Multichannel television in the context of Media market

Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial and streaming television. In the United States, subscription television began in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the form of encrypted analog over-the-air broadcast television which could be decrypted with special equipment. The concept rapidly expanded through the multi-channel transition and into the post-network era. Other parts of the world beyond the United States, such as France and Latin America have also offered encrypted analog terrestrial signals available for subscription.

The term is most synonymous with premium entertainment services focused on films or general entertainment programming such as, in the United States, Cinemax, HBO, MGM+, Showtime, and Starz, but such services can also include those devoted to sports, as well as adult entertainment.

WGN America was an American subscription television network that operated from November 9th 1978 to February 28th 2021. The service was originally uplinked to satellite by United Video Inc. as a national feed of Chicago independent station WGN-TV, making the station's programming available to cable and satellite providers throughout the United States as the second nationally distributed "superstation" (after Atlanta station WTCG, now operating as the cable-originated TBS, which had become a national service almost two years earlier).

It maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the Chicago station, airing a variety of programming including films, syndicated series, programs intended for local broadcast in the Chicago market (including local newscasts, public affairs shows and children's programs), and sports (including Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball, and regional collegiate events). By the 1990s, the WGN superstation feed began substituting some syndicated programs (and starting in 1996, selected sporting events) in accordance with syndication exclusivity rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January 1990 to reduce programming duplication between local and out-of-market television stations carried by local cable systems, and served as the national carrier of The WB (part-owned by WGN-TV founding owner Tribune Broadcasting, which would acquire the national feed from United Video in 2001) during the latter half of the decade.

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner in 1965. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner (later WarnerMedia) on October 10, 1996. As of April 2022, all of its assets were absorbed into Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The headquarters of Turner's properties were largely located at the CNN Center in Downtown Atlanta, and the Turner Broadcasting campus off Techwood Drive in Midtown Atlanta, which also houses Techwood Studios. Some of their operations were housed within WBD's corporate and global headquarters inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district, and at 230 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan, both in New York City, respectively.

Turner was known for several pioneering innovations in U.S. multichannel television, including its satellite uplink of local Atlanta independent station WTCG channel 17 as TBS—one of the first national "superstations", and its establishment of the Cable News Network (CNN)—the first 24-hour news channel. It later launched a sister cable network, TNT; the professional wrestling promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the animation-centered Cartoon Network (which later spawned an adult-oriented night-time sister network in the form of Adult Swim, as well as the classic-cartoon channel Boomerang), and the classic-movie channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Turner South—a network devoted to regional sports and southern lifestyle programming—was launched by Turner in 1999, but was later sold to Fox Sports Networks in 2006 to form SportSouth. The same year, it acquired Liberty Media's stake in their joint venture Court TV. WCW assets were later sold to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in 2001.

Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast.

Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guide, an automated telephone system, or through a live customer service representative. There has been an increasing number of PPVs distributed via streaming video online, either alongside or in lieu of carriage through television providers. In 2012, the popular video sharing platform YouTube began to allow partners to host live PPV events on the platform.

According to Amanda D. Lotz, the multi-channel transition began in the mid-1980s and ended in the late 1990s. During this era, multichannel television became popular in the United States, leading to the breakdown of the network era which had been dominated by the Big Three broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, and CBS). Many changes happened during this transition, such as the invention of the remote control, the video cassette player, and analog cable systems expanding viewers' choice and control. This era gave viewers more choice and control over what and when they wanted to view a program. Viewers were able to defy the networks' schedules, because they could record the program and watch it whenever they wanted, using the VCR and later the DVR. Producers adjusted to the government regulations and networks were forced to give up some of the control they had over program creation. Subscription channels emerged with no advertisements and the method for measuring audiences became more precise with the Nielsen people meter, with broadcasters fundamentally changing their approaches to programming to accommodate the new device. The multi-channel transition was followed by the post-network era and Second Golden Age of Television.