Cable television in the 1980s

Identification Television distribution system in which programming is delivered to subscribers from a centralized provider by cable

Cable television greatly expanded the number of channels and program choices available to viewers, whose willingness to pay for the service radically changed the medium’s revenue model. In addition to paying monthly fees, cable subscribers developed new habits of viewing to which advertisers in the 1980’s had to respond.

The relaxation of federal rules regulating cable television, the improvement of satellite delivery systems, and the expansion of the cable infrastructure throughout the United States combined with American consumers’ enthusiasm for choice to fuel cable’s growth in the 1980’s. By the end of 1983, 40 percent of American television households had cable; by 1990, cable reached 60 percent of those households. The success of cable television stations made them effective competitors with the Big Three broadcast networks—the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

Even the minimum tier of programming, basic cable, offered multiple channels, usually including broadcast stations, in return for a set monthly fee. Premium, or pay, cable channels required a fee in addition to the monthly cost of basic cable. The majority of cable channels that entered the market between 1980 and 1989 were offered on basic cable.

Cable programmers mined television audiences for specific interests and demographics and created dedicated cable channels with programming designed to appeal directly to those more limited audiences—a practice known as narrowcasting. Advertisers quickly recognized the potential of narrowcasting, which allowed them more easily to tailor commercials to particular demographics. The response was overwhelming: Viewers wanted around-the-clock information and entertainment and became cable subscribers, while advertisers leapt at the chance to spend less money to reach more specific audiences.

News, Music, and Sports

In 1980, Ted Turner launched the Cable News Network (CNN), a twenty-four-hour news channel. Broadcast news organizations dismissed CNN, but Turner correctly identified a public hunger for news and information. CNN gained legitimacy through instant coverage of news events such as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In 1981, CNN expanded to launch CNN2, later named CNN Headlines. The network built a global presence as well, with CNN International launching in Europe in 1985. By 1989, it broadcast in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East as well. CNN turned a financial corner in 1985, when five years of losses turned into $13 million in profit. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan known as the Great Communicator held an end-of-the-year press conference with anchors from the Big Three networks and Bernard Shaw of CNN, demonstrating the network’s achieved legitimacy.

In 1981, MTV (music television) was launched with the iconic symbol of an astronaut planting the MTV flag on the moon. Geared to a generation of teens and young adults who had been raised on television and rock and roll, MTV showed music videos—a new type of programming combining popular songs with image tracks. Young “veejays” (video deejays) hosted the network’s programs and introduced the videos, in much the same fashion as their radio counterparts. Music artists collaborated with filmmakers to transform the music video from promotional marketing to artistic expression.

As MTV’s popularity grew, the channel became an arbiter of young-adult tastes and trends, influencing 1980’s American culture generally. It therefore began to be targeted by organizations worried about its lack of diversity. Others criticized the distinctive, fast-paced editing style of MTV’s programs and videos, which they believed had a negative effect on teen viewers’ attention spans. Throughout the 1980’s, MTV continued to reinvent itself, recognizing changing trends in music and producing its own original programming. MTV created VH-1 (later VH1), a second music channel featuring music for baby boomers.

ESPN started as the Entertainment & Sports Programming Network, a twenty-four-hour channel devoted to sports. The network met the challenge of programming twenty-four hours a day by covering international events and obscure sports such as the “World’s Strongest Man” competition. Its programming expanded significantly beginning in 1984, when the network was acquired by ABC, which had significant sports resources, including both rights to cover future events and a library of past, “classic” sports coverage. In 1985, the sports network’s name was officially changed simply to ESPN, which went on to become a respected brand name in sports broadcasting. In 1987, ESPN came of age when it concluded a deal for partial broadcast rights with the National Football League (NFL).

Children’s Programming and Home Shopping

Nickelodeon was an early cable presence with children’s programming. It began as a local broadcast channel called Pinwheel. Pinwheel became a cable channel in 1979 and changed its name to Nickelodeon in 1981. Recognizing that its target audience went to sleep early, the network modified its programming in 1985. It continued to broadcast children’s shows during the day, but at night it broadcast reruns of old television shows that would appeal to parents nostalgic for their own childhood. The nighttime broadcast was labeled Nick at Nite. Nickelodeon, MTV, and VH-1 were owned by the same company, Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment. In 1985, they were acquired by Viacom. In 1983, the Disney Channel launched and brought favorite Walt Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to a new generation.

Home Shopping Network (HSN) began as a local cable-access venture selling surplus items. It found a home on national cable systems, however, providing the home shopping experience almost twenty-four hours a day and eventually developing products that were available exclusively through the network. A second home shopping channel, QVC (quality, value, convenience), launched in 1986. Home shopping networks offered a department store’s variety of items for sale—jewelry, apparel, kitchenware, tools—with sales that lasted for hours or minutes, thus encouraging buyers to make impulse purchases.

More Choices

Three Spanish-language stations—Telemundo, its subsidiary Galavision, and Univision—addressed the growing Latino population in the United States with programming geared toward Latino cultures and concerns. Univision was the first company in the United States authorized to receive and rebroadcast foreign television programming via satellite. Telemundo began broadcasting in 1987 with world and national news programs.

The Discovery Channel aired documentaries and other nonfiction programming, primarily about the natural world. Bravo and the Arts and Entertainment Channel (A&E) concentrated on film, drama, documentaries, and the performing arts. Lifetime focused on women’s programming and health issues. Black Entertainment Television (BET) started in 1980, broadcasting programs geared toward African Americans, such as music videos featuring black artists. Turner Broadcasting Systems (TBS) launched Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1988 with sports and colorized movies.

