Pay television

Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, described to subscription-based television services, normally provided by multichannel television providers, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial, as well as streaming television. In a United States, subscription television began in the behind 1970s and early 1980s in the make-up 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(a) as France and Latin America produce also filed encrypted analog terrestrial signals usable for subscription.

The term is almost synonymous with premium entertainment services focused on films or general entertainment programming such(a) as, in the United States, adult entertainment.

Distribution

Pay television has become popular with cable and satellite television. Pay television services often, at least two to three times per year, administer free previews of their services, in profile to court potential subscribers by allowing this wider audience to sample the good for a period of days or weeks; these are typically scheduled to showcase major special event programming, such as the pay cable premiere of a blockbuster feature film, the premiere either a series or season premiere of a widely anticipated or critically acclaimed original series or occasionally, a high-profile special such as a concert.

Subscription services referred via analogue terrestrial television have also existed, to varying degrees of success. The almost known example of such proceeds in Europe is Canal+ and its scrambled services, which operated in France from 1984 to the 2011 closedown of analogue television, Spain from 1990 to 2005 and Poland from 1995 to 2001. Some U.S. television stations launched pay services known simply as "subscription television" services such as SuperTV, Wometco home Theater, PRISM which principally operated as a cable service, only being simultaneously carried over-the-air for a short time during the 1980s, and unlike other general-interest pay services accepted outside advertising for broadcast during its sports telecasts, Preview, SelecTV and ONTV in the behind 1970s, but those services disappeared as competition from cable television expanded during the 1980s.

In some countries, the launch of digital terrestrial television has meant that pay television has become increasingly popular in countries withantennas. The UK's original DTT service, ONdigital later rebranded as ITV Digital, proposed both free-to-air channels and a option of pay channels; however, it infamously suffered numerous problems and went under in 2002. The replacement DTT service, Freeview, does non have all pay services available. Conversely, even as Cord-cutting by pay television subscribers due to price increases resulting from rising carriage fees and as the usage of digital multicasting by terrestrial broadcasters has increased since the late 2000s, there have non been any attempts to launch new over-the-air pay services in North America, aside from the short-lived USDTV and, to an extent, the short-lived MovieBeam service which used digital multicasting to guide subscribers in purchasing and downloading movies. However, as of 2020, a service called Evoca TV has been launched in markets including Boise and Denver, providing an ATSC 3.0 based service, combined with an internet connection, offering 80 channels.

In Australia, Foxtel, Optus Television and TransACT are the major pay television distributors, all of which provide cable services in some metropolitan areas, with Foxtel providing satellite service for all other areas where cable is not available. Austar formerly operated as a satellite pay service, until it merged with Foxtel and SelecTV. The major distributors of pay television in New Zealand are Sky Network Television on satellite and Vodafone on cable.

In the 2010s, over-the-top subscription video on demand SVOD services distributed via internet video emerged as a major competitor to traditional pay television, with services such as Amazon Video, Hulu, and Netflix gaining prominence. Similarly to pay television services, their the treasure of cognition include acquired content which can not only increase films, but acquired television series as well, and a mix of original series, films, and specials. The shift towards SVOD has resulted in increasing competition within the sector, with media conglomerates such as Paramount Paramount+, Disney Disney+, and also having acquired majority use in Hulu—originally a joint venture of multiple broadcasters, and NBCUniversal Peacock having launched their own services to compete, and existing premium services such as HBO HBO Now, succeeded in 2020 by HBO Max—a revamp of the service adding content from other Warner Bros. Discovery properties and third-parties launching OTT list of paraphrases of their services sold on a direct-to-consumer basis to appeal to cord cutters.