TELEVISION
Cable technology offers limitless uses
3y Peter Mackler
|ed Press International
[here are those who say you
(wrap the future of cable tele-
on around your finger.
I It's called an optical fiber, a fi-
■ent of glass only slightly
|kerthan a human hair. Take
I of them, wrap them in protec-
|(e sheathing, and you still have
pie barely the width of a slen-
ter cigar.
Ttnd each of these willowy
Jrvels can theoretically carry
l> channels of laser-light TV
wnals — more than triple the
Capacity of the most advanced
Joaxial cable — and do it more
flab I y and with less interfer-
fe.
With fiber you are construct-
j a 10,000-lane highway
[whereas today you have a
;Single-lane horse-and-buggy
path,” says Irving Kahn, the
gruffly informal chairman of
proad Band Communications Inc.
JAs a founder and former head
[ofTelePrompTer, Kahn was in on
^ ground floor of electronic cue
Trds and closed-circuit TV. He
;was running cable networks
nearly 20 years ago. Now his
* poney is on fibers and he plans
to unveil what he calls the ‘ulti-
lite” system next month.
I For cable, which now reaches
|o a fifth of all U.S. homes, the
pplications of fiberoptics are
(lormous. The TV set could be
transformed into an electronic
snie that would provide such
liracles as newspaper printouts
or home access to computer
banks of cooking recipes, refer
ence material and other informa
tion.
And all this could join tele
phone communications, the daily
mail and video entertainment on
a single fiber freeway into the
home.
Yet for an industry where satel
lites and earth stations are as
routine as slang — they’re now
“birds” and “dishes” — the cable
world is remarkably low key about
this new technology.
It’s years away, they say; still
too costly and plagued with bugs.
But there may be more than just
the normal business prudence
behind the skepticism.
For some fear that as surely as
fiberoptics will thread its way to
the telecommunications of tomor
row, it will lead to a death struggle
with the King Kong of the corpo
rate jungle — the telephone com
pany.
“We have never been in, nor
do we have any plans to be in, the
CATV business, entrepreneurs of
cable television,” William Ellin-
ghaus, vice chairman of the
board of American Telephone
and Telegraph, testified at a
House hearing last July.
Indeed, AT&T is currently pro
hibited from making such a move
outside its traditional domain. But
cable TV, which began as an aid
to rural signal reception and went
on to establish itself as saleable
programming medium, is already
beginning to expand to the more
. exotic services.
mi
the versatility of cable;
can cost pennies, millions
pn
United Press International
In Atlanta, sports mogul Ted Turner took a fledgling UHF TV
station and turned it from a million-dollar-a-year loser into a
"superstation” that goes to more than 3 million homes across the
nation.
In New York City, a program called “Shaiom Corner” regales
Jewish youngsters with songs, dance, arts and crafts, and stories
about their Hebrew heritage — all on a production budget of $20 a
show.
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood,”
the poet says. But program dreams large and small are now able to
make their way onto the TV screen, thanks to the virtuosity of cable
television.
There is nothing small-time about Turner, the wealthy 40-year-
old yachtsman who bought WTCG Channel 17 in 1970 and
promptly lost $2 million on it over the next two years.
By 1973 WTCG was turning a profit, yet Turner wasn’t about to
stop there.
In December 1976 he made the big move up on the “bird” —
arranging the transmission of his little UHF station’s programs to
cable systems across the country via satellite.
Some 2.55 million homes get Channel 17 via satellite-cable in
addition to the 700,000 non-cable households the station reaches
in the Atlanta area.
“I think there are no limits to our plans,” he says.
Carol Sterling's plans are considerably more modest as producer
and hostess of “Shalom Corner,” a sort of advanced “Romper
Room” for Jewish children ages 4-10 in New York City’s Manhattan
borough.
It’s produced by TelePrompTer Manhattan on a grant from the
Tarbuth Foundation for the Advancement of Hebrew Culture. And
unlike network shows that live and die on audience size, nobody
around Shalom Corner can even tell you how many people watch
their program.
“We are focusing in on a segment of the community that has
special needs,” explains Sterling, who trains teachers at the New
Jersey Department of Education.
Not easy with a program budget of $20 per show, but Sterling
has learned to operate on a shoestring.
“I make everything from scraps,” says Sterling, who is paid little
more than a token salary for the show. “But that’s part of the con
cept; it’s very challenging.”
Mass use is still a ways off, but
already on the market are two-
way links that allow you to “talk
back” to the TV tube, and make
possible such services as com
puterized burglary and fire alarm
systems.
