Storyline · 1972–1994
Chapel Hill adopted a cable television ordinance in 1972, and Alert Cable TV began serving Hillsborough in 1974. Carrboro's aldermen first approved an Alert franchise in 1975, but after delays over utility poles and sites refused for its equipment, service there began only in August 1979. That November Chapel Hill gave its franchise to Village Cable, and the county moved toward a cable ordinance and advisory committee of its own. Village Cable began serving Chapel Hill in 1980 and won the franchise for most of rural Orange County, and in the years after the town disputed its rates, its adult channels and its stock gift to its foundation. In 1984 Carrboro gave Alert Cable a 15-year franchise with a ban on obscene programs. In 1985 Chapel Hill let Village Cable raise its rates 10 percent a year, and in 1986 the Village Companies sold it to Carolina Cable. In 1992 Chapel Hill named a cable advisory committee and opened its review of Carolina Cable's franchise, which ran to 1994, with a hearing on residents' complaints. Cablevision took over Chapel Hill's service in 1992; in 1993 and 1994 both towns sought federal authority over its rates while Chapel Hill bargained over a franchise renewal amid residents' complaints.
On October 16, 1972 the Chapel Hill aldermen unanimously adopted an ordinance providing for a cable television franchise to be granted later. Alert Cable TV began serving Hillsborough homes and apartments in 1974, and in 1978 the Daily Tar Heel called Hillsborough the first town in Orange County with cable; Mayor Fred Cates said then that reception had improved but the promised stations from Washington and Charlotte had never been added, and he was pressing the company's new owner, Wometco. On September 9, 1975 the Carrboro aldermen voted 5 to 1 to approve a franchise contract with Alert Cable Television of Miami, subject to the second vote state law required; the company said service could begin by July 1976 at $15 to install and $6 a month, with 3 percent of subscriber revenue going to the town.
Construction of Carrboro's system began on March 6, 1978, a year late because the 1976 sale of the University's utilities had forced new agreements for use of the utility poles, and the company's regional manager expected about 2,000 subscribers the first year. On October 3 the Carrboro Board of Adjustment voted 5 to 4 to deny Alert a 120-foot tower off North Greensboro Street near the Webbwood subdivision, agreeing with neighbors that it would lower property values and endanger children and planes using Horace Williams Airport. On January 11, 1979 the OWASA board voted 7 to 1 against putting the company's antenna on its Carrboro water tower on Old Fayetteville Road, which neighbors had petitioned against, the fourth site Alert had been refused. In late March the Board of Adjustment put off a vote on a satellite earth station on town land on Bim Street after the Appearance Commission recommended denial; the company had already spent $500,000 wiring about 2,000 apartments. A 4 to 3 vote on April 4 fell short of the four-fifths majority the board needed, and on May 2 it approved the site 7 to 1. Alert began serving Carrboro subscribers in early August, starting in the southwest part of town, and had about 125 by late August at $6 a month for basic service; in September it met its Carrboro citizens' advisory committee. On October 15 it began airing a local news show on channel 12 produced, written and directed by students in UNC's radio, television and motion pictures news class, which the Daily Tar Heel called a first for the company.
In Chapel Hill the aldermen voted on October 9, 1978, on Alderman Ed Vickery's motion, to study having the town own and run a cable system instead of franchising a private company, with profits that Vickery said could buy parkland, and named Vickery and Robert Epting to a committee. On November 19, 1979 the Town Council unanimously gave final approval to Village Cable of Chapel Hill, owned by the Village Broadcasting Company that also owned WCHL radio, as holder of the town's franchise; a week earlier it had chosen Village with five votes to two each for Cox Cable and Vision Cable. With Alert already stringing service into the county, the Orange County commissioners asked county attorney Geoff Gledhill that October to draft a county cable ordinance, and in November they agreed informally to appoint a Cable TV Citizens Advisory Committee to study a county franchise and to hold off cable expansion into areas next to Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
In February 1980 the Chapel Hill Town Council approved a special use permit for Village Cable to build studios and a 150-foot tower on Weaver Dairy Road north of town. In June the company began connecting homes in Carol Woods, North Forest Hills and Timberlyne to a 35-channel system that its president said might be the first of its size in North Carolina; about 500 homes had service by early July, and the whole town was to be wired by December 1. By September Village had about 1,000 subscribers in Chapel Hill, while Alert served about 3,000 customers in Carrboro and Hillsborough at $6 a month for basic service. On November 3 the county commissioners voted unanimously, on the advice of their Cable TV Advisory Committee chaired by Don Willhoit, to give Village a 15-year, non-exclusive franchise for the unincorporated areas over Alert, which already served part of that territory. After voting on January 26, 1981 to give Village its franchise for nearly all of rural Orange County, the board on February 23 let Alert keep serving the unincorporated areas it already reached but barred it from new lines or connections outside Carrboro and Hillsborough. On April 14 the Carrboro aldermen voted to let Alert carry their regular meetings on its local access channel, ACTV 11.
