Pay TV Is Here

It Took ten long years. The FCC, with its accustomed virtuosity, dawdled. NBC and CBS and ABC, through their lobbying activities, made dawdling rather fun. Owners of movie theaters issued acres of propaganda and went to court with a series of nuisance suits. Congress succumbed to suspicion and occasional confusion. But the smoke of battle is clearing away, and we can see the results: Pay TV is coming.

A Pay-TV test will begin this June in Hartford, Connecticut, on UHF station WHCT, Channel 18. The FCC granted the Hartford test license in January 1961. The last significant courthouse roadblock by the Theater Owners of America was cleared away last March.

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Michael M. Mooney

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It Took ten long years. The FCC, with its accustomed virtuosity, dawdled. NBC and CBS and ABC, through their lobbying activities, made dawdling rather fun. Owners of movie theaters issued acres of propaganda and went to court with a series of nuisance suits. Congress succumbed to suspicion and occasional confusion. But the smoke of battle is clearing away, and we can see the results: Pay TV is coming.

A Pay-TV test will begin this June in Hartford, Connecticut, on UHF station WHCT, Channel 18. The FCC granted the Hartford test license in January 1961. The last significant courthouse roadblock by the Theater Owners of America was cleared away last March.