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Show Cable Television Grew Too fef. Too Soon and Wired Moiioi By Linda Berman Cable television grew too fast, too soon. The wired nation envisioned by media experts in the 1960's has simple not come to pass. Cable was successful in enabling rural viewers to get better reception, but, once it tried to provide alternative channels to the public, it failed. Big cities don't necessarily necessar-ily have serious reception problems. So, when cable was introduced into New York, it was thought cable could provide hundreds of new channels for the public. Not only could people see sports events, but they could participate in their own shows. There could be programs pro-grams on health care, education, educa-tion, just about anything you could think of. And, when the FCC ruled that if you served serv-ed a certain number of subscribers sub-scribers you HAD to provide pro-vide public access, cable planners thought for sure that cable was the wave of the future. But, cable systems weren't able to provide enough subscribers. Both Manhattan Cable and Tele-prompter Tele-prompter lost enormous sums of money Manhattan lost 5.0 million and Tele- promter lost 3.7 million. Organization was also a problem. An insider at Hughes, Network, which handles many sports events told me, "We're very poorly organized. We could proD-ably proD-ably make a lot of money if we were better organized." In Washington, there are many different cable systems, sy-stems, and they are uncoordinated. un-coordinated. The cable owners own-ers just can't seem to work together. And, Bell Telephone Tele-phone has come up with a new fiber optic that will make present systems obsolete ob-solete in about 10 years! What then makes cable a ivisioned by Inperis Bid ?3oi Tolie Place As Prodieied viable, attractive system for now? For one thing, in the near future, almost all sports events will be on cable. Network Net-work executives are well aware of the financial advantages ad-vantages cable has for sports promoters and they are mounting a serious campaign against cable for this reason. rea-son. They fear that siphoning will take all sports away from them, and if sports go, so will a lot of viewers. view-ers. Ads have been placed in magazines against cable, but their effect is still unknown. un-known. If this is going to happen, and Park City had a cable system, then people from all over the area would come into tovn to watch events on TV. Businesses in town would profit from a cable system in this regard. A cable system here would also provide needed information inform-ation on health care, at home education, and even skiing. Council meetings could be taped and shown on the cable so that townspeople could better understand thefr government. Amateur TV buffs could make their own shows, and have showings on the cable. It could be a super experience exper-ience for young people. And what would the cost be? Well, Greater Park City Company (GPCC) has already al-ready wired the condomin iums, and installed a relay tower. It would not be difficult dif-ficult to wire the rest of the homes. GPCC isn't sure if they are going to bring cable into the area, however. If you feel cable is important, write to GPCC and tell them so. The benefits would help everyone in the community. |