My speciality. Шепелева М.А - 21 стр.

         During the next two decades, cable expanded throughout the country, and
systems began to be consolidated as large MSOs/multiple system operators) were
formed. The real establishment of cable as a self-standing and competitive
industry, however, came in 1975, when Time Inc.'s Home Box Office (HBO)
married satellite technology and cable's selective distribution capacity to create a
national premium service that delivered uncut movies and exclusive sporting
events directly into subscribers' homes. Before HBO, each cable system wishing to
originate material had either physically to obtain and show the movies themselves,
or enter into expensive land-line or microwave interconnections with other systems
in the region. With HBO and a satellite dish, however, pay programming literally
dropped out of the sky at the cable system's headend for easy and immediate sale
to local households.
        HBO paved the way for scores of other pay or advertiser-supported cable
networks. These networks brought exclusive programming to the industry's
subscribers and introduced a range of new competitors to the television
broadcaster's audience. Meanwhile, broadcasters and broadcast networks also came
to use the satellite as a cost-effective way to relay network programs and grab local
news stories. But the most dramatic contribution of so-called birds was their
conversion of cable from a predominately repeater service to a self-standing
originator in its own right. By the end of the 1980s, little more than a century after
Alexander Graham Bell put those first tentative impulses into a wire, a vast
amalgamation of telecommunications enterprises was well established.
        These enterprises stand at the brink of even more massive technological
change. High Definition Television (HDTV), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB),
fiber optics, audio/video compression devices, and a whole range of applications
that such tools make possible are promising both to enlarge and transform how we
reach our audiences in the years immediately ahead. As National Association of
Broadcasters President Eddie Fritz told his organization's 1991 convention, "We
face challenges to the structure and technology of television and radio that will
require all the strength and persuasiveness we can muster. These are challenges of
a new order.