COM 110 | Chapter 2: History of Cable, Home Video, ad the Internet

Chapter 2History of Cable, Home Video and the Internet

Cable TV•1949: Engineer Ed Parsons buys a TV

set for his wife Grace. They lived in Astoria, Oregon -- where they were too far away from any TV stations to get a signal

•KRSC signs on in Seattle, Parsons flies around to try and pick up a signal

•He finds KRSC’s signal coming off a tower on top of the Astoria Hotel -- across the street from their apartment

•He runs a cable from that tower -- and they now can get the signal

•Soon he was stringing wire all over town for $125 a household

Cable TV•Others began doing the same thing; CATV was born

•CATV: more commonly known as Cable TV, community antennae television

•FCC was reluctant to get involved -- in 1958, they decided they did not have the authority to regulate cable since it did not use broadcast spectrum space

•UHF stations feared they would not be profitable, and asked the FCC for some protection

•1965-1966: FCC claimed jurisdiction over cable, and issued restrictive rules to protect over-the-air broadcasting

Cable TV•1968: FCC rules that CATV

systems in the top 100 markets had to get specific approval before they could import the signals of distant stations

•These rules inhibited the growth of CATV and made sure growth would be limited to smaller, rural communities

•CATV was still improving their technology during this time

Cable TV1972: FCC issued another set of rules:

1.local communities, states and the FCC would regulate cable

2.20-channel minimums for new systems

3.all local stations had to be carried

4.more regulations on the carrying of distant signals, including the nonduplication provision (cable companies could not carry shows from distant providers if those shows were available from the local market)

5.pay cable services would be approved

Pay TV

•1959: Paramount pictures effectively creates the first movie premium cable channel in Palm Springs California; for a fee users could see movies. They also offered college football games.

•Early on, this idea didn’t catch on, it would be more than 20 years before Pay TV was marketable.

Cable Growth•1975: HBO begins. They offered wider coverage at

a lower cost for first-run movies

•HBO rented a transponder on the satellite Satcom I and created the first satellite interconnected cable programming network; allowed for greater coverage of cable systems at a lower cost

•The big attraction to cable now, was receiving channels that otherwise could not be received, like HBO

•Other cable-only channels came about: Showtime, The Movie Channel, Christian Broadcasting Network -- and other regional “superstations” like WTBS in Atlanta and WGN in Chicago

•Other specialized networks followed: ESPN, MTV, CNN

•more features to attract customers

Cable Growth•FCC’s 1972 rules were stifling cable growth

•1980s: Reagan administration advanced deregulation policies; FCC would encourage competition between cable and traditional TV

•Cable Communications Policy Act (1984): endorsed localism, set up a system of community regulation tempered by federal oversight. FCC was given definite but limited authority over cable -- making the local communities the major force in cable regulation. Cable companies were given freedoms in setting rates and program services

•Big media companies invested in cable; by 1988 the industry was dominated by large multiple-system operators (MSOs)

Alternatives to Cable

•Satellites began usage for broadcast in 1962

•1976: HBO broadcast the "Thrilla in Manila" fight; Ted Turner put WTBS on satellite

•Cable Communications Policy Act legalized the private reception of satellite TV programming

Alternatives to Cable

•DBS companies like DirecTV and Dish Network offered competition

•Multichannel, multipoint distribution services (wireless cable -- using a downconverter to receive cable signals -- not very popular) and VCRs, DVDs and DVRs offered competition as well

Home Video•Videotape recorder (VTR): invention

that made home video possible

•Kinescope recorder -- film recorder that recorded off of a TV screen. Poor quality -- which is why there are few tapes of early TV programs

•VCR: began with the Sony Betamax VCR in 1975

•Betamax could record up to one hour of video (wow!)

•Betamax case: First issues with piracy; 1984 Supreme Court ruled that home taping didn’t violate copyright law

Home Video•A Japanese firm,

Matsushita, developed a competing format called VHS (video home system)

•VHS had a longer recording capability, though quality was inferior to Betamax

•Time-shifting

DVDs and DVRs•Digital video disc, or digital versatile disc

•Advantages over tape: more content, better picture and audio quality, doesn't wear out like tape

•New revenue stream emerged with the advent of DVD: boxed sets of TV programs; the first two seasons of Seinfeld generated more than $95M in revenue

•DVR: digital video recorder; records live TV to a hard disk

•The video store: 25,000 in 2004; future is bleak as consumers turn toward services like Netflix and digital distribution, On-demand programming, Internet

The Internet

• Internet: the global interconnection of computer networks made possible by using common communication protocols; the World Wide Web is just one service available on the network

•Other Internet services: Gopher, FTP, email

The Internet•Developed out of concern for military

preparedness

•Cold War struggle (1945-1989) US military had a need for decentralized communication -- communication needed to remain intact and uninterrupted in the case of a missile or nuclear attack

•packet-switching model: data packets were small, and if lost could be resent over networks easily

•With many interconnected paths on which packets traveled, if one path were lost, packets had several paths to travel on

•DARPA (1958): Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The Internet•ARPANET - born in 1968, the

network that could survive nuclear war

•Academics became involved in testing ARPANET

•1969: 4 major nodes hooked up to the network: UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford & University of Utah

•1st computer-to-computer networks, used for academic research and further development of ARPANET’s capabilities

Timeline of the Internet

• 1972: Ray Tomlinson invents email

• 1976: Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn develop TCP/IP - the new protocol made it easier to send information over the network

• 1979: USENET: a system that enabled groups of computers to share messages

• Personal computing takes off in the 1980s

• Apple Macintosh debuts in 1984

Timeline of the Internet

• 1986: the Internet is officially born; NSFNET (the new higher speed network that replaced ARPANET) used TCP/IP to connect universities

• 1987: domain names are being assigned

• 1989: Tim Berners-Lee coins the phrase: World Wide Web

• 1990s: ISPs start service

• 1993: GUI Interface developed, called Mosiac (Graphical User Interface)

The World Wide Web• Tim Berners-Lee wrote a program

that used a GUI for requesting information available on networked databases

• Then, the vast majority of information available on the Internet consisted of text; they were connected via hyperlinks

• Hyperlinks request URLs to display

• By 1994 the WWW was seeing its first commercial applications

Cable, satellites, home video and the Internet in the 21st century

• Cable TV continues to consolidate: Comcast acquires AT&T broadband, Comcast and Time Warner acquire Adelphia

• Cable continues to draw audiences away from traditional TV

• Cable provides more than TV; companies offer phone and Internet as well

• VoIP: voice over Internet protocol

• High speed broadband service

• Web 2.0: blogs, social networking, podcasting, video sharing, user-generated content