> It was even hard to explain kids 10 years ago, at a time when kids still watched cable, that there was once a time when cable TV didn't have ads.
One thing that may have made this difficult is that, in fact, there was never a time when cable didn't have ads. It was invented to deliver standard (advertising laden) TV to places geographically out-of-reach of broadcast, and basic cable always was a mix of broadcast stations and additional ad-laden stations.
Premium cable channels didn't tend to have advertising except for their own (or shared corporate parent) programming, but those were charged additionally on top of basic cable.
As someone who had cable since the mid-1980s, its been really weird to see this recent invention of a lost past where cable existed but was ad-free.
Where I lived the only reason to have cable was to watch premium channels. OTA worked perfectly fine for everything else.
So, probably you're right on your perception, but it doesn't invalidate my point of view and of other people who clearly remember a time where you did have ad-free television in Cable, because we only cared for the premium channels.
“There was a time cable had no ads” and “there was a time you could spend additional money to buy separate ad-free channels on top of dozens of relayed broadcast channels and dozens to hundreds of basic cable channels, all with ads, on cable” are... very different claims.
And using the latter to decry an evolving norm of it being possible to spend additional money to get the entire service ad-free on top of the basic cost of an (ad-supported) streaming service is... odd.
You do agree there was a paid service that had no ads. We're good on that, right? No objections, I reckon.
I see you have a point with me and others calling it cable, when it was a subset of all the cable you could get. I readily concede your point here.
So ok, there was a fucking paid service that had no ads, and I have no hard data to back what I am going to say, but I strongly suspect that those premium channels were all that mattered for most people. I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
And this subset of people, who I suspect was a plurality of cable users, that cared most about those premium channels and paid for that, had the experience of seeing those channels introducing ads while charging the same for their packages.
First, as others have pointed out, subscription based channels came later on. Cable TV had ads right from the get go.
Second, the vast majority of cable subscribers did not have subscription based channels. Most people either had basic (e.g. 20 channels), or some sort of premium tier (50 channels) which did not have ad free options. You had to pay separately an extra $10-20/month to get the ad-free ones (e.g. HBO). To counter your anecdote, almost no one I knew paid extra for them. As in, sitting right now, I cannot even come up with one name. They were for "rich" folks. Plebes like us simply rented if we wanted ad free.
Finally, I really don't get your point. When you got your ad free cable channels, the majority of cable channels carry ads. Even with the Prime/Disney degradation, the proportion of streaming services that have a paid no-ads option is still higher than you ever had at any point in cable history.
You want ad-free streaming options? They still exist!
You're really arguing pretty much everyone who had cable had multiple $10/mo (in the 80s and 90s!) premium channels and pretty much exclusively watched that? So there were pretty much zero people watching CNN, there were zero people watching USA,there were zero people watching Cartoon Network, zero people watching MTV, zero people watching ESPN, etc? Only HBO and Cinemax? Those were the only channels on at every single friends house, always?
> I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
Damn, and I thought I had a privileged childhood. Many of my friends didn't even have cable despite many coming from families making into six figures in the 90s. Literally nobody you knew only had or even spent any time watching basic cable channels?
Even for the percentage of those I knew who did have cable, most didn't have the premium channels or would only have HBO or only Showtime or whatever. And no, they weren't paying tons of money to only watch HBO, many of those other channels were often watched.
And by the fact you're scoping it to the 90s and beyond shows you're just ignoring the 40 years of history before.
> I have no hard data to back what I am going to say
You don't have the data because its 100% fiction.
> who I suspect was a plurality of cable users
Not even close. Supposedly in May 1987 it was reported HBO had 15 million subscribers. There were 41 million cable subscribers that year. In 2001 it was reported to have 25.5 million subscribers[2]. There were 66 million cable subscribers in the US. Never, in all of cable's history, have the plurality of cable subscribers had HBO.
nope, cable was ad-free when I was a kid (also of the 80's).
It's possible you were in an area with a shitty cable company, but many of us did not deal with ads while watching HBO, Cinemax, etc.
There would sometimes be advertising between shows about other shows and while that's technically advertising it's not what people mean when they talk about ads (or the lack thereof). They're talking about interruption of content to show an advertisement.
and yes, cable would also carry local channels, which had ads. No, that's not what people are referring to when they say cable did, or did not, have ads.
