In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place
Check any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
First phrase: Cable television first became available in the United States in1948.
The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
No, because the majority of TV channels you got when getting cable weren’t cable exclusive, cable exclusive appeared in 1972 (24 years after the introduction of cable broadcasting) and in 1977 came the first cable exclusive channel with ads.
People saying “not having ads was the point of cable” are wrong since not having ads on all the cable exclusive channels was a thing for 5 years and only happened after cable already had a good fooothold in the market.
You’ve already changed the goal posts. Your initial claim was that most cable networks had ads, and now you’ve walked that entirely back to “well there existed one channel that had ads”
But also the original comment was they were old enough to remember it
I didn’t move the goal post, most of the channels you got access to when subscribing to cable were the same channels you had access to without cable and they had ads, a minority of channels, starting in 72 with HBO, which was the first cable exclusive channel, didn’t have them but in 77 the trend reversed.
That’s 5 years without ads on a minority of channels you could watch and people speak like all cable was ad free and like that was the whole point of it. Well, no, the whole point was to get TV to people who didn’t have good reception and the people here ignore the 24 years of cable TV that came before 1972 and the 46 years since 1977.
Most cable TV channels still had ads, the revenue generated from subscribers would never have been enough to cover otherwise.
In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7wxRbKq9Dj
And it’s funny that you’re talking about “the early days” since it started in 1948 and I’m willing to bet that you weren’t born.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.
e: also
This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I'm not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken placeCheck any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/the-complete-history-of-cable-tv
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.I provided a source with more sources, no it wasn’t.
Need more? There:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States
First phrase:
Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948.The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
According to the wiki article that you linked:
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
Your link literally states you’re wrong…
No, because the majority of TV channels you got when getting cable weren’t cable exclusive, cable exclusive appeared in 1972 (24 years after the introduction of cable broadcasting) and in 1977 came the first cable exclusive channel with ads.
People saying “not having ads was the point of cable” are wrong since not having ads on all the cable exclusive channels was a thing for 5 years and only happened after cable already had a good fooothold in the market.
You’ve already changed the goal posts. Your initial claim was that most cable networks had ads, and now you’ve walked that entirely back to “well there existed one channel that had ads”
But also the original comment was they were old enough to remember it
And if you look at this timeline: https://www.computertechreviews.com/a-brief-history-of-cable-tv-commercials/
It lines up pretty well with their claims of when ads were during the viewing experience.
I didn’t move the goal post, most of the channels you got access to when subscribing to cable were the same channels you had access to without cable and they had ads, a minority of channels, starting in 72 with HBO, which was the first cable exclusive channel, didn’t have them but in 77 the trend reversed.
That’s 5 years without ads on a minority of channels you could watch and people speak like all cable was ad free and like that was the whole point of it. Well, no, the whole point was to get TV to people who didn’t have good reception and the people here ignore the 24 years of cable TV that came before 1972 and the 46 years since 1977.