Why does this meme always come up in any discussion when it only takes a little bit of research (if you aren’t old enough to remember) to know this was never true?
Cable TV was first pitched as a method to get broadcast TV - with ads - in places that couldn’t get broadcast. Cable companies put big towers up and rebroadcasted network TV - with ads.
Then HBO came along as an ad free premium channel and it still is.
Then the “Superstations” like TBS out of Atlanta came along. Which were always ad supported and started broadcasting nationally.
Then the first cable channels came along like MTV, Lifetime, ESPN, USA. Not only dud they have ads from day one, they had infomercials to fill out the time when they didn’t have programming to show.
There has never been a time since the invention of cable TV in the US that it was ad free.
Thanks for mentioning this. I’ll admit I believed the meme.
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.
> Then the first cable channels came along like MTV, Lifetime, ESPN, USA.
MTV was actually a ripoff of QUBE channel C-1 program "Sight on Sound" which didn't air advertisements the way we think of them. Instead record labels could pay to have their music videos prioritized or to run giveaway contests.
QUBE also lead to the creation of Nickelodeon (Which itself was ad-free for several years). QUBE channel C-3 "Pinwheel" was the first cable channel made for only young children, and was spun off into Nickelodeon when QUBE went defunct.
The QUBE T channels were just cable links to conventional OTA broadcast television channels (T for television).
QUBE C channels (C for community) did not have ad breaks. Instead there would be sponsored giveaways or sponsored shows which eventually lead to the current practice of infomercials. Except with QUBE the segments were live and viewers could push one of 5 buttons on the remote to interact with the program. For example in a sponsored cosmetics segment viewers could vote on whether the next topic would be one of 5 options, lipstick, mascara, etc. Sight on Sound would ask some questions about current viewer demographics (are you male/female. Are you in age group ABCDE. How many people are watching right now), the dj would say it was to play music matching the current demographic, but it was mainly collected to give metrics to sponsored segments or to wait for an appropriate time to play a sponsored segment.
But what most urban people considered "cable" at the time would be the QUBE P-channels. P for Pay. Unlike other pay channels at the time like HBO, the P channels were a monthly subscription (each), not pay per view. Notably, QUBE got into the news several times because of channel P-10, which aired softcore porn.
Also ESPN did not initially air advertisements during programming, only in between programs. But they also only had sports no one really cared about for the first few years. No major sports, no college games. But they did have highlights and some international sports.
The main reason early cable-only channels didn't have advertising is mainly because the subscriber numbers were so small there wasn't much revenue to be made targeting 5-10k viewers. Once subscriber numbers went up, and higher budget programming was in-demand (sports licensing is ridiculously expensive) ad breaks similar to OTA channels were introduced. But many of cable's early adopters bought into it on word of mouth, and word at the time was "no ad breaks!" It wasn't a goal of cable TV, just a side effect of the development.
It was only a few years, but there were a few years when cable tv had no ad breaks for the majority of urban subscribers. It's sort of like someone saying Netflix used to have pretty much every show and movie, and then pulling up stats from 2014 and beyond saying no they didn't.
It is advertising, but usually not the kind people are complaining about. There's no Netflix tier to remove product placement from shows.
And yeah Nickelodeon did but that's because the network was "off" during those hours. When it was on it was 12 hours uninterrupted for the first 5 years.
Cable TV was first pitched as a method to get broadcast TV - with ads - in places that couldn’t get broadcast. Cable companies put big towers up and rebroadcasted network TV - with ads.
Then HBO came along as an ad free premium channel and it still is.
Then the “Superstations” like TBS out of Atlanta came along. Which were always ad supported and started broadcasting nationally.
Then the first cable channels came along like MTV, Lifetime, ESPN, USA. Not only dud they have ads from day one, they had infomercials to fill out the time when they didn’t have programming to show.
There has never been a time since the invention of cable TV in the US that it was ad free.