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\"[This book tells of] the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV\"--Amazon.com.

Cable television is arguably the dominant mass media technology in the U.S. today.Blue Skiestraces its history in detail, depicting the important events and people that shaped its development, from the precursors of cable TV in the 1920s and '30s to the first community antenna systems in the 1950s, and from the creation of the national satellite-distributed cable networks in the 1970s to the current incarnation of \"info-structure\" that dominates our lives. Author Patrick Parsons also considers the ways that economics, public perception, public policy, entrepreneurial personalities, the social construction of the possibilities of cable, and simple chance all influenced the development of cable TV.Since the 1960s, one of the pervasive visions of \"cable\" has been of a ubiquitous, flexible, interactive communications system capable of providing news, information, entertainment, diverse local programming, and even social services. That set of utopian hopes became known as the \"Blue Sky\" vision of cable television, from which the book takes its title.Thoroughly documented and carefully researched, yet lively, occasionally humorous, and consistently insightful,Blue Skiesis the genealogy of our media society.

\"Bestselling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, cultural critic Peter Biskind turns his eye toward the new golden age of television, sparked by the fall of play-it-safe network TV and the rise of boundary-busting cable followed by streaming, that overturned both-based on exclusive, candid, and colorful interviews with executives, writers, showrunners, directors, and actors\"-- Provided by publisher.

Research summary: In family businesses, investment decisions often involve both socioemotional wealth and economic considerations. Focusing on new technology adoption, we argue that multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth contribute to complex effects within different types of family firms—depending on the level of family control—as well as in contrast to non-family firms. Results based on cable TV operators from 1983 to 1987 confirm that family ownership correlates negatively with technology adoption, especially when family owners hold a minority rather than majority position. We also show contingencies based on performance improvements and competitive threats. Our arguments contribute new insights about the tensions between economic and socioemotional factors within minority family ownership that are absent from non-family firms and more pronounced than in majority family firms. Managerial summary: We find evidence of greater reluctance toward new technology adoption among firms with minority family influence than majority family influence. This suggests that goals related to socioemotional wealth only partly explain the cautious decision-making observed in family firms, with further caution arising from conflicting priorities between family and non-family owners. Recent performance improvements help offset the reluctance to adopt new technology, albeit to a lesser degree among firms with minority family ownership. High levels of competitive threats also offset the reduction in new technology adoption, and contrary to expectations, to a greater extent among minority family firms.

This article investigates how private firms respond to potential entry from public firms. This paper uses a data set of over 3,000 U.S. cable TV systems to present evidence consistent with entry deterrence. Incumbent cable TV firms upgrade faster when located in markets with a potential municipal entrant. However, the same systems are then slower to offer new products enabled by the upgrade, suggesting upgrades in these markets occur for strategic reasons. Incumbent cable systems also upgrade faster in response to municipal entry threats than to private entry threats. Understanding how private firms respond to potential entry from public firms is especially important in light of recent U.S. government entry into several industries. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

An important outcome of technological change is industry “convergence,” as a new technology spurs competition between established firms from different industries. We study the reactions of securities analysts, as important sources of institutional pressures for firms, to the similar product/market strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence. Our empirical setting is the convergence between the wireline telecommunications and cable television industries in the period following the advent of voice over Internet protocol technology. Controlling for firm financial performance and capabilities, we find that analysts were consistently more positive toward the cable firms than toward the wireline telecom firms. Our findings further show that this divergence in reactions arises from differences in existing investor expectations and preferences concerning how firms create value; stocks owned by investors with a greater preference for growth receive more positive reactions than those owned by investors with a greater preference for margins. However, this divergence in reactions shrinks over time as convergence unfolds and as investors shift their shareholdings in response to misalignment between their preferences and firms' strategic changes. Reactions from analysts—reflecting inertial expectations of investors—may persist for a time despite changes to firms' strategies, thus creating challenges for some firms in responding to technological change and industry convergence while legitimating and enabling similar responses from their competitors.

\"A riveting and revealing look at the shows that helped cable television drama emerge as the signature art form of the twenty-first century In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television's narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and artistic ambition. No longer necessarily concerned with creating always-likable characters, plots that wrapped up neatly every episode, or subjects that were deemed safe and appropriate, shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Deadwood, The Shield, and more tackled issues of life and death, love and sexuality, addiction, race, violence, and existential boredom. Just as the Big Novel had in the 1960s and the subversive films of New Hollywood had in 1970s, television shows became the place to go to see stories of the triumph and betrayals of the American Dream at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This revolution happened at the hands of a new breed of auteur: the all-powerful writer-show runner. These were men nearly as complicated, idiosyncratic, and \"difficult\" as the conflicted protagonists that defined the genre. Given the chance to make art in a maligned medium, they fell upon the opportunity with unchecked ambition. Combining deep reportage with cultural analysis and historical context, Brett Martin recounts the rise and inner workings of a genre that represents not only a new golden age for TV but also a cultural watershed. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players, including David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire), Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm (Mad Men), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), in addition to dozens of other writers, directors, studio executives, actors, production assistants, makeup artists, script supervisors, and so on. Martin takes us behind the scenes of our favorite shows, delivering never-before-heard story after story and revealing how cable TV has distinguished itself dramatically from the networks, emerging from the shadow of film to become a truly significant and influential part of our culture. \"-- Provided by publisher.

The year 2016 marks twenty years since the enactment of the Federal Telecommunications Act and the Telecommunications Act of Puerto Rico, both of which defined the legal framework for telecommunications and cable television in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a non-incorporated territory of the United States. This study is based on media economics and historical methods to examine the processes of globalization and concentration in the pay television market in Puerto Rico between 1996 and 2015. The article is intended to answer the following questions: What role has regulation played in the processes of globalization and concentration in the cable television market in Puerto Rico? What is the corporate profile of the leading pay television companies? What changes did the structure of the pay television market undergo? What was the state of pay television in Puerto Rico in 2015? Drawing from the state telecommunications regulator's data, the analysis' findings show a market where globalization and concentration of ownership, as economic processes, were intertwined trends, and different types of companies (e.g., U.S.-based telecommunications companies, U.S.-based financial investments companies, transnational media companies, and transnational telecommunications companies) with different television delivery systems (e.g., cable television, satellite television, Internet protocol television, over the top television). The findings also trace the business model evolution of telecommunications and cable companies through the introduction of new services such as VoIP telephony, Internet access service, Internet protocol television; the reduction in the cable television subscriber base, and ending of local companies' participation in the cable television industry. [Keywords: Puerto Rico, Pay Television, Telecommunications, Media, Cable television, Globalization]