conversation with your perception of the future projections of the relationship between cable and or subscription television delivery systems and the traditional broadcast and even on into print over television brought over future of the road to roles of various kinds of information technologies are you looking at me five hundred and ten years out or well closer as well certainly i'd be happy to say that we're adding into a revolution it would be minor and i guess in simplest terms in terms of what the viewer gets out there we're going to go from a nation a system where there were basically five places to go if you were a programme maker or if you were a viewer and seventy five there were simply five places to go if you had an interest in that broad word called television and those five places were the three networks a b c c b s and n b c public television or something called syndication where you could link together on rare occasions for a very high cost relative to everything else a an ad hoc network of stations well potential and its impact on the overall industry and within the last five years the actuality of cable now being here and as we look to the near future cable is the key element to all of this future there are other elements such as subscription television where you take a signal from a television station and you feed it out in a descrambler old and then you re scramble it in the home kind of system and of course the home video disc market which in the next couple of years may get down to being what i call the home chips market and you may go out and buy something which presently we get on a cassette which is about that big and in a year or so we may get on a record which will look something like the phonograph record the long playing thirty three and a rd r p m phonograph record that we've had with us for twenty five years i think by the time and five or eighty seven rolls around that technology is going to be down to something about that big and it's going to be the utilization of the micro processing chip but in any event the the hardware is really while it's important and for once in our evolution over the last twenty five or thirty or thirty five years the hardware has jumped well ahead of the software that which we put on it the hardware really winds up taking a back seat the important thing is what do you put on all of these assorted channels and all of these sort of delivery systems you know it's one thing to have a one typewriter in an office and it's another thing to have ten typewriters in an office and it's something else again to have one hundred high speed oh electro data processing typewriters in an office well the same thing thirteen and when i got a little older something called u h f came along which added to most sets channels fourteen through eighty three well now now we have on limited  sources of channels in theory at least perhaps not in in reality yet but in theory one of the major cable companies i was reading out so long ago has proposed a system here in new york for a one hundred and twenty five channels  into the home and they're able then to be able to have a relationship where they can be billing agencies so that you know home programming can be done and people can produce certain reasonable market was regulated fee for the programming and that capability that relationship was not possible if we're broadcasting from here that was to do tional commercial and for the most part the public television delivery system of information so that makes it a different kind of relationship that cable has from broadcasting well it even some degree and in some ways it almost makes it a different medium in television as we have known it let's say for the last twenty five years has basically been a information news sports entertainment medium with certain date parts as they are referred to within the industry taking upon themselves certain similarities game shows and soap operas have  between five o'clock and seven hundred and thirty and entertainment programming has by and large been in the area of eight to eleven months again we get back into that standard half hour of news at eleven o'clock at night run off network archie bunker and nash things like that in that time period along with foreign entries which have become more of a factor in the last couple of years but now and that kind of programming is the one that has quite as easy as you know yes all guess it is a matter of circulation just like the magazine business the newspaper business the television business and it comes down to how many people can see a given product at a given time realistically in the television business look at different ways of delivering specialized material to the home that was really never heretofore possible possible to do in a marketplace or in common we're right i think i think we can learn a lot by looking at the magazine business no two industries you can't compare radio and television you can't compare radio or television in the magazine business but i think we can learn from certain examples in all of those things the magazine business in the forty's and the fifty's was a very large industry with a number of lord selling national weekly and monthly magazines many of those magazines went out of business we were familiar with them they were up in the attic when we were youngsters the saturday evening post life look what has happened in the last ten years is that magazines have gone towards the special business if a magazine can specialize to whether it's in gardening or courting or in our industry and it can get a weekly or monthly subscription list of twenty thousand people worth thirty thousand people who will really read that magazine and therefore read the eds the advertising associated with that advert that with that industry it can be very successful well we that one small way and magazines differ from television because magazines can print a ninety page issue this week and one hundred and eighty dollars page issue next week if they choose to be broadcasting is twenty four hours and you can't you can't make a twenty five hours so there are there are we have to be careful here that we don't oversimplify it but cable and the home market for the st time makes it possible for video