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Pay television, the elusive bonanza of the electronic entrepreneurs, is coming to Manhattan next fall.
It will be introduced by Sterling Manhattan Cable Television, which operates a cable system under city charter in lower Manhdttan, and Home Box Office, Inc., a subsidiary of Sterling Communications that operates a pay‐TV system in eastern Pennsylvania.
The new prime‐time service, which will be made available to Sterling's 58,000 regular subscribers in lower Manhattan for an additional monthly subscription fee, will provide major sports events, recent motionpicture releases and specialevent programing.
Subscribers will be provided with a special channel selector that can be attached to their TV set to unscramble the payTV signals. Thus, Sterling's regular cable subscribers will not be able to view the payTV programing unless they pay the additional fee.
The move marks the introduction of pay TV in New York City on a regular basis, although a number of the city's hotels are wired for subscription television and provide feature films to the largely transient customers.
Continue reading the main storyIn announcing the new service, Richard M. Galkin, president of Sterling Manhattan, and Gerald M. Lovin, president of Home Box Office, pointed out that the pay‐programing would only supplement the cable systern's regular TV listings and would not replace them.
Asked about the future of the New York Knickerbocker and New York Ranger home games, which are currently carried on the regular cable system, a spokesman for Home Box Office said “it hoped” that they will continue on the regular Channel E for the 1973‐74 season.
In any event, he said, the pay channel, which has not yet been chosen, will carry selected games of teams in the National and American Basketball Associations, and the National and World Hockey Leagues.
“We plan to carry a large number of sports events and at least four or five current movies each month,” he said. “Under the rules of the Federal Communications Commission, the films cannot be more than two years old.”
Although some details still have to be worked out Sterling subscribers who elect to sign up for the pay‐TV programing will probably pay an additional monthly charge of $9 or $10 above the regular monthly cable fee of $6. The programs will be carried on the pay‐TV channel seven nights a week from 7 P.M. to midnight.
The move by Sterling into pay TV comes only a little more than a week after the sale of Sterling Communications to Warner Communications, Inc., for $20‐million in cash fell through.
The cable company has been posting increasing losses over the last several years, and its net loss for fiscal 1973 was $10,343,000. The losses have been attributed to the high cost of installing and operating cable facilities in Manhattan. Sterling obviously hopes that pay television, which has had a spotty record throughout the country in the last several years, will put its operations in the black.
In the past, pay‐TV operators, lured by the prospect of vast profits, have faced such obstacles as technical problems, angry motion‐picture distributors and theater owners and militant “save free‐TV” groups. With the growth of cable television, however, the trend to pay TV is gaining ground.
Whether Manhattanites will pay an additional fee for additional attractions will be watched carefully by the stillinfant pay‐TV industry in the months ahead.
Continue reading the main story