5 ms·

Cable TV once had the same allure: Freedom from ads. It was even hard to explain kids 10 years ago, at a time when kids still watched cable, that there was once

Cable TV once had the same allure: Freedom from ads. 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.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> 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.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  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.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    “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.
    - elzbardico 3y ago
      Ok. We are getting there. 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.
      - grogenaut 3y ago
        you know cable existed before the 90s right? also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite
        vel0city 3y ago
        > also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite Mostly because for a while with the right equipment you'd get a lot of the original feeds direct.
      - BeetleB 3y ago
        You have to realize what an outlier you are. 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!
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > OTA worked perfectly fine for everything else. That doesn't make any sense. You couldn't get basic cable channels like MTV or TBS or Nickelodeon over the air. That's the whole point of basic cable. And it was full of ads.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > OTA worked perfectly fine for everything else You got TNT over the air? CNN? USA? Cartoon Network? HGTV? Sci-Fi? Comedy Central? MTV?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  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.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    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.
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      > that's not cable. That's premium. 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel [2] https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-growth-of-cable-tv/ https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)
      - 3y ago
- Trixter 3y ago
  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.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
I still get a handful of semi premium channels without commercials, and I don't even pay extra for the HBO tier. Cable TV commercials are now the best option we have though, because they can be trivially skipped. A DVR still gives me full control of the video stream. If you time shift you never have to see an unskippable commercial on cable. Which is just another way of saying that tech companies brought us enshittification faster and more thoroughly than what they supplanted.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I've had DirecTV cable boxes inject unskippable ads into recordings.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    That's fucking terrible.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
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. 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. Piracy is a market force.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  The Sci-fi channel had ads in the late 90's. Maybe there was a time before that when it didn't?
- vel0city 3y ago
  The SciFi (now SyFy) channel has always had ads. Go watch any of their early programs and notice how they have these fade cuts in them and are never an hour long.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    that's because sci-fi wasn't exclusively cable, hence my fuck you to them for requiring the highest package and a monthly rental just to view it. Instead I pirated their shit.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > that's because sci-fi wasn't exclusively cable I mean, outside of their original series going to VHS and pirated material the Sci-Fi channel was only cable/satellite. It wasn't OTA anywhere.

Cable TV once had the same allure: Freedom from ads. 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.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> 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.

elzbardico 3y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  “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.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Ok. We are getting there. 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.
    - grogenaut 3y ago
      you know cable existed before the 90s right? also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite
      - vel0city 3y ago
        > also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite Mostly because for a while with the right equipment you'd get a lot of the original feeds direct.
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      You have to realize what an outlier you are. 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!
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > OTA worked perfectly fine for everything else. That doesn't make any sense. You couldn't get basic cable channels like MTV or TBS or Nickelodeon over the air. That's the whole point of basic cable. And it was full of ads.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > OTA worked perfectly fine for everything else You got TNT over the air? CNN? USA? Cartoon Network? HGTV? Sci-Fi? Comedy Central? MTV?
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
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.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  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.
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    > that's not cable. That's premium. 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel [2] https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-growth-of-cable-tv/ https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)
    - 3y ago
Trixter 3y ago
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.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

I still get a handful of semi premium channels without commercials, and I don't even pay extra for the HBO tier. Cable TV commercials are now the best option we have though, because they can be trivially skipped. A DVR still gives me full control of the video stream. If you time shift you never have to see an unskippable commercial on cable. Which is just another way of saying that tech companies brought us enshittification faster and more thoroughly than what they supplanted.

vel0city 3y ago
I've had DirecTV cable boxes inject unskippable ads into recordings.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  That's fucking terrible.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

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. 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. Piracy is a market force.

BeetleB 3y ago
The Sci-fi channel had ads in the late 90's. Maybe there was a time before that when it didn't?
vel0city 3y ago
The SciFi (now SyFy) channel has always had ads. Go watch any of their early programs and notice how they have these fade cuts in them and are never an hour long.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  that's because sci-fi wasn't exclusively cable, hence my fuck you to them for requiring the highest package and a monthly rental just to view it. Instead I pirated their shit.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > that's because sci-fi wasn't exclusively cable I mean, outside of their original series going to VHS and pirated material the Sci-Fi channel was only cable/satellite. It wasn't OTA anywhere.