The Blue Sky Dialectic: How Cable Communications Succeeded as a Business by Failing as a New Medium, 1969-1989

Dozens of blue sky forecasts of cable communication\u27s glorious future were made by scholars, research institutes, public interest lobbies, and governmental advisory bodies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Because cable could carry a greater number of video signals than the broadcast spectrum and was capable of bi-direct­ional communication it was siezed upon as a means to alleviate problems such as social alienation and political disempowerment. However, interactive cable failed to develop as expected. Through an analysis of critical events, this thesis assesses the cycle of enthusiasm and disappointment--each time conducted at a higher technological plane--that characterizes the history of cable-based interactivity. It concludes that the periodicity in interactive service development is the result of events that determined the evolutionary course of cable\u27s regulatory regime.Thus both regulation and competition have in their turn alternatively been the forces behind interactive service development