Before the Internet became a limitless case of pornography just a mouse click away , tardy - night premium cable TV was pretty much the undecomposed affair ever invented , as far as adolescent boys were concerned . And , okay , all those hundreds of other cable channel were n’t bad either .
But it ’s hard to stop a in force melodic theme , especially when it has the potential to deliver porno to private households . 1972 brought the start of cable television service deregulating and the first premium remuneration cable television company , HBO . The creators foresee a cable connection allowing loaded Manhattanites to watch movies in the comfort of their own luxury apartment . It was bought by Time , Inc. , and went internal in September 1975 .
In December 1976 , a human beings who owned a local Atlanta - based place wanted to use satellite to achieve interior reach for programming . The man ’s name ? R.E. “ Ted ” Turner . Ted ’s channel were dominate by sitcoms , cartoon , honest-to-god film , and sportsman . But unlike HBO , Turner distributed his capacity for free , making money by sell advertising at cheaper rate than the programme networks .
The late part of the decade fetch a flurry of new cable internet both innocent and premium , and couch white potato could n’t have been happy : Showtime debuted in March 1978 , The Movie Channel in January 1979 , and the Entertainment and Sports internet in September 1979 . In June 1980 Ted Turner revolutionized TV ( again ) with the launch of CNN , providing 24 - hr news program reportage . Two month later HBO launched Cinemax to compete with The Movie Channel and Showtime . Before long , the intensifying competition pushed all four film groove to switch to round - the - clock programming .
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