What Was Life Like Before Cable TV

Do your remember life before cable TV? Yes believe it or not television was actually free to watch in your home. It was sort of like radio. Turn it on and you could listen for free. Yes as hard as that is to believe for some of you. You did not receive a monthly bill in the mail saying pay up or you cannot watch your TV.

In fact you when you drove around the neighborhood you would see antennae on almost each roof of every house. It was as natural as seeing a telephone pole on the street. The only cable TV that was in place was in places like the desert of the mountains where radio waves would not reach from the broadcast station.

They were out of range of the network broadcast radio waves. But then companies realized that if they could show others how to make money off TV reception then cable television would be the mainstay. They showed politicians that the government could make a lot of money from taxing the cable companies. That tax would be passed on the consumer of course.

And the cable companies met with potential broadcasters about creating content different from the network stations. And they sold them on the idea of sharing their revenue from memberships with the broadcasters so the broadcasters started putting together television programs they thought people would watch.

And today the industry is a multi billion dollar money making giant. The government makes huge money by taxing the company which simply passes this bill on to you.

All the government has to do is allow the cable company to broadcast in their area. It is simply an issue of property rights as they control the air space or at least the zoning of it.

The broadcasters are paid by the commercial time they sell. And they are paid by the cable company for the content they deliver to the cable company. And of course the cable company charges you for the broadcast as part of your membership fee. Which by the way the broadcasters want a larger chunk of the cable company profits. So expect your bill to go up because the cable company is happy with their current profits now.

They would rather you have less money than them have less money. So where would we be without all of these people making a whole lot of money from us all? We would be back to free TV. And yes the networks put on some pretty worthless stuff these days. That is until they sell these programs for syndication.

They put shows on to last three to five years and then sell them off to the broadcasters who sell them to the cable companies who sell them to us. There was a time when there was some good TV shows on the network channels. Back when people were not making so much money off the system that was created decades ago. But that time is gone. Oh hey have you paid your cable bill this month by the way?

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