Television: Death of STV

Last week’s political landslide was so massive that some of the buried victims went almost unnoticed. Pay television in California, for example, was extinguished.

On the California ballot was a proposition that had been put there as the result of a petition signed by over 500,000 voters. It asked, in effect, if Californians approved of legislation that had already enabled Pat Weaver’s Subscription Television Inc. to go into business. Californians overwhelmingly said no.

Death Rattle. Weaver’s STV, which already has over 6,000 subscribers in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, has been on the air since July, beaming plays, opera, lectures and ball games to clients on a pay-as-you-see basis. Over $22 million had been invested in it before Election Day. Since STV is the most advanced of all pay-TV systems to date, the California vote may have sounded a national death rattle for all of pay TV.

The organizers who clobbered STV were largely movie-theater owners and commercial TV interests, who collected signatures in theater lobbies and on street corners all over the state. The argument they offered was that pay-TV customers would one day find themselves paying to see shows they now see for nothing. And carrying the argument a bit farther, they also warned that pay TV could become just as commercial as contemporary network television. Once the existing networks had been defeated, the argument went, nothing could stop Weaver’s company from introducing commercials into pay TV.

The astounding success of the California initiative could put ideas into other people’s heads elsewhere. A united front of gluemakers, for example, might collect enough votes to ban the manufacture of Scotch tape. Chrysler could war on General Motors. Whichever collected the fewest votes would die a corporate death.

Public Issue. Actually, the pay-TV question was subject to public review only because STV uses telephone lines, a public utility. Last year the California Public Utilities Commission approved STV’s contract with the Pacific Telephone Co., and the state assembly passed needed tax legislation. According to California law, any public issue can be decided on an election ballot if 8% of the state’s voters sign a petition to put it there.

“The greatest communication innovation of our lifetime must not be denied the people through manipulation by vested interests,” cried Weaver, promising to seek redress through the Department of Justice, the FCC and Congress. But meanwhile he was through in California. Last week he shut down operations and will soon remove the special adapter boxes from subscribers’ sets. Californians had apparently decided that they just were not going to risk the chance of having to pay to listen to ads.