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MTV FM Hookup and Dial Position Sticker
- Thread starter willjR0K5
- Start date
The ”FM hookup devices” were usually just a cable splitter with one leg connected to your FM radio. Systems that had the MTV stereo on FM usually already had a lineup of distant FM stations and satellite delivered audio signals modulated on the FM band.
When I lived in Amarillo, Texas in the late 70s-early 80s the cable system imported seven stations from DFW which were receivable on FM, as well as WFMT out of Chicago. When MTV was added as a TV offering, its stereo soundtrack was available on 96.1 MHz.
The cable system later added a premium audio service that still used FM, but with a converter vox. For this a number of satellite delivered audio services were modulated between 114 and 120 MHz. The converter box allowed them to be received betweem 90 and 96 MHz. The MTV stereo audio was moved to this premium service, which also had stereo soundtracks for HBO and the Movie Channel, as well as KKGO in LA.
The advent of stereo television in the mid 1980s made the MTV stereo hookups obsolete.
I do recall MTV promoting the stickers, but I think most people could easily remember the frequency.
When I lived in Amarillo, Texas in the late 70s-early 80s the cable system imported seven stations from DFW which were receivable on FM, as well as WFMT out of Chicago. When MTV was added as a TV offering, its stereo soundtrack was available on 96.1 MHz.
The cable system later added a premium audio service that still used FM, but with a converter vox. For this a number of satellite delivered audio services were modulated between 114 and 120 MHz. The converter box allowed them to be received betweem 90 and 96 MHz. The MTV stereo audio was moved to this premium service, which also had stereo soundtracks for HBO and the Movie Channel, as well as KKGO in LA.
The advent of stereo television in the mid 1980s made the MTV stereo hookups obsolete.
I do recall MTV promoting the stickers, but I think most people could easily remember the frequency.
In the late 1990s and very early 2000s, I had my late grandmum's 1987 Sony stereo receiver. (I don't know the model number; it had a flat keypad for the controld and slider volume/bass/treble controls. It was one of their very few models that had sliders.) It had a push-button tuner with 10 presets (5 MW/5 FM IIRC) and a slide-out plastic card on the front panel to which would be affixed little rectangular stickers listing all the frequencies in presets. There were with a couple sheets of these labels running from 88.1 up to 107.9, along with "MTV" and "HBO". So I guess as late as 1987 there were still cable systems feeding MTV audio that way.
Here is a about an hour of MTV stereo from 1984, I don't know where it was recorded of the type of equipment it was done on:
8-track stereo aircheck from MTV cable FM PARTIALLY SCOPED - 1984 September 13 : Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Here is a about an hour of MTV stereo from 1984, I don't know where it was recorded of the type of equipment it was done on:
8-track stereo aircheck from MTV cable FM PARTIALLY SCOPED - 1984 September 13 : Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Thanks for the link, as well as the excellent description and backstory on the archive site!
I don’t recall Cable FM signals being modulated at a lower level; to me they sounded pretty much the same as OTA FM. Perhaps it was the lack of heavy processing that was (and still is) common on FM radio. Of course different systems could have done things their own way.
You are right about the noise that could be present on long analog RF cable runs, which, like the proverbial chain, were only as good as their weakest link.
Analogue telephone carrier systems were sometimes the same way. Each repeater site down the line would pick up the previous sites' noise and crosstalk, amplify it and pile it onto their own. Some of the really big (like, coast-to-coast) Long Lines N- and L-carrier routes built in the 50s/60s and which were in use until the late 80s or so could be incredibly noisy. That all started going away in the early 80s when an innovative fibre-optic network providing connections so quiet you could hear a pin drop first appeared, then disappeared entirely once fibre and mu-law T-carrier became the standard pretty much everywhere.
I remember hooking an FM boombox up to the Vancouver TCI monopoly in the late 90s and had to turn the volume up about half way to get listenable audio. Somebody on Andresen Road probably didn't do something right. The boombox also covered the aircraft band and I found two or three of the "premium" services around 108-110. Because of our proximity to Portland International Airport they had to keep it below-band to avoid mutual interference -- IIRC PDX's ILS localiser (.--. -.. -..-) is on 111.8 MHz which is where the local aircraft comms band starts.
I remember hooking an FM boombox up to the Vancouver TCI monopoly in the late 90s and had to turn the volume up about half way to get listenable audio. Somebody on Andresen Road probably didn't do something right. The boombox also covered the aircraft band and I found two or three of the "premium" services around 108-110. Because of our proximity to Portland International Airport they had to keep it below-band to avoid mutual interference -- IIRC PDX's ILS localiser (.--. -.. -..-) is on 111.8 MHz which is where the local aircraft comms band starts.
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