American Cable - A Comprehensive Study on the TV That Changed the World

By Joseph Brutsman

From the author of Marlon & Greg

American Cable

How Basic Cable Changed America

Beyond Fake News and Unreal Reality


In that media-changing era between a three TV network world and today's digital streaming, cable television came along and revolutionized our entertainment, our politics and essentially every aspect of our lives. AMERICAN CABLE tells this story. Author Joseph Brutsman ("Marlon & Greg - The Final Years of Brando & Peck") produced, wrote, directed and created cable shows from the start of the medium, from that time when it seemed that 100 new "networks" popped up overnight, nothing was on them, and creatives had to quickly figure it all out. That is just one of the many explored regions in AMERICAN CABLE.

The book is as vast as its subject, and personal as well. From "The Sopranos" to "The Kardashians", the shows are explored, in both pay and basic cable. And all along the way, Brutsman takes us behind the scenes, telling us how the productions get made, how cable arrived in the first place, and how the impact of it all has changed a nation. It's television that rocked and shaped our world, all here in AMERICAN CABLE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223903239

Book preview

PREFACE

A few days ago, I watched a silent Mary Pickford film on my iPhone, just for the Gee Whiz experience of it all, admiring how much those early filmmakers figured out from scratch, just as I knew that they could not have envisioned their work glowing in high resolution from the surface of some black soap bar from outer space, or whatever they would’ve made of my mobile device. Talk about proof that content is everything; the app that housed and presented this old film had it available for one reason and one reason only - Mary Pickford. Yes, the app probably had it free by way of public domain, but they were also giving it valued data-space on their server because her name would have a geek like me clicking on it, every few minutes required to sit through ads for Wendy’s, Cheetos or Geico.

The film I watched was an early, obscure and relatively unimportant one in the history of Pickford’s career, incredibly primitive but key to this conversation for an important factor: it was one of the building blocks that made her a star. All through my life, when I heard the extremely elderly still marvel over their first sight of a silent movie, I know I’ve never been able to fully appreciate what their experience must’ve been. Yes, I recall my youthful moments, being blown away by my first movie theater experience, my first TV, then color TV; even uncensored cable, VHS, internet and then smartphone, all amazing but probably not near the level of amazement that came with those viewing the first film images.

Beyond the audio of radio, surpassing still photographs, moving film images and the creation of Stars to sell the films; this is where so much of this book finds its conversation. American Cable is not a story of politics, but many political figures and movements are impossible to leave out of it. And as much as we give many historic leaders credit or blame for any number of achievements, transitions, accomplishments or disasters, it really is our shared media that shapes us as a nation. Decades of a nation watching Decent, Moral Hollywood Movies with Good Values (caps and quotation marks all mine) - THAT shared media built a nation of people who would go off to war after Pearl Harbor.

Of course, it’s far more complicated than that, but follow that through as you later see a TV generation that said the hell with going off to Vietnam. Fast forward to cable TV making a nation gung-ho about viewing Shock and Awe from the safety of their living rooms. Today, with so much TV, Internet, cable, streaming and the rest of it, it’s hard to figure out where all the media voices are coming from - AND what they are all saying. Those who first saw Mary Pickford on a screen didn’t know how she got there; she was a Star because she was magical. Soon, others wanted to be a Star as well, whether they were actors, politicians or, well, just about anyone at all.

Decades after Mary, Access came to many. That is the story of where we are now.

As I tell my version, I’ll use a mix of TV research, as well as my own life of 25 years in cable. Combined, it is a journey of a medium that was once only watched.

Now, somehow, we are ALL a part of it.

PROLOGUE

In December of 2021, on a cold day in Montana, journalist Lara Logan called me at my extremely cluttered home-base office at Missoula’s Warm Springs Productions; her beautiful photo lit up on my phone display. She was phoning from her home in Fredericksburg, Texas.

At that time, I was the Executive Producer and Showrunner of her investigative series, Lara Logan Has No Agenda, one of the top shows on the Fox News streaming service, Fox Nation. This is the first time she had called me after she recently equated America’s top Covid specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, with the notorious Nazi biological experimenter Josef Mengele, all on the live air of Fox News. Mere hours later, Fox’s top ratings-earner, Tucker Carlson, did the exact same comparison with Fauci and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, a guy who could, in his own fashion, give Mengele a run for his money if the competition is about the historic amount of real blood on one’s hands, as Il Duce sent over 20 percent of Italy’s Jews to German death camps.

