SelecTV was an American subscription television service that was formed in 1976 and first began broadcasting in 1978; the service focused entirely on televising movies, and was shut down in 1989.
As with other subscription television systems, SelecTV was transmitted via scrambled signal from a local UHF television station (it later became a satellite service as well). Unlike its competitors, it originally allowed subscribers to pay only for programs "selected" during the month, with the first several minutes free (the decoder box included a phone hook-up to transmit information back to the billing office); it later switched to a flat fee.
History
SelecTV began broadcasting July 23, 1978, on KWHY-TV channel 22 in Los Angeles. By November, SelecTV had signed up 5,000 subscribers. The service expanded to Milwaukee on WCGV channel 24 on June 27, 1980, and it began broadcasting to Philadelphia over WWSG-TV channel 57—a new-to-air station—on June 15, 1981.
In 1981, Burt Harris of Harriscope and SelecTV teamed up to buy KWHY-TV from Coast Television for $5.3 million; SelecTV opted to exercise an option to buy channel 22 after Coast continually opposed the airing of R-rated movies by SelecTV. Late that year, SelecTV's subscriber base peaked at 125,000. In 1983, the service went national via satellite; that same year, SelecTV lost WWSG and its 11,000 Philadelphia subscribers when that station switched to airing PRISM, a regional subscription channel that previously was cable-only.
The Milwaukee system was shut down in July 1984, leaving SelecTV operating over-the-air only in Los Angeles and on a low-power television station in McComb, Mississippi, W36AC, which began broadcasting SelecTV programming in May 1984 but did not air its X-rated movies. After a year of speculation and failure of the first round of talks, SelecTV acquired ONTV's Los Angeles operations in February 1985 from Oak Industries; some sports events were broadcast on the combined service, which had some 215,000 subscribers. Most of those events were simulcast from the then-recently launched regional sports network Prime Ticket. During this time, SelecTV also was a sustaining service for other subscription systems, such as WHT (the former Wometco Home Theater).
In 1986, SelecTV Entertainment Corporation, which was spun off from its parent, SelecTV of California, merged with home video distributor King of Video, who operated Paragon Video Productions to form a new company that provided pay TV, TVRO programming and home video products, and the original owners of STEC would own 70% of the newly combined company, and remained in control.
SelecTV was acquired by Telstar in January 1987. However, Telstar was unable to turn the company around. As 1988 progressed, it entered several entanglements with program suppliers, causing a decline in the quality of the service and causing subscribers to abandon SelecTV. The Mississippi low-power station dropped the service, having never made a profit, and converted to conventional operation as a community-oriented independent.
Continued erosion of the service's subscriber base led KWHY to start preparing a transition to Spanish-language programming during prime time. SelecTV ceased operating over KWHY after more than a decade of operations on March 31, 1989, having reached a deal to conclude the month after going into bankruptcy; one night (Monday, March 20), KWHY did not air SelecTV because the station had not been paid.
After losing KWHY, the company announced its switch to an MMDS microwave system known as "SuperselecTV". This never transpired. Instead, SelecTV yielded on satellite to co-owned Starion Premiere Cinema, which itself folded January 31, 1991.