Cable television began in 1948 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. John Walson, the owner of an electronics shop, began selling TVs in 1947. However, few customers in the local area wanted to buy a television due to the bad reception caused by the surrounding mountains. To increase sales potential, Walson erected an antenna on a nearby mountaintop, ran a cable from the antenna to his store, and connected it to his television. He then agreed to attach cables to the houses of those who bought TVs from him. From then until the early 1970s, cable networks were generally only used in rural or mountainous areas. At
FIGURE 5.2
TABLE 5.4
| Visitors to selected online music services, March 2004 | |
| Unique visitors (000) | |
| SOURCE: Lee Rainie, Mary Madden, Dan Hess, and Graham Mudd, "Unique Visitors to Selected Online Music Services March 2004," in Pew Internet Project and comScore Media Metrix Data Memo, Pew Internet and American Life Project, April 2004, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Filesharing_April_04.pdf (accessed November 22, 2004). Used by permission of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which bears no responsibility for the interpretations presented or conclusions reached based on analysis of the data. | |
| Total visitors to selected music services | 11,249 |
| MUSICMATCH.COM | 5,335 |
| Roxio, Inc (Napster) | 2,567 |
| ITunes | 2,333 |
| Listen.com sites | 1,387 |
| Walmart Music Store | 535 |
| LIQUID.COM | 169 |
most, early cable television programming included local broadcasts and a broadcast or two from a nearby region.
As early as 1965 the U.S. government and various contractors began putting up a communications satellite network. A satellite network remedied the biggest obstacle faced by broadcasters in the 1960s, which was the curvature of the earth. If the earth were flat, TVs could receive broadcast signals from thousands of miles away. Due to the curvature of the earth, these broadcast signals escape into space after traveling a hundred miles or so. With a satellite system in place, a transmitter on the East Coast was able to beam a signal to a satellite above Kansas. The satellite then relayed the signal to the West Coast without interruption.
Home Box Office (HBO) became the first pay cable station in 1972 and was the first television broadcaster to take advantage of a satellite communications network. HBO began in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and broadcast its movies and shows to a limited number of cable networks in and around the state. In 1975, in order to expand the subscription television market, HBO leased the right to use one of the uplinks on RCA's Satcom I communications satellite. Once HBO was on the satellite network, any cable network provider around the United States could buy a large, three-meter satellite dish and provide HBO for any house on the network. By 1978 HBO had one million customers. Ted Turner, who put his WTBS station in Atlanta on the satellite network in 1976, created the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980. This was followed by the Music Television Network (MTV) and a slew of other stations in 1981.
The early 1980s also saw the emergence of VCRs. As can be seen in Table 5.5, only 1.1% of households had a VCR in 1980. The percentage of households with VCRs
TABLE 5.5
| Utilization of selected media, 1970–2001 | |||||||||||
| [62.0 represents 62,000,000] | |||||||||||
| Item | Unit | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 |
| NA Not available. | |||||||||||
| 1For occupied housing units. 1970 and 1980 as of April 1; all other years as of March. | |||||||||||
| 21980–1995 as of December 31, except as noted. | |||||||||||
| 31970, as of September of prior year; all other years as of January of year shown. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii. | |||||||||||
| 4As of February. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii. | |||||||||||
| 5As of January1. | |||||||||||
| 6As of September 30. | |||||||||||
| SOURCE: "No. 1126. Utilization of Selected Media: 1970 to 2001," in Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003, U.S. Census Bureau, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2003, http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/03statab/inforcomm.pdf (accessed November 22, 2004) | |||||||||||
| Households with— | |||||||||||
| Telephone service1 | Percent | 87.0 | 93.0 | 93.3 | 93.9 | 93.8 | 93.9 | 94.1 | 94.0 | 94.6 | 94.6 |
