00:07 - Martin Brophy is the former president

00:10 - and CEO of Shen-Heights TV, which served Shenandoah

00:14 - and the surrounding area.

00:16 - Can you tell us how that company came into existence?

00:19 - Well, in 1950,

00:20 - my father started channel TV along with Albertson's service

00:25 - and they realized the need for television

00:29 - in the Valley of Shadow

00:31 - because it sat between the mountains

00:32 - and you couldn't get TV reception via antenna.

00:35 - But of course, at that time there were only three

00:37 - basic channels from Philadelphia to Wilkes-Barre.

00:40 - Scranton stations were not up and running yet.

00:43 - So my father and my godfather

00:49 - got the idea to erect the tower and run a cable

00:52 - down to downtown, and they ran it to a bar

00:56 - in downtown channel as an experiment

00:58 - to see if it was going to work. And it did.

01:01 - And the rest is history.

01:03 - Nowadays, we can take excellent reception on TV for granted,

01:06 - but in those days that wasn't the case.

01:07 - So try to let our viewers relate to

01:10 - what the conditions were in those days

01:12 - and why it helped to put the antenna on top of the mountain.

01:15 - Well, in those days, people had antennas on top of their houses

01:20 - and they would have like what they would call a rotor

01:22 - that they could from the top of their television

01:24 - set, maneuver the antenna around

01:27 - to see what kind of signal they could pick up off air,

01:30 - which there weren't very many signals available at that time.

01:34 - And when my father started,

01:35 - we only got three from Philadelphia, NBC, CBS

01:38 - and ABC, and then Wilkes-Barre Scranton got involved.

01:42 - And then you got NBC, CBS and ABC

01:45 - from Wilkes-Barre on a really foggy night.

01:48 - You might be able to get

01:49 - Binghamton, New York, if you were really lucky.

01:52 - Now, when the company started in the 1950s,

01:55 - where was your dad in his life at that point?

01:58 - Oh, he was

02:01 - probably midlife

02:03 - in his forties and,

02:06 - you know, his late, late thirties, I guess, because he

02:08 - what had he been doing for a living?

02:09 - He well, he came out of the war, came out of the World War Two

02:12 - and he was starting

02:14 - was really started into veterans organizations.

02:17 - He was organizing a lot of veterans organizations.

02:20 - He started the vets, American Vets of.

02:23 - Post number one was impossible

02:25 - in post number seven was in shadow

02:27 - and he worked on basically statewide organizing a lot of

02:31 - and post in different regions

02:33 - for people who came out of the service.

02:35 - So you said your dad and your godfather got together

02:38 - and what were the forces that brought those two together

02:41 - for this business venture?

02:42 - And it seems like a lot of business

02:44 - ventures, especially an innovative one,

02:46 - there could be some risk involved.

02:47 - Tell us about that.

02:48 - My godfather was a Yankee fan and there was no way

02:52 - to get Yankee baseball off an antenna. So

02:57 - that's what hatched my father and him trying to figure out

03:00 - how they could get baseball down to the general public.

03:04 - And sometimes it was successful, sometimes it wasn't.

03:08 - But eventually, you know, over time, it all worked out.

03:12 - So that was his main motivation was to get those Yankee game.

03:15 - It's exactly true that at that time the Phillies

03:18 - Phillies games were not being televised.

03:20 - You know, that readily like the Yankees games were.

03:23 - And everybody was a Yankees fan at that time.

03:26 - And I basically was a Yankees fan in the beginning until now.

03:30 - I'm now the diehard Philly fan,

03:32 - but that's that's the way it went.

03:34 - So tell us about all the work that was involved.

03:37 - I mean, obviously, it takes some time

03:38 - to put a tower on top of the mountain

03:40 - and then you got

03:41 - to run that tower to the homes in order to give them cable TV.

03:45 - Talk about the labor that's involved.

03:47 - And of course, the cost.

03:49 - Cost was the big factor because for them

03:52 - to get started, don't forget, this is in the fifties.

03:55 - Money was not exactly what you would call free flowing.

03:58 - And nobody, no banks or anybody

04:00 - wanted to lend them money because it was a new industry.

04:03 - They didn't know what to do,

04:05 - you know what the pitfalls were of it.

04:07 - So they had to go to relatives and friends and as did Albert,

04:11 - had to go to relatives and friends

04:13 - and ask them for monetary assistance, which they got.

