TREotM: The Late Eighties and More Cable

This is the latest chapter in my bookinprogress The Revolutionary Evolution of the Media Go here to read it from the beginningThe last chapteramp160about the midEighties ended withamp160Thatamp8217s three years with a lot of activityamp160But they were nothing like the rest of the EightiesIn 1987 TWA remember the airline and Carl Icahn launched The Travel Channel it peddled tickets too Movietime Channel and Telemundo launched as wellAs 1987 opened ABC announced it lost money while ESPN was profitableamp160 Sumner Redstoneamp8217s National Amusementsamp8217 Arsenal Holdings among the largest movie theater owners won the takeover battle for Viacom for 34bamp160Cableamp8217s deregulation in the Cable Act of 1984 took effectamp160 Jack Kent Cooke bought back into cable via McCaw for 755mamp160 Home Shopping Network expanded to Europeamp160 Rupert Murdoch bought Harper ampamp Row for 338mamp160 Paramountamp8217s Top Gun opened with a Pepsi adamp160Fox Network debutedamp160 CBS bailed out of Trintex Sears and IBM vowed to carry onamp160 CD revenues passed LPsamp160 USA Todayamp160finally made a profit just before its 5th anniversaryamp160 Cable hit 50 TVHH penetrationamp160 But Turner Broadcasting got in trouble a consortium of cable operators joined his board and bailed him out amp8230 seems Ted overpaid for Gone with the WindOn Monday October 19th the stock market fell 508 points losing 226 of its value or over 500bamp160 The Global Blue Monday infected the world and markets everywhere crashed along with the USamp160 Though too late to help a few brokers shot by disgruntled investors the Federal Reserved dropped interest rates quicklyamp160 A little later circuit breakers were added to prevent such precipitous drops in the futureamp1601988 rebounded with elections and Olympicsamp160 Faith and Values Hallmark Channel and Turner Network Television as amp8220cable channel oneamp8221 on addressable systems launchedamp160 Payperview impacted home video windows as addressable homes jumped to 40mamp160During the televised Democratic Convention Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton nominated Michael Dukakis in one of the longest convention speeches in history amp8230 Clinton almost got a standing ovation when he said amp8220In closing amp8230 amp8220The rebound though didnamp8217t include DJs their number dropped 50 as satellite distribution of music channels some from cable pioneer Glenn Jones of Jones Intercable proliferatedamp160 Every act in Billboardamp8217s Top 10 was a dinosaur that first recorded in the amp821670samp160 Long playing albums dominated the charts knocking the singles of the amp821650s and amp821660s into a temporary dustbin of historyamp160 But iTunes and streaming services in the 21st Century brought back singles in a big wayBusiness news via pagers and cellular phones hit a half millionamp160 The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times printed the same front page on December 23rdamp160In 1989 no new networks launchedamp160 But the biggest rollout was Trintex soon to be Prodigy in the last gasp of a closed system teletext retrieval systemamp160 Prodigy struggled and the advent of the Internet changed everything as AOL reacted faster while Prodigyamp8217s owners dithered about embracing the open systemsamp160ABC was 1 in network ratings and CBS was trailing 3 Foxamp160 Fox bought McGrawHillamp8217s stations Cosby bombed in syndicationamp160 FCC dropped limits on station ownership but still kept xenophobia alive by preventing noncitizens from station ownershipamp160Dan Rather jumped or was pushed from CBS to CNNamp160 CNN International could be found in 98 countries amp160Dan Rather after a visit to the boyamp8217s room leaving CNN dark first and only time in its history was personally fired by Ted TurnerTime Inc and Warner Communications mergedamp160 Run by Dick Munro and Steve Ross the combined firm had a market value of 152b with annual revenue of more than 10bamp160 Day to day operations reported to Nick Nicolas Jramp160 Drexel Burnham analyst John Reidy noted 3939What you39ve got is a company that will be the largest magazine publisher in the country the world39s most profitable record company a cable television entity with more than 55 million cable subscribers one of the world39s largest bookpublishing operations and the country39s largest supplier of paycable programmingamp8221amp160 That of course didnamp8217t lastamp160 And it wouldnamp8217t be the last merger for Time Warner that didnamp8217t quite work outMeanwhile Tim BernersLee wrote a memo when he was at CERN amp8220suggesting the creation of a network of hypertextlinked nodes to help his fellow researchers organize and share information amp8230 amp8220Next week Chapter 10 Part 9 amp8211 The Nineties and the InternetThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage management or associated bloggers

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