Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Supreme Court and cable TV (sigh)
Summary: FCC trying to watch out for us (grin)
Message-ID: <1251@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jun 88 18:30:56 GMT
References:  <1241@neoucom.UUCP> <10231@sol.ARPA>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 16


The regulations require your local friendly :-) cable company to
make an A/B siwtch available to you.  ..So that you can choose to not
watch the cable if you desire.  That is how they think they can
prevent a monopoly.  Sheesh.  Of course, the A/B switch is not
necesarily free.  Our local friendly :-) cable company is quite
happy to sell it to you for a paltry sum of $10.

There was some hope of getting access to cable-like programming
though satellite DBS, but the lobbying efforts of the cable
interests have pretty much squished that out of existance.
Interestingly, direct-to-home satellite braodcasting looks like it
has a chance of taking hold in europe.  In europe, something like
only 10% of urban homes are wired for cable, though.

--Bill