Pay television in the U.S. has never really paid. The sole system now operating in Hartford, Conn., has not begun to show a profit. But Reuben H. Donnelley Corp.,* publishers of classified telephone directories, and Lear-Siegler, Inc., electronics manufacturers, are confident that toll TV has a future.
The two companies filed a registration statement with the SEC last week outlining plans to issue some $27 million worth of public stock for a project to pipe pay TV to subscribers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Hopefully, they will be offering first-run movies, all the productions of Manhattan Impresario Sol Hurok,...