Ted Turner dies at 87

[crainbebo]

Since 1948-1949. Astoria, Oregon got KRSC-TV 5 Seattle (KING now) on cable. HBO was just a little microwave service in Wilkes-Barre when it started in 1972. It didn't go to satellite until 1975-1976. And 1976 was when WTCG went to satellite.

Ted's uplink of WTCG led to CBN Cable, MTV, USA, ESPN, and Nickelodeon also starting up. He revolutionized the television industry forever.

 

[davideduardo]

Can we call Ted the father of cable television.

No. Cable television, previously called community antenna TV began in the 1950s as a way of bringing television service to rural communities and towns blocked by terrain from the reception of any television signal.

As another poster suggested, Turner can be called the father of cable news.

 

[Josh Owens]

No. Cable television, previously called community antenna TV began in the 1950s as a way of bringing television service to rural communities and towns blocked by terrain from the reception of any television signal.

As another poster suggested, Turner can be called the father of cable news.

Thanks for the History lesson, learning all kinds of things today.

 

[davideduardo]

No, because cable had been around since at least the late 1960s as a means for people to watch nearby TV stations that would otherwise be fuzzy and blurry due to terrain blocking. However, Mr. Turner *was* responsible for popularizing cable for non-over-the-air broadcast programming. RIP Ted Turner!

Cable began its expansion in the early 50’s as a way of serving isolated populations. In some places, terrain blockage prevented the reception of television signals. In other places this year distance to the nearest “real“ TV station required table. I believe there were a couple of trial systems as early as 1949.

“Nearby“ was not a criteria for a cable system. There were systems in states like the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming where TV stations over 100 miles away, were brought into local homes by cable.

 

[Don CT]

No. Cable television, previously called community antenna TV began in the 1950s as a way of bringing television service to rural communities and towns blocked by terrain from the reception of any television signal.

As another poster suggested, Turner can be called the father of cable news.

When was the mass build out of CATV coax across the country.

 

[davideduardo]

When was the mass build out of CATV coax across the country.

Crainbebo mentioned that such a system was in operation in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1940s. CATV began to build out at the very beginning of television as a way of bringing service to areas that had no local or nearby TV station that could be picked up off the air.

In many cases, those CATV systems were community efforts. The local residence contributed to some funding and put an antenna up on a nearby hill and ran cable down to the town and to individual homes. They did not bring in anything but the nearest stations that could be picked up by such a system.

It was people like Ted Turner, who realized that cable systems could be used to bring in other programming than that of the nearby stations. The greatest expansion of cable occurred when you could get better reception of your local stations plus an assortment of different and distant ones even in cities that had a number of local TV operations. That meant that viewers in big cities that had previously had a variety of signals available over the air now had more choices…. And they were willing to pay for them.

 

[Pittsburgh 1020]

I was in CATV for 45 years.
If I recall correctly, HBO was the first satellite channel around 1975-1976. Then I think CBN was the second satellite channel. Then Ted Turners Channel 17 was the third…and as they say the rest is history.
When I started CATV many years ago…the cost was…$5 per month. And that was for all of 12 channels. Imagine that!

 

[Don CT]

It was people like Ted Turner, who realized that cable systems could be used to bring in other programming than that of the nearby stations. The greatest expansion of cable occurred when you could get better reception of your local stations plus an assortment of different and distant ones even in cities that had a number of local TV operations. That meant that viewers in big cities that had previously had a variety of signals available over the air now had more choices…. And they were willing to pay for them.

Turner popularized the modern cable setup. When you would pay for channels. HBO ESPN TBS CNN TWC. That’s the modern cable system. Not what a few people had in 1940.

We could say the internet started in 1960 but it wasn’t wide spread until the 90s.

 

[davideduardo]

Turner popularized the modern cable setup. When you would pay for channels. HBO ESPN TBS CNN TWC. That’s the modern cable system. Not what a few people had in 1940.

There were reported to be millions of CATV subscribers going back to Its origins in the 50s. Throughout the first several decades of broadcast television, cable TV was the principal source of programming in huge portions of the country that did not have local TV or a full array of the three major television networks.

The system still used by cable TV, which is based on a wired connection of homes to a central signal distribution network is no different nor any more “modern“ today then it was over 70 years ago. Just more channels and many more that are not over the air channels anywhere.

Ted Turner popularized the concept a video service created “just for cable“ and distributed it nationally. He did not modernize it or create any advances in technology. His great achievement was providing content that viewers were willing to watch and which he could sell to national advertisers.

We did not pay for most of those channels you name. We paid for the connection to a system that brought them to our homes. Those cable channels were paid by advertisers, not subscribers. While HBO required a subscription, others like CNN and TBS were free to the user once they had paid their local cable company for their connection.

 

[Don CT]

Were there always carriage fees or is that a new thing.

 

[vchimpanzee]

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

Here is one notable time when Ted Turner took over WJRJ-TV Atlanta and made "Superstation" a household name in the 1970's-1980's when at station became WTCG-TV/WTBS-TV which is where the now cable network TBS (Owned by WB) and the now Gray Media's WPCH-TV's Atlanta history came from.

The station that is now the NBC affiliate in my area did the same thing.

Then the NBC affiliate dropped NBC and picked up ABC, but the ABC affiliate didn't take NBC. So what could have been a second superstation wasn't.

 

[Negin]

Ted was a genius helping bring cable TV into the modern ages (back then).