04:16 - And through that, they were able to erect a tower,

04:21 - they were able to purchase land, and the cemetery

04:25 - basically leased it for a while, erect the tower

04:29 - and they found a television

04:33 - sales repairman and salesman.

04:35 - Quote unquote,

04:37 - who became their engineer and helped them to formulate

04:42 - the business, which

04:45 - at the time we used to call it a shack.

04:48 - But it's the antenna site for the truly was just a shack

04:53 - where you would walk in

04:54 - and all the amplification equipment was in it.

04:57 - But my father, like at night would go up,

05:01 - switch it over to the New York channels and back to regular

05:04 - channels, you know, when there was a game

05:06 - on or something like that, if they could pull it in

05:09 - and it was, you know, that was my first hands on experience.

05:12 - I used to go up the tower with them and do it.

05:14 - So what kind of excitement was created

05:16 - by putting that tower up in the mountain?

05:18 - In other words, could people at the base of that mountain

05:20 - look up and see that tower and say,

05:22 - That's going to give us good television reception?

05:24 - Oh, yeah, all the time.

05:25 - Every time it was a tower,

05:27 - the people towered over everything

05:29 - because it was the highest point on how big a tower was.

05:33 - It roughly was only about 75 feet high.

05:35 - It does sound relatively short.

05:37 - Yeah.

05:38 - So the mountain does most of the work right today.

05:40 - You know where you have to be above

05:42 - on the top of the mountain.

05:43 - So the distance

05:44 - for the tower to be built doesn't have to be that high.

05:47 - And it was like an structure

05:50 - not not a straight tower like you see today.

05:52 - It was just a structure. And

05:56 - it provided them with the

05:58 - flexibility to mount multiple antennas,

06:02 - thereby arm them in different directions

06:05 - for different stations as they came, as they became available

06:08 - for one.

06:09 - When we in the mid late fifties,

06:12 - we branched out to WGA of Lancaster.

06:15 - That was an NBC station, and they did everything

06:19 - they could to help us out in perks

06:21 - and things like that, to offer to customers, to sign up,

06:24 - you know, like ashtrays and things like,

06:26 - you know, tchotchkes that they usually show up.

06:29 - And I remember the ashtray

06:31 - with a kind of stow the wagon on it, right.

06:33 - And those things they used to hand out and

06:36 - that's how we started.

06:37 - We started with three channels with the five, 10 to 12,

06:41 - and then we eventually went to 26

06:45 - and then now it's like hundreds.

06:49 - How long did it take to put

06:50 - this whole system in place then before people could

06:53 - enjoy the benefits of it and get five channels,

06:56 - which again by today's standards isn't a big deal.

06:58 - But back then that must have been special by the first.

07:03 - When they first started this to get the first

07:08 - 50 customers

07:10 - took about a year and a half

07:13 - and then it just expanded.

07:15 - After that,

07:16 - they can only, you know, like I said, money was tight back then

07:20 - and you could only do so much as as is the money you had.

07:23 - So that's how they expanded as they got the

07:26 - they got the finances available.

07:28 - Then they kept going, expanding, expanding.

07:32 - Then customers need to be persuaded to take the plunge.

07:34 - Or maybe some of them were saying, it's about time.

07:36 - I'm ready to pay money for this service.

07:38 - Well, most of them said it's about time

07:40 - we'll pay for the service because they they really had no

07:43 - you know,

07:43 - you don't want to put a 75 foot tower on top of your house.

07:47 - So this way and not only that, when you had wind,

07:50 - rain, snow, hail, sleet, whatever, coming down

07:53 - and blocking your reception on your house antenna,

07:57 - you didn't want that.

07:58 - So we took the brunt of that.

08:00 - We had we you know, took care not to get our antennas,

08:04 - my stuff for things like that.

08:06 - But it was a learning curve, you know,

08:08 - like anything else when started out.

08:10 - Yeah.

08:10 - What were some of the lessons or the obstacles

08:12 - maybe you didn't anticipate in the early days?

08:14 - Well,

08:15 - what you didn't

08:15 - anticipate in the early days

08:16 - is the re amplification of the signal.

08:19 - You can only go so far before it out of the re amplified.

08:23 - Well, in the early days

08:24 - you're serving the surrounding community anyway,

08:26 - but it was still an issue to have more power.

08:28 - Right. Right.

08:29 - And you'd using all tubes.

08:31 - Don't forget, you're not using like

08:32 - transistors or anything like that.

08:34 - So tubes burn out.

08:36 - So you had to go replace the tubes and then the location

08:40 - of these amplifiers, so-called amplifiers, were

08:44 - at times in people's homes.