It’s the “wired nation” concept
of the late ‘60s taking on new
steam as dreams expand to fill
the increased channel capacity.
Cable operators worry AT&T,
with a half-billion-dollar invest
ment of its own in fiberoptics, will
find it hard to stay on the
sidelines.
After all, says Irving Kahn,
“The big business in the next 10
or 20 years will be the business of
information. It’s a whole new ball
game and everybody can play.”
Congress is just now trying to set
the ground rules with its first re
write of the 44-year-old Com
munications Act.
And the cable industry, which
grew up fighting government re
strictions and network charges
that it was a menace to the
broadcast way of life, has little
doubt who would win a no-
holds-barred turf war with the
telephone giant.
“We say that in a head-on col
lision between the Mack truck
and this bicycle we are riding
we’re going to be just a statistic,”
says Robert Schmidt, president
of the National Cable Television
Association.
Cable TV has come a long way
since the first line was stretched
from a hilltop antenna 30 years
ago to bring television to the
homes of eastern Pennsylvania’s
coal belt, which were blocked off
from over-the-air signals.
Today more than 4,000 cable
systems serve some 14 million
homes, according to industry fig
ures. Nearly 3 million shell out an
extra $8-to-$13 monthly fee for
pay-TV movies, sports and vari
ety extravaganzas, all uninter
rupted by commercials.
The immediate future looks
brighter still.
Analysts predict an average
15-percent annual growth rate for
cable TV over the next eight
years. Total revenues, just under
$1 billion in 1976, are expected to
reach $1.5 billion this year.
For the viewer, cable TV is a
cornucopia of video delights. In
addition to regular entertainment
fare, the country’s cable viewers
get news and weather services,
religious shows, children’s
shows, consumer shows, com
munity and public-access pro
gramming.
Cable is also flexible enough to
accomodate visions big and
small. For example:
—The newly created Cable Satel
lite Public Affairs Network plans
to distribute gavel-to-gavel cov
erage of the U.S. House of Rep
resentatives, possibly as early as
the beginning of next year.
—In Findlay, Ohio, high school
students produce programs on
school doings, sporting events,
community news, meetings and
panel discussions.
—A Los Angeles channel offers
information on bus services and
surveys gasoline prices in various
parts of the city.
—Two-way hookups allow resi
dents at senior citizen centers in
Reading, Pa., to interview local
politicians and bridge the genera
tion gap with high school students
via a split-screen dialogue.
—In Little Rock, Ark., a cable
franchise proposal includes the
link-up of all municipal services
from hospitals to schools.
Among cable folk there is a lot
of talk about avoiding the “blue
sky” promises that caused them
so much trouble last decade. But
it is still a young industry barely
able to restrain its youthful
enthusiasm.
“The potential uses of cable
are limited only by man’s
imagination,” says Lucille Larkin,
public affairs vice president for
the National Cable Television As
sociation.
One reason for all this headi
ness is floating 22,300 miles
above the Earth’s equator —
RCA’s Satcom I satellite, one of
the “birds” that changed all the
rules for long-distance signal
transmission.
It not only cuts costs — $800
for an hour-long transmission
coast to coast as opposed to
$1,800 over land lines, says RCA
— but makes it as easy to trans
mit from New York to Los
Angeles as from New York to
Philadelphia. All that is needed is
an earth station to receive the
signal and a cable network to dis
tribute it.
And as the audience expands,
so do programming possibilites.
There may not be a big local de
mand to see a dog show, but grab
enough canine fans across the
country and it might be worth
while.
“We’re building the underpin
nings for a national communica
tions network,” says William
Bresnan, president of Tele-
PrompTer’s cable division, the
country’s largest cable operator.
“It’s now a question of community
of interest rather than geograph
ical community.”
Home Box Office, the largest
pay-TV distributor, fired the first
shot of cable’s satellite era with
transmission of the 1975 “Thrilla
in Manila” between Muhammad
Ali and Joe Frazier. Now Satcom
I is booked up on all 22 working
relayers.
The number of earth stations
has also taken off since the cost
of a workable “dish” dropped
from $100,000 in 1975 to a cur
rent $12,000. Last year there
were 200 dotting the country; by
the end of this year there will be
1,200 set up or in the process of
installation.
Satcom I is one of four com
munications birds in orbit, but the
only one that sen/ices cable TV.
RCA was planning to send
another up in 1981 but industry
sources say it’s under pressure
from potential clients to move up
the timetable.
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