163:, as people who tend to work or attend school during the week are more likely to be at home to watch. As such, free previews originally ran only on Saturdays and Sundays until the early 1990s (although HBO occasionally held single-day free previews during the work week through the late 1970s). Providers and pay services began starting them on Fridays as early as the late 1980s, these three-day events would not become more common until the 1990s. During the mid to late 2000s, free previews for premium channels began to expand to four-day periods (typically from Friday to Monday, although some subscription television providers have even occasionally offered five-day previews starting on Thursdays). In effect, free previews for premium channels are usually scheduled in tandem with the premiere of a new or returning high-profile made-for-cable
293:. With digital cable having become commonplace since the early 2000s, most cable and satellite providers have since eschewed using local origination channels to carry free preview events and no longer produce interstitials for events involving premium channels; instead, providers simply unencrypt the service's signal on the designated channel slots of the main channel and all related
179:. These preview periods can run anywhere between one and five times each year. Although free previews have historically been carried nationally by all pay television service providers (particularly for premium channels), it has become common since the 2000s for preview events to only be made available to an individual provider or a selected number of participating providers.
156:. Television providers typically offer the premium services at discount rates or with extended periods of free service (generally one or three months, before standard pricing applies thereafter) for new subscribers during the preview period, often with installation fees normally incurred for subscribing to the service at any other time waived.
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sports packages and select basic channels available on higher subscription tiers also occasionally offer free previews, sometimes for as long as one to two weeks. In the case of out-of-market sports packages, previews for those services are most commonly held during the first week of a professional
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channels that are carried by the provider as well as in some cases, a related pay service (for example, in the United States, HBO offers free previews either involving only its eight-channel multiplex, or both the HBO channel slate and the seven-channel multiplex of its sister network
Cinemax,
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or a higher-end programming tier by allowing access to a service typically encrypted from viewing by customers who do not subscribe to it during the preview period. Although any subscription television service around the world can hold such an event, free previews most commonly occur with pay
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began offering their TV customers the ability to preview premium channels for a period of 48 hours, whenever they want, using their remote control. The feature, referred to as "Free View" or "Fios Free
Weekends", can be enabled once for each premium network, including HBO, Showtime, Cinemax,
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as subscribers would sample the service for a few weeks, eventually become tired of seeing the same films being repeated over and over, and then ultimately cancel their subscriptions. Realizing the struggles it was facing because of this, HBO partnered with a cable system in
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In recent years, the free preview concept has been restructured due to the migration of premium cable services to digital programming tiers to which many conventional pay television subscribers have upgraded since channel infrastructure upgrades occurred with the advent of
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to the location where the free preview was taking place (for example, Rich
Heritage Inc. – a cable marketing firm and production company founded by Terry Rich, who, until 1998, hosted many of the free previews the company produced for providers such as
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Such events, which typically run anywhere from two days to one month on average, are held mainly to incentivize subscribers into purchasing the service that is being transmitted during the applicable timeframe.
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channels that are available on basic cable tiers accessible to any subscriber. However, some of the more risque content featured on premium networks, such as (with some past exceptions) Cinemax's now-defunct
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This article is about the stunt programming concept employed by pay television services. For other uses of the term known in this context as a "free preview", see
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152:. For commercial-free services, these events may feature appeals to the audience between programs to order the service, usually by phone or the
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to allow subscribers to view the service's programming for free on channel 3. After one month, HBO was moved to channel 6, where it would be
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or collegiate sports league's regular season, with a second free preview window often occurring shortly after a professional league's
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break where the price of the package is halved in the wind-up towards the latter half of the season for playoff positioning.
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Until the early 2000s, television providers and premium services ran hosted interstitials between programs, which featured
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HBO continued the concept an expanded it other cable systems in 1977. Soon, other premium cable services (such as
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block of softcore adult series and films, usually does not air on free preview weekends.
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Programs that air during free preview events of premium channels generally do not
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Free previews are generally used to increase subscribership of a premium channel,
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The Rise of Cable
Programming in the United States: Revolution or Evolution?
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Marc
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The free preview concept was originated in the early 1970s by
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It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era
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70:) at no cost for an extended time period.
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171:(such as a
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586:2018-04-19
352:References
306:services,
226:After Dark
101:churn rate
78:Background
54:provider (
36:"freeview"
426:April 20,
388:April 20,
373:Routledge
318:In 2016,
295:multiplex
254:vacations
204:profanity
184:expurgate
114:scrambled
60:satellite
335:See also
196:violence
154:internet
121:Showtime
106:Lawrence
93:New York
21:Freeview
271:Cinemax
259:Comcast
173:concert
169:special
161:weekend
131:Concept
83:History
38:) is a
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327:, and
250:Sinbad
212:V-chip
200:nudity
150:Canada
506:(PDF)
484:(PDF)
325:Starz
56:cable
518:2020
496:2020
428:2015
415:ISBN
390:2015
377:ISBN
329:Epix
273:and
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