Cable TV earlier

[sunsurf]

I read that Dick Clark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Clark_(entertainer)) tried to get a cable TV network started in the mid '50s but couldn't get enough money to start it. What if he had?

Is there somebody else more likely to start a cable TV network at a different time? Maybe during the 30s, with or without a Depression? Maybe the first cable TV shows are all about the doings of the rich aristocrats of New England (because they are the only ones who can afford TV stations and TV sets at the time. So the first TV shows are all about them and their horses and dogs and fancy soirees.)

Or during the Hippie Era some hippie son of millionaires uses his daddy's money to make underground cable tv shows (underground literally and figuratively.)

How might cable TV have been used in WW II?

[Saladin]

afaik, only the UK, via the BBC was broadcasting TV before WW2 -- frex My father remembers watching some of the FA cup finals in the later 30's on TV as a young boy.

You dont give us a date for the actual commencement of cable in the US, that would help :)

[sunsurf]

Cable TV started in 1948 in Appalachia. People in the mountains couldn't get TV reception from the big cities.

http://www.pcta.com/about/history.php

http://www.telecom.ksu.edu/cable/history.html

And the history of TV...

http://www.tvhistory.tv/

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelevision.htm

afaik, only the UK, via the BBC was broadcasting TV before WW2

Butterflies...:)


And for... How Television came to Boston (http://www.tvhistory.tv/W1XAY.htm) just bring in some rich families who don't want just anybody watching their programs, so they get cable TV invented a few years earlier...? Is that plausible?

[carlton_bach]

I'd say it depends on the initial business model. OTL, TV was treated as a radio analogue - broadcast reception is free (or cheap, in the case of many European states) and the commercial value is in advertising. Say ATL TV is regarded as analogous to telephone - a service that is paid for by the user.

I had something like this happen in my 'Bentham' TL

[Saladin]

afaik, only the UK, via the BBC was broadcasting TV before WW2

Butterflies...:)

Sorry, I dont understand. the BBC was running TV pre ww2 in OTL