It’s more than possible that monster Mengele received a lab subject or two thanks to the dictator known as The Elderly Butcher Boy of Fascism - or - to Tucker Carlson, Anthony Fauci. In no way am I defending Lara’s TV remark, but the hypocrisy of Fox News was, hell, predictable. I guess Lara went for the Doctor comparison while Tucker figured it would be bigot-clever to go with the Italian connection. Oh, mamma mia, how brilliant that Mr. Carlson is! I personally find both comparisons to be deplorable, but I’d soon learn that was not the full conclusion at Fox News - Lara was immediately out at the network, just as Carlson didn’t receive a single shrug over the whole thing. Big ratings are the villain’s kryptonite at Fox News. Being a smug white male asshole who knows nothing about world history seems to be incredibly appreciated there as well. (About a year later, Tucker was fired. Oh, not for content, but for rudeness to superiors.)

Lara did that explosive TV appearance just a few short hours before this call she was now making to me. But a lot had happened since then. As I hesitated to answer the phone, I realized that for the first time in our multi-year relationship of working together, I might know more about her current situation than she did at this moment in time. My bosses had just had serious calls from both Fox News and Lara’s representative at the prestigious United Talent Agency.

I sensed that I might be hearing about much of the Lara Logan fallout before Lara Logan was.

I was asked not to talk to Lara; they (the production company, network and agent) would all deal with her shortly. I was also told not to talk to any reporters or news folks who would call or contact me about the matter - and indeed, try they did, for days; it seemed that major papers and news networks had no trouble tracking me down in Missoula after my years on Lara’s show.

Ignoring those calls and emails, I knew then: as it was after she parted ways with CBS and 60 Minutes years before over a report on Benghazi, Lara would probably again be off into her own Media Wilderness. People would say, She changed. Did she? Only Lara can answer that. Perhaps she did, but one thing IS certain: thanks to cable and 24-hour news, the industry she started in as a young reporter had definitely changed. That’s what much of this book is about.

Through the years, incredibly, I never once fully discussed politics with Lara. I assumed she had me figured out, though. I was Juilliard-educated in the arts, lived in NYC and Los Angeles, and now found myself at a Montana TV production company, so I could support my autistic daughter and her relatively costly Southern California life of special education, work-skill training and therapy; I love that she has a full and busy life there with her loving and caring mother. I just wish that their Santa Monica rent didn’t have the equivalent tab of living in Paris.

My then-current job in Montana: to write and produce a show with and for a world-famous journalist, one who up to this point had survived a long, amazing, and to say the least, colorful set of careers. The time span of those careers is where much of this book takes place. In our different worlds, while I was working in L.A. film, TV and theater, and Lara was working in foreign and U.S. network news, Cable arrived, to reinvent every aspect of American life: our politics, our entertainment, our economy, and perhaps most sadly (to me), many of our values.

Today, younger people know little about a world before, what I will call (in general) Cable TV. For older people, the change was so gradual (or sudden), they didn’t even seem to notice.

But if you worked in the arts, media, news or even sports, the epic arrival of Cable was The Game Changer of All Time. It was a glorious explosion of ingenuity, creativity and viewership. And - at the same time, I believe, it’s how we have the totally broken nation that we have today.

That call from Lara; as my bosses requested, I didn’t pick up. I felt horrible about that; Lara and I shared a unique and personal friendship; even with all our differences, we had trust for one another. It actually thrilled me to know that I could get along so well with someone I disagreed with to such a high degree. That fact goes to where so much of the country seems to be today - who is our immediate enemy and who is not, based on what YOU believe and what I believe.

More on all that later in this volume.

Lara was just one of my many media adventures, in what I am calling, AMERICAN CABLE.

INTRODUCTION

Here’s a good question: what do I mean by Cable in this book? Well, different things at different times. Often, I will be quite specific about the actual technological process of bringing TV channels into homes that are not the product of The Big Three Networks (sorry, Fox Network, somehow, you’re still not in their club yet, but congratulations, you DO seem to have your own unique thing going). At other times within this book, I’ll refer to Cable as being that giant set of media eras that stretch from The Arrival of The Big Three to Today’s Streaming. Given that vastness, please know that my topics will jump around a lot, just as I will often shift from personal history to, at times, world history; there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to cover here.

I have been working non-stop in Reality TV for almost a quarter of a century, about the amount of time that the, uh, Art Form has existed. My personal stories tell of how so much different programming gets made, and why so much of it might seem, for many, to be totally substandard, inferior to scripted media, and at times, downright embarrassing. Having said all that, there are many who feel Reality is alive, expressive and even superior when compared to canned scripted product. Many young people especially share this notion. By now, an entire generation or two have known TV only as this epic 100 channel landscape; those of us who still lovingly discuss The Big Three Networks display our advanced age in an obvious fashion.

