Excerpts from the 1964 original business plan:
“Though 94 percent of the households in this country have TV sets, less than 50 percent are able to receive more than two viewable signals. As CATV (community antenna television) has been able to extend television’s entertainment and educational reach, it has found overwhelming acceptance from a TV – hungry public.”
“CATV has many of the economic characteristics of a utility… Only one or two cases exist where two CATV systems compete for the same subscribers. Even in the absence of an exclusive provision in its franchise a CATV system establishes an effective monopoly position by virtue of its pole characteristics and plant installation.”
“Many indicators suggest that the future of Pay TV— if in fact it has a future— will be based upon microwave and cable transmission and will bear a cooperative rather than a competitive relationship with the CATV industry.”
“We feel that the CATV industry has an unusually promising future. We have been exposed in our present employment to a continuum of new and existing businesses in widely diverse industries. Within this sample we have concluded that the CATV industry offers the most promising relationship of risk to return. As a result, we have established Continental Cablevision Inc. with the objective of developing over the next 10 years a substantial position in the CATV industry (viewed now as on the order of 20,000 subscribers). ”
“It is our intention to build new systems rather than to buy operating properties, since there is a surplus of buyers in the present market.”
“Whether the Company can achieve its objective will in large part depend on our ability to locate promising markets, win franchise awards, create and use capital sources, and rapidly realize a given area’s subscriber potential.”