 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.520 actually receive anything worth watching. So the early early days, 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.960 this was very much an urban sort of form of entertainment, 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.080 and it would only be later that we would see 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.240 ways of distributing it to broader networks. By the early 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.160 nineteen forties, the US government was beginning to create regulations 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.680 for the new television industry, and this would be an 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.920 ongoing kind of back and forth between the US government 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.679 and various providers, whether they were broadcast companies, cable company, 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:53.479 satellite companies, or what have you. Part of this process 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.520 meant that the government wanted to bust up some of 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.720 the bigger companies like our c A. Then newly formed 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.280 Federal Communications Commission. The f c C went up to 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.199 our c A and said, hey, we see you've got 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:10.079 a couple of NBC networks. Do you need to knock 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:12.240 that off? Dump one of them. You can keep one, 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:14.600 but you've gotta get rid of the other one. So 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:17.080 our c A did as it was told and spun 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:20.600 off one of the two NBC networks, and that became 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.920 a newly formed company that took on a new name. 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:27.880 That new name was the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC. 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.040 Now ABC wouldn't really become a television broadcast company for 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.640 a few more years, but then you get the three 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.800 big early broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC here in 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:43.240 the United States. Fox, of course, would follow much much 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:48.120 much later. By the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties, 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:53.440 commercial television was becoming a thing. Sponsored programs would feature 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.360 frequent pauses to identify the sponsor and urge people to 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.880 go out and buy the product. It could be incorporated 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.800 directly into a show. In several cases, even the NBC 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.679 News in the late nineteen forties was sponsored by a 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:10.160 tobacco company, and as such, the host, John Cameron Swayze 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:14.800 was required to have a smoking cigarette in frame during 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.640 every shot. He didn't have to have it in his mouth, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.120 but it had to be seen and it had to 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:25.480 be lit. Enlightened times, ladies and gentlemen. The programs on 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:30.400 television at that time were primarily extensions of previously existing 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.079 radio programs. So if you ever watch old Classic TV 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:37.360 and then you find out, hey, there was also a 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.640 radio show, well, chances are the radio show came first, 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:44.200 and then they would end up adapting that into a 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:48.720 television series, finding often that doing so was not always 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.400 easy because, as it turns out, with radio shows, you 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:55.079 have an unlimited visual effects budget because it is in 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:59.320 the mind of the listener. If I do a science 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.120 fiction series Ease or a Western, I don't have to 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.840 actually have any spaceships or horses. I can just create 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.960 a little bit of sound effects and let the listener 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.480 provide all the visuals. But if I'm going to do 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:17.120 a television series, suddenly, I gotta produce some stuff otherwise 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.240 viewers are going to be turned off pretty quickly. So 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:23.120 it was a mixed bag, but it did mean that 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.880 there were a lot of people drawing upon the experience 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.760 of radio broadcasting in those early TV broadcasting days, and 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.240 those three big broadcast networks were largely able to float 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:40.520 their television businesses by pulling from radio profits. So in 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.800 other words, they were taking the profits they were making 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.520 from one business and using it to support a second one. 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:51.400 Because even though it was revolutionary, there wasn't a huge 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.480 audience yet, there was not really an easy way to 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:56.640 make a lot of money in TV because there just 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.800 weren't that many people able to afford a television set. 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.280 So this was kind of a necessary evil in order 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:07.000 to keep a very young industry afloat while its audience 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:11.559 was able to start to coalesce and and grow, and 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.679 it ended up working. It paid off big time, but 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:19.160 it did take some time to do so. Now keep 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:22.680 in mind television's at this time, we're still pretty expensive, 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:24.240 and in order to get any use of them, you 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.520 still needed to live somewhere relatively close to a broadcasting 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:34.160 tower unless you had really innovative approaches to getting content 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.280 like people did and say Pennsylvania. But we'll get to 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.560 that in a second. Now, it would be a good time, 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.440 I think, to talk about how broadcast television works from 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:49.040 a very very high level. First, in order to send 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.920 a television signal out over the air, you need a 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:56.439 certain amount of bandwidth in radio frequencies. It's because you're 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.839 setting a lot of information out, the image information, the 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.680 audio information for picture and sound, plus you want a 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.520 little room on either side to avoid interference. If you're 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:10.560 talking about like a fairly modern broadcast that's about six 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.679 mega hurts a bandwidth space on the radio spectrum, and 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:16.120 again that creates a bit of a buffer so that 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.400 you don't have two channels overlapping each other and interfering 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:21.760 with one another. So in the United States, the government 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.720 would dictate which frequencies could be used for stuff like 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:29.040 television or radio broadcasts. They could also determine what the 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.120 other parts of the spectrum could be used for. And 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.040 this is a way again to avoid having two different 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.120 services try and use the exact same bandwidth and thus 