No. When major cable channels like TBS and ESPN launched in 1979, they had regular commercials just like broadcast. (You can read their histories on Wikipedia.)
There were some channels that didn't have ads at first -- e.g. Nickelodeon was ad-free when it launched in 1979, and added commercials in 1984.
But there was never a time when basic cable was free of ads, meaning ads for products (not just other shows).
Premium cable channels are ad-free (HBO, Cinemax), but that's not cable. That's premium. You had to pay extra for that, on top of your basic cable subscription.
Moving the goalpost is not compelling. Yes, national cable stations were commercial free for years (eg Z Channel^1, HBO, Showtime, et al), before every channel was advertised as being on cable, in a marketing shift to shift away from over-the-air broadcast and bundle programming rates. TBS was regional (Atlanta, Georgia^3), when it started off. The niche market of TBS was not industry defining anymore than my local bakery's donut deal is. This was a shift in terminology, but the history remains^2.
> . Yes, national cable stations were commercial free for years (eg Z Channel^1, HBO, Showtime, et al), before every channel was advertised as being on cable
Premium cable channels like Showtime, HBO, et al., came after (by a couple decades), and were priced as a surcharge on top of, cable carrying relayed broadcast and ad-supported basic cable channels.
You're the one moving the goalposts to make cable mean only HBO and Showtime. Cable existed for decades before HBO launched, and HBO wasn't even the first cable-only channel. Cable's original pros was absolutely not about freedom from ads, no matter how you slice it.
Yes, commercials did eventually invade it (as everyone knows), but this was not the initial marketing (aka promise). I guess you had to be there. Good luck with whatever.
I'm sorry that you're insisting on pushing that narrative, which is incorrect.
Your article literally starts off stating "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." Not that it was actually sold that way or promised that way, just that people had some impression that was how cable would work. It also mentions how in 1981 (only few years after the first cable-only big TV channels came out!) advertising was already a $45M. It doesn't once state there were no ads on cable networks, and points to multiple TV channels which launched with ads. The article adds to my point, not takes away from it. There were ads immediately when cable TV only channels were a new thing, this article confirms it.
And this also doesn't say anything about the fact most channels on cable were just retransmissions of the major networks, which had ads. So most content available on cable was advertising based. And as mentioned, most cable-only networks had ads when they launched. Sure, there were a few out there like HBO and Z-Channel and what not, but most of the cable-only channels that came out had ads.
> Many cable channels have yet to begin operating, and those now running commercials, such as Ted Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network or U.S.A. Network's ''You'' program for women, carry 30-second and one-minute commercials that are a standard feature of regular television
Even your other article (everything80spodcast.com) makes a point at the delineation between basic cable (which channels often had ads) and premium cable which relied on additional subscriber fees. Basic cable channels like TBS and USA relied on ads, premium channels charged extra fees. Your own articles continue pointing to the fact ads were on cable from the start.
> Eventually, this cable television concept split into basic cable and premium. One of the first basic cable channels was the Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS. And two of the first big premium channels were HBO and Showtime, which will be a big part of the focus here.
And its funny you mention Z-channel as an example of one of the early "national" cable channels and call TBS "regional", when Z-channel pretty much never left Southern California. If TBS was a regional channel, Z-channel was a hyper-local one. TBS as a cable channel was in six states, over 90 cable networks, and several hundred thousand households in 1976. A decade later in the mid 1980s Z channel was still only in Southern California on a single cable network and had less than 100,000 subscribers. Which one was old hat? Which was the regional again?
Let me reiterate. I'm sorry that you're insisting on pushing that narrative of "national cable stations were commercial free for years" among other things, which are incorrect. I'm not arguing there were not some premium cable channels which didn't run ads, I'm saying the vast majority of regular cable channels had ads from day one. Your own sources agree with me on this. Good luck with whatever.
Many many people say the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked. I guess I should ignore all the evidence and my own lived experience otherwise and listen.
Cable had ads from the beginning. A few channels that came out decades later doesn't invalidate that fact. Even then, the first few cable-only channels had ads. Then on top of that the vast majority of cable-only channels had ads, only a select few didn't. It's revisionist history saying cable didn't have ads.
