The Cable History Project

BRIAN LAMB AND THE FOUNDING OF C-SPAN

By Larry Satkowiak, June 3, 2013

Brian Lamb will receive the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award at the Cable Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. on June 10, and it reminded me about C-SPAN’s beginnings and his outstanding contribution to the United States. It’s the story of a quiet man from the Midwest who has had a profound impact on our society, who brought our government closer to its people, and who insisted on always doing the right thing even when it was not popular.. more »

THE HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN - NBC, GE, AND COMCAST

By Larry Satkowiak, May 6, 2013

When Brian Roberts announced that Comcast completed its purchase of NBC Universal from General Electric, I did not hear much about the historical connections. Last week, as I walked past 30 Rock and Radio City Music Hall, I thought that most people today probably would not know the General Electric links to television and the cable industry. This is one of the richest stories in American business history and it shaped our modern media and communications world. more »

HISTORY BOOKS AND THE CABLE INDUSTRY

By Larry Satkowiak, April 2, 2013
As I research the history of American television, I can only conclude that the cable industry must not have made much of a difference. Outside of brief references to the founding of the industry in 1948, the First Generation of cable pioneers are hardly mentioned and not given any credit for the phenomenal growth of television.  more »

THREE GENERATIONS OF CABLE

By Larry Satkowiak, March 6, 2013
Daniel J. Boorstin, the prominent historian, once commented that historians like to “…bundle years in ways that make sense, provide continuity and link past to present.”   When I began to study the cable industry from an historical perspective, I did not find a workable historical model that was useful in separating what the cable industry “was” compared to what it “is.”   more »

HOW AT&T BECAME A MONOPOLY

By Larry Satkowiak, January 30, 2013
The Theodore Roosevelt administration is known for its campaign against big business, but it also had to decide how it would deal with a technology deemed to be the essential service of its time: the telephone. It didn’t help that J. P. Morgan, the famed financier, had gained control of AT&T by 1907 and had publicly announced that major consolidation was on the horizon. During this time, there were a large number of telephone companies across the United States and substantial competition. AT&T had about half of the national market and independent companies held the rest. Morgan needed a tough-minded businessman who shared his vision for a national monopoly to take the helm at the new AT&T. And that man was Theodore Vail.   more »

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