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Showtime, started and still half-owned by Viacom, a company active in many entertainment fields, has leaped from 92,000 subscribers in 1977 to 675,000 now. Many had watched HBO programs until January, when Teleprompter bought half of Showtime and switched from HBO's service to Showtime's on all Teleprompter cable systems. Showtime does not offer sports; it concentrates on movies and entertainment specials, many for an older audience attuned to country and western music. But it is trying more adventurous approaches too. In March it treated viewers to a peek at the topless chorus girls of the Folies Bergere in Paris (a similar show had been on HBO earlier). Its other offerings have included What's Up, America?, a magazine-type show taking looks at Americana (a honeymoon hotel, an erotic bakery), and specials featuring Lola Falana, Engelbert Humperdinck and Debbie Reynolds.
The manufacturers of hardware for cable TV are enjoying the most astonishing boom of all. Scientific-Atlanta, maker of a broad range of communications equipment, designed its first earth station to receive satellite-transmitted signals in 1974, and by the end of 1975 had not sold one. In 1977 it sold 65; last year 125; this year it expects to sell 1,000. Cable-TV gear accounted for 75% of the company's 1978 sales of $94 million. Jerrold Electronics in January booked three tunes as many orders for decoder boxes and other cable equipment BRIAN R. WOLFF as ft did in the whole fourth quarter last year. Its sales of cable gear have multiplied 4½ times since 1975.
Oak Industries, another maker of decoders, almost tripled its sales of pay-cable equipment last year to $32 million.
Growth might well speed up even further if Washington would strip away its remaining regulations. Cable TV still faces bewilderingly complex rules on the duration of its franchises, how rapidly a company must wire an area after it has swung a franchise, and other matters.
Last week's FCC ruling could spur a move in Congress to deregulate both cable and broadcast TV.
Just about all the elements seem to be in place for a further growth of cable TV dwarfing anything yet seen. Technology is improving: the cost of an earth station to receive satellite signals is down from $100,000 in 1975 to as little as $12,000 today. Programming is becoming more diverse and imaginative. Indeed, the stage is set for a classic scrap for top industry positions, as befits a business in which technology, creative talent and entrepreneurial leadership open a new market.
In the process, the viewer should benefit. To be sure, cable TV may never win mass audiences for many programs. Its leaders have no intention of even trying to do so. That would mean duplicating network fare—and who would pay to watch something akin to the shows he now sees free? The networks are unrivaled at concocting programs that appeal to tens of millions, but in the process they have ignored the specialized interests that every member of the TV audience also possesses. Cable TV, in contrast, offers for profit the potential choice of programs to suit every taste.