1949: A secretary at the Federal Communications Commission sends a letter to cable pioneer Ed Parsons in Astoria, Oregon, asking him to explain his community-antenna television system. It’s the first-known FCC involvement in cable TV.

Parsons was a radio engineer and station owner who’d worked in Alaska, Washington and Oregon. He and his wife saw television demonstrated at a broadcasters’ convention in Chicago in 1947. Mrs. Parsons wanted one of the newfangled gizmos, and Ed bought one when Seattle’s KRSC-TV, Channel 5, announced plans in the spring of 1948 to go on the air.

Parsons had to...