Along with both my own history and a look at cultural movements along the way, as stated, I’ll also take a detour here and there regarding the machines, devices and gear that make all this possible: the tubes, the satellites and the smart-phones; they aren’t just cold, manufactured delivery systems in all this: each new invention almost always goes on to reshape the creative nature of things; it can’t be otherwise - Just ask an old woman after she’s watched the latest Pixar animated masterpiece, fully rendered on computers - a woman who once hand-painted celluloid frames for Walt Disney. Why bring up some fictitious elderly artist? She’s just an example of how radically things change, in both the creative and the technological - All mixed together.

Yes, this book will look at many of those lab-created miracles as well. Sometimes, I’ll label such a detour to be an Essay - Don’t be scared; none of this is all that serious. My goal with an Essay? Step back and maybe take a look at stuff that made all this media possible: the earliest days of radio, the invention of the flat-screen, etc. Frankly, when I began writing this book, I didn’t think that I’d need so much information about all the many roots of cable (no, I won’t go into the iron ore to make cable and that kind of school), but as I put my chapters together, I realized how fascinating some of these origins are - whether they be in tech, culture or creativity. It’s all important; everything from the evolution of 4K video resolution to the satellite-driven birth of ESPN. Every bit of that is part of the story of how we got here and where we’re going.

The book I wrote before the one you are now reading is called Marlon & Greg. It is about the final years of Brando and Peck, years in the 80’s, 90’s and early aughts, when I was working with both legends as a writer and producer. That work came after my years as a young Juilliard-trained actor; I was a driven young man who was fortunate enough to do a great deal of film and TV within the worlds of a few major movie studios and even fewer television networks. Along the way, I then learned directing, writing and video editing, and much of that led directly to me working in Reality TV after Brando and Peck passed on (both, The Absolute Greatest of Real Men). As I was writing that book, I constantly thought of how basic cable changed America, beyond Fake News and unreal reality. I was thinking all of that because during those years following Greg and Marlon, when I shifted out of scripted Hollywood, basic cable was a then-new frontier, an uncharted world of 24 news, untried reality TV and most importantly, NO clue (by anybody) of how to do any of it - OR - what remote ramifications any of it would bring.

This book utilizes my journey as a TV writer, director and producer, as I helped to create shows such as Overhaulin’ and "Living with Ed" - to my many years producing for TV production companies all across America, in almost every major city in the U.S. It was these journeys that led me to understand the political divide that basic cable was often creating, far beyond the obvious battles involving basic cable news such as MSNBC and FOX NEWS. About those two networks: I do offer forehanded sincere apologies to the political sensibilities of any of you dear readers; I don’t mean to offend in this book. I’ve worked on all sides of every political spectrum in TV; like many, I have opinions, but I will always respect the opinions of others.

Back to my journey: as I saw Car TV such as Overhaulin’ become Red State TV, just as a progressive hit Eco show such as Living with Ed struggled to find and maintain a home cable network, I was soon offered work that firmly put itself in strict political categories: 2nd Amendment shows such as CMT’s Guntucky, Nudity based shows such as TLC’s Buying Naked, and Burly Man shows such as Yukon Men, Mountain Men, Hillbilly Blood and others. This, as certain genre lines were becoming quite clear in almost all of cable television. Some of the stories in this book will begin way back, when it was all just a dream: what IF there could be more than just those three L.A. and N.Y. based TV networks? What if we could ALL have a network that spoke more to US? What if all that glorious fame could be spread around more? Not just available to a few. But how would such new programming work? Would unions be involved? And how will technology and this new Internet play into all this?

To get even more specific, one attempted journey of this book is a look (not examination; let’s not get too heavy here) at today’s VOLUME of content and delivery systems regarding our decades of media. I’ll say it again: the content and delivery are directly related, not just by devices, but also by numbers; they changed through the years. Older times: a few people made a few pieces of media for a smaller nation possessing fewer screens. Today: many more people make many more pieces of media for a much larger nation. It’s almost ironic: the huge want for personal fame and the want to tell our own stories; for some, these wants were planted when Fame was more elusive, and the stories being told were rarer: less people got to participate in the earlier storytelling of U.S. media.

Now, many more participate and thus the paradox: in a crowded field, Fame and opportunity can mean far less - It can have a shorter life span, and ultimately mean little. Okay, that’s a look at those who want to be in the game and make stuff. For others, we viewers, it’s both a grand and confusing time. And nobody knows where it’s all going next. There’s so much to see. So much to watch

- Let’s be honest - Many would say, too much to watch. Today, you can be a fan of a show or film that is not just unseen by everybody you know, it can also be unknown to everyone you know, even if all your friends and relatives stay current, surf the web or whatever it is they do so they are not accused of living under a rock. But I’m getting ahead of myself; as we begin here, let’s return to a bit of a tease about the basics.

