"How the fuck can a business seemingly employ
only monsters, operate policies concocted from
purest evil, offer zero options, get propped up
as a monopoly by the worst parts of government
funding and compliance, and still turn a profit
where so many other business would instantly
implode and vaporize?"
Hey guys! Look at all the
big, big words I can use!
Don’t I sound smart???
Cameras weren’t everywhere, film processing required time, nothing went viral in the same ways it does now. This also meant people were more sheltered, expectations were lower, and maybe if you were exposed to a word of mouth black market underworld you knew a little more than those who were naive. But otherwise, even without rose colored glasses, people probably really were more polite by default (unless drunk, for which there might be a time and a place, usually).
But cultural differences aside, the technical aspects of deployment for both cable and public telephone networks followed comparable implementation models.
Originally, the household telephone handsets were proprietary appliances owned by the utility, it was installed by a technician and did not belong to the head of the household. This goes back to telegraphs, undersea cables and wire services which tie into banking networks also.
Back in the 80’s, cable television was new. Black and white television sets weren’t a complete anachronism yet, and rabbit ears were a thing. VHS and VCR appliances were also new. Things weren’t digital yet. Satellite dishes were luxurious and conspicuous to neighbors, and it was said that you could watch channles from other countries with one, including picking up European and Asian adult channels that broadcast nudity, all without any added cost. It was just available to the high gain receivers that could pick up the signals and tune into them.
Cable followed a private model, not a utility, and catered to people with enough money, who were sick of interference static and snowy noise disrupting a TV show. It appeared as trunk lines were put in place in geographic areas, but the technical details followed the telephone utilities, in that the set top box was a proprietary appliance not to be modified or replaced by the end user.
But it was all pretty low tech. Running a wire, plugging into a generic contact point. No special technicians with authorization were require to peer behind the curtain and know the black magic. No microchips, encryption or DRM that couldn’t be trivially overruled. It was mostly the same TV on the airwaves, but piped to the home on a conduit more reliable than the ambient electromagnetic spectrum. Cable companies simply “scrambled” an unpaid channel (there weren’t many to begin with) with an analog modulation that wasn’t much more complicated than interference signals introduced by music equipment, and there was a black market for descramblers that bypassed subscription fees, called hotboxes. You could also just splice into a neighbors line and pull in service for free (stealing cable). I think there’s a Simpsons episode about it.