The Cable industry was established in 1948 in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. It was first created to provide reception of over the air television signals in remote areas that had trouble getting good or any reception at all. The Cable industry started to grow in fact by the 1960s about 800 cable systems serving 850,000 subscribers were up and running. By the 1970s the cable industry was rapidly growing in fact in was also during this time that Charles Dolan and Gerald Levin of Sterling Manhattan Cable presented the world’s first TV network that customers had to pay for which was HBO. HBO was the trendsetters of the networks charging customers for their services, in fact it was because of HBO that a national satellite distribution system was created. With satellites now a part of the industry, more and more businesses started venturing into the industry and helped in a major way to grow the program networks. Because of cable’s success and the fact that local television stations felt threaten, it was also at this time that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first started to regulate the Cable industry.
Why Was Cable Regulated?
Cable’s first regulation was issued in 1965. Local television stations and broadcasting networks were complaining and felt that cable was becoming a problem and was a major threat to the television industry. The reason that local station and broadcasting networks felt so threaten was because cable provided customers broadcasting from other networks that local stations couldn’t. The FCC put their first regulation in place which was actually two regulatory provisions. One provision what that cable companies had to carry all local stations. This of course worked in the favor of the local stations and broadcasting networks because this eliminated cable’s threat to them. The other provision prevented cable companies showing programs from distant stations 15 days before to 15 days after the show was aired on local stations. If that wasn’t enough to add insult to injury a year later the FCC issued another regulation that prohibited cable companies from importing signals from distant television stations into the top 100 television markets in the country. What this did was caused the cable industry to have a freeze effect on the development of cable systems in those 100 television markets in the country. The cable industry wasn’t pleased in the least bit, in fact they fought up until 1972 when a new policy was established.
By 1972 another regulation was enforced. With this new regulation once again were geared to benefit local television because the regulations were put in place and structured so that cable wouldn’t be in competition with local television. They were also put into place so that the FCC could make it hard for cable companies to capitalize on their business. For example if cable competed with local television, cable would defiantly win the battle hands down. Yet this would affect the FCC because then they wouldn’t be able to make money off the local station and would only be making money off cable. To further help and secure local stations network, the FCC make it a requirement that all cable companies obtain a certification of compliance before they could operate their business. The FCC was doing everything they could to prevent the cable industry from become a monopoly by pulling any technicalities that they could, but the cable industry didn’t lay down in fact the fought back.
The first legislation law to address the cable industry happened in 1984 with the Cable Communications Policy Act. What this did was presented new regulations that were fairer and not so one sided by regulating franchising and deregulating the rates charged to customers. This gave the cable companies the ability to set their rates without restrictions in markets with three or more broadcast stations as to before where rates were regulated by state and local authorities. This Act also gave cable companies the ability to capitalize on their business and it made things fair for the cable industry.
By the 1990’s the cable industry had blossomed and became the television industry’s it-factor. The cable industry was