When I start on a BIG project - a film, a series, or a book like this, I say that I first try to take the Ocean out of it. You start with an ocean of possibilities, options and work; drop-by-drop, you try to tame that ocean. But this book is about an ocean that has no limits. Still, I found my methods, mixing the broad strokes of this medium with my many years in cable TV. Broadly, this volume will study that some-say-magical, others-say-destructive era; from the moment people learned they were now going to pay for TV, up to the first days of streaming, when there started to be some of the first obituaries being written for basic cable - That’s a movement we’re STILL going through, along with all of the mergers, network buyouts and more. After years of writing, producing and directing Reality, I later found myself in that aforementioned Red world of basic cable, as one of Bill O’Reilly’s final producers for his work at Fox News, and then, as previously stated, Lara Logan’s final Executive Producer when she was at Fox. None of this was about my politics; I always tried to maintain a strict neutrality as I focused on the programming, the deadlines and the work. But through it all, I saw how basic cable really was shaping our country. For me, Cable is the story of, primarily, creativity. For others, it is about influence. And for many: a purely economic tale.

It’s how we got to be who we are today as a nation. It’s the story of technology, information and pop culture.

It’s a series of vital questions that I feel really should be both asked and fully answered.

Given all that raging Ocean, I also hope that this is a book you will enjoy as it flows before you. But know: the flow of media changes by the hour. Some of this chronicle is momentary.

CHAPTER ONE • AMERICAN CABLE ESSAY ONE TELL ME SOMETHING, SHOW ME SOMETHING

SO many viewing choices today. Actually, I think that’s great. Was the world of media (and America itself) really a much better place when a nation sat on edge as a whole, on pins and needles about when Lucy Ricardo would have her baby? Some would say, Yes and I know why. Many still swoon poetically over that supposed Time of Nationwide Community. It was an era when America had (forced) shared values and common ideas, unlike the splintered, fragmented division of today. But who decided back then? In that particular case, a few Fat Cat executives at CBS, some greedy cancer-spreading advertisers at Philip Morris, and to a far lesser degree, Desilu Studios and Lucille Ball herself - Those few who had elite seats at The Big Table. (TV Fan Aside: did Desi marry well or what? I’m certain he was the role model to Sonny Bono.)

And as you can see here, the above scenario (based around a once-popular show) is a media example that does not remotely include real stuff like sports, music, or that basic media staple that some say is the biggest problem child of all: News - or whatever might fit under that banner today. That’s a long way to say that this THING is BIG, this media deal, and we keep mixing up the many pieces, so it both grows and constantly reinvents itself - We make news into entertainment, we make media celebrities out of politicians, we make athletes into actors, we make actors into politicians, we make news pundits out of anybody - Look, I’m not saying that everybody needs to just stay in one lifetime lane, but our constant mash-up of stories, genres, celebrities, politicians, etc., etc., etc. - Well, on some days, it can clearly all be quite exhausting. And for many, nothing fed, shaped and literally built all these diverse matters more than TV.

Yes, all media before television directly fed into what became the earliest days of TV, but once picture and sound could be in your home, everybody had to get a set and have a look. I won’t get into all that television inventing and experimenting that can be traced way back to the 20’s; there are better books for that field of knowledge, but I will lay down an easy marker of the late 1940’s and early 50’s, when it was becoming clear that US network TV was here, and it was here to stay. Interestingly, Cable itself also actually started then - For only one reason and one reason only: those precious big city airwaves couldn’t reach everybody in all parts of America. (Today, it is a near identical matter when you hear of the need for Rural Internet.)

Back then, network affiliates existed as the cable-less links - BUT – all those affiliate guys had network agreements: the nets fed the affiliates, the affiliates fed their community - at least the parts their airwaves could reach - Money was made. By comparison, early cable was seen as something of a pirate’s business. As I’ll get to shortly here, building individual cable systems took time, capital and a number of determined individuals. Eventually, when those Cable individuals saw how local network affiliates could sell their own profitable advertising and even produce their very own programming on, around and over the network’s signal, they too eventually realized they could do that as well, without interference from the network; or so they thought for a time, - Until the networks fought back; much more on all that coming up.

Allow me to jump to Streaming for a moment, only as a brief example of how things stay the same even as they change; it is kind of the dream and the throw-back at the same time: perfect picture and sound - BUT - no pesky wires - Back to The Air bringing it all to us. And the bonus wants we picked up along the way: no commercials, no censorship, huge variety, and I watch when I want to watch. ‘Sounds good. But what’s it all cost? And maybe I’ll take an ad or two if you can keep that cost down for me a bit? Yeah, we circle back to advertisers yet again.

