Word: fcc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...regulatory climate is turning more favorable for cable operators too, after many years during which the Federal Communications Commission almost strangled the industry's growth by severely restricting the number of signals that cable operators could transmit. The FCC began to ease up in 1972, and last week it took a long further step: the agency's commissioners voted 6 to 1 in favor of a proposal to allow cable operators to pick up signals from as many distant broadcast-TV stations as they wish. Currently, there is in most cities a limit of two-so that...
Earlier in April, cable operators were partly freed of an obligation to broadcast shows they did not want to carry. The FCC had long required cable stations to provide "public access" air time to just about any group that put together a show. Though some of the programs perform a real public service (consumer-advice shows, for example), many are excruciatingly dull (talk shows on which people-in-the-street rattle on about nothing in particular) and a few border on pornography (nude dancing on Midnight Blue over Manhattan's Channel...
...poor. Antenna builders soon noticed that if they made the towers tall enough, they could pull in signals from distant as well as nearby stations, thereby offering viewers greater variety as well as clearer pictures. But the road from Panther Valley to national prominence was long blocked by the FCC. Not until the 1970s did two events combine to broaden the cable audience dramatically: the FCC's first steps toward deregulation and, more important, the coming of satellite transmission. Since 1975, cable programmers (Home Box Office, a subsidiary of Time Inc., was the first) have been bouncing signals...
Since satellite programming began, the industry has expanded with a rush. As recently as 1974-75, Teleprompter was losing money, and some other cable operators were also in financial trouble; they had borrowed heavily to expand after the FCC loosened regulations but got squeezed by high interest rates. Now the industry is bringing in $1.4 billion in revenue a year and posting profits high enough to catch the eye of multinational giants. General Electric has bought into a cable operator and Getty Oil into a programming company. RCA plans this December to send up another Satcom satellite that will carry...
...Satcom, whose signals bounce to the earth stations of cable systems all over the country. At present there are four: WTCG in Atlanta, WOR in New York, WON in Chicago and KTVU in the San Francisco-Oakland area. They and their cable customers should benefit especially from the FCC'S proposal last week that cable operators be permitted to pick up as many signals as they like from anywhere, and a companion proposal that cable companies be permitted to air shows even if the same programs are being carried by local broadcasters...