One thing that may have made this difficult is that, in fact, there was never a time when cable didn't have ads. It was invented to deliver standard (advertising laden) TV to places geographically out-of-reach of broadcast, and basic cable always was a mix of broadcast stations and additional ad-laden stations.
Premium cable channels didn't tend to have advertising except for their own (or shared corporate parent) programming, but those were charged additionally on top of basic cable.
As someone who had cable since the mid-1980s, its been really weird to see this recent invention of a lost past where cable existed but was ad-free.
So, probably you're right on your perception, but it doesn't invalidate my point of view and of other people who clearly remember a time where you did have ad-free television in Cable, because we only cared for the premium channels.
Cable TV commercials are now the best option we have though, because they can be trivially skipped. A DVR still gives me full control of the video stream. If you time shift you never have to see an unskippable commercial on cable.
Which is just another way of saying that tech companies brought us enshittification faster and more thoroughly than what they supplanted.
And using the latter to decry an evolving norm of it being possible to spend additional money to get the entire service ad-free on top of the basic cost of an (ad-supported) streaming service is... odd.
You do agree there was a paid service that had no ads. We're good on that, right? No objections, I reckon.
I see you have a point with me and others calling it cable, when it was a subset of all the cable you could get. I readily concede your point here.
So ok, there was a fucking paid service that had no ads, and I have no hard data to back what I am going to say, but I strongly suspect that those premium channels were all that mattered for most people. I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
And this subset of people, who I suspect was a plurality of cable users, that cared most about those premium channels and paid for that, had the experience of seeing those channels introducing ads while charging the same for their packages.
I have not carried cable since Cox wouldn't allow me to watch the sci-fi channel without renting hardware per month (the refused to let me purchase the box outright).
I stopped pirating when netflix started streaming, but now I'm back to pirating because fuck these greedy bastards.
Piracy is a market force.
It's possible you were in an area with a shitty cable company, but many of us did not deal with ads while watching HBO, Cinemax, etc.
There would sometimes be advertising between shows about other shows and while that's technically advertising it's not what people mean when they talk about ads (or the lack thereof). They're talking about interruption of content to show an advertisement.
and yes, cable would also carry local channels, which had ads. No, that's not what people are referring to when they say cable did, or did not, have ads.
There were some channels that didn't have ads at first -- e.g. Nickelodeon was ad-free when it launched in 1979, and added commercials in 1984.
But there was never a time when basic cable was free of ads, meaning ads for products (not just other shows).
Premium cable channels are ad-free (HBO, Cinemax), but that's not cable. That's premium. You had to pay extra for that, on top of your basic cable subscription.
That doesn't make any sense. You couldn't get basic cable channels like MTV or TBS or Nickelodeon over the air.
That's the whole point of basic cable. And it was full of ads.
Moving the goalpost is not compelling. Yes, national cable stations were commercial free for years (eg Z Channel^1, HBO, Showtime, et al), before every channel was advertised as being on cable, in a marketing shift to shift away from over-the-air broadcast and bundle programming rates. TBS was regional (Atlanta, Georgia^3), when it started off. The niche market of TBS was not industry defining anymore than my local bakery's donut deal is. This was a shift in terminology, but the history remains^2.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel
[2] https://www.everything80spodcast.com/hbo-showtime-the-rapid-...
also the real ad free experience was large dish sattelite
First, as others have pointed out, subscription based channels came later on. Cable TV had ads right from the get go.
Second, the vast majority of cable subscribers did not have subscription based channels. Most people either had basic (e.g. 20 channels), or some sort of premium tier (50 channels) which did not have ad free options. You had to pay separately an extra $10-20/month to get the ad-free ones (e.g. HBO). To counter your anecdote, almost no one I knew paid extra for them. As in, sitting right now, I cannot even come up with one name. They were for "rich" folks. Plebes like us simply rented if we wanted ad free.
Finally, I really don't get your point. When you got your ad free cable channels, the majority of cable channels carry ads. Even with the Prime/Disney degradation, the proportion of streaming services that have a paid no-ads option is still higher than you ever had at any point in cable history.