As the following chapters unfold, I’ll keep saying that Tech IS both communication and entertainment. It’s even art in its own way. But to some, in certain cases, tech can be a constant intrusion that dehumanizes whatever it touches. Allow me to give you a very specific example, one that relates to all this more than we first might think. To see any current giant studio film these days is to see an exercise in perfection: perfect visuals, perfect audio, perfect everything. It’s great if a giant studio’s idea of perfection is your jam. With today’s technology, there is not a single thing, idea, concept, stunt, visual or notion that can’t be accomplished and/or fulfilled on a screen. So, when I see something truly amazing, (say, in a big glossy action film, or even a cool Pixar feature) I personally need to remind myself of all the artists, technicians and craftsman who made that happen. If I don’t, I will only sit there bored, muttering Computers, after asking myself, How did they do that? Before computers, I used to love asking myself, How did they do that?! But now, thanks to tech, I have my lazy, boring, don’t-give-a-shit answer. Computers.

My point: let’s NOT get that jaded. In those above cases, Computers are simply the paints, sets, make-up, music and even stuntmen of today, capable of amazing things when used by smart people (watch either Avatar film; you’ll see). Throughout this book, you’ll read about tech that seems simple, commonplace and even mundane today. But never forget - Most of these things are absolute miracles - Miracles solved and created by humans. TV was miraculous. And so was cable TV. Somehow, cable turned the lights on for many people. It made things possible that weren’t prior to its arrival. It broke barriers, allowing more to The Big Table of Creativity.

Cable was so much more than a mere Delivery System. But, of course, so was the old silent film projector. As well as the big box radio that once had a place in almost every American home. And yes, these devices had their moments as undisputed examples of State of the Art.

Allow me to give a bit of respect to these miracles of the past. Odd to think today, but for roughly a decade, silent cinema shared the entertainment and pop culture landscape with U.S. radio - One medium could talk, the other didn’t, even though (as a history of pipe organ players never stop yapping about) yes, music was almost always present when a silent film was shown.

In those early days, film could show you primitive images, while radio could only make you imagine those images, in far less primitive ways. None of this was seen as a series of short-comings at the time; there really was no public outcry about movies needing to give us sound - or even color, for that matter - or radio needing to give us pictures - not yet, anyway. That’s always the way it is with these breakthroughs: we never really know that we need something until a profit-making company puts whatever-it-is out there, creates an audience, and then somehow forces that thing to creep into our sacred mind-space, where we all find ourselves thinking, I must have that! Without it, I can no longer be a functioning member of society!

Interestingly, the real power in those Silent Movie/Radio Days (when it came to true human interest, must-see material and even most entertainment) more than likely came from the daily newspaper - The morning editions, the evening editions and every edition in between (imagine that!). The newspaper-based Press of that day - (yes, you WILL need to explain why it’s called Press to young folks) - It had a hold over almost every US citizen in the early 1900’s, certainly anyone who lived in a major city. Daily comics were huge, most of the radio news was read from those papers anyway, and like the flickering movies of that day, it showed you images, quicker than any slowly arriving film. Perhaps, most personal (and best of all), after a few folds, you could take that paper where you wanted to, starting a solid history of connection between something to stare at while dining, riding a bus or sitting on a toilet. Bulky radio needed years of downsizing to become portable.

And speaking of that box: 1920’s NBC was once King of all that meant Radio to a nation; a country instantly in love with this new talking and singing thing in the parlor. And how could America NOT be thrilled?! It spoke, it entertained, and at times, it fooled you. In 1938, NBC’s competitor, CBS Radio aired Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds and many listeners believed that outer space aliens had actually landed in New Jersey.

Without a doubt, that type of creativity would be at the heart of what decades later could be labeled, Reality.

I’m certain that some reality producers today would laugh at those gullible 1938 listeners, all as they work hard to get their modern-day viewers to buy into the notion that the Kardashian family is up to anything real.

Let’s face it - Every generation has its own notion of what is and is not gullible.

But hey, there are no Kardashians without cable.

Onward, as we figure out how we really got Cable to begin with.

LAYING CABLE

It’s the 1940’s in America, and TV broadcasting was still in its infancy. The few networks beamed-out signals that were electromagnetic. That’s how those early shows went out onto the airwaves. The network affiliates needed to build high towers to connect with those big network signals. Like radio, it was a game of toss and catch - The affiliates threw, and your home antenna caught the signals, sending the content into your primitive-yet-amazing living room TV of the era - a device that somehow knew how to reassemble all that air into picture and sound.

