Cable TV: More Than a Blob

In a burst of self-congratulation Sunday night, no fewer than seven cable channels broadcast the 11th annual ACE Awards, celebrating a stockpot of performances on the home-wired medium.

Later that same evening, HBO, holding many of the 82 ACES, aired “The Blob,” a magnificently vulgar film unsuitable for immature or mature audiences. The contrast is constant: Cable TV is often a superb alternative to commercial television; it is also often dumber than commercial TV.

More than 92 million homes in the United States have television sets. More than half of those households now have a side order of cable--garnish for the couch potatoes. The young medium has earned its bragging rights. Nowhere else is there the no-nonsense news presented by CNN, the workings of government telecast by C-SPAN, the plays on A&E;, the 1940s films on American Movie Classics, the Bunuel film retrospective on BRAVO. Nowhere else on TV is there as much good music or as much drama free of the censor’s gray hand.

So we forgive the hawkers touting jewelry or pork-belly futures. We tolerate the mutants appearing on public access and admit that our worst prurient interest watched half of “The Blob.”

Cable helps make the visual medium an adult community, in the grown-up sense of the term.