entertainment that which we used to call telecasting which now really is an anachronism because it's not telecasting anymore it's not broadcasting anymore i'm not sure what it is it's it's video it's video  now makes it possible to have all channels what does he mean by all channels well you mentioned e s p n the entertainment and sports programming network that is backed by getting your oil they want on the air less and they devote the seventy or eighty hours a week of programming to all sports ted turner from atlanta we were chatting with before we went on the air we were chatting about ted turner cable news network that's an incredibly good it is yes it is i think it's not going to be easy for mr turner and his associates because new is a very expensive story to some of my friends recently here in new york city and as you probably know there are two or all news radio stations in new york city w c b s radio and w i n s now those two radio stations that have budgets well into the millions of dollars in order for them to have all of the reporters in the equipment necessary the gathering of news is quite expensive now you have a television or a video cable service going on the air that wants to be able to cover news almost as well as the networks and it's going to require a great deal of money to support that operation mr turner is prepared to do that i certainly hope that the finances are there and that the advertiser  by payments of people in the home would yes i do advertisers i think i think that pay cable and i guess the best example of pay cable in the country today is home box office which is part of subscribers across the country home box office recently won over the four million subscribers let's talk a little bit about numbers for a moment because i think that's important here we are in the in the early stages of  there are approximately seventy five million homes in america that have one or more television sets and i think the latest statistics show that more than half of those homes have more than one set but let's for the moment let's figure that there are about seventy five million homes in america that have a television set that's about ninety nine eight percent of the homes in america so everything except every home in america every apartment house every apartment unit has a television set with the exception of two tenths of one percent of the american homes almost an infinitesimal amount ok cable presently is in to  about sixteen to seventeen million of those seventy five million homes so i guess that in terms of percentages breaks out to one in five television homes is in some  way up to a cable system now there are lots of different kinds of cable systems in this country and we don't want to bore viewers with what is a cable system and what isn't but let's just say that there are about sixteen to seventeen million homes in this to yes in other words the advertising agencies have always said that when we hit the one rd mark which would be today twenty five million so that could happen very quickly and most most experts would guess that that's going to happen by the middle or late one thousand nine hundred and eighty two because many urban areas such as the suburbs of new york city pittsburgh houston chicago have not been wired up to this point cable having gotten its start basically in rural areas or in a few cities around the united states but now large urban areas which will increase the number of homes that have a have some kind of delivery system very quickly in terms of cable in terms of pay cable there are approximately just over six million homes that have some form of pay cable service that subscribe to some form of pay cable service home box office having four million of those six million so they are by far and away the leader of it i think it is going to be a long time before the american public pays for those things which used to getting free of charge home box office and showtime and if you live here in new york city or downtown in whatever city you live and having to plunk down anywhere from three dollars to snow up to six dollars here in new york city you tend to get most of those pretty good movies fairly early because those pay cable systems go out and they make arrangements with the owners of those films before they are ever seen in the theaters and usually very shortly after they are they are seen actually in a motion picture theater and well before they are ever seen on networks now in terms of paying for things like news i think that it's going to be difficult to get anyone to pay five dollars a month or eight dollars a month or ten dollars a month for those kinds of services you know well it might in the might not be them in the other two we do have a we do have a you talk about the programming the thought to be premium a program that people are willing to pay something extra for we have in the in general things are breaking seems to be getting the interest of people to where there might very well be ongoing interest in some of these events and some of those news events are those kinds of perceptions of people concerned with the media institutional structure of decision making processes and might actually be something that there would be a great market and great interest in the part of the general citizenry if it was done right and at the right time i agree with everything but i point out out and underscore your last two lines if it's done by the was absolutely magnificent video and presented mr rockefeller very very well and those kinds of perceptions are very exciting particularly for some ongoing connection to the question but in the stations that are going i think you have to ask the question then bring the excitement of the world in will our society have we created a television society in this country that today will pay for those things well or will someone take a dollar to see that well it could be that is the kind of perception of programming that would have to be so interesting an ongoing and that would be exciting ability to raise funds that those organizations have and ask yourself i don't see those organizations doing what you have suggested here what you have propose think there might be other organizations but i'm not sure whether the funding