Americans have always enjoyed free television, financed by advertisements.
A:) The Television has not always existed. therefore neither did television programs. therefore it was impossible for anybody to get free Television anywhere (including the US) since the TV wasn't invented. Pedantic? Maybe. However, even so, the advertising model has changed rather dramatically.
Remarkably, the new age of television dawned virtually on the 50th anniversary if the industry. The first regularly scheduled telecasts in the US were begun by NBC in 1939, and it was not a promising beginning for the new medium. In a public demonstration at the New York World's Fair that year, television — a chunky set wit ha screen 8 inches (20cm) high — drew large crowds but was largely dismissed as an electronic marvel with a dubious future. A number of "experts" declared that television transmissions were too expensive to compete with radio, that channel frequencies were too few in number, and that television sets were too complicated for most people to operate.
Television might have proved the naysayers wrong sooner, but the US involvement in World War 2 from 1941 to 1945 stopped the medium's development there for the duration. Immediately after the war, however, there was no question that television had arrived. Owning a TV set became part of the postwar American dream, and the prosperity of the 1950's helped that dream along.
Originally, Television modelled itself on radio. The new medium snapped up radio's program forms, its economic structure, its executives, stars, and advertisers. And soon enough, it's audiences as well.
As in pre-war radio TV programs were presented by single sponsors — advertisers who paid all the costs of producing and airing the show. This arrangement gave advertisers considerable control over program content. In addition, companies often became strongly linked in the public mind with the shows they sponsored. To this day, there are people who associate comedian Milton Berle with the Texaco oil company. Berle's Tuesday night ptohtam, "the Texaco Star Theater" which debuted in 1948 and ran until 1956, was US television's first genuine mass-audience hit. Berle went on-air just as TV sets were dropping in price and becoming a fixture in middle-class homes. He is credited with helping television tovertake radio in mass appeal.
Initially, in the US, there were four networks. NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont. The DuMont network was founded by Allen B. DuMont, one of the inventors of the the television. But it was the smallest of the four entrants, and because there was scarcely enough television advertising to support 3 networks, they went out of business in 1955. ABC struggled for survival for the next 10 years as the third network in what was often characterized as a 2 and a half network economy.
Searching for new ways to compete, ABC i nthe mid-1960's introduced participating advertising, a system in which spot commercials are placed in a program like advertising pages in a magazine or newspaper. The economic realities of broadcasting at that time — climbing producting costs, the expense of airing "blockbuster" movies, and the dwindling number of companies that could afford to underwrite the entire cost of programs — prompted CBS and NBC to also adopt this form of advertising. Spot commercials took program control away from advertisers and handed it over to the networks. Moreover, participating advertising meant that companies would literally compete to have commercials aired during prime time viewing hours and during national telecasts, resulting in larger profits for the networks with each passing year.
By the 1970's, the three networks were on equal footing in the competition for viewers and advertising dollars. And they ruled the TV industry. The Big Three networks held such domination over the airwaves that all other TV broadcasters combined — independent commercial stations as well as public television affiliates — could muster barely 10% of prime-time viewership. The demand for network commercial spots so exceeded the supply that networks were able to raise their ad rates, by ten percent or more each year. network television at this point became a failureproof business- even programs that flopped made money. The networks got to be such money machines that NBC sank into third place in the competition for viewer ratings and still posted record profits from ad revenue.
But the richer and more powerful the networks grew, the more they were resented. The federal government became so concerned about the networks domination of the TV industry that it began looking for ways to limit their power and open to airwaves to greater competition. In the early 70's the FCC adopted several new measures aimed at reining in the networks. The financial-interest and syndication rule, for example, barred the networks from demanding an ownership stake in programs they put on the air and thereby forced them out of the profitable business of selling their own reruns to local stations.