 

[fybush]

It's fair to divide the history of cable TV into two broad swaths - the "community antenna TV" (CATV) era that indeed began as early as the late 1940s in places like the Pennsylvania hills and the Pacific Northwest where would-be viewers didn't yet have any service directly over the air, and then the more modern era of multichannel cable-only programming that started in the mid-1970s and exploded at the end of the decade.

In that first era, CATV was mostly limited to rural areas and small towns, since urban areas and larger communities already got their TV over the air with anywhere from 3 to 7 channels and had no reason to pay just to get those same networks.

That's what made Turner such a revolutionary figure. He *did* leverage new technology - first microwave relays and then satellite delivery - to make WTCG a regional and then the first national superstation, as much by trial and error as anything else. And then he took a huge financial risk and a technological leap with the launch of CNN. Without CNN, the development of other "all one thing all the time" channels, whether MTV or the Weather Channel or BET, might not have happened as quickly. It was absolutely because of the risks Turner took that cable systems began to have more than the "big 3" and maybe HBO to offer subscribers. It was because WTBS (and ESPN, too, though a few years later) became a must-have chapel that cable systems all installed satellite downlinks by the late 1970s, which in turn opened the spigots to dozens of other new channels.

And it was because of all those new channels that CATV became modern cable TV and became something that people in cities and suburbs suddenly wanted to have, which in turn made cable a truly national medium in a way that CATV never could have been.

It all certainly could have still developed without Ted, but his unstoppable energy and his willingness to try just about anything to grow his networks made it all happen much more quickly than it might have otherwise.

The man deserves every bit of of honor and respect he's being shown in the industry today.

 

[The Hustle]

So I have to hear Fox News Radio, since our station runs it. They did a story about Ted Turner's passing today. Mentioned that he was the "father of the 24 hour news cycle" and that he owned the Braves, and founded TBS, TNT, The Cartoon Netwqork and TCM. BUT.....................

No mention of CNN. Small and Petty, and tells you all you need to know.

 

[Don CT]

It's fair to divide the history of cable TV into two broad swaths - the "community antenna TV" (CATV) era that indeed began as early as the late 1940s in places like the Pennsylvania hills and the Pacific Northwest where would-be viewers didn't yet have any service directly over the air, and then the more modern era of multichannel cable-only programming that started in the mid-1970s and exploded at the end of the decade.

In that first era, CATV was mostly limited to rural areas and small towns, since urban areas and larger communities already got their TV over the air with anywhere from 3 to 7 channels and had no reason to pay just to get those same networks.

That's what made Turner such a revolutionary figure. He *did* leverage new technology - first microwave relays and then satellite delivery - to make WTCG a regional and then the first national superstation, as much by trial and error as anything else. And then he took a huge financial risk and a technological leap with the launch of CNN. Without CNN, the development of other "all one thing all the time" channels, whether MTV or the Weather Channel or BET, might not have happened as quickly. It was absolutely because of the risks Turner took that cable systems began to have more than the "big 3" and maybe HBO to offer subscribers. It was because WTBS (and ESPN, too, though a few years later) became a must-have chapel that cable systems all installed satellite downlinks by the late 1970s, which in turn opened the spigots to dozens of other new channels.

And it was because of all those new channels that CATV became modern cable TV and became something that people in cities and suburbs suddenly wanted to have, which in turn made cable a truly national medium in a way that CATV never could have been.

It all certainly could have still developed without Ted, but his unstoppable energy and his willingness to try just about anything to grow his networks made it all happen much more quickly than it might have otherwise.

The man deserves every bit of of honor and respect he's being shown in the industry today.

How were the small original CATV channels backhauled. Was microwave readily available.

 

[Don CT]

Inside the NBA just did a really nice tribute to Ted at the start of the broadcast.

 

[ted chittenden]

Cable had been around for that long? Whatyaknowboutthat! Thanks for the info.

Yes. And, as other posts since mine have pointed out, even longer. In my case, that was how we heard Los Angeles stations in the mountain suburb of Tujunga: Beverly Hills Cable.

 

[fybush]

How were the small original CATV channels backhauled. Was microwave readily available.

Microwave was used starting in the 1950s to bring distant broadcast stations to translators and CATV systems in remote areas. That's how the first superstations, including WTCG, started. By the 1960s, microwave networks brought the LA independent stations as far east as West Texas, the Denver stations up into Montana and Wyoming, WTCG into various parts of the south and the NYC independent stations upstate as far as Buffalo.

But there was no such thing yet as an "original CATV channel." CATV providers could do local origination that was usually mostly just scrolling text or a camera panning across weather readouts. Cheaper video equipment in the early 1970s started to make it possible to do more with these local channels, and you began seeing local news and variety programming showing up in areas that might have been too small to support a broadcast TV station.

These were generally strictly local operations. HBO in 1974 was the first to break that mold, using microwave distribution to send some old movies and regional live sports around Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

Two years later, HBO and WTCG went up on the satellite, and that was really the first time cable systems around the country had access to quality programming that was more than just relaying broadcast stations.

It's pretty amazing how fast things boomed from there - go just six years forward from 1976 and by 1982 you had CNN, ESPN, Showtime, the Weather Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon, ARTS, USA Network, regional sports networks and so on. But none of that existed as late as the mid 70s. And at the center of it ALL was Ted Turner.

 

[nickp]

Ernie Johnson and Tony Schiavone commemorate the memory of Ted Turner on ESPN and TBS

 

[nickp]

He created TBS TNT TCM and Cartoon Network He was an avid environmental activist and created Captain Planet and he bought WCW and bankrolled Monday night wars era That's the Turner legacy