is available i think what you may see in the next ten years are organizations who have in effect been shut out from commercial broadcasting and you may see more involvement from the oil companies in this form of delivery you may see it is not inconceivable that tobacco companies which have now spread quite widely into soft drink into confectionary items you may see them getting into this form of home delivery and  before we run out of time i did want to mention one other thing as the home market grows whether we call it cable or microchips or processors remember that the two way capability and the ability to do things from your home with the new technology that is probably going to be the greatest advantage that these new forms of delivery will bring over and above what we have learned to live with over the last twenty five years the ability to shop from your home and the ability to order certain services directly from your home not good to get into your car not to go down to the store the ability  to acquire printed material in your home via these kinds of systems those are perhaps the greatest advantage is both monetary early and cult truly that these whether you feel just a couple minutes left whether you feel that the technological capabilities that have been coming online with cable now five or optics incredible ability to see if we might be collectively as a society at a moment of a kind of in a that we almost have too many choices might be if we if we had been pioneers say thirty years ago our choices would have been far fewer and perhaps our efforts would have been directed more towards one or two things today many of us who find ourselves in this industry say well which way do i go do i concentrate on cable or do i try to get into the home video market because each one has its own uniqueness and its own peculiarities each one doesn't suited to a number of varying kinds of perceptions that become part of an informational environment in which video is one is one part and we do have these various kinds of capabilities brought online i've mentioned use of that might be part of new patterns of programming that might be made available to the i suppose we're going to do with narrow tasking i mention the possibility of having one which  present the perceptions of those who have really leading edge responsibility in a systematic way to the american citizenry i think you great numbers of people who have things like that and would be interested in doing  pattern of programming similar to that which could make that independent of advertising because you'd be gaining new revenue from the base of support that would be going straight to the home marketplace and would also not have to be dependent upon the federal government for support as public television which would probably be appropriate if people representing the major corporate interests for the historically here in pattern and government representation would be considerable part of the responsible reason teaching on this particular channel you could be economic it's possible that it is it is quite possible that in the course of the next four to seven years we will see the emergence of something like that not easy because the question comes will provide the initial development  funding who will provide that initial ten dollars to fifty dollars to one hundred million dollars to get the project off the ground i think that any one of these things could work provided they are amply funded at the beginning certainly and all cultural channel could do exceptionally well in this country there is more than more than enough in the area of arts and culture that could be properly put on a fairly low cost paid channel the question is who's going to put who's going to put up the development money and i think as we move through the next year or two dollars we're going to see some interesting corporations spring forth who perhaps have not been thought  of as broadcasters in the past and so we might be able to an opportunity to let people have an opportunity that way and it would also be if you were to do a pattern that i wasn't just going to be necessary to have some sort of board of directors oversight in terms president of black entertainment television bob was very much a conversation so let's black entertainment television what's it about for the cable television or the black entertainment television is the nation's st and only cable television satellite network distributing black programming on an advertiser supported basis to about four million five hundred thousand dollars cable households across the nation quality programming quality black entertainers we can find a problem finding quality entertainment black entertainment programming is not a problem i think it is a problem because as you know there's no  production mill if you will turning out black programming simply because there's never been a distribution system for black programming because television has to have mass appeal programs so you can't target specifically to any particular group but going to team of television is attempting to open up their distribution television because television generally has been in and of itself or even to a mass audience is probably representative of any the situation in terms of any narrowcast absolute similar group this would if we were doing a women's programming program for the elderly in fact there is a satellite network being  get a narrow casting that you can go to a certain is a pretty good marketing term to think of the black model black or absolutely i think if you go if you look at the growth of cable television it's only growing really in the urban markets most of the small traditional cable areas have been wired so now cities like richmond low rock houston louisville chattanooga all under construction and having significant black populations and i think in order for cable operators survive in these urban markets he's going to need a significant amount of black program that might even start big thinking about bring cable to washington black potential market for your programming absolutely i mean i figure that cable in urban markets got to get anywhere from thirty to forty percent penetration to survive and a significant number those viewers are going to