Cable’s Last Laugh
Courtesy of Ben Thompson, Stratechery
If there is one industry people in tech are eternally certain is doomed, it is cable. However, the reality is that cable is both stronger than ever and poised for growth; the reasons why are instructive to not just tech industry observers, but to tech companies themselves.
The Creation of Cable
Robert J. Tarlton was 29 years old, married with a son, when he volunteered to fight in World War II; thanks to the fact he owned a shop in Lansford, Pennsylvania that sold radios, he ended up repairing them all across the European Theater, learning about not just reception but also transmission. After the war Tarlton re-opened his shop, when Motorola, one of his primary suppliers, came out with a new television.
Tarlton was intrigued, but he had a geography problem; the nearest television station was in Philadelphia, 71 miles away; in the middle lie the Pocono Mountains, and mountains aren’t good for reception:
It turned out, though, that some people living in Summit Hill, the next community over, could get the Philadelphia broadcast signal; that’s where Tarlton sold his first television sets. Of course Tarlton couldn’t demonstrate this new-fangled contraption; his shop was in Lansford, not Summit Hill. However, it was close to Summit Hill: what if Tarlton could place an antenna further up the mountain in Summit Hill and run a cable to his shop? Tarlton explained in an interview in 1986:
Lansford is an elongated town. It’s about a mile and a half long and there are about eight parallel streets bisected with cross streets about every 500 feet. There are no curves; everything is all laid out in a nice symmetrical pattern. Our business place was about three streets from the edge of Summit Hill and Lansford sits on kind of a slope. The edge of Lansford inclines from about a thousand feet above sea level to about fifteen hundred feet above sea level in Summit Hill. So to get television into our store, my father and I put an antenna partly up the mountain. No, we didn’t go all the way up, but we put up an antenna, kind of a crude arrangement, and then from tree to tree we strung a twin lead that was used in those days as a transmission line. We ran this twin lead, crossed a few streets, and into our store. And we had television.
The basic twin lead was barely functional, but that didn’t stop everyone from demanding a television with a haphazard wire to their house; Tarlton realized that new coaxial cable amplifiers designed for a single property could be chained together, re-amplifying the signal so it could reach multiple properties. After getting all of the other electronics retailers on board — Tarlton knew that a clear signal would sell more TV sets, but that everyone needed to use the same system — the first commercial cable system was born, and it sold itself. Tarlton reflected:
You didn’t have to advertise. You had to keep your door locked because the people were clamoring for service. They wanted cable service. You certainly didn’t have to advertise.
