The History of TV Programming from Its Beginnings to Satellite Service

The history of TV programming actually goes back to before radio, when vaudeville entertainers toured from town to town with their variety shows that kept everyone entertained with their wide scope of entertainment, that that was performed live on stage.

The advent of silent movies slowed things down a bit for vaudeville entertainers but it was radio and talking movies that realy put an end to the vaudeville era. With talking movies and radio, a variety of entertainment was available to everyone every night of the year and people stopped showing up to vaudeville shows when they arrived in town.

Some actors made the switch from vaudeville to radio and talking movies and we are all lucky that they did, because they brought their talent and high standards with them, to the new media that needed direction and input.

Buddy Ebson, Red Skelton and Milton Berle are just a few of the names that made the switch and they fit comfortably into the new live tewlevision format after their years of training on the vaudeville circuit. Advancements in technology came along from time to time and they all helped to improve the quality of what people were seeing in their homes.

Live TV programming, changed to prerecorded programming and black and white went to color. The cost of a television also came down some and it no longer took a month’s wages to buy one. As time progressed, there were some great shows that appeared on standard TV programming and further along, there were some that really sucked.

People watched anyway and the TV became an important part of every Americans home and they all watched it every night. Other than going from tubes to electric circuitry, there really wasn’t a lot that changed in TVs for quite some years.

There came a point in standard TV programming, where the quality was so low and the amount of TV commercials was so high, that it created a market niche for what we now know as cable service. Standard TV has to show commercials to generate the cash flow to keep its doors opened and this is one of its glaring weak spots.

Cable service charged a fee and showed no commercials and for this alone people were ready to sign on. Cable service had no competition though, other than each other and they qualified for public utility easement rights. So up and down every street in America they went and also off the sidewalks and up into peoples yards whether they liked it or not.

There were numerous political scandals in communities across America, as cable companies bribed local elected officials to curry favor in their quest for service areas. So while cable service was a welcome change, they did get off to a bad start business wise and they were then and always have been ruthless in their billing practices.

They over charged for their installation even back in their beginnings, even when they knew they were going to be generating fantastic profits for their service for decades to come. The high cost of cable service and the low level of services and channels that they provided, left the door wide open for satellite service providers to enter the field with a far superior quality of TV programming service, at a more reasonable cost to the consumer.

Since its inception a little over a decade ago millions of dissatisfied cable service customers have made the switch to satellite service and more and more of them come to satellite every day.