> Many many people say the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked.
you're going to have to define many here because I don't think your definition and mine align.
> Cable had ads from the beginning.
No, cable carried local channels from the beginning and local channels had ads because local channels were typically broadcast over the air to television sets with antenna of some sort (aka "rabbit ears": https://www.amazon.com/Wideskall-Universal-Indoor-Antenna-Co...).
What you're essentially saying here is that the vast majority of cable channels would _interrupt_ their programming to show ads.
That was not my experience nor the experience of most people.
> cable carried local channels from the beginning and local channels had ads
Cool, so we can both agree this is 100% non-factual, revisionist history:
> Cable TV once had the same allure: Freedom from ads.
Like, we're both agreeing that at the start, 100% of cable's channels had ads, 100% of channels had ads for decades, and throughout the entire history of cable the vast majority of channels had ads?
> What you're essentially saying here is that the vast majority of cable channels would _interrupt_ their programming to show ads.
I have never once made the claim cable would interrupt regular programming of OTA networks to insert their own ads. But, well ackshully, many networks did end up having cable override the ad breaks for the OTA broadcasts and run their own ads, so in a way this actually was reality for some channels in some areas at certain points in time.
What I have been arguing is cable TV, from day one and for decades every channel on it, had ads. That the majority of channels available to cable subscribers have always been filled with ads. That the majority of the first cable-only TV channels had ads from day 1 (TBS, CNN, USA, ESPN, Nickelodeon, AMC, etc).
The majority of cable-only TV channels had ads. Arguing otherwise is arguing revisionist history not based in reality but in your own fantasy dreamland.
> you're going to have to define many here because I don't think your definition and mine align.
I dunno, I'm seeing a few people making the argument that cable TV never had ads or was free of ads at the start, and I often find convention centers crowded of people arguing for the flat earth and personally know several moon landing skeptics. My experience is flat earth has more supporters than the "cable never had ads" group.
> That was not my experience
Ok cool, and many people also experience a flat earth.
> I once had someone correct me and say cable also has ads. I had to look it up and sure enough, it apparently does now.
You've absolutely made the argument cable only recently started to show ads. You've tried stating things like the Sci-Fi channel didn't have ads when it did from day one. "it apparently does now" makes no sense when you then also agree that the majority of cable has had ads since the beginning.
> I have never once made the claim cable would interrupt regular programming of OTA networks to insert their own ads.
And the reason this is a "well akshually..." is that when people talk about cable not having ads, they mean programming didn't get interrupted to deliver ads.
It's also why those who are arguing "well cable always had ads" don't have a leg to stand on, because streaming services _are_ interrupting content to display ads.
> You've absolutely made the argument cable only recently started to show ads.
That's why you don't cherry pick quotes.
what I actually said
> I have not carried cable since Cox wouldn't allow me to watch the sci-fi channel without renting hardware per month (the refused to let me purchase the box outright).
> __I STOPPED PIRATING__ when netflix started streaming, but now I'm back to pirating because fuck these greedy bastards.
stop and think about that timeline and tell me I said recent. Netflix started streaming late 90's/early aughts.
> programming didn't get interrupted to deliver ads.
Two different things. "Cable not having ads" means cable didn't have ads, which we've now agreed on many, many times that cable absolutely carried ads. And yes, on channels like ESPN and USA and Comedy Central and Cartoon Network and CNN and what not there were ad breaks in shows, even at the beginning of those channel's existences. And once again, the majority of channels on cable were just retransmissions of OTA networks, which once again as we've agreed on had interruptions in the programs for ads.
Cable.
Had.
Ads.
Since.
Day.
One.
The majority of content available on cable had ads, since day one.
Any argument otherwise is denying reality.
> Netflix started streaming late 90's/early aughts
Laughable you're going to argue timelines with me here. Netflix streaming services didn't launch until 2007. 2007 is not the late 90s nor the early aughts. Once again showing me you're delusional and have poor recollection of history, or just trolling. I'm supposed to trust your recollection of the history of cable over the piles of written articles from the times in question and my own lived experiences when you're arguing Netflix was streaming in the 90s?
