136 Copyright 1989 by Peter Huber. In 1989, that's when. Even allowing for the margin between a wholesale purchase and retail sales, something revolutionary is going on here.
Free television is what gives.
Television, as I discussed here last month, that's paid for in cereal, when you go shopping for Wheaties the day after the Super Bowl. Instead of subsidizing programming costs when you buy cereal, you pay the old-fashioned way, by cash or check. From 1952 until 1968 the Federal Communications Commission's response to pay TV was paralysis by analysis. It was heartily discouraged. In Moscow, they promised free bread.