Crude as it all was back then, it worked pretty well in the cities, where the networks and affiliates had set-up shop and had more towers around for the masses. But those early signals didn’t travel all that well into the less populated countryside - The further out of the city, the worse the picture and sound on your set. For quite a while, it was a pretty consistent equation: ‘you lived out in the country, you got lousy, or in some areas, NO television. Even early on, many wanted to fix this reality; from what they were hearing out on the farm, this new TV Thing was just too damn important to be ignored. So, hard to believe, as far back as 1948, there was a Cable presence in the television world: CATV - That stood for Community Antenna Television. Who were they? They were a small, geographically scattered (but obviously determined) group of nerds who started playing with ideas that would eventually bring better TV transmission to areas outside of the big broadcast cities. In short, they wanted those outside of broadcast TV’s reach to reach out to broadcast TV.

The understandable goals of CATV were the same as even those we all recall a few short years ago with the Internet and smart-phones; goals we still strive for: better reception and more content variety (often by way of better reception). But for the next few decades, after it was first established, CATV and primitive cable could only really do the work of an elaborate phone provider of the era: use direct hard-wires to deliver rural areas the Big City network signals that were out of their reach with home antennas - It was oddly equivalent to a neighbor-helping-neighbor type of deal: I’m getting some reception, you are not - I’ll run a live cable your way. However it first took shape, this primitive practice did work, just as it must’ve put ideas into the heads of those with foresight and creativity: What were they thinking? Something like, If one CAN be the ‘middle man’ who delivers picture and sound by way of cable, why just deliver the network stuff? As the delivery service, heck, I could also pipe-in NON-network content, or even MAKE content myself. Okay, that was a long way off. But the seeds were surely planted. First, for more details on how CATV and early cable actually worked and first succeeded on a tech level, we need to step back and have a look at a man of that era named Robert Tarlton. This guy was something; a radio salesman in Lansford, Pennsylvania, returning home after WWII.

Bob’s homecoming goal: to make a killing with this incredible new gizmo, television. One big problem for him: a nearby mountain messed-up and essentially sealed off the Philadelphia-sent broadcast signals that were trying to make their way into his small town. Understandably, nobody in Lansford wanted to buy a TV from Tarlton if it was essentially just a big cat warmer.

But Tarlton was both determined and bright. He got some local Lansford CATV-minded investors to help him build a large receiving antenna on top of that tall, troublesome mountain (having the foresight to try this in 1949!) As good as his reception now was, he still then had to enhance the collected signals through something of an amplifier just outside of Lansford. His next step: with individual coaxial cables, he could now pipe-in a near-perfect signal from that amplifier into nearby homes. House by house, he charged for the service. Yes, Cable was born.

In a TV starved nation, it didn’t take long for other intelligent guys to follow Tarlton’s lead and set up their own Cable TV systems - A power lineman in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania named John Walson, an Astoria resident in Oregon named Ed Parsons; this guy set his operation up on his small apartment rooftop. The regional construct was often identical: one powerful large receiving tower, an amplifying system that would enhance and boost the incoming signals, and then individual cables that would run directly to houses, all for installation costs and monthly fees. This went on for decades, growing in numbers year after year. As the 1960’s arrived, nearly 700,000 American subscribers got TV by way of over 600 different Cable outlets. It was great for those consumers, but it was also seen by many as pretty-much undisputed theft for profit. As this Cable notion kept growing, the networks were getting ready to strike back.

It’s perhaps easy to see both sides of the early wars between the big broadcast networks and upstart cable deliverers. These new cable guys were making money by intercepting and selling free network product to paying customers. On the other side of the argument, many parts of the country were indeed in areas with lousy TV reception, thus cable was providing a wanted service that was costly to build. National advertisers - the lifeblood of network TV - they had to be thrilled with more eyeballs landing on their ads; they probably kept the networks on leashes for a time. Meanwhile, technology fueled both fires. For the networks, ever-improving home antennas were arriving, as well as stronger transmission abilities for network affiliates.

All that as cable was also increasing its technical quality, along with a new feature that was as much a bonus for cable as it was the final insult to the networks: some cable companies were now adding their own Program Options, by way of piping-in shows from different affiliates and various broadcast time zones; local sporting events played big within these new options.

Cable’s new pitch was clear: great reception AND unique scheduling, maybe local programming; it’s worth the cost. All as the Antenna networks continued with the same pitch they had for years: We’re working on the reception, but hey, it’s free.

Whatever the case, by the late 50’s and early 60’s, the frustrated networks all had the same notion: it’s time to get the feds involved. Let’s ramp-up into this part: The Federal Communications Commission has always been one of those odd government agencies that is either hated or, at best, tolerated. It’s the type of thing that seems to get created simply because something unexpected becomes too big, everyone is angry or scared about that, and nobody has a real or workable solution. So, someone calls the Feds. Again, we are still going through all those exact same confused matters with the Internet today, particularly when social media is involved.

