Who killed captain video? How the FCC strangled a TV pioneer

Reason, March, 2005 by Glenn Garvin

It wasn't until the mid-1970s that a series of court decisions began freeing up cable to compete. The result was not just cable-only channels such as CNN and HBO but a rebirth of broadcasting. On cable, UHF channels were no longer weak and fuzzy, and it was mostly on UHF stations that Fox, the first new American network in 40 years, made its 1986 debut. (Ironically, Fox's VHF affiliates included several stations founded by Allen Du Mont.) Since then, three more networks--the WB, UPN, and Pax--have been born, and in each case the umbilical cord leads straight to cable. Of the WB's 200-plus affiliates, more than half are essentially cable-only channels that cannot be picked up with an antenna.

Meanwhile, the lowest-common-denominator ethos of the three-channel world has been shattered; to compete with Tony Soprano and Carrie Bradshaw, the broadcast nets have been forced to come up with better, bolder programming of their own. And if you don't like it, then watch a ballgame (there are more than 30 sports channels these days), the news (around the clock, not just when Walter, Chet, and David feel like it) or even the Weather Channel. The days when Tuesday night meant choosing between Petticoat Function, Peyton Place, and an old movie are gone forever. Forget what you hear from TV critics--this is the Golden Age of Television.

And the Trent Lotts and Olympia Snowes of the world want to unleash the FCC on it? As Captain Video used to say, "Let's blast them to space dust!"

Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin is author of Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras (Brassey's) and, with Ana Rodriguez, Diary of a Survivor: Nineteen Years in a Cuban Women's Prison (St. Martin's). He writes about television for The Miami Herald.