E. L. Parsons of KAST, Astoria Oregon, in the summer of 1949, erected an antenna system to receive Station KING-TV, Seattle, from 125 miles away, and he distributed the signal received by coaxial cable to twenty five "subscribing neighbors". This may have been the first installation of Cable Television. The concept spread to small towns in Pennsylvania and Washington.

The growth of CATV can be divided into three phases, the first being the one just described, where the range of local TV is extended to "fill holes" in their normal coverage area created by mountains or other obstructions or interferences. These systems are small, locally owned, and are called "community antenna systems". The second, or "distant station importation", began in the late 1950's, and utilized microwave to transmit signals from broadcast stations to cable systems located far outside their normal service areas. These were first called "community antenna systems" and later "cable television" or "CATV" and a host of regulatory and copyright problems were created and local broadcasters had new competition. The third phase began in the late 1970's with the use of satellites to distribute programs to cable systems. Nationwide distribution of programs that did not originate on TV Stations now became profitable. The development of the third phase increased the size and scope of CATV with 8,500 systems, 42,750,000 subscribers and almost 50 percent of the country's television homes on cable by January 1, 1988.

For a typical cable television system (see Figure 1), signals received either from satellite, microwave, or from a nearby broadcast station, are then processed, combined and fed into a coaxial cable supertrunk. From there, signals are fed into distribution system trunks through a splitter and brought into homes through subscribers drops. The amplifiers must be carefully designed to compensate for greater attenuation of cable at higher frequencies. Cable attenuation is typically 20 times greater at 500 MHz than at 50 MHz. They must also have precise automatic gain control to adjust for temperature variations which affect cable attenuation. The amplifier spacing is a trade-off between noise if the spacing is to great, to cross talk if the spacing is too small. A coaxial cable's high signal attenuation and limited bandwidth preclude the transmission of digital transmission. Special set-top converters are needed on UHF signals because of attenuation limitations.

The solution to attenuation and bandwidth problems lay in the use of fiber-optic cable with an advantage of 10,000 to 1 over coaxial cable, and digital can be used to get noise-free and interference-free reception. The digital to analog converter is expensive for digital, and all analog with a hybrid of fiber on long trunks and coaxial on short simplifies the system. Since fiber-optic systems can handle both telephone and video signals, competition between telephone and CATV is ongoing. Cable broadcasts erode local TV broadcast audience and is a subject of FCC regulation. Direct satellite broadcasting is competition for CATV. Future prospects for CATV include HDTV programs and the prospects are bright.