Word: tv
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...conceived by its originators in the early 1950s, pay TV was to bring to every living room Broadway musicals, operas from the Met, heavyweight-title fights-all for $1 or so a show. There would be ballet, first-run and art movies never seen on TV, classical drama and the boldest of the off-Broadway experiments-the sort of minority programming that network executives claim is uneconomical. But that vision did not reckon with the relentless opposition of movie exhibitors and the broadcasting lobbies in Washington. Over the years the TV industry kept insisting, as the National Association of Broadcasters...
...first-run (last week's offerings included Frank Sinatra in The Detective). In earlier days, WHCT was more venturesome. It carried a 1963 Joan Baez concert live ($1.50) and the 1964 Clay-Liston fight ($3). That drew 63% of the clientele. There have been other signs of pay-TV appeal. Patients at a Hartford old folks' hospital who got their service free were so enthusiastic that they made a bed-to-bed collection and sent the proceeds to the station...
...ahead in other markets. Now, after years of knuckling under to the anti-pay lobby and its friends in Congress, the commission approved more fee-vee, but hesitantly. The authorization will not take effect for six months, pending congressional review. And the new pay-TV charter contains so many safeguards for the existing industry that the National Association of Broadcasters may no longer oppose the plan...
Hedged Go-Ahead. In the first place, under the suggested regulations, pay TV would be restricted to markets where at least four standard stations are al ready operating. As of now, that means 89 cities and about 81% of the U.S. TV households. As for programming, the fee-vee system would not be allowed to bid for TV fare that is now available free. Pay operators, for ex ample, could not in most cases telecast movies more than two years old; or series-type shows with continuing casts; or the latest of any sports event that had been telecast...
Despite the FCC's well-hedged go-ahead, therefore, the future of pay TV is still uncertain, at best. Joseph Wright, board chairman of Zenith Corp., believes that start-up and production of sufficient decoding devices will mean a year's delay between FCC authorization and actual premiere of a new pay channel. And that would be in just one market, perhaps where Zenith maintains its headquarters: the city of Chicago...