Social Movements, Political Battles, and New Market Emergence in Pay Television

This paper documents the development of pay TV in the United States. We show that when the first version of pay TV, over-the-air pay TV, came to the market, a social movement started by movie theatres and TV broadcasters to "protect free TV" blocked the emerging market. Later on, however, another technology with a similar business model, pay cable TV, became successful. A closer look into the factors leading to this success shows that regulatory voids, the ambiguity of the public interest frame, and the influence over public opinion can create windows of opportunity for a technology to emerge despite strong opposition from incumbent firms. We argue that in highly regulated industries, technology dominance can arise from windows of opportunity emerging amidst political battles.

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