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.079 create interference with each other. It's a very orderly system 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:46.280 to make sure that things run smoothly. Otherwise you would 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:50.920 have amateur radio operators honing in and and booting off 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:56.000 actual commercial radio stations or television stations, depending upon the 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.520 power of the transmitter and maybe how far away you 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.640 happen to be from that transmission source. So in the 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:08.440 United States, uh the government said that from fifty four 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.800 mega hurts to the eighty eight mega hurts range, you 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.480 would have channels two through six. Then you have to 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:16.920 jump up to a hundred seventy four mega hurts to 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.160 two hundred sixteen mega hurts for channels seven through thirteen, 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.520 and then jump up again to four hundred seventy mega 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:25.360 hurts all the way up to eight hundred ninety mega 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.280 hurts for channels fourteen through three. Now, the reason why 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.440 there are gaps between six and seven and between thirteen 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:38.200 and fourteen is because those frequencies had already been allocated 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:43.680 to other radio uses, so you couldn't just shift everything over. 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.960 That would require an enormous amount of work. So instead 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.800 of shifting everybody, you say, all right, well, we've got 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.280 this band of frequencies available here, We're going to allocate 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.800 that to these channels. Then we'll go up the spectrum 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.840 until we can find the next wide band of frequencies 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.040 that are available to allocate to TV again, and they 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.120 did that a couple of times. As for the tech 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.400 of the broadcast, it's pretty simple and concept. You have 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.800 a camera and a microphone on one end that's capturing 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:17.760 obviously visual and audio data, converts it into an electronic signal. 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:22.040 That signal goes to a transmitter that's essentially a giant antenna. 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.040 You amplify that signal quite a bit and you send 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.320 it up the antenna, which then converts that signal to 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:33.080 radio waves. So you get these electromagnetic waves that emanate 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.720 outward from the antenna. On the television side, you would 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.560 have a receiving antenna that would pick up those incoming 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:43.680 radio waves and then convert them back into a television signal, 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.480 which gets amplified in the TV set, and then you're 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.160 able to watch your stories. Now, obviously it gets more 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.880 technical than that, but that's good enough for our purposes, 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:56.040 with not an episode to talk about the actual workings 0:15:56.120 --> 0:16:00.720 of broadcast TV. Just as commercial broadcas as television was 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.280 getting its start, so was cable television. Now I don't 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.960 mean cable channels, but rather using actual physical cable as 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:11.120 a delivery mechanism for television signals. So in other words, 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:16.160 we're not talking cable TV like MTV and UH, Comedy 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.560 Central and those kind of things. We're talking about just 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:24.440 getting television signals using cables. Uh. This arose in three 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.400 different areas in the United States, more or less simultaneously 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.600 and independently of each other. It was in nine which 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:33.880 is pretty incredible when you think about it, that it 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.600 was that early, and it was happening in Arkansas, Oregon, 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.080 and Pennsylvania. And the three things that these places had 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.200 in common was that they had some communities that were 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.960 a good distance away from these urban centers and therefore 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.800 could not easily pick up television signals. But they had 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.440 populations that people who wanted to watch TV. So what's 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.160 your solution if you can't really get a signal out 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:03.320 to your house. Well, they decided to take a sort 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:08.520 of communal approach. H Essentially, the community would put up 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.480 a big receiver antenna someplace that would get the best reception, 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.320 like at the top of a really tall hill, and 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.960 they would receive broadcast signals at this big antenna. Now 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.560 that big antenna would be connected to a system that 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:26.600 used cables to send the TV signal to distant homes. 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.920 So if you think about it like a regular television set, 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:33.440 if you have a TV set at home and you've 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.080 got a regular antenna set up, it's essentially the same thing, 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:41.760 except the signal is traveling a much further distance in 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.280 the cables than it would from the antenna to your screen. 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.520 It's going through a cable that actually crosses the land 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:53.040 or rather as usually strung up on utility polls, and 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:58.959 so you can have people in very distant regions watch television. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.399 They're getting the low coal broadcast, uh, they're picking it 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:06.320 up from a centralized antenna that is then sending the 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.840 signal out to these distant homes. It was a pretty 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:14.080 clever way of fixing things, although it would cause some 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:16.560 issues further down the line, and we'll talk about those 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.359 towards the end of this episode. This idea of how 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:26.200 do you how do you end up reconciling the broadcast 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.040 side of this business with the cable side of this business. 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:33.640 But at the beginning, it was just a way of 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.880 allowing people who otherwise would not have access to television 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:41.440 at all to get that access. By the early nineteen sixties, 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.240 there were about eight hundred cable systems in the United 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.480 States with more than eight hundred thousand subscribers, and larger 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.000 companies were starting to get in on the game. They 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:54.119 were moving in on the domain that had been the 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.639 arena for smaller businesses. This is kind of the story 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.439 of Comcast. I also at a show about that. If 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.200 you search the tex Stuff archives, you'll find the story 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.240 of Comcast, and you'll learn that a lot of Comcasts 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:13.000 history involved the company buying up smaller companies, regional companies, 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:17.280 and growing their own business that way, and they became 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.640 a coast to coast business largely by buying up other companies. 