08:46 - They were in their basements.

08:48 - So for reciprocation purposes, you would give them free,

08:53 - free TV for the right to use their basement.

08:57 - Oh, I see.

08:58 - So that amplifier could help

08:59 - get cable TV to several other houses.

09:02 - And then you gave them a break, right?

09:04 - Yeah.

09:05 - Now, tell us more about the physical network involved here.

09:08 - You said the tower was on top of

09:09 - Mt., was only 75 feet, which came as a surprise to me.

09:12 - How much cable did you have to run Kovacs Cable?

09:16 - I mean, we all became so familiar with what a Kovacs

09:19 - Cable was, and, well, a Kovacs cable then was not Kovacs Cable.

09:24 - Now, what was the difference?

09:25 - It was, did my father

09:27 - realize what the cable was when he was in the service?

09:29 - Because he used to climb poles and things like that

09:32 - in the service,

09:33 - and it was like Army surplus cable that they were using it.

09:37 - We had a copper jacket and

09:40 - didn't have the Styrofoam center that it has,

09:43 - but it had a copper wire in the center,

09:45 - which was the conductor for the signal right.

09:49 - And, you know, you today you can go with fiber.

09:51 - You can go miles with fiber.

09:53 - Well, then you couldn't you can only go like

09:56 - maybe 1500

09:57 - feet and you'd have to re amplify it.

10:00 - So the physical restraints

10:03 - were really something else.

10:06 - Now, the first day

10:09 - the community was able to get five channels

10:11 - and that's what you were able to go to right away. Right.

10:13 - And what kind of feedback did you get from the cable?

10:16 - I mean, again, maybe it's hard to relate to today,

10:19 - but that must have generated some excitement in those days.

10:22 - So what are you hearing from your customers?

10:24 - And they were

10:24 - there were some complaints, too, more than enough complaints

10:29 - over time that start there that it wasn't a pure science.

10:34 - But yeah, of a lot of

10:37 - the first customer that they had was Albert's Bar for naturally

10:42 - they rang Albert's bar to make sure it worked.

10:44 - Public Place Yeah.

10:45 - And everybody seemed to like it.

10:47 - But then as you branch it out into individual homes,

10:50 - it was like,

10:51 - Well, maybe this is not going to be

10:53 - so hot in only three channels, you know, till you offered more,

10:57 - you know, right?

10:58 - Then the acceptance became greater.

11:01 - So at first at least, you had excellent reception

11:03 - on three channels, which was an improvement.

11:06 - And I'm sure there's plenty of

11:09 - viewers that never had to deal with an antenna on their house

11:12 - or the attendant problems that came with that.

11:16 - I mean, there's all kind of jokes

11:17 - about adjusting rabbit ears on TV and

11:19 - and like you said, there was a mechanism

11:21 - that could turn the antenna

11:22 - that was mounted on the chimney, perhaps.

11:24 - You know, we had

11:25 - this was a whole different environment, right?

11:27 - We had a slogan in it for our 50th anniversary.

11:30 - We had from rabbit ears the digital years,

11:33 - you know, and that's how far we went

11:35 - because it was from rabbit ears,

11:36 - literally, to a digital format, which is today what we what

11:41 - we now use. Mm hmm.

11:43 - But back then it was 75 years ago, it was really different.

11:48 - Now, you were talking earlier

11:49 - about getting the funding for a project like this,

11:53 - and it does involve innovation and taking a risk.

11:55 - Obviously,

11:56 - you said some of the funding came from private sources.

11:59 - It sounds like not much came from the but

12:01 - how much funding came from banks?

12:03 - Were they willing to take a chance on cable TV?

12:06 - In the beginning, no.

12:07 - A lot of it came from private sources

12:10 - and as as they expanded the system

12:13 - and the amount of money that they charge for hookups

12:16 - and things like that

12:17 - generated the revenue

12:19 - that they would they could build the system out further.

12:22 - But then eventually banks took a chance.

12:25 - But, you know, it was pretty tight,

12:29 - you know, how how they would get funds. But

12:33 - the banks

12:33 - eventually came around and they saw the light.

12:37 - Now, tell me more about your dad.

12:39 - Around the inception of this company,

12:41 - you said he was a veteran. He had been in the Army.

12:44 - So did he know that he was going to this was going to determine

12:48 - how his life was going to go

12:50 - for the immediate future, that he was all in on this.

12:52 - Oh, yes.

