Unless they cause viewers to say to themselves, “I’ve gotta subscribe to this network,” the new channels will pick up such a small percentage of a cable system’s subscriber base that advertisers won’t see any reason to buy time on their schedules. Speaking to a packed house during a programming panel in mid-convention, the heads of 12 cable networks painted a grim picture of fledgling channels struggling for survival on what the industry calls “new-product tiers,” which will cost a cable subscribers extra money every month to get them. That slowdown has meant that a number of promising new networks have languished because cabler operators don’t have the channel capacity to accommodate them. Without fresh streams of capital, most cable operators have had to slow down the costly upgrades of their systems. Even in his upbeat speech opening the convention on May 8, Decker Anstrom, president of the National Cable TV Assn., the lobbying arm of the industry, which sponsored the get-together, said, “Today, access to capital has become the chief competitive problem for the cable industry.” These delays, coupled with tough (the industry says unfair) reregulation from Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, have shut off the flow of investment from Wall Street.
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