Just when network television was at it's peak of power, the marriage of two previously separate technologies — video cable and satellite communications — made it possible to deliver programs coast to coast in a new and more economical way. Before the satellite connection, a typical cable operation was simply a tall antenna that brought in programs — mostly network programs — in areas of poor reception and relayed them by wire to subscribers homes. In 1975, Home Box Office (HBO) a pay-television service, began feeding it's line-up of programs by satellite to cable-TV systems in the US. By reaching homes across the country, HBO became, in effect, a new national network. The only cable systems that could receive it however, were those with satellite dish antennas (which at this point made "stealing" the signal a tad uneconomical to your average consumer). Within a year, most of the larger systems had such antennas, and by 1980 they were part of any cable company's standard equipment. By the early 1980's virtually every cable system in the US offered subscribers 10 or more channels of satellite-relayed programming. (People with satellite receiving dishes could pick up satellite broadcasts directly, for a more expensive one-time "fee" of buying the dish.)
Still, the ability of satellite networks to reach audiences was slight compared to that of ABC, CBS, and NBC. By 1980, cable was available to only 20% of the nations households, and most of those were in rural and suburban areas. The major cities remained unwired for cable. Wiring urban areas was difficult and costly, and it was further complicated by municipal governments, which required cable companies to compete for exclusive franchises. It appeared that the largest cities might not have cable in the foreseeable future, and possibly not until the next century. Without access to urban audiences, cable services had no chance of challenging the great broadcast networks.
As it turned out, though, public demand brought cable to the cities far sooner then anybody had expected. The demand was not for the technology itself, but for the variety of programs cable offered; channels devoted to news, sports, movies, music, public affairs, arts, Siamese faith-healers network, etc.
Today we remember the 1970's... Or, some people "remember"- others learned about it separately, for example, I cannot remember the 1970's merely because I was not yet alive at that point in time. Perhaps that is why? I consider it history worth learning, while older people may consider it instead as yesterday's news? In any case, it should be remembered as the last decade where US television was under the absolute dominance of the networks. Throughout the 80's, the networks continued to be the great department stores on the main street of TV, but increasingly, the trendy boutiques along the side streets were picking up business.
Executives of the Big Three refused to acknowledge the extend of the threat posed by the growing competition. Typical of their short-sighted outlook (a outlook now reflected, it would seem, by the RIAA and Music labels, but that's another topic) was a booklet entitled
The Road to 1990, published by CBS in 1984. Largely an exercise in wishful thinking, the brochure was intended to assure advertisers, investors, and other interested parties that the networks would continue to be the driving force in television in the 1990's. CBS conceded that cable program services, then numbering about 30, might reduce the networks audience share somewhat, but at most only by 15 percent. It also predicted that with cable companies specialized programming and relatively small audiences, "It is unlikely that all 30 services will survive". Nowadays, what they once called "services" have essentially become what we call channels, and they number in the hundreds even for the more basic Cable packages, which has become a ubiquitous "necessity" to many people.
By 1986, just two years after the booklet was released, the number of cable channels numbered 54. In addition, there were five "superstations" beaming programs across the US and Canada by satellite, and an ever-increasing number if independent UHF stations. By this time, also, VCR's — introduced more the 10 years earlier — had become another important variable in the TV equation, and thousands of video rental shops were opening from coast to coast. There was no denying any longer that the networks day in the sun was drawing to an end.
In 1986, just as profits were beginning to slide, all three TV networks were sold to new owners. Capital Cities Communications Inc. bought ABC; The General Electric Company Bought NBC and it's parent company, RCA (and we all know who owns it now
) and CBS effectively went ot businessman Laurence A. Tisch, whose stockholdings fell just a hair short of constituting a legal buyout. In every case, the new managements were composed of hard-nosed executives with no reverence for the history or traditions of the companies they bought. Concerned solely with profitability, they proceeded to slash operating costs by firing hundreds of employees and cutting executive privileges and other nonessential expenditures. Almost overnight, the glamour and fun went out of network television as it struggled to meet the cold realities of the "bottom line."
