Avenue TV Cable (Ventura, CA) early 80's lineup

[K.M. Richards]

A now-closed old thread listed all of Ventura County's cable system lineups taken from various newspapers in July 1988. I stumbled across it just this morning and thought I would add some historical perspective.

John George started Avenue TV Cable in 1953 in order to bring reception to the Ventura Avenue district on the far west side of town, which was terrain shielded not only from Mount Wilson in Los Angeles but also from Broadcast Peak in Santa Barbara. He also owned Johnny's Radio Den (later, Johnny's Sight & Sound) and was the authorized Packard Bell dealer for the area ... only he could get no sales in the Ventura Avenue district because of the inability to receive television signals.

So he put up a head end at Grant Park, which was on a bluff overlooking the district and with a perfect line-of-sight to both Wilson and Broadcast Peak, and wired the entire district himself. He then offered free cable service to those who bought their sets from him; the more expensive the set, the longer the free service term, and then charged some nominal amount (probably a couple of bucks; basic service was still less than $10/month in the 80's) to continue using the service.

After my involvement in 1968-69 with the ill-fated KKOG-TV/16, John hired me (while still in high school!) to help him launch local origination programming on channel 6 Saturday mornings and afternoons; we used to carry the Friday night football games of both Ventura and Buena High by dragging the cameras, etc. over to Larrabee Stadium, recording the game and then playing it back around noon the next day. (This was quite popular with the parents of students who attended both schools.) We also got our hands on a bunch of movies that were in the public domain and would run them free of commercial interruption, and I both hosted a Dick Clark-like Saturday morning show playing records for an in-studio audience who danced to them, and "anchored" a weekly summary of local news.

It was my experience with Cable Channel 6 (which was a TeleMation "weather channel" the rest of the time and then switched to KBSC/52 late afternoons and evenings) that got me my first radio job; because the Ventura County Fair parade passed right in front of the Avenue TV Cable building, we carried it live with several tape replays with a three-camera (!) setup ... one on both sides of the street (taking advantage of the existing interconnect cable to Sight & Sound that John had put in many years previous) and one on the roof to get a view of parade entries as they approached up the street. Our emcee for the 1972 parade was local broadcaster Fred Hall, who had just put KOVA/105.5 on the air in Ojai earlier that year and simulcast (! .. again) the audio on his fledgling station. Fred heard one of my carted station breaks, asked who the voice was, and was told it was the teenager up on the roof with camera #3. When the parade was over, Fred urged me to get my Third Phone and promised to hire me once I had it. I passed the FCC exam in April 1973 and Fred, true to his word, hired me for weekends in July. I went full time with him after graduation and ended up staying there for four years, all told.

Back to John George: He was a perfectionist in terms of the technical aspects of his product, and saw for himself that the "early adopters" of satellite networks were having extreme difficulties with providing uninterrupted service. He therefore decided all of the reception and signal processing was going to be not at the head end but at the system offices, and fed to the head end by the same trunk cable we used to send Cable Channel 6 up there. And the dishes ended up on the same roof that camera #3 occupied for Fair parades.

I had remained friends with John after going into radio, as as luck would have it, I lived just about one mile from the tail end of his service area, in a tract which had originally been called "Five Points Park" south of that intersection where Main St., Thompson Blvd. and Telegraph Rd. converged. So John installed not only one of the first converter boxes (not yet available to "ordinary" subscribers) at my house, but also a signal strength meter so I could give him reports on specific channels' reception as he tweaked everything pre-launch. In fact, I first saw the movie "The Boys From Brazil" on Cinemax during one such test.

So the thread with the 1988 channel lineup sparked my memory, and I am reposting it with notes of what had originally been the lineup when it formally was offered to subscribers in 1982. (And yes, John let me keep the converter box with free premium channels for several years afterwards as thanks for my assistance.)

