Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Quick Facts
 Cost of monthly cable service 1950: $3.00
 Cost of monthly cable service 2006: $73 (w/high speed
internet)
 First satellite TV broadcast: NBC, 1962
 Cost of the first home satellite dish: $36,000 (1979)
 Cost of DirecTV satellite system 2002: $0 (limited time
offer - sign up for 1 year subscription)
 First Consumer VCR: 1975
 Development of the Internet: 1986
 Development of the World Wide Web: 1991
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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The Story of Cable TV
 Cable started in rural towns such as Astoria, Oregon and
Lansford, Pennsylvania
 Community Antenna TV literally meant sharing of a
common antenna system to pick up television signals
 By 1952, about 70 cable systems were serving 15,000
homes in the U.S.
 By 1961, about 650 systems serving 700,000 homes
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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FCC and Cable
 In 1958, the FCC avoid regulating cable but in 1966
decided it was really an ancillary service to broadcast
television
 In 1972, the FCC established more formal rules
Local communities, states and the FCC were to
regulate cable
New systems would have a minimum of 20 channels
Must carry all local stations
Regulations on importing distant signals and
nonduplication of signals approved
Pay cable services would be approved
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Beginnings of Pay TV
 1953, Pay experiments in Palm Springs met with little
consumer interest
 1977, HBO rents transponder on satellite to distribute
movies via satellite
 FCC delayed or cancelled certain implementation
requirements for cable operators
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Cable Growth - Technical and Regulatory
 Satellite distribution of signals made it possible to
distribute programming to local cable franchises
Satellites greatly simplify distribution issues
 The Cable Communications Act of 1984
reduced FCC control over cable
made the local community the major force in cable regulation
 Large companies rushed to get local franchise rights to
build cable systems
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Cable Growth - continued
 Between 1975 to 1987
Number of cable systems tripled
Penetration increased from 14% in to 50%
 By 1988, the cable industry was dominated by large
multiple-system operators (MSOs)
 Today most all homes (98%) could receive cable TV
 2006 about 66% of all TV homes subscribe to cable
 Annual revenue from subscribers is $45 billion in 2005
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Growth of Satellite TV
Year
1995
1998
2001
2004
Subscribing Households
2,200,000
8,700,000
17,000,000
20,000,000
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Alternatives to Cable
 TVRO (satellite television receive-only earth stations) popular option
for people who could not get cable.
By 1990, three million consumers had these large dishes
 DBS took the nation by storm in the mid-1990s
Today there are more than 20 million subscribers
 Wireless Cable (MMDS - multi-channel, multipoint distribution
systems) uses microwave technology to distribute
television programming.
2006 fewer than 1 million subscribers
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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Home Video History and Growth
 Broadcast video tape recorders debuted in 1956.
They were quickly adopted by the television networks
 Videocassette recorder history
SONY introduced the Betamax VCR in 1975.
VHS system introduced in 1977, not compatible with Beta
Movie companies claim ‘time-shifting’ a copyright infringement
In 1984, the Supreme Court rules that home taping did not
violate copyright law
 Today about 95 million households own a VCR (about
90% penetration)
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DVDs and DVRs
 DVDs are replacing home VCRs
 DVDs provide better picture quality than VCRs
In 1998 about 1 million American homes had a DVD
In 2006 about 60 million homes own a DVD
 Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) record television
programs on hard disk
By 2002, approximately 1 million DVRs in U.S. homes
Due to grow to 20% of all households in 2007
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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The Video Store
 In the late 1970s, the Video Shack chain opened
 Video rental stores sprung up across America
1984, about 20,000 specialty video rental shops
 Industry concentration has created several large rental
chains.
Blockbuster Video became the market leader
 Long term, video rental faces competition from Video on
Demand (VOD) services on cable and DBS
 Internet surfing reduces time spent watching TV
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The Internet and World Wide Web
 The Internet is a global interconnection of computer
networks using common communication protocols
 The World Wide Web is one of several services
available on the Internet
 Gopher, FTP and email are other services available to
Internet users
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The Birth of the Internet
 Cold war struggles between the U.S. and the former
Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik speeds development of
the Internet
U.S. creates DARPA to research new technologies
 The SAGE Project (early warning radar system) provides
the U.S. with advanced warning against a missile attack.
 Computer and communication technology
modem and video display terminal were outgrowths of the SAGE
project
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Would there be a dial tone?
 Concern over survivability of communication systems
during national crisis help spur network development
 Many contribute to the net’s development
Paul Baran and Donald Davies, working independently, develop
theoretical ideas for making computer networks less susceptible
to attack
Bob Taylor at DARPA decides to build trial network
 Technological innovations spur network growth
Packet switching provided for small data packets to be sent over
distributed communications networks
Transmission Control Protocol provided switching to handle
network traffic
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ARPANET, Email and USENET
 In 1969, first ARPA network connection is tested
between UCLA and Stanford
 Ray Tomlinson develops e-mail in the early 1970s
 Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn develop TCP/IP
 USENET extended use of the system to many university
researchers
Local Area Networks like Ethernet extend useful
of networks
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Personal Computers: The n ew mass medium
 Apple Computer’s Macintosh revolutionized the personal
computer market
Personal computers put intelligence at the ends of networks
 Networks such as Compuserve and America Online
provided social usage networking
 Domain names such as .gov, .edu and .net extended the
usefulness of networking
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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The Internet at last
 NSFNET linked supercomputer centers across the
country together
 The Internet was born in when NSFNET replaced
ARPANET
 Independent Service Providers (ISP) like AOL allowed
everybody to connect to the new network
 New services like FTP and WAIS set the stage for
WWW
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The World Wide Web
 In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee develops idea of using a
graphical browser for retrieving information on network
databases.
 ‘Hyperlinks’ inserted in the browser to call up information
on remote computers
 URL (universal resource locator) addresses are used to
locate information on the network
 The concept was called the World Wide Web
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The World Wide Web
 In 1991, World Wide Web experiments start in Europe
and the United States
 In 1993, Marc Andreesen developed Mosaic, the
forerunner of Netscape Navigator
 The browser and WWW formed ‘killer applications’ that
started an Internet craze
 Today more than 1 million sites contain more than 2
billion pages of information, graphics, sound and video
Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet and Beyond
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