| Radio2 | Millions | 62.0 | 78.6 | 94.4 | 98.0 | 98.0 | 98.0 | (NA) | (NA) | (NA) | (NA) |
| Percent of total households | Percent | 98.6 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 | 99.0 |
| Average number of sets | Number | 5.1 | 5.5 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 |
| Television3 | Millions | 59 | 76 | 92 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 101 | 102 |
| Percent of total households | Percent | 95.3 | 97.9 | 98.2 | 98.3 | 98.3 | 98.4 | 98.3 | 98.2 | 98.2 | 98.2 |
| Television sets in homes | Millions | 81 | 128 | 193 | 217 | 223 | 229 | 235 | 240 | 245 | 248 |
| Average number of sets per home | Number | 1.4 | 1.7 | 2.1 | 2.3 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.4 |
| Color set households | Millions | 21 | 63 | 90 | 94 | 95 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 101 | 102 |
| Cable television4 | Millions | 4 | 15 | 52 | 60 | 63 | 64 | 66 | 67 | 69 | 69 |
| Percent of TV households | Percent | 6.7 | 19.9 | 56.4 | 63.4 | 65.3 | 66.5 | 67.2 | 67.5 | 68.0 | 68.0 |
| VCRs4 | Millions | (NA) | 1 | 63 | 77 | 79 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 86 | 88 |
| Percent of TV households | Percent | (NA) | 1.1 | 68.6 | 81.0 | 82.2 | 84.2 | 84.6 | 84.6 | 85.1 | 86.2 |
| Commercial radio stations:2 | |||||||||||
| AM | Number | 4,323 | 4,589 | 4,987 | 4,909 | 4,857 | 4,762 | 4,793 | 4,783 | 4,685 | 4,727 |
| FM | Number | 2,196 | 3,282 | 4,392 | 5,296 | 5,419 | 5,542 | 5,662 | 5,766 | 5,892 | 6,051 |
| Television stations:5 Total | Number | 862 | 1,011 | 1,442 | 1,532 | 1,533 | 1,564 | 1,589 | 1,615 | 1,663 | 1,686 |
| Commercial | Number | 677 | 734 | 1,092 | 1,161 | 1,174 | 1,195 | 1,221 | 1,243 | 1,288 | 1,309 |
| VHF | Number | 501 | 516 | 547 | 562 | 554 | 555 | 561 | 561 | 567 | 572 |
| UHF | Number | 176 | 218 | 545 | 599 | 620 | 640 | 660 | 682 | 721 | 737 |
| Cable television: | |||||||||||
| Systems5 | Number | 2,490 | 4,225 | 9,575 | 11,218 | 11,119 | 10,950 | 10,845 | 10,700 | 10,243 | 9,926 |
| Households served | Millions | 4.5 | 17.7 | 54.9 | 63.0 | 64.6 | 65.9 | 67.0 | 68.5 | 69.3 | 73.0 |
| Daily newspaper circulation6 | Millions | 62.1 | 62.2 | 62.3 | 58.2 | 57.0 | 56.7 | 56.2 | 56.0 | 55.8 | 55.6 |
in 1997 jumped to 84.2%, but then slowed down and leveled off at around 86% of households by 2001.
Closed Captioning and the V-Chip
By the mid-1970s, television had become the predominant medium not just for entertainment but for news and emergency information. Recognizing this, the Federal Communications Commission set aside part of the television broadcast spectrum for closed captioning for the hearing impaired. Closed captioning consists of scrolling text at the bottom of a TV screen that spells out what is being said on television. Four years after the FCC action, ABC, PBS and NBC ran their first closed captioned programs, which included the Wonderful World of Disney and the ABC Sunday Night Movie. At first closed captioning was scripted, but then the National Captioning Institute developed a keyboard interface that could be used to create captioning for live sports, television shows, and newscasts. A stenographer listened to the audio portion of a broadcast and typed it into the broadcast in real time. In 1990 Congress required that all television receivers contain decoders that display closed captioning, and in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress insisted that closed captioning be included in all shows by the turn of the century.
As part of this act, Congress also requested that broadcasters rate their shows. The industry heeded the request and developed the "TV Parental Guidelines." At the beginning of every television show, a rating is shown in the corner of the screen for fifteen seconds. TV-G designated general audiences, while TV-MA warned of content not suitable for anyone under seventeen. Even with the ratings system in place, parents across the country found they still could not monitor all the shows on cable as well as broadcast television. According to a statement delivered to Congress by FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani on March 12, 1998, the average child spent twenty-five hours a week in front of the television. In response, in 2000, the FCC insisted that all television sets thirteen inches or larger contain a "V-chip." The V-chip worked in conjunction with the ratings system. If a parent set the V-chip to allow only TV-G shows, the microchip would simply block every show not rated TV-G.
