Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting

by Sarah Banet-Weiser (Editor), Cynthia Chris

Cable television, on the brink of a boom in the 1970s, promised audiences a new media frontier-an expansive new variety of entertainment and information choices. Music video, 24–hour news, 24-hour weather, movie channels, children's channels, home shopping, and channels targeting groups based on demographic characteristics or interests were introduced.
Cable Visions looks beyond broadcasting’s mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. It offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of key cable newcomers aimed at niche markets (including Nickelodeon, BET, and HBO Latino), and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV (such as nature, cooking, sports, and history channels).

384 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[Shant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very broad in a good way. I never really thought about the beginning of cable, and this book will teach you, whether you want it to or not. Reading early reactions from different groups about cable was interesting.

I was surprised by how informative the Discovery Channel chapter was, and I appreciated the 'wokeness' of the Food Network and cable news chapters. I was surprised that Here TV was mentioned.

I would fast forward through the Nickelodeon chapter (Read a book by the author on the subject) and the HBO chapter that followed it (Kind of vague, though the reference to the ___ and Philosophy series was surprising). I liked the WWE chapter, although it went in and out of having to do with cable.