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If Flinn wondered about what the Tulsa team was up to while he held down the fort in Greenwich, he erred on the side of letting Bliss experiment-aslong as the price tag didn't get out of hand. Bliss, after all, was turning in results that only added to United Video's bottom line. Not long after getting the WGN service launched, the company's Tulsa-based engineers began looking for ways to make use of the untapped sideband that came with the transponder slot. "We were getting a free ride essentially, so we started carrying things on the subcanier," explains Bliss. 'We jammed a lot of things on that transponder, without degrading the video at all."
Over the next few years, United Video's team developed, among other things, a weather serv- ice and several satellite music networks-all of which were eventually sold at tidy profits. The most lucrative innovation, however, came in 1981, in the form of an idea that Bliss cheerfully confesses he"stole": an electronic version of TV Guide.
'We bumped into a guy in Michigan who was doing it on a very small scale through the phone lines," explains Bliss. "Scripps Howard was doing it too, but they were using a paging format, also by telephone, whereas we put it up on the satellite."
The traditional print version of TV Guide magazine worked fine when there were only three major broadcasters and a handful of cable channels," says Peter Boylan. "But as more and more channels were launched, there had to be a better way to help consumers figure out what's worth watching."
United Video's engineers worked out a virtually fool-proof method for sending programming information via satellite to subscribing cable systems. The data was transmitted three times in close sequence, and if any of the three transmissions did not "take," the cable system would call up and have United Video send it all again.
The business got off to "a slow start," says Bliss, but in the end "the EPG, or electronic program guide, was probably our biggest, best business. Today, under Gemstar, it serves more than 60 million homes."
While the company's wizards continued to fine-tune the EPG (renamed Prevue Guide in 1988) during the 1980s and into the 1990s, Flinn kept a sharp eye out for competition. He picked off a small rival, TV Decisions, and merged it with Prevue Guide. Scripps Howard gave up after being "out-marketed" by Flinn's group and was also absorbed.

JoeTheDragon wrote:Did the Chicago area systems use the phone line system that was in use in Michigan?

wgn america was never on any Chicago area system. Also cable was on in a few area in 1981-1985 (not in the city of Chicago) But in areas out side of it.

Before the 1985-1986? preview guide C-band started.

JoeTheDragon wrote:I just read the article and seen the talk about the phone line system that I did not say anything about in the older post.