be black households and they're going to be interested in a program that you'd be able to provide that would be today but it's interesting entertaining programming that specifically and totally of a black cultural been beautiful that's done into the grid that has been done you've been able to get that you've been able to get that kind of programming you've been able to rely on but you are going to have to be thinking can not go out and pay the kind of dollars you can pay on commercial television so we're going to have to programming that's already existing for example we're going to try to do this fall black college football and basketball games right mason why is no reason why grambling football should not be seen nationwide the nd only to notre dame and sending players to the professional ranks we're also going after events that take place in the black community like the urban league annual dinner that will feature all a lot of black celebrities as well as entertainment that a company has been going after things like the n be pretty good and as we saw you provide a good a good mix that would be attractive from an entertainment standpoint and from the interest of organizations and representative the urban league in exposing their particular social objectives right you're dealing with a cable you're dealing with a narrow cast a narrow audience as it were better you're able to operate in terms of that and you're going national on the cable so you have a national distribution pattern are you able to move toward national advertising rates you have to do with well you know what is the you know how does it work out when we started out seeking to attract advertisers who have an interest in targeting the black consumer black americans as a whole spend some seventy billion dollars that's who are good and so we feel that advertisers want to reach that audience on a rifle shot basis if you will as opposed to a shotgun approach of broadcast to be specifically aimed at the blacks they'll have a general advertising for example beers consumed by black as well as white yeah but i think if you want if you're a beer benefactor or a distributor and you want to make sure that you maintain your  excited about because sham pale is a product that's almost totally consumed in the black consumer market so naturally they're looking for an outlet that will give them access in a very specific way to their potential because mark to the people are most likely to buy that which they're not specifically want to move into a pattern where you could have patterns where there would be certain pay by people no absolutely not we are going to be advertiser porter why because i don't i want to give the viewer the black house so every incentive to carry black and to watch black entertainment television i don't want to put a economic price on perceiving black entertainment and the more numbers i can i can have watching more i can charge if i haven't yet i really want to build an audience might my key objective over the next twenty three years is to build up a consistent audience a you can say that cable television is a video publisher i mean do you can wow with cable rights right i mean you walk down the street in new york or washington look at a newsstand and you see i'm a magazine everything from field and stream to playboy case and so i think cable television can provide that same kind of diversity that same kind of viewing choices and then advertise you want to reach a specific market yeah target their message in that particular medium you think you're going to be able to target that particular message in the cable television medium in cost one thousand dollars terms in competition with the rates that are charged by evan you know the print media and so forth or what's of kohan i don't think so i think you're talking about apples and oranges we're talking about television in print i think the impact of television as a medium on a particular  individual is far more significant than either print or radio and i don't think will be in competition direct competition with the print people or the radio people i think advertiser trying to reach a black audience who traditionally use reach a particular audience in the case of black viewers for example nielsen studies clearly show that black programming attracts a black audience so if you want to reach a black audience why not advertise on black pearl in fact they do that if you look at the jeffersons and good times those shows and those advertisers want to reach a black consumer will advertise heavily in those kinds of programs sports programs another yeah and i wondered also if you could start thinking about people who've been putting together that kind of oh i don't know print radio other kinds of earlier on medias as it were available for that those might also be people that's an experience and some sources of potential programming ideas and so forth it could be relevant i think so i've been following that market pretty care i would hope so i would listen with those i would think that people who have ideas creative people a lot of the you know the things i'm most excited about the creative potential the black community has yet to be tapped i mean the you've got people like ozzy davis ivan dixon brad peters who are tremendous creative giants but never get the exposure on commercial television ever do it and i want to of and black people are hungry for it and you ask anybody if they've been satisfied with the amount of television amount of black programming on television i guarantee you that you can overwhelming know that they're not satisfied and we started this thing a year ago and less than a year ago and the tremendous enthusiasm excitement it's generated is just unbelievable you can get john coltrane kind of jazz or other kinds of like you're going to get a whole lot more we audience in this country than the but that's right i mean i firmly believe that a lack program is or any quality  the five starting players just about were black so black programming is and pro sports dan brown has been on television for very long time black drama has been a little hard to accept black comedy at the jefferson time has been on but i think there's a there's a there's a tremendous opportunity for pure