You want ad-free streaming options? They still exist!
Instead I pirated their shit.
Premium cable channels like Showtime, HBO, et al., came after (by a couple decades), and were priced as a surcharge on top of, cable carrying relayed broadcast and ad-supported basic cable channels.
> I never ever found a house amongst my friends and family during the 90's that had only basic cable.
Damn, and I thought I had a privileged childhood. Many of my friends didn't even have cable despite many coming from families making into six figures in the 90s. Literally nobody you knew only had or even spent any time watching basic cable channels?
Even for the percentage of those I knew who did have cable, most didn't have the premium channels or would only have HBO or only Showtime or whatever. And no, they weren't paying tons of money to only watch HBO, many of those other channels were often watched.
And by the fact you're scoping it to the 90s and beyond shows you're just ignoring the 40 years of history before.
> I have no hard data to back what I am going to say
You don't have the data because its 100% fiction.
> who I suspect was a plurality of cable users
Not even close. Supposedly in May 1987 it was reported HBO had 15 million subscribers. There were 41 million cable subscribers that year. In 2001 it was reported to have 25.5 million subscribers[2]. There were 66 million cable subscribers in the US. Never, in all of cable's history, have the plurality of cable subscribers had HBO.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HBO [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-05-ca-53541...
I mean, outside of their original series going to VHS and pirated material the Sci-Fi channel was only cable/satellite. It wasn't OTA anywhere.
You got TNT over the air? CNN? USA? Cartoon Network? HGTV? Sci-Fi? Comedy Central? MTV?
Mostly because for a while with the right equipment you'd get a lot of the original feeds direct.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
Yes, commercials did eventually invade it (as everyone knows), but this was not the initial marketing (aka promise). I guess you had to be there. Good luck with whatever.
Your article literally starts off stating "Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers' monthly subscription fees." Not that it was actually sold that way or promised that way, just that people had some impression that was how cable would work. It also mentions how in 1981 (only few years after the first cable-only big TV channels came out!) advertising was already a $45M. It doesn't once state there were no ads on cable networks, and points to multiple TV channels which launched with ads. The article adds to my point, not takes away from it. There were ads immediately when cable TV only channels were a new thing, this article confirms it.
And this also doesn't say anything about the fact most channels on cable were just retransmissions of the major networks, which had ads. So most content available on cable was advertising based. And as mentioned, most cable-only networks had ads when they launched. Sure, there were a few out there like HBO and Z-Channel and what not, but most of the cable-only channels that came out had ads.
> Many cable channels have yet to begin operating, and those now running commercials, such as Ted Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network or U.S.A. Network's ''You'' program for women, carry 30-second and one-minute commercials that are a standard feature of regular television
Even your other article (everything80spodcast.com) makes a point at the delineation between basic cable (which channels often had ads) and premium cable which relied on additional subscriber fees. Basic cable channels like TBS and USA relied on ads, premium channels charged extra fees. Your own articles continue pointing to the fact ads were on cable from the start.
> Eventually, this cable television concept split into basic cable and premium. One of the first basic cable channels was the Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS. And two of the first big premium channels were HBO and Showtime, which will be a big part of the focus here.
And its funny you mention Z-channel as an example of one of the early "national" cable channels and call TBS "regional", when Z-channel pretty much never left Southern California. If TBS was a regional channel, Z-channel was a hyper-local one. TBS as a cable channel was in six states, over 90 cable networks, and several hundred thousand households in 1976. A decade later in the mid 1980s Z channel was still only in Southern California on a single cable network and had less than 100,000 subscribers. Which one was old hat? Which was the regional again?
Let me reiterate. I'm sorry that you're insisting on pushing that narrative of "national cable stations were commercial free for years" among other things, which are incorrect. I'm not arguing there were not some premium cable channels which didn't run ads, I'm saying the vast majority of regular cable channels had ads from day one. Your own sources agree with me on this. Good luck with whatever.