Word: dials
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Which makes what's happening on the computer networks all the more startling. Every night, when they should be watching television, millions of computer users sit down at their keyboards; dial into CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or the Internet; and start typing -- E-mail, bulletin-board postings, chat messages, rants, diatribes, even short stories and poems. Just when the media of McLuhan were supposed to render obsolete the medium of Shakespeare, the online world is experiencing the greatest boom in letter writing since the 18th century...
...other similarly superfluous channels created by broadcast networks are the most potent newcomers on the jammed cable dial. Fox's entry went on the air with a subscriber count of 18 million homes -- the largest start-up figure for any cable service in history. Nearly 11 million homes are expected to be on board July 4, when nbc introduces America's Talking, a new network consisting of -- are you ready, America? -- nothing but talk shows. Last October ABC launched ESPN2, a hipper, younger version of cable's largest sports network; it currently reaches 12.8 million cable homes...
...answer is that, remarkable as it may seem, the cable dial is full. The much hyped 500-channel future is years away, and for now the average cable system has only about 40 slots for programming. Take away the dial positions that must be given to over-the-air stations and public-access channels, and there aren't nearly enough spaces for the more than 70 basic-cable services vying for an audience -- and for the advertising revenue they need in order to survive...
Actual crowding on the dial, however, is only part of the problem. A more important roadblock to new channels, in the view of the cable industry, is government regulation. In the 1992 Cable Act, Congress responded to consumer complaints about the rising cost of cable service by instructing the Federal Communications Commission to regulate rates. The FCC proceeded to roll back current rates and to establish a strict formula for how much cable operators could raise them in the future...
Whoever is to blame, the oversupply of reruns and chat on the cable dial has become oppressive, the attempts to breathe new life into them almost laughably desperate. America's Talking will offer such quirky variants on the talk-show form as Am I Nuts? (psychologists offer advice to people facing everyday stress) and Pork (its single topic: government waste) On ESPN2, the hotshot hosts can be abrasive enough to provoke violence (New Orleans Saints quarterback Jim Everett, taunted by interviewer Jim Rome this spring, overturned a table and pounced...