12:53 - Project.

12:54 - Oh, he was he was definitely all in on it.

12:56 - When he and Albert got together on it, they

12:59 - they decided that this was going to be the thing.

13:02 - Was, Albert, a Yankees fan, too?

13:03 - I know your dad wanted to see those Yankee games.

13:05 - Albert was a great Yankee fan.

13:07 - He was he knew a lot of umpires at the time and a lot of Yankee

13:11 - players because he used to go to New York, to the games, and

13:17 - he was a bartender at the bar that he had.

13:20 - And a lot of people would always talk

13:22 - about the Yankees, the Yankees, and we couldn't get them.

13:25 - So that that's what precipitated this whole deal.

13:28 - Marty, what did expanding your bandwidth do for your service

13:32 - by the expansion of the bandwidth

13:34 - allowed us to offer more, more channels.

13:36 - And it opened the door for digital and Internet,

13:40 - which today is where everything is at the Internet.

13:44 - You know, it just broadened the pipeline

13:45 - that goes to the consumer and it gives the consumer

13:49 - much more opportunities to enjoy, more, more services.

13:54 - So when you took over in the late sixties

13:56 - about how big a company was it?

13:57 - How much had it grown since your dad?

14:00 - Early days in the 1950s?

14:02 - Well, in the 1950s, they had maybe like a

14:06 - couple of hundred customers

14:07 - at the time, and it gradually got up to like three or 4000

14:12 - over time.

14:13 - And when my father

14:14 - passed away in 65, I think we had 4200 customers.

14:18 - And when we sold the business in 2013,

14:22 - there was 3900.

14:25 - Well, that sounds ambitious. All right.

14:26 - Growing from hundreds to thousands.

14:29 - And then you got to make updates to the equipment

14:31 - in order to accommodate all these people, right?

14:33 - Well, that that's true. That was the thing.

14:34 - We always kept advancing with the technology.

14:37 - We didn't let the technology advance over top of this.

14:41 - We try to keep in step

14:42 - with what's going on of the latest innovations,

14:46 - because if you don't, you'd get lost in the weeds.

14:49 - Now, when you were president

14:50 - and CEO, just how big was the company

14:52 - as far as the office was concerned?

14:54 - How many people were working there?

14:55 - We had nine people.

14:58 - We had four.

14:59 - It sounds relatively small given

15:01 - that you were serving thousands of homes.

15:03 - That was only nine people.

15:04 - We had four road crew and

15:09 - five three office personnel

15:11 - and myself and another manager.

15:15 - Now, what about programing itself

15:18 - as far as the late 1960s was concerned?

15:20 - How much had it changed again

15:22 - from your dad's day in the early fifties? Well,

15:24 - in the early fifties, programing was accessible anyway.

15:28 - You can get it.

15:29 - But as time went on,

15:31 - then everybody had to start paying for programing.

15:33 - I mean, what was the programing, Marty?

15:35 - What were people watching in the fifties

15:37 - and how it had changed by the sixties?

15:39 - Well, basically in the fifties they watched NBC, CBS and ABC.

15:43 - That's all you had.

15:44 - Then all of a sudden you had public broadcast television.

15:48 - And then in in the sixties, we had seen,

15:52 - you know, which was the public education station at that time,

15:56 - which was a great demand because a lot of people wanted that.

16:00 - And then when we went to satellite,

16:02 - then you could get like arts and entertainment

16:04 - and Bravo and things like that.

16:07 - John was just

16:08 - expanded over because the bandwidth expansion

16:12 - and the availability of programing,

16:15 - but along with that availability came a cost

16:18 - which naturally had increased the price

16:20 - that you charge the consumer, which the consumer didn't like.

16:23 - But what were you going to do? Huh?

16:25 - So it's interesting to consider that the foundation

16:28 - that was laid back in the 1950s for cable TV, you said

16:32 - the bandwidth was expanded, so that allowed for the Internet.

16:35 - So you were kind of preparing for the future

16:38 - back in those days, correct?

16:40 - That's exactly what we did.

16:41 - We didn't want to just sit back on our laurels.

16:44 - We wanted to move forward with,

16:45 - you know, the latest technology.

16:47 - Because when we launched our digital program,

16:51 - we had a nice little program set up in a restaurant

16:54 - where we brought in a digital big screen TV, and we

16:59 - showcased our

17:00 - new advanced digital platform that we were about to launch.

