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Old Cable Lineups from Missouri

Mark Roberts said:
The Missourian subscribed to a listing service which possibly had outdated information.
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Some things never change... As a Missourian subscriber about a decade ago, I noticed their listings were woefully inaccurate for the various cable systems in the area and I asked them about it. They confirmed they just got them from the listing service and they'd have to ask their provider how it got so bad. A couple of weeks later the listings got a massive refresh.

Around that time, Columbia proper was served by four different TV services not counting satellite providers. Mediacom (ex-TCI) had the area bounded by I-70, Stadium, and 63 as well as some areas to the northwest, southwest, and immediately east of 63. Charter (ex-Falcon) had the north-central, northeast, far east, southeast, and south-central areas, some exclusively and some neighborhoods where you had a choice between Mediacom and Charter. CenturyTel/CenturyLink also began offering Prism services in the 2000s and Columbia was a major distribution point for that service. And finally, Socket launched an IPTV product around that time in fiber areas.
 
jwnelson said:
Some things never change... As a Missourian subscriber about a decade ago, I noticed their listings were woefully inaccurate for the various cable systems in the area and I asked them about it. They confirmed they just got them from the listing service and they'd have to ask their provider how it got so bad. A couple of weeks later the listings got a massive refresh.
Click to expand...
This wasn't uncommon. Cable TV finally came to Columbia in 1977 after more than a decade of contentious discussions. In that year, the Tribune started getting its listings from an outside service; the Missourian probably followed shortly thereafter. With the rise of satellite services, compiling TV listings would have become more time-consuming; ultimately making it less expensive to just get the paste-up copy from somewhere else. Both newspapers were fully offset and photocomp by then, so that would have been fairly easy to do, and less time-consuming than having someone sit at a terminal and type it all in manually.

jwnelson said:
... Columbia proper was served by four different TV services not counting satellite providers. Mediacom (ex-TCI) had the area bounded by I-70, Stadium, and 63 as well as some areas to the northwest, southwest, and immediately east of 63. Charter (ex-Falcon) had the north-central, northeast, far east, southeast, and south-central areas, some exclusively and some neighborhoods where you had a choice between Mediacom and Charter. CenturyTel/CenturyLink also began offering Prism services in the 2000s and Columbia was a major distribution point for that service. And finally, Socket launched an IPTV product around that time in fiber areas.
Click to expand...
Basically look at the city boundaries in 1977 and, inside those boundaries, that's where Cablevision/Group W/TCI was the only traditional cable provider. Falcon had the perimeter of subdivisions around Columbia; where Columbia annexed (generally small areas that volunteered in order to get city services), that's where both companies were available. Falcon never imported St. Louis and Kansas City stations, though, since it didn't have access to the microwave relay station where Cablevision also put its head-end. In the early days of Columbia Cablevision, the St. Louis and Kansas City channels were the big reason for people to subscribe.

Columbia basically dominates the trade area any more, but it took a surprisingly long time to happen.
 
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