Cable and the Blackout Rule

 I grew up in Northeast Ohio in the city of Euclid .My family got cable around 1982.I became a huge sports fan when i turned 10 years old. The Indians and Cavs were not very good at the time. The most interesting team at the time was the Cleveland Browns. The Browns had just come off a great season in 1980 but a very bitter loss to the Raiders in a playoff game. This was the famous Red Right 88 that turned into an interception that sealed the game for the Raiders. This led to a subpar 1981 at 5-11.

I was still very interested in the Browns  in 1982.The strike of course happened this year. It was a loss of 7 games that year. The strike began after the second week of the 1982 season. NBC had a plan to show Canadian Football league games on Sunday during the strike. At 1p.m that day the NBC pregame show ended and what i thought  would be Canadian Football. Then a voice was heard saying due to contractual reasons the Canadian Football could not be shown. I asked my dad and he said that meant the game could not be shown because of blackout rules. That was the first i had ever heard of a TV blackout .It was far from the last time i would hear of it. The worst part was instead of  Canadian Football they decided to show the Browns vs Raiders playoff that they had lost on Red  Right -88. A very bad decision to show in the Cleveland area.

The following football season we had cable and then i started seeing an even stranger thing with Cable and the Cleveland Browns. Whenever the Browns were at home they had to sell out the huge Municipal Stadium. In the years i was watching it was between 78,000 and 80,000.It was hard to sell out every game. The rule at the time was a sellout had to occur 72 hours prior to the game .I started noticing that it said on Viacom cable in the Eastern Suburbs of Cleveland the game would be shown even in case of blackout There was  a catch to this in the city of Euclid in 1983.I soon learned that is was only south of the railroad tracks in Euclid. I lived north of the railroad tracks. The cities of Shaker and University Heights all were able to get the game
but only a small part of Euclid. 

This was due to an odd set of rules set by the NFL and upheld by court cases throughout the 1950's.When the NFL first began televising games in the late 1940's and Early 1950's each team made there own decision of what games they would  televise. Teams would get one sponsor for each telecast, In 1950 the Los Angeles, Rams decided to telecast each home game and attendance dropped dramatically. This then led the NFL and its teams to never show a home game unless it was agreed to by both teams.

Starting in 1953 all NFL  home games even the Championship games  would not be shown. In 1965 Telerama cable began in Beachwood, Ohio. This quickly spread  to Shaker Heights, University  Cleveland Heights and Warrensville Heights, Euclid was added  along with Richmond Heights in 1966.This only covered a small part of Euclid because the lines were easier to bring down Richmond .Road into that part of  Euclid. The wider part of Euclid was not wired because of arguments over a contract .It was also more expensive the further North into Euclid. The FCC before 1966 had ruled that they did not have control over Cable or CATV as it was called in the 1960's.The  FCC under pressure from broadcasters did set rules for how many out of town signals could be in each city and set rules for rural areas. They then asked  Congress to set rules for Cable Television. Since Telerama was in existence before the new rules.They could show Browns home games starting in 1966.The signal was usually taken from Toledo or Erie Pennsylvania.

In  1970 the first Monday Football game was shown between the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets. The game even though sold out was not shown on Channel 5 WEWS. The game was not telecast on Telerama Cable either because a signal could not be acquired from Toledo or Erie. The game was only on radio on September 21 1970

In 1973 the Congress passed a temporary bill that would allow home games to be shown if  it  was sold out 72 hours before a home game. The league had blacked out all Super Bowl games starting in 1967 at the site of each Super Bowl. This led to lawsuits in Miami over the blackout rules. The law expired in December 1975 but the NFL kept the 72 hour blackout rule in effect.