Cable Cowboy

Cable Cowboy
Author: Mark Robichaux
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2002-10-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0471434329

An inside look at a cable titan and his industry John Malone, hailed as one of the great unsung heroes of our age by some and reviled by others as a ruthless robber baron, is revealed as a bit of both in Cable Cowboy. For more than twenty-five years, Malone has dominated the cable television industry, shaping the world of entertainment and communications, first with his cable company TCI and later with Liberty Media. Written with Malone's unprecedented cooperation, the engaging narrative brings this controversial capitalist and businessman to life. Cable Cowboy is at once a penetrating portrait of Malone's complex persona, and a captivating history of the cable TV industry. Told in a lively style with exclusive details, the book shows how an unassuming copper strand started as a backwoods antenna service and became the digital nervous system of the U.S., an evolution that gave U.S. consumers the fastest route to the Internet. Cable Cowboy reveals the forces that propelled this pioneer to such great heights, and captures the immovable conviction and quicksilver mind that have defined John Malone throughout his career.

Blue Skies

Blue Skies
Author: Patrick Parsons
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2008-04-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1592137067

Cable television is arguably the dominant mass media technology in the U.S. today. Blue Skies traces its history in detail, depicting the important events and people that shaped its development, from the precursors of cable TV in the 1920s and '30s to the first community antenna systems in the 1950s, and from the creation of the national satellite-distributed cable networks in the 1970s to the current incarnation of "info-structure" that dominates our lives. Author Patrick Parsons also considers the ways that economics, public perception, public policy, entrepreneurial personalities, the social construction of the possibilities of cable, and simple chance all influenced the development of cable TV. Since the 1960s, one of the pervasive visions of "cable" has been of a ubiquitous, flexible, interactive communications system capable of providing news, information, entertainment, diverse local programming, and even social services. That set of utopian hopes became known as the "Blue Sky" vision of cable television, from which the book takes its title. Thoroughly documented and carefully researched, yet lively, occasionally humorous, and consistently insightful, Blue Skies is the genealogy of our media society.

Cable Visions

Cable Visions
Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2007-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814799493

Looks beyond broadcasting's mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. This work offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of cable newcomers aimed at niche markets, and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV.

FCC Record

FCC Record
Author: United States. Federal Communications Commission
Publisher:
Total Pages: 968
Release: 2004
Genre: Telecommunication
ISBN:

We Now Disrupt This Broadcast

We Now Disrupt This Broadcast
Author: Amanda D. Lotz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2018-04-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 026203767X

The collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV. Cable television channels were once the backwater of American television, programming recent and not-so-recent movies and reruns of network shows. Then came La Femme Nikita, OZ, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. And then, just as “prestige cable” became a category, came House of Cards and Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and other Internet distributors of television content. What happened? In We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, Amanda Lotz chronicles the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced an era termed “peak TV.” Lotz explains that changes in the business of television expanded the creative possibilities of television. She describes the costly infrastructure rebuilding undertaken by cable service providers in the late 1990s and the struggles of cable channels to produce (and pay for) original, scripted programming in order to stand out from the competition. These new programs defied television conventions and made viewers adjust their expectations of what television could be. Le Femme Nikita offered cable's first antihero, Mad Men cost more than advertisers paid, The Walking Dead became the first mass cable hit, and Game of Thrones was the first global television blockbuster. Internet streaming didn't kill cable, Lotz tells us. Rather, it revolutionized how we watch television. Cable and network television quickly established their own streaming portals. Meanwhile, cable service providers had quietly transformed themselves into Internet providers, able to profit from both prestige cable and streaming services. Far from being dead, television continues to transform.

Modern Cable Television Technology

Modern Cable Television Technology
Author: David Large
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 1093
Release: 2004-01-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0080511937

Fully updated, revised, and expanded, this second edition of Modern Cable Television Technology addresses the significant changes undergone by cable since 1999--including, most notably, its continued transformation from a system for delivery of television to a scalable-bandwidth platform for a broad range of communication services. It provides in-depth coverage of high speed data transmission, home networking, IP-based voice, optical dense wavelength division multiplexing, new video compression techniques, integrated voice/video/data transport, and much more. Intended as a day-to-day reference for cable engineers, this book illuminates all the technologies involved in building and maintaining a cable system. But it's also a great study guide for candidates for SCTE certification, and its careful explanations will benefit any technician whose work involves connecting to a cable system or building products that consume cable services. - Written by four of the most highly-esteemed cable engineers in the industry with a wealth of experience in cable, consumer electronics, and telecommunications - All new material on digital technologies, new practices for delivering high speed data, home networking, IP-based voice technology, optical dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), new video compression techniques, and integrated voice/video/data transport - Covers the latest on emerging digital standards for voice, data, video, and multimedia - Presents distribution systems, from drops through fiber optics, an covers everything from basic principles to network architectures