entertainment from a black perspective that we can provide pure entertainment you also mentioned also there would be an opportunity there within the programming pattern overall of the channel you're doing nationally the system you're doing nationally for some  should support right but they need the money and the way to get money is by bringing together blah entertainers to participate in a celebrity tennis tournaments now that's entertaining television has celebrity tennis tournaments all over so why not a black entertainment special of a celebrity mismatch people featuring people like arthur ashe or jane kennedy jim brown bill cosby and then at the same time when you entertain in the black view of the white viewers for that matter you also talk about the acknowledged that the kind of positive entertainment program we will now that developing kind of programming patterns is what you said you're more interested in develop product already made you not getting yourself involved in the production and i will be getting about one of those right now we're buying programs in the can i will be getting involved how expectations were living up to actually been living up to the expectation in a two month period i had expectations that it would be a difficult process but i've been pleasantly surprised in the response that i've gotten from the cable television industry st of all very good you know completely cooperative and nd of all been surprised that a sponsor got from the motion picture industry we've got fifty four major motion picture companies supplying film product to us and i think the difficult part of it is a good course going to be the advertisers because they're the new cable in particular whatever that a new that's a new fact we've got seven national advertisers signed on already that's committed for fifty two dollars weeks demonstrates the kind of commitment and the kind of confidence i think advertisers have in the potential of cable television to provide an alternative medium to broadcast they were committed for fifty two weeks at that with the commitment being a part of two hours a week or do you have did you have a point where your programs can be expanding beyond that now is increase additional time we don't want to grease time beyond what we can with two things one who can afford the course and two where we get to the range where we're just filling space or time and not providing quality programs you don't want it to be that's right i mean i'd rather provide three or four hours of quality programming rather than ten to twelve hours of you know basic not interesting on the one hand it's really interesting because you say there's a lack of product from historical tradition and you know this in the cancer ward but when one begins to think about what programming there could be there it's almost mind boggling million seventy five thousand dollars well no cable satellite network today on advertise put basis could support that kind of production and nobody could do it on the basis of the revenues yet they're able to say oh that's right so we so i'm looking for a cooperative relationship between potential entertainers and performers particularly for example if i want to do an urban league dinner yes and let's say new roles and he's a great guy has done a lot of good things for community or for national organizations like you know negro college fund so if we were all just performing and if he is willing to say for a modest fee our allow you to take my performance and use it one time or two times on the network maybe just do it or and or i'm out here building a platform and all these entertainers have never had a stage before and the only way we can get audience is for them to get up on the stage i can't survive without them and they can't survive without a distribution system so what we need is to work together during the initial time we're small that channel of the times and you have programming in a way that can be demonstrated to as right i will pay an additional amount of money to go to the guy that's right you get it and then i can go to an advertiser and say i've got more viewers this is that these are the numbers these are the demographics and for you to reach their viewers going to cost you this and i take that money then i go down to the ossie davis in the brock p that is in the down of summers in the jerry butler's and say let's go how it's performed so you really do have an interest in seeing the cable networks move i have an interest in seeing cable television grow i have an interest in seeing black entertainment on cable television systems and i have an interest in providing a distribution system for black programming advertising supported advertiser porter so you don't do you see yourself moving toward trying to  in or factor in a little bit or something subscription television systems are emerging to say clearly that i could feed for example if i produced a program for my network and i showed it on the network i could it would be no problem for me to be in a license that program to a subscription television tends to be pretty much like commercial television you've got the same mass reach so why not go after with programming then to reach the same mass numbers i mean why would you why would you take a subscription television state system while the television systems and the pay systems are also trying to do programming is going to get the name of the greatest number of people talking absolutely i mean it's also people who won't pay but that's right but i think the more you got if you hop everybody the more like you're going to pay and that's exactly what cable television doing so for example if i have a subscription television system and if i could provide a program that would get me forty million forty thousand homes i would rather have that then one provide a program that can only give me twenty yeah well that's what he was paying a great deal more than the forty but i think rick basically what to agree that this is something that you're going to felt comfortable in supporting home and they did and we have an agreement and i'm very happy with it and i think they are and as an example of the kind of commitment i support my particular service has got in the cable television and as i