ABSTRACT
The history of radio and television did not end with broadcast or cable television. This chapter begins with developments in electronics, the enabling technology for the media. Solid-state and digital electronics did more than displace tubes and wires. Solid-state technology changed the concept of electronic equipment manufacture and repair. Wireless cable, also called multichannel television, emerged in 1983. It consisted of channels from the instructional television fixed service, the operational fixed service, and the multipoint distribution service (MDS). MDS proved ideal to distribute pay programming to multiunit dwellings. Communication satellites broke the bottleneck that existed when AT&T’s terrestrial facilities were needed to create radio and television networks. Communication satellites also enabled local stations to increase their news coverage.