Advances in Television in the 1990s
In 1994 a new way of broadcasting movie and television shows became available when RCA released its
TABLE 5.6
| Digital television standards | ||
| Analog | DTV | HDTV |
| SOURCE: "What is DTV?" Federal Communications Commission, http://www.dtv.gov/whatisdtv.html (accessed November 22, 2004) | ||
| Broadcasts at least through 2006, and most likely longer. Consumers will always be able to connect an inexpensive receiver, a set top box, to their existing analog TV to decode DTV broadcast signals. Set top boxes will not convert your analog TV to high-definition. Analog TVs will continue to work with cable, satellite, VCRs, DVD players, camcorders, video games consoles and other devices for many years. |
Digital cable or digital satellite does not mean a program is in high-definition. Analog TVs will continue to work with cable, satellite, VCRs, DVD players, camcorders, video games consoles and other devices for many years. Multicasting is available. HDTV is available. Data streaming is available. |
High-definition broadcasts offered. Best available picture resolution, clarity and color. Dolby theatre surround-sound. Dolby surround-sound. Wide screen "movie-like" format. |
Direct Satellite System (DSS). The DSS was the first affordable satellite receiver available to the American public. By installing an eighteen-inch satellite dish on their houses, Americans could receive nearly two hundred channels in their living rooms. To squeeze so many channels into a stream of data small enough to travel to space and back, the direct broadcasting satellite provider had to use a form of digital compression known as MPEG-1. The MPEG-1 compression format works much like an MP3 format. (The MP3 format in fact was developed from the audio portion of MPEG-1 format.) In order to employ the MPEG-1 format, all television shows recorded in analog must first be transformed by analog-to-digital converters into a digital format. MPEG-1 encoders, owned by the direct broadcasting satellite provider, then compress the digital data largely by removing redundant scenery between frames. For example, if a character's face is the only discernable movement between two frames in a movie, then the background from the first frame is applied to both frames, cutting out the redundant information in the second frame. The compressed signal is then beamed to the satellite network. Upon receiving the signal, the satellite network broadcasts the signal to homes all across the country. A DSS box in the home decompresses the signal and delivers it to the viewer.
Several years after the first direct broadcast satellites were released, cable companies introduced digital cable. Digital cable works in much the same way as direct broadcast satellites, but uses a slightly more advanced MPEG-2 format for compression. By digitally compressing their programming, cable providers found they could transmit ten times more television stations than before along their cables. Many cable providers added music stations, pay-per-view movies, and multiple movie channels to their services. The only drawback with both systems was that the decoder could only work on one television at a time, and it was very bulky.
In terms of television accessories, the big development in the late 1990s was the DVD. Since its release in 1997, the DVD quickly rose to become the preferred format for watching recorded movies. Looking at Table 5.5, the introduction of the DVD coincides precisely with a slowdown in VCR sales. According to the research-marketing firm Digital Entertainment Group, some 110 million DVDs were sold by 2004. DVDs work almost exactly in the same way as CDs, but the standard DVD can hold up to seven times more information per disc, which allows the DVD to carry the data needed for a much larger video files. DVDs are recorded in the MPEG-2 format as well.
Digital TV
Many confuse the concept of digital cable with digital TV. Digital cable simply uses digital technology to compress the size of broadcasts so that the customer has more channels. Most of the programming fed through the digital cable systems is not digitally recorded. Digital television, however, is digital from start to finish. Digital cameras are used to record the broadcast; digital cables, satellite systems, and broadcast towers send a digital signal; and digital televisions play the broadcast. The result is a television picture that more closely resembles an image on a computer monitor than an image on a television set. The FCC has established a number of standards for digital television, which are shown in Table 5.6. Standard definition TV (SDTV) has the resolution of an analog TV, which is roughly 480 × 440 dots per inch (dpi) or 210,000 pixels total. The next step up in visual quality is the enhanced definition TV (EDTV), which generally has the same over all resolution as a standard TV but features a wider screen. Finally, high definition television (HDTV) is the highest quality television format with resolutions up to 1,920 dpi horizontally and 1,080 dpi vertically. Overall, the HDTV has more than two million pixels to display each image, which provides the viewer with ten times the detail of standard TV. For a television to earn the HDTV name, it has to have the ability to play the latest versions of Dolby stereo as well.
