Early cable tv

[Little_stinker]

When do you consider that Cable tv made its initial foray onto the national scene and what channels were an early presence? Two channels that come to mind are ESPN and the Weather Channel.
I consider the late '70s to be the dawn of cable tv as we have known it as a national presence. I know that cable has been around a long time, but I'm talking about when cable experienced its major initial national growth.

[Dude111]

I have read there was cable TV in the 50s!

I also thought it was the late 70s it started but I guess not!

[Babalu]

I don't know about it being around in the 1950's but I remember cable starting around 1970 in Manhattan because many neighborhoods had lousy TV reception due to the tall buildings. The first cable company I remember is Manhattan Cable, which is long gone.

[stevea]

Early cable TV was Community Antenna TV (CATV), and localized. For instance, a condo complex in the south Florida West Palm area would put up a large antenna and the whole complex would have the option to hook up. Voila, in addition to West Palm stations, you also have the Miami stations. This of course is the simplest form--later additions involved satellite transmissions of farther-away channels, and ultimately networks which did not involve local stations at all.

[GentlemanJim]

I recall getting WGN and TBS right at the very beginning and being disappointed that we didn't get WOR too. Being able to get PBS affiliates in Chicago and Bowling Green seemed noteworthy too, I'm not really sure why they seemed "more exotic" than our own local affiliate. And of course there was HBO

Also, a boat load of local access channels, which seemed barely worth watching, even on their best day. It was explained to me that the local cable franchise operator was required to furnish these slots in accommodation to the local government, as a "sweetener:" in order to get the franchise....so it appeared to be a "big brother, if that day ever comes" type arrangement, while allowing local screwballs and goofs to play with the equipment in the mean time.

Had to be late 70s because I was still in school. But for some strange reason I believed that the USA network as well as AMC had always been a part of the package, but I see in researching them that neither existed prior to 1980.. So I must have formed a convenient memory, upon "discovering" them later, believing in error that they had always been there.

Sportswise, I've always been a "homer", and our local broadcast affiliates had good carriage of the teams that I cared about, so ESPN appeared to be more of a curiosity to me, than anything of value. I guess if one was a Yankees fan living in Columbus or Louisville, then ESPN made a lot of sense?

Over the years since, my cable patronage has gone through stints, I'll spend 8-10 years watching, and then 5 (or so) off, claiming to be sick of paying a subscription fee to watch commercials.

Then. something will happen to draw me back in. rinse, lather, repeat, etc.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Babalu

I don't know about it being around in the 1950's...

Ya they talk about it here buddy in this thread

www.dslreports.com/forum/r33586560

[Yong Fang]

My family got cable when we moved into our new house in 1982. This was forty years ago, and I am somewhat vague about what was on it. MTV was a big thing since it began in 1981, and I was a teenager then so it was a big hit, especially with teenagers and young people. It had "VJs " who became stars in their own right. I remember a "Downtown Julie Brown". There was also a black guy co-hosting who I forgot his name. MTV launched many music careers in the 1980's, and we could actually see our musical stars really for the first time outside of a stray Saturday Night Live or variety show.

CNN was basically a news person at a desk reporting the "top stories", there were not any personalities then and no one had their own show, it was basically the national news 24 hours a day instead of waiting until 6:00 to get it from a broadcast network. Sometimes my parents would have it on as background noise and if nothing Earth shaking would happen would just basically repeat what they said before, I dont know if it was live or a tape. Maybe the CNN director went, "Well, the President is alive, there is no disasters and the Russians aren't invading, let's just tape a half hour, play it on a loop and let Ted go home for the night."

I remember USA Network, which had a really cool show late at night, usually on the weekends called "Night Flight" which showed advante garde stuff, stuff like cult movies and whatnot. There is very little of it now on Youtube. Then there was TBS, which back then was just a UHF like channel which showed reruns of old shows like The Brady Bunch and whatnot, with Atlanta Braves baseball. Seems there were a couple of channels like that, showing old reruns of 1950's-1970's shows. No one then outside of the networks was remotely making their own TV shows.

HBO and Cinemax were on then for an extra fee, but my parents didnt want to pay the extra. HBO actually used to show Hollywood movies, hence their name. It was sort of cool because it was the first time on our home television we could hear the f-word, the s-word and some butts and breasts (as a teenage boy). It was also refreshing to be able to see a movie without the censorship. Cinemax back then especially at night had fairly near NC-17 films on, we kids used to call it "Skinamax".

Back then, at least with me and us, the major three broadcast network channels reigned supreme and the various cable channels was something of a backup if there was nothing on the networks, or maybe we find an old movie or The Night Flight show. VCRs were becoming a thing, so we could tape our shows and before Blockbuster, there were independent local places that rented tapes, including pornos if we were of age.

