Chapter 4: Cable, Satellite, and Other Delivery Systems.

Then:

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From the early days of television experimentation until the late 1970s, most people received television directly from the broadcast stations. Their television sets were attached to antennas that received the broadcast signal directly from the local television stations. Translators were not used used in the very early days of televisions, and many of the people who lived in areas far from big cities or where the television signal was blocked by hills or mountains couldn't receive television signals. In the late 1940s the FCC had difficulty assigning stations to frequencies or channels. There also were not that many franchises of cable companies around. ( Norman  J. Medoff & Barbra Kaye)







Now:

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Now we barely use satellite dishes to watch television. Our society today uses cable lines and modems. The way we view cable now is different from how it was viewed years ago because we don't face the same  problems that people faced in the 70s. Our signals are more reliable and harder to block because most cable companies no longer use satellite dishes. Cable is different now from how it was in the 70's because we have multiple franchises and multiple cable companies. Our generation also uses digital video recorders. DVRs allow us to pause and rewind live TV. We also have the ability to re watch and record our favorite as many times as we desire. Our generation is different from previous generations because we have programs such as On Demand and Xfinity which allows us to to view a list of movies and shows scheduled to run on that station that we can watch as many times as we please. We also use cable for more than TV. We use it for phone lines and internet.


Later: 

I predict that in the future we will slowly but surely start to view cable a lot less because it costs so much. I think that cable will still be around because most people would need their cable company for their internet and land lines. According to this video  future of cable  more people spend time watching Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu because its costs less. They think that cable will still be around because they will have to drop their prices in order to get their customers back.