| Through a comprehensive systematic analysis of one currently-occurring change of potentially great significance for the ecology of media and information in United States--that is, the change in the structure and function of the broadcast network television medium (specifically focussing on ABC, CBS, and NBC) as a consequence of the introduction of the new medium of cable television--this study helped to illuminate the processes of inter-media change in a society.;Since its inception in 1949 as Community Antenna Television (CATV), what has since become "cable television" has been recognized by its advocates and critics alike as a major agent of change in the American ecology of information.;Neil Postman's "principle of media change"--that is, that new media affect older forms by "competing for time, money, and attention" (1992)--was used as a framework for examining the dynamics of the relationship between the older broadcast television medium and the new cable television medium. It was found that the entry of cable television into the television environment in the 1950's, and its steady encroachment, particularly in the 15-year period 1980 to 1994, on the audiences and revenues of the three broadcast television networks, resulted by 1994 in a radically altered television landscape. Indeed, that landscape was so transformed--in patterns of ownership, program production, delivery systems, and viewer behavior--that questions about the impact of cable television on broadcast television after 1994 lose their relevance. In 1980, cable television and broadcast network television were relatively independent industries in competition with each other. By 1994, they had come to be perceived, and to function structurally, as simply two alternative delivery systems (among others) for television programs and advertising messages--subsidiaries and often economic partners in a much larger communications "mega-industry" whose future structure, direction, and consequences for American culture are as difficult to see, from the vantage point prior to 1994, as the structure, direction, and consequences of cable "retransmission technology" were to see in 1950. |