17:04 - And we had all the

17:08 - township supervisors, the borough council people,

17:10 - all the important people there too,

17:12 - to let them know what we were about to do

17:15 - before we did it because we just didn't want to roll it out.

17:18 - Nobody know what it was this way.

17:19 - If any of the customers or

17:22 - their constituents ask them what's going on,

17:24 - they would already have known what to expect.

17:28 - Now, as far as expecting innovations in the future,

17:31 - we didn't know what the public didn't know

17:33 - what the Internet was going to look like back in the 1960s.

17:36 - And yet somehow you were laying down the foundation for this.

17:39 - Well, it seems like a big unknown.

17:42 - It was, you know, like technology move.

17:45 - So fast, it moves terribly fast.

17:47 - And the problem with it is it's capital intensive.

17:52 - And for a small cable operator, it's really hard,

17:55 - really hard to do that.

17:57 - I mean, you have to make certain adjustments.

17:59 - You have to adjust your billing system.

18:01 - You have to adjust your your expertize, all kinds of things.

18:06 - And tell us about the rest of your family.

18:09 - When you took over the company in the 1960s,

18:12 - what was in your family and what was everybody doing?

18:14 - And did you know that you would

18:16 - eventually settle into cable like your dad did?

18:19 - I didn't know that because

18:20 - when I was going to school, I was going

18:22 - to college to be a teacher.

18:25 - But then I wound up in the army and that didn't work out.

18:29 - But I have three brothers and all three of

18:35 - all of my brothers were involved in the business with me.

18:37 - My one brother was my engineer,

18:39 - general was my construction manager, and

18:42 - we had, like

18:44 - I said, the road crew that we had and

18:48 - the office personnel were very good.

18:51 - Interesting story.

18:52 - I don't know if you've ever heard of Mrs.

18:53 - T's pierogies I have in Shenandoah.

18:56 - Right. Well, Mr.

18:58 - T was married to a gal named Jean,

19:02 - and she used to work for my father.

19:05 - She left Shanghai when she married Mr. T.

19:11 - And we've become we've become very close. Mr.

19:13 - T not to be confused with the guy on TV in the 1980s

19:16 - say exactly right.

19:17 - And unfortunately, they both passed away just now,

19:21 - not too long ago,

19:22 - but they were very good

19:23 - friends of the family and you know, of Shan Heights.

19:28 - We used to go to school.

19:29 - We needed a lot

19:31 - of I used to be short a nickel to get on the bus to go home.

19:35 - We'd stop at the office in Jean Nickels to get off the bus.

19:38 - It's those kind of things that you always remember, like,

19:45 - sure, when I was written up in cable magazine,

19:49 - Cable Facts magazine, the reporter asked me,

19:53 - What's your worst experience?

19:56 - And I said to him, I said, Well,

19:58 - I've always dreaded the super Bowl

20:01 - and things like that, because you never want

20:04 - to have an outage during a Super Bowl

20:06 - pressure is to deliver that Super Bowl, right?

20:08 - Well, the one year I forget the year,

20:10 - but it was Baltimore was playing in the Super Bowl

20:13 - and it was the beginning of the third quarter.

20:17 - And all of a sudden, nothing but snow on the television set.

20:22 - My heart dropped and I thought, Oh God, what happened?

20:27 - So I immediately ran out of the house

20:29 - and I was

20:29 - getting in my car to go to the antenna site

20:31 - because I wanted to see what happened.

20:33 - And I could hear my neighbor yelling, You better get

20:37 - this back on. Brophy

20:40 - As you were dashing to your car, Stassi hit a car.

20:43 - That is funny.

20:44 - Unfortunately, it was just an outage of a power supply.

20:48 - So we managed to get it fixed rather rapidly.

20:51 - So it was your equipment,

20:52 - but I bet you were hoping it was not on your end.

20:55 - Right. And I was hoping you was there.

20:57 - Exactly.

20:59 - But, you know, you do a lot of things

21:02 - like the weather conditions and everything like that.

21:03 - That day was really, really cold.

21:06 - So, you know, the weather has an effect on it

21:09 - or come to think of it,

21:10 - did the weather have any effect on that tower

21:12 - that was on top of the mountain we've talked

21:14 - about a couple of times?

21:15 - It did.

21:16 - Sometimes if you'd have a heavy snow,

21:18 - you'd have to make sure that,

21:19 - you know, the antennas didn't ice up on you.

21:22 - So somebody had to go, how do you d

21:24 - I said, if the thing is 75 feet high,

21:26 - you climb up and knock the ice off,

21:29 - you can't

21:30 - blowtorch it off and you can't put one of the nine employees

21:33 - gets to climb in that tower. Yeah.

