Cable Visions

Through a series of highly original and carefully researched essays, Cable Visions offers a lively and comprehensive survey of the contemporary multichannel television landscape in the United States.--William Boddy, author of New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United StatesCable television, on the brink of a boom in the 1970s, promised audiences a new media frontier-an expansive new variety of entertainment and information choices. Music video, 24-hour news, 24-hour weather, movie channels, children's channels, home shopping, and channels targeting groups based on demographic characteristics or interests were introduced.Cable Visions looks beyond broadcasting's mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. It offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of key cable newcomers aimed at niche markets (including Nickelodeon, BET, and HBO Latino), and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV (such as nature, cooking, sports, and history channels).