(italics are my notes on the original 1982 lineup)

2 KCBS (CBS 2 Los Angeles)

[calls were KNXT until April 2, 1984]​

3 KEYT (ABC 3 Santa Barbara)
4 KNBC (NBC 4 Los Angeles)
5 KTLA (IND 5 Los Angeles)
6 PTL Network

[in 1982, local origination, MSN in the morning followed by Daytime and PTL Club (only) with a digital information/classified ads service the rest of the time]​

7 KABC (ABC 7 Los Angeles)
8 Financial News Network

[was KWHY/22 weekdays until 3:00pm, then KMEX/34 evenings and weekends; they switched to the satellite SIN feed later]​

9 KHJ (IND 9 Los Angeles)
10 KCET (PBS 28 Los Angeles)
11 KTTV (FOX 11 Los Angeles)
12 KCOY (CBS 12 Santa Maria)

[this was brought in by microwave relay and John made a few extra bucks "sharing" it with Cablecom General and Oxnard Cablevision]​

13 KCOP (IND 13 Los Angeles)
14 WTBS (IND 17 Atlanta)
15 Nickelodeon

[prior to 1984, Nickelodeon and ARTS were on the same satellite transponder and Avenue carried both on this channel]​

16 Pay Per View

[this was unusable for technical reasons in 1982 and was blank until "offset" technology became available to eliminate interference]​

17 KTBN (TBN 40 Los Angeles)

[actually, by 1988 Avenue was carrying the TBN satellite feed]​

18 Showtime
19 KLCS (PBS 58 Los Angeles)
20 Lifetime

[was Cable Health Network before merging with the aforementioned Lifetime in 1984]​

21 KADY (IND 63 Oxnard)

[original call letters were KTIE, originally carried on channel 8 when it signed on in 1985; originally channels 21 and 22 had been used for a more primitive premium offering, using a dedicated two-channel descrambler, of ON TV and The Movie Channel]​

22 A&E Network
23 The Movie Channel
24 Select TV

[actually, the correct name was always "SelecTV" and Avenue carried this because ON TV merged with it in 1985]​

25 HBO
26 Disney Channel
27 Cinemax
28 MTV
29 The Nashville Network
30 CNN
31 CBN Family Channel
32 USA Network
33 ESPN
34 VH-1
35 C-SPAN
37 Weather Channel

[originally on 34 until VH-1 launched in 1985, then moved to 36; I think the channel number was a typo at the newspaper]​

39 Tempo

[was Satellite Program Network in 1982, and on a satellite John didn't have a dish pointed at]​

61 Z Channel

[my recollection was that this was Avenue's first "hyperband" channel, and subscribers had to have their old Jerrold midband/superband converter replaced to subscribe]​

And now, a few "blast from the past" images of that era:
TeleMation "weather scan" system:

Avenue's was a later model that looked more like this:

And this was the Jerrold Electronics converter box, which had the then-revolutionary feature of scrambling on/off being controlled by the central office, rather than using channel-specific traps or channel-specific physical decoders:

This concludes my trip down memory lane. Thanks to everyone who didn't fall asleep.

 

[radiofan2023]

Those are cool stories. How did you get the heavy tv camera up to the roof? I ran a 3 camera setup a few years ago for a college station, and it’s not easy.

Did you have to turn in the converter box eventually or change to renting it? My family had a converter box like that from Telecable in the late 80s, but I think ours had a number pad on top, I’m not sure why.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Those are cool stories. How did you get the heavy tv camera up to the roof? I ran a 3 camera setup a few years ago for a college station, and it’s not easy.

As I recall, some 52 years later 🤔, we used the crane on one of the installer trucks; since the roof wasn't as high as the cables strung between the telephone poles it was a workable solution. I believe we hoisted the camera head, tripod, and cable on three separate cycles.

Did you have to turn in the converter box eventually or change to renting it? My family had a converter box like that from Telecable in the late 80s, but I think ours had a number pad on top, I’m not sure why.

John was, as I said, very appreciative of my help. In fact, when he first installed the racks and racks of satellite receivers and cable modulators, he made a big point of asking me to come over to the offices/studios (I had left channel 6 about a year after starting at KOVA) to show it off, saying "you are one of the very few non-employees who can appreciate all of this."

My recollection is that he never charged my mother (whose name the bill was in) for the Jerrold converter, he also let us have the expanded basic at no charge until his family sold the company in the 1990s, and when he did finally charge us for premium services he only charged us for HBO and let us keep Showtime free. (We had to drop Cinemax, The Movie Channel, Disney, and ON TV.)

I think sometimes he got a real kick out of someone my age taking that big an interest in his "empire". I do not recall him ever talking down to me or getting angry with me. Mild rebukes? Sure. But nothing unwarranted.

 

[radiofan2023]

He sure sounds like a neat guy!

 

[K.M. Richards]

He sure sounds like a neat guy!

He was. I liked him a lot. He lived to age 84 and passed away in 2007. His son and daughter sold the system four years later in the face of what it was going to cost to upgrade their broadband offerings.

