[bluGill]

cable didn't start ad free. It started because some valley communities couldn't get a signal at all so the put one community antenna on high ground and ran a cable to houses to get normal broadcast tv with ads to each house. a few ad free stations came latter.

[Kye]

I spent a long time thinking CATV on the back mean Cable TV, not Community Antenna TV.

[manarth]

Huh, and I thought it was short for "Conditional Access TV" – i.e. you needed a subscription of some sort.

TIL.