Session: 1234567891011121314151617         Page 550551552553554555556557558559560561562563564565566567568569570571572573574575576577578579580581582583584 of 755

cable. We were in cable in Canada before we were in cable in the United States. The reason for that was that I suspected that the FCC would bar us from being in cable, and I wanted to get experience in it, because I knew we would have to deal with it as a company. It seemed to me that the place to test it and to get some experience was in Canada, if Canada would allow us to come up and invest in cable in Canada. The Canadian government did agree to allow us to come in, and then they became very protective and asked us to leave. We had to sell our property up there and come back to the States.

Cable presented a number of problems to the industry. It came into being in some parts of the country, not as a program service, but simply as a way to get a decent signal from the transmitter to some remote part of the city or to a community that was behind a hill that would get a shadowed effect from the television signal. In that sense, it was adding circulation to the station.

Then, shortly thereafter, people began to want cable because it gave a better signal. People in apartment buildings didn't get as good signal as people out in the country, and if you had a wire from the transmitter to the Plaza Hotel, for example, your signal was clear and clean. So that was a separate kind of service that came out of cable, and was a money-making operation, because you put in a wire, you could charge so much for that service.

The affiliates and our own company-owned stations welcomed cable, because it gave them more circulation. They could reach out with wire and get more people. So when they were selling [advertising] time, they had more homes to sell, and they didn't want anything to interfere with that. So were a company divided, in a sense, on the benefits of cable. There wasn't any question but what the service was a good service, it was just who was going to