But back in the 1980's, cable wasnt a big thing looking back, it was just a supplement of the broadcast networks, but looking back on it and especially MTV, it was fairly revolutionary. Looking back on it, it was like the Stone Age.

[TSMIV]

I'm pretty sure we got it in 1983. We got WGN, WTBS, and a similar channel from Dallas/Fort Worth (the call letters were something like KTVT), MTV, USA, and Nickelodeon. I was 6 that year so I watched a lot of Nickelodeon! We got around 30 channels which was a big step up from the 4 or 5 we were getting OTA. We even had HBO free for quite a while.

[Chocolate Moose]

I remember when cable didn't have commercials!!!

[James28]

Right thread to ask a question like this: Because HBO is a premium cable network, what was the first-ever basic cable network in the U.S.?

[TJ]

The first subscription service we had in Chicago was ON TV and Sportsvision. It had a decoder box you flipped to change the channel. It was the first time I saw Star Wars.



We first got cable TV in 1983. Disney Channel was pretty big around that time as a premium channel. I watched Still the Beaver and EPCOT Magazine.

I remember watching Australian rules football on ESPN. They had the USFL. They didn't have the major sports leagues like they do now.

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Originally Posted by James28

Right thread to ask a question like this: Because HBO is a premium cable network, what was the first-ever basic cable network in the U.S.?

Per Wikipedia:

One of the first "basic cable" networks was TBS—which was initially established as a satellite uplink of an independent television station (the present-day WPCH-TV) in Atlanta, Georgia.

[1960'sTVfan]

I think ON TV was the first pay TV service in Chicago. I was an ON TV subscriber, I signed up for it in 1981 or 82, I got it mostly to have the Sportsvision channel. If I remember correct, my monthly bill was about 40 dollars. Then a few years later, around 1984, my neighborhood got wired for cable TV and the cable eventually replaced the ON TV. I signed up for cable in 1984, the name of the company was Group W Cable and I think at first I was paying about 46 dollars a month for the service. Group W Cable eventually became Prime Cable, then Prime Cable became Comcast, and of course the price for the services gradually increased as time went along. During those middle 1980's years, I was a regular MTV watcher, I enjoyed the music videos and I most often would watch when the adorable looking Martha Quinn was on, I had a major crush on her in those days.

I also remember a channel called Tempo Television, I think it originated from Oklahoma, it was an oddball channel that showed some unusual stuff and was fun to watch during the overnight.

[24/7 reruns]

Originally Posted by stevea

Early cable TV was Community Antenna TV (CATV), and localized. For instance, a condo complex in the south Florida West Palm area would put up a large antenna and the whole complex would have the option to hook up. Voila, in addition to West Palm stations, you also have the Miami stations. This of course is the simplest form--later additions involved satellite transmissions of farther-away channels, and ultimately networks which did not involve local stations at all.

That's what was available in the city I lived in. It was called closed circuit TV. There was a couple of public access channels and all of the local channels. Since my family live outside the city limits we used a directional outdoor antenna mounted on what looked like a flag pole. We picked up stations in Pittsburgh PA, Steubenville Ohio, and a couple in West Virginia. This was in the late '60's / early '70's

When we moved to the NYC metro area we started out with an outdoor antenna. NYC had so many more channels than the Pittsburgh area did. Back then the independent channels were like the digit channels we watch now.

Cable wasn't available until the early '80's. When we first got cable the paid channels were scrambled if we didn't subscribe to them. It was always fun trying to decipher the images on the adult channels.

We got TBS and WGN and a station from Boston which was great for us baseball fans. Plus MTV got started. Spent many hours watching it. The only down side to this was all of the hassle it was to get the cable company to actual provide the service we paid for. Lots of hours spent on that as well.

[cpmaz]

I think HBO started in 1972.

The original cable TV (in central MA, anyway) was intended to enhance reception of over the air channels; for example, in Central MA we had multiple NBC affiliates to view (Boston, Springfield, and Providence).


The first non-southern New England channel that we received was WPIX out of NYC.

[Mace Dolex]

Living in Bakersfield in the 80's they only had four channels or six if you add Univision and PBS but my dad would pay extra and we'd get additional channels mostly from Los Angeles and in that subscription The Movie Channel was included.

Around '87 or so my dad canceled the package and we were back to local Bakersfield channels but in 1990 we decided to get a Warner Cable box which came with a vast of basic cable channels like TBS; TNT; USA; E!; Disney Channel; MTV; VH-1; Comedy Channel (later rebranded to Comedy Central)