Lo-Res, 6 mb - Making Connections - Time Warner Cable

Cable antennas, initially referred to as community antennas,
took different forms depending on the manufacturer and
demands of the local systems. This antenna, pictured in
1955, was located in Holmdel, New Jersey.
12 Making Connections : Time Warner Cable and the Broadband Revolution
Demand for television was soaring, despite
broadcast stations being limited to major urban
markets during this period. That had the effect of
cementing NBC and rival Columbia Broadcasting
System as the leading broadcast networks, and
forced latecomer American Broadcasting
Company to play catch-up for years. A fourth
network, Dumont, never recovered from the
effects of the freeze and faded to black a few
years later.
Enter community antenna television. The freeze
effectively barred the networks and independent
broadcasters alike from venturing beyond the top
20 to 30 U.S. urban markets, where most stations
were clustered and applications for new stations
focused. But since community antenna systems
simply received a signal and did not broadcast at
the time, they weren’t regulated by the FCC and
therefore weren’t constrained by the freeze. As
much as the industry and regulators locked horns
over CATV oversight in coming years, there is no
question that the freeze on broadcasters provided
community antenna entrepreneurs with a
protective regulatory umbrella under which they
could build their systems.
Who’s on First?
Who invented community antenna television?
After decades of claims and counter-claims, there
remains no clear-cut answer to the question. In
addition to a dearth of documentation supporting
claims of some of the early practitioners, there is
also a definitional problem: What, exactly, constituted
a community antenna system? 16
With all the discussion of who was the “father”
of cable television, the more pertinent question
might be, who was the mother? Grace Parsons
may be more deserving of the title than anyone.
The Astoria, Oregon, native was visiting Seattle in
the fall of 1948 when she saw her first demonstration
of television, conducted by KRSC-TV. She
liked what she saw. She returned home and told
her husband, Leonard, who had been building
radios for years and owned local radio station
KAST, that radio was no longer enough for her.
“I want pictures with my radio,” she declared. 17
Given the fact that Seattle was 125 miles away,
Parsons told his wife it was technically impossible.
Besides, his ultimate goal, shared by independent
radio station owners around the country, was to
launch a broadcast television station as soon as
the FCC freeze was lifted. She persisted; he began
experimenting.
Parsons was personal friends with the television
station manager in Seattle, Robert Priebe, who
let him know when the Seattle station would be
testing its signal. Using a homemade testing
device, Parsons eventually located the signal
from a perch on the rooftop of the Astoria Hotel,
erected an antenna, and ran a wire to his nearby
apartment building. The Parsonses and friends
were watching television on a set with a nine-
inch screen in Astoria on Thanksgiving Day 1948,
when KRSC officially went live with its broadcasts.
By the summer of 1949, Parsons had roughly
30 homes and businesses on the system, with
people placing amplifiers to boost the signal in
their attics or apartments. Coverage of the system
by the Associated Press in the summer of 1949,
and an article in Popular Mechanics in April 1950,
helped spread the word about community
antenna television across the country. Parsons,
unclear as to what authority if any held regulatory
sway over such a system, also alerted the FCC to
his system. 18