said you worked with him in terms of the accessing of trans partners base are you picking bagging on the h r m m b a thing i see you're doing that when they're not doing madison square garden one thing they're going to think you can get back in time when they're not using it that's right and that gives me immediate access to that kind of market does that mean that they don't program from what is it to in the morning on fridays when you didn't think that's right does that mean that the limitation you have in terms of the amount of program a block or even you can black entertainment television ok we've got plenty of time to thrash out exactly what our relationship going to be because as i say we just went on the air january th you know it's not like there's a lot of graduate out of programming and waiting around but bob and i have a good relationship and the i think it's going to be in the interest of both companies as we go forward in terms the kinds of services we can offer cable operators have you thought at all about as you perhaps develop increasing production out of it keep putting the har exposure the better for the product and that's figuring in terms of your activity in the way you say that's right that's figuring my thinking that i hope that if i'm successful in producing the black college football games i think they're going to be u h f stations and small markets there will be interested in carrying this program you'll be able to do that me the most exciting industry going is telecommunications because we just on the frontier of what can what can happen using cable and satellite and disk into sets and and so on so i think  i don't think we've scratched the surface of the kinds of things that could be done that have never been done before for example you could do a totally black game show but expect twisting the humor the questions the give and take and to black perspect expectations generally you have certain expectations and on the whole it's moving along more easily more rapidly more successfully than you anticipated getting feels like it is more successful than i anticipated their course like in any new business problems only arise in the general state of the economy is one what impact will have on the growth of cable television is a question there's always a problem of not enough good programming there's always a problem of convincing advertisers many who are facing budget cuts for whatever reason about getting revenues there's always a problem of cable systems many of them still don't have a channel capacity so i would say this this business could not have been put together any sooner nor do i think it could have been put together if i had not had the opportunity or been at the vantage point of being in the cable television industry for three years as a lobbyist and having a chance to meet the bob rosenkrantz and the russell carps and the john malone's and all the other leaders thankfully i happen to have good relationships with these people based on my prior activity representing the industry in washington so that's why these kinds of things come together i mean today with satellite being in such a time being in such demand  one is is even considering giving away satellite time because it's like holding on to prime real estate you know it's they may want to use of her own purposes so it's a i was fortunate enough to be in the right place the right time and knowing the right people yeah and you got a nice follow solid base of operation that things look better all the time if you look at it absolutely to me if the cable television if you continue to grow at the rate is growing i think by one thousand nine hundred we'll be in thirty million homes i'm assuming that three to four million of those homes are going to black households and let's assume they're for people in a black family that's four times three million dollars that's twelve million dollars black viewers it's almost forty percent of total black population that's incredible have access to this network that's tremendous advertising information attainment distribution system that's a tremendous black institutional structure within the society that helped bring the commune the black community nationwide together as a force of there to get to the surface i think it will be of that i think also be important for white americans because i think  what for the st time white americans will have an opportunity to see black americans from a creative standpoint were black americans are behind the scenes doing the producing the writing and everything you know so i think the message will be more positive because it comes from a black perspective and plus i think black people will then be willing to to sort of laugh at some of the programs that we now get upset about because we have an alternative we have another place to go i think the reason also because it'll be done right but i think because you see the alternative see even though you never see him as doctors lawyers successful business people go pro as well you know whatever you're always in the comedy rows or in the sports room i'm saying with black entertainment television with another dramatic approach to entertainment you can  show blacks in a in a light that i think a benefit the whole cultural understanding of the country you know you would have a really good time doing this and all the activities you can do in the same time you must have a pretty good strong sense of responsibility for what you doing that's a pretty important institution a structure to build nationwide but i think i think you have to have that i again i cable operators and they'll tell you this in the satellite people have satellite time a very jealous of what programming reaches their subscribers because the subscriber can only take it on the cable operator one way and that's disconnected as a last thing a cable operator won't know so he's going to be very concerned about the programming he provides so i recognize my responsibility to the cable operator is to the viewers just to buy advertisers because they want to be associated with body programming and i also have my own internal  very much indeed all the very best into the future not that i think you need any particular additional luck with thank you very much