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:26.119 They didn't grow their subscribers just by convincing people to 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.200 join Comcasts. They grew their subscribers largely by buying up 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.960 other companies that already had a large subscriber base. And 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:35.920 they just kept getting bigger and bigger that way. And 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:38.439 they were not the only company to do that, although 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.520 that was of course the focus of my episodes. Now. 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.040 Around this time, the FCC put some limits on what 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:49.920 cable companies could do. For example, they weren't supposed to 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.760 run cables so that a person in one service area 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.520 like a city, would be able to get access to 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.840 the local programming of a different service area different So 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:05.000 in other words, I shouldn't be able at this time 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:08.919 be able to turn on my television in Atlanta and 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:12.840 watch local Chicago broadcasts. That would have been a no 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.000 no around the early nineteen sixties according to the f 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.600 c C. Now, one thing this managed to do was 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.600 kind of put the brakes on the cable industry at 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.919 that time, because now big companies were saying, well, it's 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:27.679 starting to become a headache. I mean, there are all 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:31.879 these little local broadcast areas where this makes sense, but 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:35.919 we'd have to operate as almost like a franchise across 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.360 the United States, and that was a little bit more 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:42.640 daunting of a task than having a unified approach. So 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.919 it actually slowed down the deployment of cable TV in 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:50.040 the US for about a decade. But in nineteen seventy two, 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.480 the FCC decided ease back on some of those restrictions. 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.280 They started to deregulate the cable industry and this would 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.000 continue on through the next two decades. So this is 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:02.359 also when the first pay TV network came about. That 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.840 would be the Home Box Office or HBO network. To 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:08.159 learn more about that story, you can check out the 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.200 three part series on the HBO story, the first episode 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:16.359 published on May fen. Now, HBO's Passed is closely tied 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.680 to the rise of cable television and the other network 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:22.679 that really fostered the growth of cable TV in the 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:27.199 United States, as in this idea of nationalized cable, not nationalized, 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:29.720 but national cable in the sense that you could watch 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:34.760 content from other places on your local TV. That big 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:40.200 network was w TBS, the Ted Turner Network, and along 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:44.520 with HBO, this was suddenly an ability for people in 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:47.320 very different places in the US to get access to 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:51.440 the same content as opposed to relying solely upon their 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:56.000 local providers, their local broadcasters. In nine four, the Cable 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.960 Act further deregulated the industry, and there was an enormous 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.720 boom at that point in cable television development. But then 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:05.760 we need to talk a little bit about satellite TV. 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.400 Let's jump back again to nineteen sixty two. So we're 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.960 back in the year where uh communities are are using 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:20.879 cable to deliver television broadcast to remote locations. The f 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:24.280 c C is just getting into the game saying, don't 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:28.240 show stuff that doesn't belong to your region. Keep regions 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:31.760 separate from each other, because we're getting into these disputes 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:35.879 that are really a headache to deal with. And around 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:38.879 this time was when the United States launched the first 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:43.760 telecommunications satellite. This one was called tell Star. It was 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:46.280 a Bell Labs project. It was built by a T 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:48.760 and T and it could receive signals from the ground 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:52.080 from Europe and send them over across the Atlantic to 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.800 America and vice versa. But it was limited. It could 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.720 only act as a sort of line of sight satellite, 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:00.680 so that meant that it had to have a clear 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:04.280 shot both from wherever it was receiving information and wherever 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:07.800 it was sending information. And from a practical standpoint, that 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.880 meant that the satellite could beam a live television feed 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:14.879 for about twenty minutes every two and a half hours, 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:17.480 because that's how long it took it to orbit the Earth. 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:20.320 So you couldn't watch a full length movie in one 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:23.879 sitting using this thing. But it was kind of a 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:28.800 dawn of a new era with this telecommunications approach. Tell 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:33.280 Stars actual fate was rather unfortunate. The United States and 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:35.960 the then Soviet Union had been in the habit of 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:40.520 conducting high altitude atomic weapons tests, and those tests pretty 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:45.359 much toasted the satellites systems. So it went offline permanently 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.680 on February twenty one, nineteen. Although it was still in orbit, 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:52.359 it hadn't crashed to the Earth, but the electronics inside 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:56.600 it were essentially fried, so there was no more TV 0:23:56.760 --> 0:24:00.639 being sent by Telstar one at that point. Now, it 0:24:00.680 --> 0:24:03.080 proved a point, but it wasn't really a replacement for 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:07.159 broadcaster cable TV. In nineteen seventy six, there was a 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:11.119 Stanford professor named H. Taylor Howard who built the first 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:15.119 privately owned satellite receiving system, and he was a pretty 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:18.280 clever dude. His satellite antenna could pick up the same 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.760 transmissions that cable networks were using to send signals across 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:27.600 the nation. So while you didn't have individual customers using 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:30.919 satellite dishes until this point to pick up this stuff, 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:34.840