Early in January 1982, when the Chapel Hill franchise's two-year hold on the original rates ended, Village raised the monthly charges for five of its nine services, by as much as $7.05 a month in all, for about 4,700 subscribers in Chapel Hill and 860 in the rest of the county. That month it also began carrying Escapade, a channel of R-rated movies; by mid-February residents had complained to council members that nonsubscribers, children among them, could pick it up, and Village asked the council to release it from keeping channels for University and town government use. On April 26 the council voted unanimously to accept Village's 1979 franchise offer to give 10 percent of its stock to the Village Companies Foundation, a local philanthropy set up under the franchise, ending a dispute over the stock's worth by setting no value; Mayor Joe Nassif read a letter saying the foundation had been offered $100,000 for the stake. On August 17 Village, which had offered its 12-channel basic service free, began charging new basic customers at least $8.50 a month and raised its 17-channel and 35-channel services; Town Attorney Emery Denny Jr. advised the council that the company could set its own rates until a review due between September 1 and November 30, 1983. On August 23 the council voted 8 to 1 to approve, three weeks after the fact, Village's swap of two satellite channels for Cable News Network 2 and the Weather Channel; Bev Kawalec voted no, saying the town should hold to the original franchise.
In June 1983 Village temporarily stopped carrying Escapade, owned and operated by Playboy, after several residents complained. On November 9 the Carrboro aldermen put off Alert's request for a 15-year renewal of its franchise, which the company offered to upgrade from 20 to 35 channels with a local channel, after residents complained of poor service, and asked for detailed proposals and a local studio. On November 14 the Chapel Hill council voted 5 to 3 to give the town two years' authority to regulate Village's rates whenever increases topped 10 percent a year, with Nassif switching his vote after the town attorney warned that a deadlock would leave the matter to the new council; Jim Heavner, owner of Village Productions, said a recent Federal Communications Commission action barred towns from regulating anything but the 12-channel basic service. In December, at the town's request, Superior Court Judge D. Marsh McLelland extended to February 29 an order keeping the foundation from selling its 50,000 shares back to Village; the town said the sale broke an Internal Revenue Service rule on nonprofits dealing with their parent companies.
On January 11, 1984, on complaints by two local subscribers, District Court Judge Patricia Hunt ordered Village and Alert to show ESPN's pay "Season Ticket" ACC basketball games to every ESPN customer; after similar orders across the state, ESPN and Raycom dropped the package on January 17, and in September Superior Court Judge Gordon Battle dismissed a Carrboro subscriber's class action over Alert's blackout of the games. Village dropped the Playboy Channel on February 24, its general manager saying five films offered that month had been X-rated and barely edited, while Alert said it planned to add the channel. On October 8 a citizens' group whose petition carried 1,300 names asked the Chapel Hill council to keep the channel from returning, and the council voted to hold a public hearing on cable pornography. The next day the Carrboro aldermen voted 4 to 2 to approve the first reading of a franchise letting Alert raise rates and grow from 20 to 35 channels, one of them the Playboy Channel, with Alderman Zona Norwood voting no. Alert then withdrew its request to add the channel, and on October 23 the aldermen gave first approval to an ordinance letting the town revoke the franchise if a judge found programming obscene. On November 13, after revising it three times, they unanimously approved a 15-year franchise that extended Alert's contract eight years past 1991: basic rates could rise from $7.50 to $10 a month only after it grew to 35 channels, and it had to reach 54 channels by 1992 and provide equipment for televising town meetings. They also passed an ordinance making it unlawful for the company to show obscene programs.
On October 14, 1985 the Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously allowed Village Cable to raise its rates by 10 percent a year for the next two years without council approval; larger increases were to be studied and approved by the council. On August 30, 1986 the Village Companies of Chapel Hill sold Village Cable to Carolina Cable, a large cable holding company, on condition that it keep to Village Cable's practice of gradual rate changes, so that the Village Companies could put more of its effort into radio. On February 10, 1987 the Carrboro aldermen approved transferring the town's cable franchise from Carolina Cable to Prime Cable Income Partners L.P., after earlier approving a transfer to Prime Venture I, Inc., Carolina Cable's managing general partner; Town Attorney Michael Brough said the change was meant to simplify the company's accounting and bookkeeping.
On January 27, 1992 the Chapel Hill Town Council appointed a new Cable Television Advisory Committee of twelve residents and council member Roosevelt Wilkerson. On February 3 the council began its review of Carolina Cable, whose 15-year franchise ran to December 1994, with a public hearing at which residents told the council and the committee of slow service, old equipment and descrambler boxes that disabled the features of cable-ready sets and VCRs.
