Cable & Satellite
1960 – 1990. The broadcast bottleneck breaks. Satellites bring live international events into living rooms. Cable televises 50 channels, then 500. The VCR puts time-shifting in viewers' hands. The Walkman makes media portable. MTV makes the music video an art form.
Part of Media
29 moments in this segment.
- — Telstar — First Live Transatlantic TV. On July 23, 1962, the Telstar 1 satellite — launched ten days earlier — relays the first transatlantic television signal. Walter Cronkite in New York and Yves Mourousi in Paris exchange greetings. The Tornados' instrumental "Telstar" reaches #1 on both sides of the Atlantic that summer.
- — Telstar — First Live Transatlantic TV. Telstar 1, launched 10 July 1962, relays the first live transatlantic television pictures between the U.S. and Europe. For the first time an event could be seen across the ocean as it happened, foreshadowing the era of global live broadcasting.
- — Geostationary comms satellites. Early Bird / Intelsat I made live intercontinental television and telephony routine.
- — Moon Landing Live Broadcast. On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people — one-fifth of humanity at the time — watch live as Neil Armstrong steps off the Eagle lunar module onto the surface of the Moon. The largest synchronous shared experience in the history of broadcasting.
- — Moon Landing Live Broadcast. On 20 July 1969 an estimated 600 million people — a fifth of humanity — watch live as Neil Armstrong steps onto the Moon, the largest shared television audience the world had ever seen. It is the moment global live broadcast comes of age.
- — MTV & the music video. MTV made the music video a dominant form — "Video Killed the Radio Star" was its first.
- — CNN — First 24-Hour News Channel. Ted Turner launches CNN on 1 June 1980 as the first 24-hour television news channel. Rolling live coverage — perfected during the 1991 Gulf War — permanently changes the pace of news from the evening bulletin to the never-ending cycle.
- — MTV Launches. MTV goes live at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981 with the pointed first video "Video Killed the Radio Star." By fusing pop music with television it makes the music video a dominant art form and turns image into a central currency of pop culture.
- — Sony Walkman. Sony releases the Walkman TPS-L2 on 1 July 1979, making recorded music personal and portable. The private, headphone-shaped listening bubble it created reshaped how people consumed media in public — a direct ancestor of the iPod and the smartphone.
- — Fall of the Berlin Wall — Live. On November 9, 1989, Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski stumbles through a press conference and accidentally announces immediate East German border openings. Within hours West German TV is broadcasting live from Checkpoint Charlie as crowds cross. The world watches the Cold War end in real time.
- — Fall of the Berlin Wall — Live. On 9 November 1989 television carries the fall of the Berlin Wall live to the world. The images of crowds streaming through the checkpoints — broadcast in real time east and west — show how live media itself had become an actor in world events.
- — The Gulf War — live TV war. CNN's round-the-clock live coverage of the 1991 Gulf War — reporters broadcasting from Baghdad as bombs fell — created the modern spectacle of war as live television and cemented the 24-hour news channel.
- — The fax machine. Though the technology dates to the 19th century, the standardised Group 3 fax machine of the early 1980s makes instant document transmission over phone lines a fixture of the office. For two decades the fax is how signed paper crosses distance in real time. The subject dates from 1980; this photograph was taken in 2003.
- — HBO Launches Pay Cable. Backyard satellite dish era — HBO's 1975 satellite distribution kicked off the cable-TV gold rush that filled American suburbs with C-band receivers like this one. On November 8, 1972, Home Box Office begins transmitting a Polish-American hockey match in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania over a microwave relay — the first cable-only premium channel. In 1975 HBO becomes the first network to distribute via geostationary satellite. The cable era begins. The subject dates from 1972; this photograph was taken in 2004.
- — The camcorder. The home camcorder let ordinary people shoot and keep moving images — a step toward user-generated video. The subject dates from 1983; this photograph was taken in 2008.
- — The Atari 2600 — games at home. The Atari 2600 (VCS), released in 1977, brings cartridge-based video games into the living room and makes gaming a home mass medium. Its success — and the crash that followed in 1983 — set the pattern for the console industry that followed. The subject dates from 1977; this photograph was taken in 2011.
- — Nintendo & the NES. The NES revived home gaming and made interactive entertainment a media giant. The subject dates from 1985; this photograph was taken in 2013.
- — The Game Boy. Nintendo’s Game Boy made interactive media truly portable and sold by the hundred million. The subject dates from 1989; this photograph was taken in 2014.
- — CNN — First 24-Hour News Channel. Ted Turner — the cable-television impresario who launched CNN in 1980 and bet the entire format that news could fill 24 hours. On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner launches CNN — the Cable News Network — from Atlanta. 24-hour rolling news with international correspondents. CNN comes of age covering the 1991 Gulf War live from the al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad as Tomahawks strike the city outside Peter Arnett's window. The subject dates from 1980; this photograph was taken in 2015.
- — Sony Walkman. On July 1, 1979, Sony introduces the TPS-L2 Walkman — the world's first portable personal stereo cassette player. 30,000 units sell in two months. The pavement, the bus, the gym suddenly have soundtracks. Aldous Huxley's "individual sphere of attention" is now wearable. The subject dates from 1979; this photograph was taken in 2015.
- — Space Invaders & the arcade. Space Invaders launched the video-game arcade craze — interactive electronic media as mass culture.
- — Betamax & VHS. Sony's Betamax (1975) and JVC's VHS (1976) launch the home-video-recorder war. VHS's longer recording time and looser licensing win the market by the mid-1980s, and the VCR gives viewers control over broadcast time — the first crack in the networks' schedule monopoly.
- — MTV Launches. MTV Networks' Times Square headquarters in the mid-1990s, by which point the channel had reshaped pop music distribution worldwide. At 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, MTV airs its first music video: The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." A new visual grammar is invented; pop music becomes inseparable from the image it ships with. By 1985 MTV is mandatory infrastructure for any major-label release. The subject dates from 1981; this photograph was taken in 2017.
- — Betamax & VHS. Sony introduces the Betamax in Japan in May 1975; JVC launches VHS in October 1976. For a decade, the two formats compete in the world's first format war. The subject dates from 1975; this photograph was taken in 2017.
- — The Compact Disc. The CD made recorded sound digital and mass-market — and previewed the digital media to come. The subject dates from 1982; this photograph was taken in 2017.
- — The VCR and time-shifting on trial. When Sony's Betamax let people record TV, Universal sued — and in 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court's "Betamax decision" ruled home time-shifting legal, a landmark that shaped decades of media-copyright law.
- — The Kennedy–Nixon TV debate (1960). The first televised presidential debate showed that on TV, how you looked could matter as much as what you said.
- — HBO Launches Pay Cable. Home Box Office begins on 8 November 1972 as the first subscription pay-cable channel, and in 1975 becomes the first to distribute nationally by satellite. HBO's model — pay a fee, skip the ads — kicks off the cable-television gold rush of the 1970s and 80s.
- — The DVD replaces the tape. The DVD, launched in 1997, put a whole film on a disc with menus, chapters and crisp digital video. It killed the VHS tape within a decade and made the home film library sharp, compact and random-access.
