The cable TV industry has undergone more changes in the past fifty years than nearly any other industry. In the early days (50's-60's) you only got whatever channels would fit on channels 2-13 on your TV dial. There were no cable boxes. The next big revolution was the A/B switch which essentially doubled the channels you could get. Two coax lines came into your TV one with one set of channels 2-13 and the other with another set of channels in the 2-13 slots. You went from twelve channels to 24, Whoo-hoo!
Then in 1972 the folks behind HBO thought maybe people would rather stay at home and watch movies than go to theaters. "A pay TV channel?" asked the sceptics. "It'll never work!" It did. WTBS was right behind them with the first SuperStation. By 1980 there were now 28 cable program networks, but most cable systems still just had the original 24 channels available and they were forced to carry local channels, so there wasn't room for a whole lot more. Those 28 cable networks bought their way onto cable systems. They were paying cable systems to put their channels on their systems. It was the only way they could get into people's homes and without people watching, advertisers wouldn't buy ad time.
These 28 cable only networks needed to be seen, so they paid more to the bigger systems where more eyes would be on their programs. This led to the creation of the cable giants, like Comcast. The more subscribers you had, the more the cable networks would pay you to air their programming. Smaller systems were bought up and merged to create the giants we have now. Bigger was better.
Then along came the cable boxes where suddenly the limit on the number of channels exploded. Homes went from being able to get 24 channels to hundreds of channels. Cable companies thought this was great. They'd get more and more money from all of those channels paying to be on their system. Instead of collecting money from maybe fifteen cable networks they could be getting paid by a hundred or more. Yeah, not so much. A funny thing happened. Some of the cable networks decided they weren't going to pay to be on the cable systems. In fact, they were going to charge the cable companies to carry their programming.
This caught the cable TV industry a bit off guard. "Uh, what?" "You heard us, pay us or we won't let you air our programming." (The infamous "I want my MTV!" period of cable TV.) After a whole lot of headscratching the cable TV industry yielded and started paying for content. This resulted in the sudden increase of cable bills for subscribers who were not happy, but having few alternatives bit the bullet and paid the money. The cable TV systems had no choice but to raise bills. Instead of getting paid to air channels they were now required to pay for those channels and pass the costs on to the consumer.
That's largely where we stand today, but a new revolution is already taking place. Streamed television is starting to take the place of the cable TV systems and that will only increase when the new 5G wireless services are fully operational with 20+ gbps transfer speeds. Most of the streaming services now offer channel packages, but it's just a question of time until you'll be able to assemble your own package of just the channels you want to watch. Most of us only watch eight to ten channels anyway, so this could be a good thing. It will decimate the cable industry as we know it however. Will conventional cable TV survive? Probably not. This is the biggest threat it's faced yet and there's no really good solution for them. The new wireless 5G system will make their cable TV, Internet, and phone services obsolete. In the not too distant future consumers will be able to pick and pay for just the channels they want. It's coming and there's nothing the cable industry can do to stop it. They are about to become a modern day version of the buggy whip manufacturers.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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