21:36 - So it must have been pleasant to have your family involved

21:40 - in the business here.

21:41 - So talk about that whole dynamic and how it made it

21:43 - maybe nicer and maybe cozier

21:46 - with your family working on the same thing.

21:47 - It was a truly unique family experience.

21:50 - You know, all families get along really well,

21:54 - you know?

21:56 - So it's tough, too

21:58 - tough to do because you never leave work.

22:01 - It's it's always taken it home.

22:02 - Always take it home with you wherever you go.

22:05 - And like

22:05 - we from a small community, everybody knows you

22:08 - wherever you go, right?

22:10 - I mean, you can't walk down Main Street without people

22:12 - saying, hello, hello, how are you?

22:14 - What are you going to fix it exactly?

22:16 - Like your dad was yelling at you to fix the Super Bowl, right?

22:19 - Exactly.

22:21 - And as far as the future is concerned,

22:25 - are there things you look back to back in the 1950s or rather

22:30 - when you took over in the 1960s

22:32 - that you could have done differently?

22:34 - Is there anything that you could have fixed along the way?

22:38 - It's easy to have a 2020 rear vision.

22:41 - Of course,

22:41 - they probably are a lot of things I wish,

22:43 - but if I had to do it over again.

22:45 - But you know, I often think about that

22:47 - if you change something,

22:49 - go back and change something to alters everything

22:51 - going forward. Yes.

22:53 - So it sounds like the plot of a movie. Yeah. Yeah.

22:55 - I mean, I don't know if I would

22:58 - I probably would want to

22:59 - change a couple of things, but I don't know if I would.

23:02 - Yeah.

23:02 - It's interesting to contemplate what you said

23:04 - a minute ago, that you take the work home with you.

23:06 - Certainly when you get home, you turn on the TV, that's you.

23:10 - So you're kind of constantly monitoring your progress

23:12 - and you write constantly and like,

23:15 - I have a habit to this day

23:18 - checking all the channels out.

23:20 - I mean, I don't know why, but I do it.

23:22 - I just the instinct, you know,

23:24 - you want to make sure they're all on the air

23:26 - because if you go through and you're missing one or two

23:29 - when and a why they're not there,

23:31 - you're going to pick up the phone and call somebody and say,

23:33 - you know, Fox News isn't on now or

23:37 - something else isn't on.

23:39 - Yeah, well, how about why?

23:40 - Why is it the station's fault?

23:42 - Is it our fault

23:43 - or is it something in between us and the station?

23:46 - You know, it's like your own policeman.

23:50 - So what did you personally get out of the 40 some years

23:53 - you spent as the president, CEO of a Shanghai TV?

23:58 - Was it fun for you? It was it was fun.

24:01 - It got

24:02 - it got to the end where it wasn't fun.

24:05 - It got to be really labor awesome.

24:09 - In the beginning, it was it was fun.

24:10 - I met a lot of really nice people.

24:13 - I made a lot of good friends.

24:14 - That's what I miss the most in the industry.

24:16 - The camaraderie with all the all the people.

24:19 - I mean, I still stay in touch

24:21 - with a lot of them, like Joe Ganz and others.

24:24 - But I mean,

24:27 - I've learned an awful lot from from the Ganz

24:29 - family, from a lot of people who've gone before.

24:32 - And I watched a lot of people try different things.

24:36 - And if it worked for them, then we would do it.

24:39 - It didn't work. We'd stay away from it.

24:41 - You know, I figure I'm not going to be the guinea pig.

24:43 - I'll let somebody else be the guinea pig and see if it works.

24:46 - If it works, then okay.

24:48 - If it doesn't, we'll try something different.

24:50 - So new cable pioneers get together

24:52 - and have some conversation.

24:54 - What is the subject? Usually turn to?

24:57 - Is it the old days or relating

24:59 - what we have today to what you did in the old days?

25:01 - Well, it's kind of a kind of a mixture.

25:03 - It's kind of like nostalgia at first.

25:07 - And then nostalgia is overtaken by the present

25:10 - as to, you know, what what it is today and how it

25:14 - how it can be either better or worse,

25:16 - you know, the the pitfalls of it and the rewards of it.

25:20 - Martin Brophy, former

25:21 - president and CEO of Shen-Heights TV,

25:24 - thank you very much for your time.

25:26 - Thank you very much. Appreciate it.