Television in the Eighties

Wider Choices for Home Screen Viewers

After nearly four decades of commercial television broadcasting, the medium employs space-age satellites and computer technology to provide nearly 76 million American households1 with instantaneous presentations of news, sports and entertainment. Yet, technologically speaking, television is still in its infancy. A combination of new advances in home video electronics, satellite-transmitted cable television, information retrieval systems and a deregulatory climate in Washington are certain to alter the content of television radically in the coming decade.

Typical of prophecies of things to come, Desmond Smith of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. writes that “the kind of storm that swept Dorothy off to Oz is about to hit the old broadcasting industry, and the American public — which owns the public airways ...