Religious Programming

Television ministries were also beneficiaries of cable’s growth in the 1980’s. Cable television made stars out of charismatic Christian ministers Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson. Robertson, an entrepreneur as well as a popular preacher, built the Christian Broadcasting Network, which became Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye Bakker headed PTL (Praise the Lord) television, which was carried by twelve hundred cable systems. In the late 1980’s, Bakker and Swaggart were forced from their ministries by financial and sex scandals, and Bakker was convicted of fraud in 1989. The power and reach of the so-called televangelists’ television shows made their subsequent falls from grace into national news.

Premium Cable

Home Box Office (HBO) was one of the first premium cable television services, and the network moved into the 1980’s with the ability to increase its reach to households through satellite technology. It also expanded its programming to include made-for-cable movies as well as theatrical releases that had not yet been released on video. HBO viewers were film buffs who wanted to watch commercial-free, unedited motion pictures. Rival network Showtime aired similar programming but was one-third of the size of HBO, which reached roughly 9.3 million viewers in 1983. HBO launched a sister movie channel, Cinemax, in 1980 and followed it with the Comedy Channel in 1989. As HBO and Showtime evolved, both channels designed programming to maintain their subscriber base.

Many cable networks were start-up companies with necessarily lean budgets. They broadcast primarily inexpensive programming, such as syndicated shows, old movies, and talk shows. By contrast, broadcast programming development and production were time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly. In 1985, the broadcast networks’ revenues fell for the first time in their history. Between 1980 and 1989, the number of households subscribing to cable grew to 59 percent, and the number of viewers watching network television fell by 15 percent. The networks found themselves vulnerable to takeover, and by 1986 each of the Big Three changed ownership. The traditional broadcast networks were institutions incapable of quick adjustments in the changing television marketplace. They were out-maneuvered by cable.

Impact

In 1981, an average of nine broadcast stations were available to television households. By 1989, an average of twelve broadcast stations and thirty channels were available to the same television household. In ten years, a radical transformation had taken place. The effects of cable television filtered through news, entertainment, and the American consciousness.

MTV overcame the music industry’s initial reluctance to produce music videos. Indeed, the industry became dependent on the music channel to introduce new artists and to revive the careers of older artists. Pop cultural icons such as Madonna and Michael Jackson used music videos and personal appearances on MTV to facilitate transitions in their careers. The visual aesthetic cultivated on MTV—fast-paced montage editing and a frenetic overall style—spread throughout television, film, and commercials. The 1984 NBC series Miami Vice owed its visuals and use of current music to the cutting-edge music channel. A new generation of directors achieved their first successes in the music-video industry before moving into film. Such motion pictures as Flashdance (1983) and Footloose (1984) owed their success in part to their ability to cultivate a music-video look and appeal to a young audience that demanded a fresh approach to the movie musical.

MTV’s cultural effects went beyond the aesthetic. Both the network and the music industry faced controversy over the language and sexual content of videos that were consumed largely by minors. Concerned parents even enlisted support from Congress. When MTV responded by censoring videos, it was accused of bending to outside pressures and political correctness. Sociologists also attributed shortened attention spans to MTV’s fast-paced content.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation stepped into the chaos of broadcast networks’ decline to launch the FOX network , an alternative network with cutting-edge programming designed to appeal to a younger audience. The cable era set into motion a frenzied period of media mergers, as entertainment corporations acquired companies with a cable presence, combined broadcast networks with cable channels, and built organizations to accommodate the vertical integration of entertainment products.

The broadcast networks were portrayed as dinosaurs, lacking mobility and facing extinction. In response, the networks adapted by copying cable television’s most successful programming and targeted a younger generation of viewers. Cable made huge inroads into viewership, but no individual cable network approached the Big Three in terms of the sheer number of television households they reached.

Eventually, cable experienced growing pains, and the growth in viewership stalled. Viewers complained of repetitious programming. In response, cable companies instituted original programming. HBO and Showtime produced series and original movies for television. Nickelodeon commissioned original animated series for children. MTV added so-called reality series. The pressure to maintain growth was unending.

Television viewers with cable access were no longer dependent on network evening news broadcasts, whose audience declined steadily. Viewers preferred up-to-the-minute news that could be tuned in at any time. Large corporations took over the networks and enforced cost-cutting measures in the network news operations. The networks jettisoned foreign bureaus. CNN, with an expanding international presence, became a primary source for news around the world. Critics described CNN as “crisis news network,” because audiences increased during crisis coverage, a type of coverage at which twenty-four-hour news channels excelled. During slow news cycles, however, CNN still had to fill its airtime, and critics complained about the network’s tendency to do so with less weighty lead stories reminiscent of those found in the tabloids.

Television viewers developed new habits of program selection that were troublesome to commercial television broadcasters. Channel surfing, or channel grazing—switching from channel to channel to avoid commercials or select different programming—became a common habit as more channels became available. Advertisers could no longer count on their commercials being seen by the majority of a channel’s viewers. However, the ability to narrowcast on specialized channels combined with the reduced expense of placing commercials on cable television helped convince advertisers not to abandon television advertising. Indeed, as they recognized the growing power of cable television, they accelerated spending in cable markets. From 1980 to 1989, advertising dollars spent on cable increased from $53 million to $1.5 billion.

Bibliography

Auletta, Ken. Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Personal portrait of Ted Turner.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way. New York: Random House, 1991. Details the factors that led to the precipitous decline of broadcast network viewership. Excellent behind-the-scenes descriptions.

McGrath, Tom. MTV: The Making of a Revolution. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1996. Inside story of MTV from its inception through 1992.

Roman, James. Love, Light, and a Dream: Television’s Past, Present, and Future. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996. Perspective on different eras of television.

Vane, Edwin T., and Lynne S. Gross. Programming for TV, Radio, and Cable. Boston: Focal Press, 1994. Excellent information on ratings and networks.