By Archers. Taylor, P.E., Malarkey, Taylor & Associates, Inc.
Cable television (CATV) has already suffered through too many premature technological developments. We do not need any more fiascos like the early transistor amplifiers, or strip-braid and styrafoam cable. Expanded bandwidth is now being promised in fanciful franchise proposals before it is ready, with unrealistic system design and gross lack of awareness of either the costs or the difficulties. The crash program to provide more channels appears to be a repetition of the automobile industry's horsepower race, now seem as disastrous. The effort is diverting our attention from the scandalous inefficiency of use of the channels we already have, such as spreading the information content of a 4 kHz news wire over 24 MHz of cable spectrum. we need to improve our product; we need to recognize that ~ore is not necessarily better.