The digital TV standards were adopted by the FCC after Congress passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The act called for a full conversion to digital television across America by 2006. By that time every television station serving every market in the United States was
TABLE 5.7
| Estimated revenue, printing expenses, and inventories for newspaper, periodical, database, and directory publishers, 1999–2001 | |||||||||
| [In millions of dollars (48,414 represents $48,414,000,000). For taxable and tax-exempt employer firms. Estimates have not been adjusted to the results of the 1997 Economic Census. Based on the North American Industry Classification System, 1997.] | |||||||||
| Newspaper publishers (NAICS 51111) | Periodical publishers (NAICS 51112) | Database and directory publishers (NAICS 51114) | |||||||
| Item | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 |
| NA Not available. | |||||||||
| S Data do not meet publication standards. | |||||||||
| *Includes other sources of revenue, not shown separately. | |||||||||
| SOURCE: "No. 1129. Newspaper, Periodical, Database, and Directory Publishers—Estimated Revenue, Printing Expenses, and Inventories: 1999 to 2001," in Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003, U.S. Census Bureau, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2003, http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/03statab/inforcomm.pdf (accessed November 22, 2004) | |||||||||
| Revenue* | 48,414 | 51,507 | 47,277 | 37,901 | 39,834 | 39,266 | 15,433 | 16,657 | 17,469 |
| (NA) | (NA) | 42,367 | (NA) | (NA) | 31,714 | (NA) | (NA) | 11,730 | |
| Subscription and sales | (NA) | (NA) | 9,394 | (NA) | (NA) | 13,816 | (NA) | (NA) | 594 |
| Advertising | (NA) | (NA) | 32,973 | (NA) | (NA) | 17,898 | (NA) | (NA) | 11,136 |
| Internet | (NA) | (NA) | 433 | (NA) | (NA) | 1,150 | (NA) | (NA) | 1,010 |
| Subscription and sales | (NA) | (NA) | (S) | (NA) | (NA) | 856 | (NA) | (NA) | 603 |
| Advertising | (NA) | (NA) | 324 | (NA) | (NA) | 293 | (NA) | (NA) | 407 |
| Contract printing | (NA) | (NA) | 1,788 | (NA) | (NA) | 934 | (NA) | (NA) | 144 |
| Distribution of flyers, inserts, etc. | (NA) | (NA) | 977 | (NA) | (NA) | 110 | (NA) | (NA) | (NA) |
| Graphic design services | (NA) | (NA) | 42 | (NA) | (NA) | 44 | (NA) | (NA) | (NA) |
| Sales or licensing of rights of content | (NA) | (NA) | 75 | (NA) | (NA) | 231 | (NA) | (NA) | 121 |
| Rental or sales of mailing lists | (NA) | (NA) | 14 | (NA) | (NA) | 161 | (NA) | (NA) | 1,253 |
| Publishing services for others | (NA) | (NA) | 12 | (NA) | (NA) | 369 | (NA) | (NA) | 31 |
| Expenses: purchased printing | 3,427 | 3,352 | 3,121 | 4,287 | 4,981 | 4,426 | 1,198 | 1,112 | 1,238 |
| Inventories at end of year | 737 | 786 | 748 | 1,258 | 1,340 | 1,185 | 408 | 398 | 376 |
| Finished goods and work-in-process | 43 | 51 | 63 | 877 | 879 | 773 | 383 | 370 | 355 |
| Materials, supplies, fuel, etc. | 694 | 736 | 685 | 381 | 462 | 413 | (S) | (S) | 22 |
required to air digital programming in one of the formats described in Table 5.6. In addition, broadcasters no longer had to air analog content. Americans with an analog TV set would be required to either buy a digital television or a $50 to $100 analog-to-digital conversion device in order to watch TV. At the close of 2004, however, only a very small percentage of Americans had HDTV or even EDTV. Fortunately, the Congress placed a clause in the act that allowed for a postponement of the deadline should most households not be ready for the transition.
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