The FCC first came along in 1934, meant at the time to deal with all the exploding ye olde tech of the day: black ceramic phones, Fibber McGee’s radio, the Old West’s still-used telegram, and this fanciful, dreamed-of Television Thing, if that ever becomes real (so the skeptics thought in the 30’s). In short, the FCC was primarily designed to deal with Who controls the airwaves, and not much more than that. When the networks finally wanted to take on cable in the mid-50’s, they went to the creaky FCC, having no idea of the advantage cable would have in a legal arena. In the early battles, it was that often-seen mismatch between New Ideas outfoxing Old Thinking.

UPSTART

In 1956, one could imagine the heads exploding at the TV networks when the FCC said they really couldn’t go after Cable for the networks because Cable was not using - wait for it - airwaves! True when given thought. The cable entrepreneurs were simply receiving network airwaves, just like anybody else. What they did once they had them; that was not airwave related. The battles went on as both sides grew. It was the continuing growth of cable that made the networks know they eventually had to stop (or solve) this unique problem, just as it was the continuing growth of the networks that finally made a newly terrified U.S. Government step in.

Here was the change: in 1962, the year First TV President John Kennedy was elected, U.S. politicians realized that network TV had, in a real sense, now become the most powerful tool in politics; nothing else was close. As the networks then wisely went directly to elected politicians with their FCC gripes, the craven politicians of the day probably all had a similar question when it came to dealing with the powerful broadcasters; something along the lines of, What do you ask of me, My Lord? So much for the FCC just being about airwaves - A newly-energized, now-politically driven and super-re-deputized FCC suddenly became programmers, in a sense, just because handsome John Kennedy looked so much better on TV than shady Richard Nixon.

As the FCC had constantly done previously, (when they were allowed to act as censors and moralists outside of their originally-designated purview for radio and early TV), the agency seemed to work hard when it came to knee-capping cable, simply because that is what network TV wanted. But the combined FCC Cable Reports of ’65, ’66 and ’69 weren’t about dirty words or images. They were, it seemed, about putting cable out of business. And if that wasn’t legally possible, the networks would settle for newly-regulated cable being reduced to essentially a rural-based novelty cult. One of the first shots across the bow: cable was banned in urban areas where network antenna reception was deemed to be satisfactory without having cable.

Other new laws in the FCC’s Brave New Cable World Handbook: without complex express permissions, cable could no longer make their own schedules with different or time-shifted airings, of either network (or at times) non-network programming. Since cable was essentially relegated to only rural areas, the FCC now demanded that farm folks get to be on local cable TV as well, during non-network hours (It’s not hard to imagine the corn-pone, country-lawyer-style congressmen who courageously fought for that early Culture War gem - It’s YOUR cable, Possum Valley! You shouldn’t hafta look at only New York slickers an’ Hollywood dandies!).

It’s as though the networks knew exactly what cable could become if left unchecked; that proof came with two of the most draconian new FCC rules: One: IF granted permission to show a licensed, paid-for non-network-run Hollywood movie, that cable operator had to make sure that the film was over ten years old (man, someone at the networks saw HBO coming). And for sports, even stranger and more obvious in intent. IF (permission granted) a cable operator ran a sports airing outside of a network-aired game, those cable matches had to be on tape and - get this - at least 5 years old. Wow. Remember, this was all well before VHS recorders, home video and DVR; the networks really did want to make one thing clear; to cable, to the FCC, to the audience and especially to all of (future) technology: We Are the Ones Running Things Here.

Now, I’ve always loved and marveled over The Big Three Networks - their style, their smarts and their shows and news that set the standards for quality. But even as a small-town Minnesota boy, I distinctly recall the David and Goliath tremors of the early 70’s, as little cable somehow kept growing and the networks were clearly seen as censoring, capitalistic puritanical bullies.

Remember, this is when Hollywood finally got to make non-family movies (M, GP and X ratings arrived), when pornography was slowly becoming mainstreamed (Playboy became an accepted on the coffee-table lifestyle guide) and, as it was when the Internet arrived decades later, it was a time when many people said that we all need MORE choices and MORE outlets. Oh, and here’s The Great Unspoken on that list - MORE possibilities for OTHERS outside of established TV and film to achieve the thing that was quickly becoming The American Currency: Broadcast Fame. As powerful as the major networks were at the time, they were somehow losing a battle that had yet to be fully defined by the public. It was a lot like when the phone monopoly was shattered in the 80’s, something that went beyond even the economics of the day: people did not know exactly WHAT they were rooting for, but they knew it was Change - Change against A FEW who had power. The public pressure FOR cable was huge in the early 70’s, and thanks to constant outcry, the FCC blinked, no longer enforcing many of their arcane rules. Looking back, the agency really had no choice - Cable was not a cartel of drug dealers; they were a system of businesses (with foresight), all working within legal means. Even the big networks were starting to secretly plot how to join them when they saw that they were clearly not going to stop them.

