Super TV launches in Washington, D.C. on November 1, 1981


On November 1, 1981, TV wasn't enough anymore. It was time for Super TV. A brand new TV station, WCQR 50, began broadcasting a new kind of television in America: subscription television, which was broadcast over the air, but could only be viewed by paying customers using a descrambler box atop their TV set. HBO was distributed in a similar fashion at the time, a time when many areas of the country did not yet have cable TV service. Super TV promised viewers - and delivered - first-run movies, concerts, live sporting events, and, as the announcer would state with an intentionally leering tone at the end of this laundry list, "late night adult films."

The Super TV story dates back more than 10 years before those scrambled pictures could fly through the air over our nation's capital. Ted Ledbetter, a telecommunications industry veteran, spent the entire 1970s fighting to get WCQR on the air. Ledbetter was a pioneer in subscription television, and an eccentric entrepreneur. He was a Black Tony Stark or Elon Musk of the telecom business, but never received the recognition he deserved. 

By the time the federal government cleared the way for Ledbetter to establish WCQR, he was just in time for the dawn of the subscription television age. Joining with new partners Clint Murchison Jr. and Field Enterprises, Ledbetter was ready to bring Super TV to fruition. Offices were constructed, and transmission rights were obtained on the massive transmission tower at 9th and Peabody Street, NW in Washington, D.C.

Twenty-seven stations across America, including WCQR, formed the new subscription television market as of Super TV's launch, according to a 1982 Federal Register listing. But few had the slick logo, graphics, and polished presentation of Super TV.

Super TV broadcast from 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM on weeknights, and from 5:00 PM until 2:00 AM on weekends. For most of the day, WCQR broadcast the picture from an external, elevated camera that continuously but slowly panned back and forth over the station's nearby urban environs. This was interspersed with promotional messages for Super TV. At 4:00 PM on weekends, the station would air unscrambled programming for an hour prior to the beginning of Super TV's broadcast day at 5:00. These included a gardening program, a public affairs program hosted by Ledbetter himself called "Trools: New Tools and Rules," and dashcam-view video of Ledbetter's car driving in the Virgin Islands.

Once the signal went scrambled, Super TV would typically show at least two first-run movies like Beverly Hills Cop and The Year of Living Dangerously. Weekend Super TV programming often commenced with an animated film for children. Live sports included heavyweight boxing matches, and an exclusive package of Baltimore Orioles games. Short films were shown as needed to fill time between the features, including an inventive Star Wars parody called Hardware Wars. Viewers who paid an extra fee would round out the evening - and early morning - with those "late night adult films."

Those who didn't subscribe were treated to a scrambled picture. An audio loop would alternate Super TV subscription promos with music selections, including "Morning Dance" by Spyro Gyra and "Silence and I" by the Alan Parsons Project.

Super TV would eventually expand to the Baltimore area. There, it found a home on WNUV 54. Elsewhere in the country, services like ONTV and Spectrum would gain similar popularity.

Alas, as hard-wired cable TV advanced across the nation, it became difficult for single-channel pay TV to compete with the "rainbow packages" cable could provide. Super TV began to lose subscribers, and ceased broadcasting on March 31, 1986.

The demise of Super TV and other subscription television operations was probably to be expected. What is surprising, is that Super TV did not continue on as a premium channel on cable television like HBO did. As for Ted Ledbetter, he was last heard from in the 1990s. By that time, he was driving his custom electric vehicles around his large landholding in Texas, and promoting living "off-the-grid."

But on November 1, 1981, Ledbetter wasn't running away from cutting edge technology - he was defining it, with Super TV. Establishing "new tools and rules" for the television consumer. When people claim the garbage-spewing streaming services today constitute "the golden age of television," well, my friends, they don't know Super TV.

Location: Peabody St NW & 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20011, USA

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