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0 pointskuratkull3y ago0 comments

I think he's talking about the 70s or sometime back then

0 comments

I looked into this and it’s not true that cable existed without ads.

From a 1981 NYT article

> Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers' monthly subscription fees. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

autoexec3y ago

Cable television may not have been conceived of as television without commercial interruption, but it was heavily advertised as being ad free and for a time it really was. I remember the ad creep. It started with channels adverting themselves or shows/movies that would air or replay later on their channel, then came ads for shows airing on other channels, then came the commercials for cars and dish soap.

mixmastamyk3y ago

In 1980 we had Showtime at our house. Standard VHF channels 2-13 that did have ads and one extra premium channel with no ads.

njarboe3y ago

Only the premium pay extra channels. Similar to today, you could pay to have no ads for some content.

thewebcount3y ago

Absolutely. In my area of the Midwest, first it was Channel 100 [0]. Then eventually they launched HBO. Shortly after that there came Cinemax and Showtime. These were all premium channels that showed only movies. (And many of them are still around.) It was a little while before they started having normal crap channels with ads, like WGN [1] and TBS [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_100 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGN-TV [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPCH-TV

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