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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 wi

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!
vel0city 3y ago
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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541...

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!

vel0city 3y ago

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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541...