Like many things at the start of the 70’s, cable leapt out of its cage. With newly attractive-yet-undefined Cable now on many minds, ironically, it was the remaining network-friendly (soon-tobe-tested) FCC rules that had more than a few irate cable creatives thinking along the lines of, Who needs the networks AT ALL? Everything we do associated with them only brings trouble. Here we are as a delivery service, giving them bigger across-America audiences, a better picture, and thanks to their paid stooges at the FCC, we’re always wondering what the next hoop-jump is gonna be. Ditch THE NETWORKS fully and WE make all the new cable TV rules! True, but at the time, definitely in the Be Afraid of What You Wish For category of dream. And that WAS a mere dream for quite some time. Still, before long, the networks flipped a full 180, smart enough to create Must Carry clauses (along with new user and licensing fees) with all cable companies. This new profit-stream for the networks embodied a key, painful reality for early creatives seeking network independence in the early days of legit cable: most subscribers WERE just paying for cable to get better Big Three network reception. It would take years to wean U.S. TV audiences away from the collective (newly-cabled) grip of CBS, NBC and ABC.

Frankly, while the networks had a right to be seeing profits from cable, there was so much hypocrisy at work as we all watched those network guys reading the writing on the wall, creating those Must Carry clauses; the networks had fought the early little cable guys for years. Now that Cable was gettin’ REAL, the networks made sure that the FCC kept them in the bundle (so to speak – it was a small bundle in those days).

But honestly, back then, the networks had nothing to worry about. They were still The Powerful, now co-existing with this New cable movement, a movement that was still more Hip Idea than Competitive Broadcaster.

The networks figured, "Hell, even if cable creates 1,000 empty channels, what’s gonna be on them? Who is gonna replace us? In any way? In any shape? In any form? Who?!"

The networks were about to find out.

TICKETS, PLEASE

In the early 70’s, New York City’s Time Incorporated (yeah, the fancy magazine folks) and NYC businessman Charles Dolan were looking to sell a very chichi idea, a notion pretty-much designed for the pleasure of the rich - Which is probably why everyone would eventually want what they were selling. As a cable executive and an avid sports enthusiast (so avid, he was able to cultivate valuable broadcast deals with the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers) Dolan was the driving force behind This Big Idea - SO big, even with the vast capital he had, Dolan needed the epic investment and prestige of Time Inc. to (maybe) pull this off. You need to put your head back into that time period to understand how cool and unprecedented all this was.

Here’s the deal: here you are, in your sleek Manhattan penthouse, with all your sophisticated friends. The Seagram’s is poured neat after a great dinner. You turn on your then-large-one-ton-tubedriven 1970’s Rich-Guy TV - Your guests ask, What’s on tonight? You tell them. Well, tonight, in this very penthouse, the sold-out game that’s about to start playing at Madison Square Garden - It’s on in this apartment, live and commercial free. That will be followed by an uncut, uninterrupted screening of that big R rated Paul Newman movie that was just in theaters a few weeks ago. It’s a film ABC will show all chopped up into shreds, about three years from now.

Your incredibly impressed friends rightfully think, "WHAT? Oh my God, how cool is my rich friend here?! Tonight, thanks to him, I’m watching a sold-out pro game and an uncut theatrical feature film! If I was stuck at home with my TV, I’d be in for a night of cigarette commercials surrounded by ‘Bewitched’, Sandy Duncan and ‘The Ken Berry ‘Wow’ Show’ - How cool is my rich friend here? And how did he pull off this game?! And this movie? What - The - Hell?!"

Yes, it was a prestige-marketed product that quickly caught the attention of the masses, and it pretty-much embodied all of what dreamers thought Cable without the networks was supposed to be. Occasional Pay-Per-View event-by-event was already in the cable pipeline, but this was different: Home Box Office changed everything. And since they were a full subscription service, showing all non-network programming 24/7, they could do whatever the hell they wanted, at times, by ignoring those old FCC rules (but they had a plan for that fix in the near future). By 1975, satellite transmission became broadcast legal; HBO smartly signed-up quick and soon had satellites in space beaming for them - In a sense, cable was now cutting one end of its cable. And that was yet another innovation that put HBO on the map - in a big and well-publicized fashion. By the mid-seventies, young HBO was huge and steadily growing; those new satellites were a big part of that. They beamedout