Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948. By 1989, 53 million American households received cable television subscriptions, with 60 percent of all U.S. households doing so in 1992. Most cable viewers in the U.S. reside in the suburbs and tend to be middle class; cable television is less common in low income, urban, and rural areas.

According to reports released by the Federal Communications Commission, traditional cable television subscriptions in the US peaked around the year 2000, at 68.5 million total subscriptions. Since then, cable subscriptions have been in slow decline, dropping to 54.4 million subscribers by December 2013. Some telephone service providers have started offering television, reaching to 11.3 million video subscribers as of December 2013.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that the percentage of American adults that reported having a cable or satellite television subscription fell from 76% in 2015 to 56% in 2021, while a 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that only 36% of American adults reported having a cable or satellite television subscription.

History

First systems It is claimed that the first cable television system in the United States was created in 1948 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania by John Walson to provide television signals to people whose reception was poor because of tall mountains and buildings blocking TV signals. Mahanoy City was ideally suited for CATV services, since broadcast television signals could easily be received via mountaintop antennas and retransmitted by "twin-lead" or "ladder-lead" cable to the valley community below (where broadcast reception was very poor). Walson's "first" claim has long been questioned and his claimed starting date can not be verified. The United States Congress and the National Cable Television Association have recognized Walson as having invented cable television in the spring of 1948.

A CATV system was developed in the late 1940s by James F. Reynolds in his town of Maple Dale, Pennsylvania, which grew to include Sandy Lake, Stoneboro, Polk, Cochranton, and Meadville.

Even though Eastern Pennsylvania, particularly the counties of Schuylkill and Carbon in the anthracite coal region, had several of the earliest CATV systems, there were other CATV entrepreneurs scattered throughout the United States. One was James Y. Davidson of Tuckerman, Arkansas. Davidson was the local movie theater manager and ran a radio repair business on the side. In 1949, he set up a cable system to bring the signal of a newly launched Memphis, Tennessee station to his community, which was located too far away to receive the signal with set-top antennas alone.

Leroy E. "Ed" Parsons built the first cable television system in the United States that used coaxial cable, amplifiers, and a community antenna to deliver television signals to an area that otherwise would not have been able to receive broadcast television signals. In 1948, Parsons owned a radio station in Astoria, Oregon. A year earlier he and his wife had first seen television at a broadcasters' convention. In the spring of 1948, Parsons learned that radio station KRSC (now KKNW) in Seattle – 125 miles away – was going to launch a television station that fall. He found that with a large antenna he could receive KRSC's signal on the roof of the Hotel Astoria and from there he ran coaxial cable across the street to his apartment. When the station (now KING-TV) went on the air in November 1948, Parsons was the only one in town able to see television. According to MSNBC's Bob Sullivan, Parsons charged a $125 one-time set-up fee and a $3 a month service fee.Sullivan, Bob. "Cable TV: King of misleading come-ons." NBC News. January 28, 2008. Retrieved on January 29, 2008. Web page excerpted from Gotcha Capitalism by Bob Sullivan. Copyright (c) 2007 by BobSullivan. Reprinted by arrangement with The Random House Publishing Group. In May 1968, Parsons was acknowledged as the father of community antenna television.

First commercial system In 1950, Robert Tarlton developed the first commercial cable television system in the United States. Tarlton organized a group of fellow television set retailers in Lansford, Pennsylvania, a town in the same region as Mahanoy City, to offer television signals from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania broadcast stations to homes in Lansford for a fee. The system was featured in stories in The New York Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. The publicity of this successful early system set off a wave of cable system construction throughout the United States, and Tarlton himself became a highly sought-after consultant.

Tarlton used equipment manufactured by a new company, Jerrold Electronics. After seeing the success of the Tarlton system in 1950, Jerrold president (and future Pennsylvania governor) Milton Shapp reorganized his company to build equipment for the now-growing cable industry. In 1952, Tarlton went to work for Jerrold, helping to construct most of the major systems built by that company in the 1950s. Tarlton was also responsible for training many of the major operators of cable systems in the 1950s. In 2003, Tarlton was inducted in the Cable Television Hall of Fame for his work building the first widely publicized cable television company in America.

Early growth The rise of free broadcast television during the 1950s greatly threatened the established entertainment industry by offering an alternative to the common practice of regularly paying to see films. The possibility of turning free television viewers into paid television viewers was discussed early on. For example, after 25 million American televisions tuned to a musical version of Cinderella in 1957, executives calculated that if the network had received 25¢ for each television tuned to the show, it would have earned more than $6 million without distribution costs. However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.

During the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s freeze on television licenses from 1948 to 1952, the demand for television increased. Since new television station licenses were not being issued, the only way the demand was met, even in communities with one or more operating broadcast stations, was by Community Antenna Television (CATV), as early cable was known (so named because of the literal sharing of a very large receiving antenna by an entire community).

1980–2015: Cable reaches its peak In the 1980s, the number of homes with cable grew dramatically, from an estimated 16 million in 1980 to 50 million in 1990. The growth of cable offered new opportunities for entrepreneurs and media companies to reach niche audiences. Coming on the heels of the 1979 launch of Nickelodeon children's network and the ESPN sports channel, Ted Turner founded CNN, a 24-hour news network, in 1980, and TNT in 1988. Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment launched MTV, a music video network, in 1981.

The growth was fueled by a combination of a more favorable regulatory environment and the spread of new technology such as improved wiring and satellite technology, which made more channels available to more households. The growth continued in the 1990s, with coverage reaching 67.7 million homes by 2000. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, while a partnership of NBC News and Microsoft introduced MSNBC, a news outlet that had a presence on cable and the internet.

Writing in Forbes, media and advertising consultant Brad Adgate said cable TV "was in its zenith" in the early 2010s because more than 100 million households subscribed to pay TV and the industry's 2013-14 estimate said cable would surpass broadcast TV for the first time.

Regulation

Policy history

On August 1, 1949, T.J. Slowie, a secretary of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to Parsons requesting that he "furnish [to] the Commission full information with respect to the nature of the system you may have developed and may be operating." This is the first known involvement of the FCC in CATV. An FCC lawyer, E. Stratford Smith, determined the Commission could exercise common carrier jurisdiction over CATV. The FCC did not act on this opinion, and Smith later changed his mind after working in the cable industry for some time. Further, Smith's decision was influenced by his experiences testifying several times in United States Senate committee hearings. Senator, and future FCC commissioner, Kenneth A. Cox attended and participated in these hearings. He prepared a report for the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce against CATV and supporting the FCC policy of a television station in every community.

In 1959 and 1961, bills were introduced in Congress of the United States that would have determined the role of the FCC in CATV policy. Chief architect of some of these bills was attorney Yolanda G. Barco. She was one of the first female executives in cable, described as the "principal attorney for cable television interests during the industry's formative years"."Cable Pioneer Yolanda Barco Dies at 74." Multichannel News, December 6, 2000, p. 16 The 1959 bill, which made it to the floor of the Senate, would have limited FCC jurisdiction to CATV systems within the contours (or the broadcast range) of a single station; however, the bill was defeated. The 1961 bill proposed by the FCC would have given the Commission authority over CATV as CATV, and not as a common carrier or broadcaster. The Commission could then adopt rules and regulations "in the public interest" to govern CATV in any area covered both by CATV and broadcast television. No action was ever taken on this bill.