5 ms·

This is strange. I've consistently heard that it was a total myth cable was ever ad-free.

jasone 8y ago
I distinctly recall the ad-free experience of my cousin's cable service circa 1980, in stark contrast with the broadcast reception my family had. I can't definitively say that there were no commercials on the channels we didn't bother with, but in essence it was certainly a commercial-free viewing experience. This was in the Denver area. By the early 90s things like home shopping network channels and infomercials were increasingly common, and we eventually ended up with common disruptive commercials. Perhaps your "myth" sources are too young to have actually experienced the early days of cable.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Around that time we had the Showtime channel and there was not (and still no third-party advertising?). Of course when the "basic cable" started a few years later, for example MTV, those channels always had commercials.
gitgud 8y ago
Australian cable (Foxtel) was ad-free until 2000-ish if anyone can remember?
- MetallicCloud 8y ago
  I had Austar around that time, and it was kind of ad free. They advertised other shows on that channel, and sometimes other channels, but there wasn't any ads for products. But I remember around the early 2000's that started to change.
guidoism 8y ago
Not the US, but in Bolivia in the late 90s cable was essentially ad free. My favorite channel was "The Sony Channel", they had stuff like Dawson's Creek (don't judge!) and Seinfeld ad free. Because those shows had spots for commercial breaks they stuck music videos in between. Ok, maybe that isn't completely ad free, the music videos were essentially ads for Sony's music artists, but it was better than regular commercials.
flyinghamster 8y ago
I remember the early-1980s cable landscape, when the only "cable" channels were what we could call premium channels now: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, etc.; all the other channels were local over-the-air stations.
- icedchai 8y ago
  We got cable in 1981 and it was exactly this. None of the “cable” (premium) channels had ads. Some of them, like Nickelodeon, did add ads in the late 80’s.
copperx 8y ago
I remember asking my mother "what is cable TV?" when I was a kid and I still remember she said, "It's when you pay for TV so you don't get ads." This must have been 30 years ago.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
The internet didn't used to have ads or spam either.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Relatively speaking, most of the time the internet has been around, spam and ads have been around. Spam on nntp predates the web, iirc. Bots in the messenger apps were unforgivingly ruthless, and email has had spam at least since the early 90's. Also, even shows that did have ads, it wasn't nearly as much. If you look at say Buck Rogers, iirc it's about 48 minutes per episode with credits, and back then they didn't share space for credits with ads. Today a lot of shows are as little as 34-38 minutes to an hour of programming. That's 30-40% of your viewing time being advertising. Not to mention product placement and other ad channels in the content. Not to mention the crap that's happened to youtube that's made it hard to follow/watch channels with content you want to follow in favor of engagement algorithms. It starts to suck pretty badly all around. The last update to my Nvidia Shield TV brought ads into youtube there too, where there weren't any until a few weeks ago. My GF uses Hulu's "live tv" services, which aren't bad, but still have all the ads, are painful. I'd still rather use torrents, even if I am paying for content.

I distinctly recall the ad-free experience of my cousin's cable service circa 1980, in stark contrast with the broadcast reception my family had. I can't definitively say that there were no commercials on the channels we didn't bother with, but in essence it was certainly a commercial-free viewing experience. This was in the Denver area. By the early 90s things like home shopping network channels and infomercials were increasingly common, and we eventually ended up with common disruptive commercials. Perhaps your "myth" sources are too young to have actually experienced the early days of cable.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Around that time we had the Showtime channel and there was not (and still no third-party advertising?). Of course when the "basic cable" started a few years later, for example MTV, those channels always had commercials.

gitgud 8y ago

Australian cable (Foxtel) was ad-free until 2000-ish if anyone can remember?

MetallicCloud 8y ago
I had Austar around that time, and it was kind of ad free. They advertised other shows on that channel, and sometimes other channels, but there wasn't any ads for products. But I remember around the early 2000's that started to change.

guidoism 8y ago

Not the US, but in Bolivia in the late 90s cable was essentially ad free. My favorite channel was "The Sony Channel", they had stuff like Dawson's Creek (don't judge!) and Seinfeld ad free. Because those shows had spots for commercial breaks they stuck music videos in between. Ok, maybe that isn't completely ad free, the music videos were essentially ads for Sony's music artists, but it was better than regular commercials.

flyinghamster 8y ago

I remember the early-1980s cable landscape, when the only "cable" channels were what we could call premium channels now: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, etc.; all the other channels were local over-the-air stations.

icedchai 8y ago
We got cable in 1981 and it was exactly this. None of the “cable” (premium) channels had ads. Some of them, like Nickelodeon, did add ads in the late 80’s.

copperx 8y ago

I remember asking my mother "what is cable TV?" when I was a kid and I still remember she said, "It's when you pay for TV so you don't get ads." This must have been 30 years ago.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

The internet didn't used to have ads or spam either.

tracker1 8y ago
Relatively speaking, most of the time the internet has been around, spam and ads have been around. Spam on nntp predates the web, iirc. Bots in the messenger apps were unforgivingly ruthless, and email has had spam at least since the early 90's. Also, even shows that did have ads, it wasn't nearly as much. If you look at say Buck Rogers, iirc it's about 48 minutes per episode with credits, and back then they didn't share space for credits with ads. Today a lot of shows are as little as 34-38 minutes to an hour of programming. That's 30-40% of your viewing time being advertising. Not to mention product placement and other ad channels in the content. Not to mention the crap that's happened to youtube that's made it hard to follow/watch channels with content you want to follow in favor of engagement algorithms. It starts to suck pretty badly all around. The last update to my Nvidia Shield TV brought ads into youtube there too, where there weren't any until a few weeks ago. My GF uses Hulu's "live tv" services, which aren't bad, but still have all the ads, are painful. I'd still rather use torrents, even if I am paying for content.