Cablevision took over Chapel Hill's cable service in May 1992, and in February 1993 company officials admitted that customers who owned their own remote controls had not been told they could drop its $2-a-month remote-control fee. On September 7 the Carrboro aldermen voted unanimously to apply to the Federal Communications Commission for authority under the 1992 Cable Act to regulate the basic rates, equipment charges and customer service of Cablevision Industries, as the Chapel Hill council had recently voted to do for Cablevision of Chapel Hill. At the start of 1994 Cablevision began offering the Playboy Channel in Chapel Hill as a pay-per-view service. At a February 7 hearing most of some 15 speakers opposed the 20-year renewal the company sought along with a $15.3 million fiber-optic upgrade, complaining of outdated equipment and high installation charges, and Robert Joesting, chairman of the town's cable advisory committee, said 20 years was more than was justified. In March the council suspended for 60 days an order for refunds to subscribers while a consultant interpreted new federal rate rules; Town Manager Cal Horton said any overcharge, up to 6 cents a month, came from faulty FCC inflation tables. With renewal talks stalled over the company's converter boxes for basic channels, the council asked the FCC on July 5 whether the town could require some channels without a box, and on August 22 it gave the staff room to negotiate before the franchise expired in December.
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Jim Heavner recounts growing up in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, his student days at UNC and how the Village Companies holding company grew in Chapel Hill. Interviewed by Doug Eyre in 2002; oral history cassette in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Audiovisual Materials Collection, CHHS.012.
Sports broadcaster Woody Durham speaks at a roast in his honor on 25 January 1986, probably in Chapel Hill. Seated beside him is Jim Heavner, at the time head of The Village Company in Chapel Hill. Hugh Morton photograph.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Thomas A. Bowers's history of a century of journalism and mass communication teaching at the University of North Carolina, published by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2009. It runs 282 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Robert E. Seymour's columns for the Chapel Hill News, gathered into a 192-page book by Chapel Hill Press in 2003. The short pieces offer anecdotes and reflections on Chapel Hill history, local manners and customs, and North Carolina life. Seymour (1925 to 2020) was the longtime pastor of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church.
Anniversary booklet for the first twenty-five years of WCHL, the Chapel Hill radio station at 1360 on the AM dial, published in 1978. Topics include radio broadcasting and Chapel Hill history, with advertisements included. 20 unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits.
Anniversary booklet marking fifty years of WCHL 1360, the Chapel Hill radio station, with profiles of fifty people from Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Published in 2003, 36 pages with portraits. Contributors include Roland Giduz, Jim Heavner, Jonathan Howes, Neil Offen and Rosemary Waldorf.
Thomas A. Bowers gave this talk on the beginnings of journalism teaching at the University of North Carolina on October 15, 2009 in Wilson Library, part of the Gladys Hall Coates university history lecture series. It was printed the same year.
Richard Hunter Simpson filmed this seven minute farewell to Howell Hall in 1999. The film concerns the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, its buildings and its history, and the teaching of journalism in Chapel Hill. One videocassette, color with black and white sequences.
Centennial edition of the Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina student newspaper, produced at Chapel Hill in 1993 to mark one hundred years of publication. Jen Pilla is named as centennial edition editor. Topics include the paper's history along with college student newspapers and periodicals in Chapel Hill, which makes the issue a source for the paper's own record.
An illustrated volume, with portraits, published by Village Sports in 1993 to mark forty years of WCHL, Chapel Hill's radio station at 1360 on the dial. Its writers were Jim Heavner, Roland Giduz, Jim Shumaker, Zora Rashkis, Dan Dunlop, George McCall, Lee Pace, Beth Tatum and Larry Stone.
A television news report of three minutes and fifty six seconds by Kenley Jones, broadcast on NBC Nightly News in 1975, on the spelling and grammar test journalism students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had to pass for the major. John Adams, a former dean of the journalism school, is interviewed.
Stuart Willis traces the history of the North Carolina University Magazine, the student periodical published at Chapel Hill since 1844. His article was detached from the magazine itself in 1914 and printed by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Societies, which ran it.
Holland Thompson's history of the North Carolina University Magazine at fifty years, written while he was a student of the class of 1895. It ran in the magazine for March and April 1894 and was issued separately at Chapel Hill by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.
Leaflet on the southern broadcast media history initiative of the Southern Historical and Folklife Collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, printed in 1995. The project concerned the history of broadcasting in the Southern states and the business records that document it. Five pages on one folded sheet with illustrations.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Cable television in Orange County, 1972–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/cable-television-storyline-1972/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