Over the next two years, Some 3,500 network staff members lost their jobs. The news divisions were hit hardest by the personnel cuts, in part because, being "in-house" operations, theirs was the only programming whose costs the managers could control. But the new owners reasoned that since local TV stations made money on their news departments, there was no reason why the networks should be
losing money on news. As a result of all this belt-tightening, the networks were back on a profitable track but at nowhere near the levels of the past.
The shakeup of the big three did nothing, however, to stop the erosion of network viewership. By late 1989, the networks' share of the prime-time audience had slipped to about 64 percent. Down from 90% 10 years before. Meanwhile, more then half of US households — some 52 million — had been wired for cable.
The networks were now ready to try just about anything to broung back the good times. In their desperation, they ventured into a practice that ended up backfiring on them: sensationalist programming, also dubbed "tabloid TV" because of it's similarity to the crime,sex, and weird goings-on formula of many tabloid newspapers.
In making a foray into tabloid TV, the Big Three were largely following the lead of yet another competitor, The Fox Broadcasting Company, launched by Australian American media tycoon Robert Murdoch in 1986. Fox became the first new regular broadcast network — as opposed to satellite cable network — to last more then a year or two since the failure of DuMont more then 30 years before.
Most analysts wrote Fox off as a reckless and doomed undertaking. Murdoch, however, had conceived a clever strategy for his network. His plan was to offer programs that appealed particularly to younger viewers, to produce shows for less then the networks paid, to establish just one night a week of programming each year, and to introduce new series in the summer — opposite network reruns. The strategy worked. Television critics, having little else to write about in the summer, gave the Fox line-up considerable attention, while interest among young people spread via word of mouth.
Credit for the Fox's Success, however, goes mostly to them taking the low road. It's programs included such titillating shows as "A Current Affair" "America's Most Wanted" and "The Reporters" all of which tended to blur the line between fact and fiction by mixing reenactments of crimes and other events with actual news footage.
EDIT: I didn't realize how long that was...
I could go on for some time with this little "history lesson" but I think a good point that needs to be made is that this topic is NOT ABOUT TV. Therefore I hope the above has settled any possible arguments about what was and wasn't free or who and what advertised for whom during what point in time. There are also some relevant points of note, however; especially regarding individually owned satellites; at the time no legal action was taken, nor
could be taken against the owner of a satellite dish, despite the fact that they were essentially getting Cable service "for free". I imagine this was because the equipment necessary was far more expensive.
WillyW makes an excellent point as well with regards to the owner of the access point, One which I initially misunderstood in my reply; the "subscriber" to the internet service, basically, to should some sort of responsibility for securing their network. many have responded to that with comments in the league of "poppycock" and "fiddlesticks". However, consider for a moment, with regards to the car analogy.
Some have said that "an unlocked car is not a free car". So then the question arises...
Why do we lock our cars? Perhaps it's because we really don't care wether the person taking our car feels they are morally justified or not and simply
don't want them to take it. So too should that be the attitude with regards to Wireless networks, and it is the one I exercised when I first set up my wireless internet. The first thing was simply to enable WPA; the fact that I now have encryption means that, legally, if somebody was to "crack" my router (unlikely) and do nasty illegal stuff that get's traced to me, and I can prove that there was a breech of the security measures I put in place, I would not be liable.
However, if I left my router completely unsecure, according to law (here)
I would be accountable for the other persons actions. It doesn't matter that they broke the law (if they did, I'm not even sure it's illegal for them to connect when the network is completely unsecure) the thing is- I can't prove anything. I can't tell them who did it, since if I was good enough working with the router to do that one would think I might have secured the network. It's not a case of making sure the people who don't have a clue how the technology works aren't being put on the hook for things they didn't do, it's a case where the people who don't have a clue
should get one. Saying that people who aren't familiar with Wireless network protection should have some sort of protection to prevent them being held liable for misuse of their connection by others is like saying that people who don't know how to drive a car shouldn't be held accountable for what the car does while they drive it, simply because they "
don't know better".
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