Cablevision Of Connecticut Corporation history

The original proposal by Cablevision, in August 1979, called for a basic monthly service charge of $4.50, which is about half the going rate.

By 1980, at about the time the cable industry began receiving significant nationwide attention, Cablevision had 155,000 customers and $14 million of cash flow.

But after the decision, Robert Knickerbocker, a lawyer representing Cablevision, was congratulated by an attorney for another applicant, who said, ''Congratulations, for now.'' Service Would Start in 1982

In 1983 Cablevision began offering the Newsday Channel, a 24-hour news and information channel produced in conjunction with the New York newspaper Newsday.

In 1984 Cablevision moved aggressively to win a cable franchise in Boston.

By 1986 Nobody Beats the Wiz had 11 stores and was doing an estimated $200 million in annual sales.

In 1987 Cablevision bought Adams-Russell Co., a cable TV company based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

In 1988 Gulf & Western outbid Cablevision for the rights to Yankees games.

Cablevision settled with Gulf & Western in 1989, agreeing to offer the Madison Square Garden Network as an option in its service package, priced and promoted equally to its own Sports Channel.

In February 1990 Cablevision announced it would invest $1 billion with three other media companies in Sky Cable, a direct-broadcast satellite service that was to offer up to 108 channels.

In 1991 the Cablevision and NBC partnership agreed to start a sports-news cable channel.

They also agreed to offer the first pay-per-view Olympics coverage of the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona.

Also in 1993 Cablevision paid about $170 million to gain full control of American Movie Classics, which had been 50 percent owned by Liberty Media.

In 1994 Nobody Beats the Wiz began selling personal computers and allied products in order to counter competitors such as Computer City and CompUSA, who were entering the New York market.

Meanwhile, Cablevision bolstered its presence in the New York sports scene through the early 1995 joint purchase, with ITT Corp., of Madison Square Garden from Viacom Inc. for about $1 billion.

Overexpansion Leads to Bankruptcy: 1996-97

In December 1997 Cablevision merged its regional sports channels into Fox Sports Net, gaining a 50 percent stake in a new national sports network, which was launched in partnership with News Corp.'s Fox Sports and TCI's Liberty Media.

A former company executive who apparently chose to remain anonymous despite having nothing bad to impart, told James T. Madore of Newsday in 1998, 'They are good people to work for because they treat you like family.

Three new 'concept' stores designed to better market Cablevision goods and services were due to open in the near future; one of the three, a 25,000-square-foot outlet in Bay Shore, Long Island, was scheduled for completion in November 1999.

West Hartford high school play revisits controversy of altering school’s Native American-themed mascot In a year when cultural sensitivity in sports team names is news across the country, West Hartford’s 2015 debate over its high schools’ mascots will be in the spotlight again.

Hartford Magazine 2020 'Best Of’ readers poll to be published in October