I was cable before cable was cool. Ted Turner, May 1982. Turner, aka Mouth of the South, founder of Cable News Network CNN, was tooting his horn at the National Cable Television Association convention in Las Vegas. However, a month later another 24 hour news operation would offer some competition; Satellite News Network SNC.
SNC, based in Stamford, Connecticut joined the 24 hour news business on June 21, 1982. It was a joint venture of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and Westinghouse Broadcasting (Group W). SNC was designed as a satellite-delivered cable television network, much like CNN. However, they built in several innovative twists to their format, including a 10 minute cut-away for local news. That is where Capital Broadcasting Company fit into the plan.
The SNC format mirrored its slogan, Give us 18 minutes, we'll give you the world. They used video and news packages from ABC News and seven crews based in Washington. International stories came from networks outside the country to fill a rotating format every 20 minutes. The remaining time in the 30 minute cycle was reserved for local stations to insert local content. WRAL signed up to provide news for the Carolinas.
June 14, 1982, WRAL had just expanded the 6pm Action News 5 newscast from 30 minutes to 1 hour. The ramp-up to the expanded newscast included additional resources in news personnel, operations, and engineering. The newsroom/studio had just relocated to an expansive space that once served as an auditorium for the AJ Fletcher opera company. Additional space beneath the newsroom provided the perfect location for a small control room and a one person anchor desk. Reporter Nina Szlosberg was hired to be a producer/anchor for the local cut-in newscast. Other WRAL reporters, including Claren Scott, were tapped to anchor as well. Dave Waters, former WRAL ENG editor, became a director and played back his own tapes as well. Waters was a one man band. The glass enclosed control room served as a backdrop for the news anchor.
WRAL created a network of stations across North Carolina to feed news reports to Channel 5 to be used on Action News 5 as well as SNC. The newscast was uplinked to SNC which had the technology to integrate the local newscast from our basement studio into a dedicated feed to cable systems across North Carolina. At the bottom of the hour and the top of the hour, the process repeated itself; SNC provided national and international news for 18 minutes and then time for another local cut-in. The process is similar to what we do today during CBS Morning News.
The super competitive Ted Turner, AKA Captain Outrageous, was not going to stand idly by having an upstart cable news network challenge his Atlanta established CNN and the recently launched CNN 2 (Headline News), which was a preemptive strike against the ABC/Group W venture. In fact, there was already bad blood between Turner and Group W. By 1982, Turner Broadcasting was being eyed by other communication companies. In fact, Westinghouse launched a takeover attempt. The broadcasting boxing gloves had already come off.
SNC worked well for Capitol Broadcasting Company, but not for ABC and Group W. SNC had problems gaining traction with advertisers and cable systems. After little more than a year, the loss was more than $40 million dollars. Ted Turner stepped in, bought out the challengers and shut down SNC on October 27, 1983. Even the deep pockets of ABC and Group W could not compete with Cable Cool Ted.
As for Capitol Broadcasting, no problem. When one door closes, another one opens. Media entrepreneur and visionary Jim Goodmon had a new project in mind that would change the delivery of background music to businesses. It just so happens that it needed satellites and uplinks. Stay tuned for the story about Seeaburg Music. Of course it is another David vs Goliath story.
Thanks to Corp's Pam Allen for this capcom story & these photos. Pam Parris Allen is a former WRAL newscast producer/director who now works as a researcher and producer on the CBC History Project.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
31/08/2025
Legrand | AV, a global specialist and industry leader in audiovisual solutions, returns to CEDIA Expo 2025, taking place Sept. 4-6 in Denver, with a powerful li...
31/08/2025
Global media technology company Backlight will unveil new capabilities in its Iconik, Wildmoka, and Zype product lines at IBC2025 (booth #1.D09), September 12 1...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
I was cable before cable was cool. Ted Turner, May 1982. Turner, aka Mouth of the South, founder of Cable News Network CNN, was tooting his horn at the National Cable Television Association convention in Las Vegas. However, a month later another 24 hour news operation would offer some competition; Satellite News Network SNC.
