As radio profits declined with the advent of television, broadcasters resurrected an idea rarely heard since the beginning of air transmission: pay radio. Pay radio proposed an end to advertiser support for broadcasting. In place of ad revenues, pay-radio programmers would charge subscribers five cents a day (eighteen dollars a year) for broadcasts (scrambled to nonsubscribers) uninterrupted by advertisements. Many proponents of pay television proposed a similar scheme. The advertising industry was naturally opposed to the concept and by 1948 had killed it. Nevertheless, the principles of pay radio and pay television would return in the 1970s with the rise of public radio and cable television. (VHF) wavelengths. Most American television receivers carried the VHF signal, and commercial broadcasters wanted the FCC to reserve VHF channels for their transmissions. Educational programming was thus shunted to the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) wavelengths, effectively blocking its development.

Precedent for the Future.