Jeff Simmermon, the director of digital communication for Time Warner Cable, gave us a blast from the past on Twitter today: He linked to a 1981 report from The New York Times on the state of cable, a story written when broadcast TV bestrode the earth like an invincible colossus and America was still being introduced to the idea that you didn't need rabbit ears to watch Monday Night Football.
The story is a gem, in hindsight. It begins:
MAJOR advertisers and agencies are slowly beginning to test cable television as an advertising medium. How fast the medium grows will depend on how quickly cable operators and advertisers develop the new technology's place in the advertising spectrum. It also remains to be seen what other advertising media will be hurt by cable's growth. Because of the basic similarity, one might expect that commercial broadcast television would be the most likely to suffer. But Roger Rice, president of the Television Bureau of Advertising, said he is not worried.
History is about to turn full circle on Time Warner. The company lost 129,000 subscribers last quarter; many of those losses came because people are cutting the cord and watching video online.
Now who's not worried?
Here's the Times story (below):
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