Ralph Negrine - Cable Television and the Future of Broadcasting

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: TELEVISION

Volume 11

CABLE TELEVISION AND THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING

Edited by
Ralph M. Negrine

First published in 1985

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1985 Ralph M. Negrine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

TIrademark notic e: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-82199-5 (Set)
eISBN: 978-0-203-51517-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-83924-2 (Volume 11)
eISBN: 978-0-203-77352-9 (Volume 11)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

CABLE TELEVISION
and the Future of Broadcasting

Edited by RALPH M.NEGRINE

1985 Ralph M Negrine
Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row, Beckenham, Kent BR3 1AT
Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, Suite 4, 6th Floor, 64-76 Kippax Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cable television and the future of broadcasting.

1. Cable television

I. Negrine, Ralph M.

384.55'56 HE8700.7

ISBN 0-7099-1818-6

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Ltd

Ralph Negrine

This book is intended to fulfil two main functions. Firstly, to provide a general survey of developments in specific countries and, secondly, to give the reader the opportunity to assess the promise of cable television, to gauge its rate of development and to measure its likely impact on existing broadcasting services. In a rapidly changing environment, such aims may appear over-ambitious but there is sufficient common ground between nations to make some important comparisons possible and worthwile. Some of these comparisons, and indeed the similarities, will be considered here.

Cable television remains, after more than 30 years of development a distribution system. But the nature of that distribution system has changed quite dramatically over its relatively short life-span: cable television systems today have an enormously increased capacity and the more technologically advanced broadband cable systems can even carry a variety of data and interactive services. Such changes, in isolation, may not appear significant but their combination within a single wired network opens up a range of possibilities for mass and inter-personal communication hitherto only dreamt of. The concept of 'The Wired Nation' which refers to a society wherein a wide range of services - both telecommunications and entertainment - are supplied to all through a national network of (optical fibre) cables is therefore not too far-fetched, as the French attempt to construct this society illustrates. More problematic though, as the chapters in this book point out, is how to reach that goal.

It has not always been the potential for greater telecommunication that has made cable television so central an issue in the last two decades. Admittedly, governments have often stated their desires to achieve the goal of the wired society but, in practice, it remains the case that it is the public's real desire for more television entertainment services and entrepreneurial incentive to satisfy this desire that has propelled cable from a secondary and supplementary distribution system to a potentially prime one. Herein lies one of the major contradictions in the development of cable systems: are cable systems essentially entertainment systems or are they primarily telecommunications systems which can also carry entertainment services? Furthermore, what is the present relationship between these two features of cable and what should that relationship be in the future and as the technology becomes even more sophisticated? Finally, should cable systems be regulated as public utilities or should they be allowed to function as private enterprises seeking profits and expansion?

There are many answers to these questions and each individual country has its own preferences. Nonetheless, these preferences are made known within a certain context: a realisation that cable systems will develop only as a response to the pressure for more entertainment services over, and above, that which already exists. This factor is fairly common across all the countries surveyed here and goes some way towards explaining why the issue of cable has moved to the centre of media debates in the last ten years.

In that period, cable's fortunes were trans formed. This transformation, which happened in the mid 1970s, was the result of changes in two areas. Firstly, the means to deliver more, and different, services were developed and proved to be, in the main, profitable. Secondly, decisions were taken which permitted both cable's physical expansion and its fuller exploitation.

These two changes took place at different times in different countries. The US was the first country to experience the full array of services that broadcasting by satellite to cable systems made possible. Home Box Office (HBO) is perhaps the most successful of these services to date and it does demonstrate the ways in which these services can break out of the tradi tional pattern of television broadcasting. They eschew the general, the Lowest Common Denominator type of programmes and direct their material to specific audiences -the young, the film fan, the sports fan and so on. The popularity of these services was assured once the link with cable systems was complete and the regulatory frameworks surrounding cable systems were measurably relaxed. An audience could then easily be reached without recourse to the expensive and more powerful Direct Broadcasting by Satellite (DBS) system of distribution. Moreover, the public did not have to purchase a dish aerial for the recept ion of these services. Satellite broad casting, with the aid of cable systems, effectively created new, and sometimes better, national networks - Home Box Office, Cable News Network and so on.