Cable television systems across the country, wielding their new power to pick and choose the programs they carry, are dropping public television stations or switching them to less desirable positions on the cable dial.

For another, he knew that the prime audience for a new late-night entry would be young men, who tend to stay up late, often drifting all around the cable dial.

I began surfing channels and discovered a few new stations, what I now call the 700 club, because they are where heaven resides on the cable dial.

As the audience fragments across the cable dial, the networks are unlikely to be able to bring in much more advertising money from sports events.

The ever-expanding cable dial is allowing "Harsh Realm" to live on after its network death.

That combination could prove lethal not only for independent producers but for smaller cable channels struggling to hang on to an appealing spot on the crowded cable dial.

The movie will grip those fascinated by the restaurant business, like myself, and those who merely drift by the Food Network on the way to MoreMax or Speedvision on the cable dial.

In those systems, which typically brought in up to a dozen stations to the viewer from across the region, 12 slots on a cable dial would often leave a few vacancies.

By the end, the narration verges toward preachy, when the program could have gone on to explain how the verdict inspired today's overtly pro-prosecutorial coverage of splashy trials all over the cable dial.

I tell myself that there's a silver lining: if the show tanks, at least it will be on a quiet corner of the cable dial, so I can learn from the mistakes and do better the next time.