Talk:Cable television in the United States/Archive 1

Substitution of stations
There should be something on here from the 1960s or early 1970s about "substitution". TV stations in smaller markets would require the cable television company to substitute the station's signal for a more distant signal carrying the same program, in order to protect the sales the local station made for advertising.

Canada used this starting in the early 1970s, requiring cable television systems to substitute a Canadian station over one or more American stations carrying the same program at the same time, in order to protect the Canadian broadcaster's sales of advertising during the program. For example, if CFPL-TV London was carrying the same program as NBC affiliates, the cable systems in London and region would temporarily distribute CFPL-TV in place of WICU-TV 12 Erie, WKYC 3 Cleveland and WWJ-TV (now WDIV-TV) 4 Detroit. Since the Canadian stations tended to carry more commercials than allowed US stations during prime time, Canadian viewers tended to complain about deleted scenes, and a brief overlay of station breaks at the end of the program time slot.

GBC 22:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a problematic link to the Cox Report--wrong report, wrong decade.

Licensing Freeze
Would it be possible to explain what the television licensing freeze of 1948-1952 was, or link to an rticle about it if there is one? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.209.31.91 (talk) 00:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC).


 * Here is an article about it on the web: Freeze of 1948--Rpresser 20:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The FCC was by 1948 innundated with hundreds of requests for new TV station licenses. There were also several issues which needed to be resolved... 1) a standard for color television; 2) channel space for noncommercial TV; 3) reduction of channel interference between stations; 4) a national channel allocation scheme; and, 5) opening up of additional spectrum space for TV. The Korean War slowed down the resolution of these. -Dawn McGatney  —Preceding unsigned comment added by McGatney (talk • contribs) 06:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Number of Cable Providers per Region
I thought there was a regulation that each region could only have 1 cable provider. For instance, Time Warner is the sole provider in manhattan. Is that true?


 * No and yes. Manhattan's dual head ends and dual channel plans are a remnant of the 1970s when the northern and southern parts of the island had different companies: Stirling and Teleprompter.  They merged and the merged company was later bought by TWC.  Jim.henderson 13:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Subscriber Fees for Cable Channels
I'd like to add a table to this article that lists "subscriber fees" for various representative cable channels. Problem: I don't know how to make a table. However I have the necessary data culled from various sources. Can someone add this to the article? From the wikipedia entry Disney Channel (with appropriate references) and also http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_cabletv_economics.asp CENTS channel 8 Cartoon Channel 33 Nickelodeon 44 CNN 60 USA/FOX News 80 Disney Channel 89 TNT 290 ESPN (I don't know why there's a big purple block around my post. And I don't know how to fix it.)  (shrug)  -   Theaveng 18:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It's the spaces you put between the left margin and the text, or in your case numbers.

Here's a line with a space to the left.

And here's one without. The way I make tables is to copy someone else's table with similar layout from another article and replace the contents. Jim.henderson 13:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

liar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.217.74.80 (talk) 17:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

"Basic cable" lacks a history of the term
Originally, "basic cable" was one of many tiers, and actually scarcely included anything but broadcast networks. For years, I for one found it irritating to hear the term "mis-used" to cover what was then called "standard tier" by most companies; I've had to get over it, of course, as it has become the de facto name of pretty much everything that isn't premium cable. It would be illustrative if we could add well-researched info on the evolution of the term from the early days till now. Ideas? Lawikitejana (talk) 21:06, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Wrong.
". . .cable television is less common in low income, inner city, and rural areas."

I can see there's a citation for this, but it's wrong. Cable seems to be in every lower class house (ghetto) I know of. I live in a low-income area of Las Vegas, and EVERYBODY has Cox Cable. I also lived in Pahrump, NV, for many years, and EVERYBODY has either CMA Cable, DirecTV, or Dish. I also lived in low-income area of Pahrump, near their Walmart. My grandparents live in the worst part of Los Angeles, and EVERYBODY has cable, too.

Just because the statement is cited doesn't mean the citation's link itself has accurate info. Perhaps finding some more sources may be better, than just citing one source that's highly inaccurate.

Apple8800 (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It is certainly wrong, perhaps for grammatical reasons. "Urban and rural" make up 100% of households, do they not?  Perhaps the source considers surburban to a third category, but, even so, I don't think urban households lack for cable access.  Am I wrong? --Icowrich (talk) 13:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

potential resource
Cutting the Cord on Cable by Kevin Sintumuang 7.January.2012 WSJ. 97.87.29.188 (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Fiber-telcos in the "Statistics" list of top cable companies
In the "Statistics" section of this article, there is a list of the ten largest cable TV providers, sourced to the NCTA. Well, the NCTA list includes DirecTV and Dish Network, but those have been removed here in Wikipedia, because they are not cable companies. However, still present in the Wikipedia list are AT&T and Verizon. They're typically thought of as fiber-telco providers of television, not traditionally defined as "cable". Shouldn't they be removed from the list? - 2001:558:1400:10:19D5:F30A:E83C:5188 (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Reference needed for Telecom TV subscriber.
What exactly is a Telecom TV subscriber? Are we talking about IPTV?

Total US cable subscribers by year --Wyn.junior (talk) 17:22, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Use of Antenna: A rhombic Antenna allows Reception of any Broadcast TV CHANNELS over any reasonable distances of local 250 miles
We should bouild and instill these antennas so we may all enjoy my lifestyle of the last 50 years or so... KCD-20746-3728 (talk) 14:53, 3 September 2017 (UTC)