> That's why you don't cherry pick quotes.
Adding in the context of needing a cable box is what drove you to quit doesn't make this statement any closer to reality:
> I once had someone correct me and say cable also has ads. I had to look it up and sure enough, it apparently does now.
Emphasis added. Apparently cable has ads now, who knew. As if that's some kind of recent (from at least the late 90s+) phenomenon. When you've agreed in this thread multiple times cable TV has had ads since the beginning.
Adding in the context of "I haven't paid for cable since the mid-90's" as an argument that cable somehow didn't have ads in the 90s but does now still just shows you're delusional. USA and Comedy Central and MTV and CNN and Sci-Fi and Cartoon Netowrk and the like all had ads which interrupted programming in the 90s. That was cable. It had ads. The ads interrupted the shows on the vast majority of channels. I was there, I saw it, I lived it. I have multiple sources talking about advertising in cable channels going back to the early 80s. Shit I've got VHS tapes on my shelf here from recordings of things like The Daily Show and Dragonball Z from the 90s which cut to ad breaks in the middle of the shows. You're telling me the things I can see with my own eyes, right now, aren't real!
> Saying there are no ads, when there were ads, is just wrong.
right, and Cox Cable has a competitor because there's a dialup service available that competes against the fiber.
That's not how English works, that's not how people work. That's how computers work.
You are communicating with people, not computers.
> Probably doing too many to notice all the ads on cable in the 90s then I guess. Because they were there.
it's a mitch hedberg joke. I was making fun of your insistence that my usage of the word 'now' means it couldn't have also been true for a long while in the past.
I go to a restaurant. I ask the waiter, "does this sandwich have mustard on it?" The waiter responds "No, this sandwich does not have mustard." I order the sandwich and find it has loads of yellow mustard on it. I go to the waiter and ask what gives, and he replies "well, it doesn't have any Grey Poupon."
Was the waiter correct in telling me "this sandwich does not have mustard"?
Is saying "there were no ads" when the fact is there were ads correct? Even if we were to just scope it to pre-roll ads, the argument that cable offered "freedom from ads" overall is untrue. Because there were still ads on most cable content, whether that be interruption style ads (which did exist) or pre-roll.
Saying the point of cable was freedom from ads is rewriting history. Most of cable had ads from day one. A few channels didn't correct. But that's not all of cable, and that was never the main point of cable.
And I did get the reference to the joke. It still doesn't change the fact the Sci-Fi channel had ads since its inception and yet you somehow didn't notice until recently, which was my whole point.
> when people talk about cable not having ads, they mean programming didn't get interrupted to deliver ads.
When your entire argument becomes the massive logical inconsistency of "it's not ads because it's not this one type of ad" (see: it's not mustard because it's not grey poupon), misremembering history (Netflix was streaming in the 90s), and yet is also still ignoring facts (most basic cable channels did have interruption style ads), you know you're detached from reality.
According to sources above cable networks made $45M in advertising in 1980 in 1980s dollars, 138M in 2023 dollars. Just a few years into major nationwide networks really getting into it and cable still being a pretty niche market. Somehow they were making millions in ads not having ads according to your logically inconsistent reality.
No one is denying that you could buy premium services on top of cable that were ad free.
The claim that was being denied was that “cable used to be ad free”, and specifically used as a basis for lamenting an evolving standard where the basic tier of streaming services are ad supported. Aside from not being the claim you have moved the goalposts to, it was made in a context where the ine you’ve moved the goalposts to would make no sense.
I watched Nickelodeon in 1980 and there were most definitely no ads. (It also only broadcast from 6am to 2pm, having a static image outside of those hours.) I can't support your insistent viewpoint that cable TV always had ads.
One thing that may have made this difficult is that, in fact, there was never a time when cable didn't have ads. It was invented to deliver standard (advertising laden) TV to places geographically out-of-reach of broadcast, and basic cable always was a mix of broadcast stations and additional ad-laden stations.
Premium cable channels didn't tend to have advertising except for their own (or shared corporate parent) programming, but those were charged additionally on top of basic cable.
As someone who had cable since the mid-1980s, its been really weird to see this recent invention of a lost past where cable existed but was ad-free.