 

[radiofan2023]

He was. I liked him a lot. He lived to age 84 and passed away in 2007. His son and daughter sold the system four years later in the face of what it was going to cost to upgrade their broadband offerings.

Cool

 

[yeoldeschool]

[this was unusable for technical reasons in 1982 and was blank until "offset" technology became available to eliminate interference]​

Are you referring to HRC or IRC?

24 Select TV

[actually, the correct name was always "SelecTV" and Avenue carried this because ON TV merged with it in 1985]​

Now this is something I would not have imagined ever happening. Did SelecTV (or OnTV preceding the merger) seek cable carriage during their final, failing years of being over-the-air subscription services, as attempts to reposition themselves as regional premiums on cable itself? Or was this arrangement strictly done with cable systems, like Avenue, serving areas beyond their OTA signal footprints?

37 Weather Channel

[originally on 34 until VH-1 launched in 1985, then moved to 36; I think the channel number was a typo at the newspaper]​

39 Tempo

[was Satellite Program Network in 1982, and on a satellite John didn't have a dish pointed at]​

61 Z Channel

[my recollection was that this was Avenue's first "hyperband" channel, and subscribers had to have their old Jerrold midband/superband converter replaced to subscribe]​

Many addressable descramblers could virtualize their channel numbers in those days the way ATSC tuners can today. Hyperband started at channel 37, so if 39 and 61 were their real RF channel numbers, both would have qualified as hyperband.

Is it alternatively possible that neither were hyperband, but that they were instead located on the special FM/aircraft midband RF channels, with their numbers virtualized as 39 and 61 (see the table here)? Note the common -- but not mandatory -- virtualized channel numbers they were often given. I would tend to suspect this possibility myself, considering increasingly expensive cable trunk cascade amplifiers tended to be sold in those days with their maximum bandwidths incremented every 50 or 100 MHz. This is why many cable systems often stopped at channel numbers like 36 (300 MHz), 53 (400 MHz), 69 (500 MHz), and 78 (550 MHz) in those days. That said, I immediately noticed that your 1988 lineup happened to go to precisely channel 36 (once correcting for the typo), after which your friend only had two extra channels, separated by gaps. That gave me the hunch they were virtually-numbered FM/aircraft band rather than hyperband channels. At least for 61 to have been truly 61 (RF), your friend would have needed to have sprung for extra-expensive 500 MHz cascade amplifiers instead of the next step up (400 MHz), in spite of not having had enough services at the time to even fill the 300-400 MHz (37-53) spectrum. Also, your recollection of customers needing different boxes to receive 39 and 61 wouldn't automatically conflict with this idea of those channels having been on FM/aircraft midband frequencies, either. Reason being: some of that era's midband/superband box models simply didn't tune the FM/aircraft part of the midband. So what his subscribers may have been swapping their boxes for may have just been more premium mid/super models with that extra spectrum tuning included.

Not sure if you would have wanted this technical background, but since you have such technical memories of his system already, I thought I'd throw this extra food for thought in as well.

In any event, great story about his system. It's too bad none of our cable systems today are still locally owned and operated, especially by enthusiastic people with such interests in technical perfection. I still remember being able to call up my local system and talk to the headend and public access techs as a kid and ask questions -- questions they never minded answering. "Can I see the Prevue Guide's menus? What does the 'Diagnostics Mode' option do?" *the engineer says 'sure!', and interrupts a city of 45,000's scrolling program guide to show a curious 12 year old nerd a screen full of crap about C-band subcarrier baud rates and checksum error counts* Cable companies don't give you service like that anymore.

And this was the Jerrold Electronics converter box, which had the then-revolutionary feature of scrambling on/off being controlled by the central office, rather than using channel-specific traps or channel-specific physical decoders:

My cable system had those little silver cylinder traps as well before upgrading to addressable converters. They tended to disappear from certain coax tap handhole vaults around town, followed by magically re-appearing in other handholes serving the homes of unpopular classmates or teachers.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Are you referring to HRC or IRC?

You expect me to remember that detail 40+ years after the fact? I'm sure John would have remembered, but he passed away over 15 years ago.

Now this is something I would not have imagined ever happening. Did SelecTV (or OnTV preceding the merger) seek cable carriage during their final, failing years of being over-the-air subscription services, as attempts to reposition themselves as regional premiums on cable itself? Or was this arrangement strictly done with cable systems, like Avenue, serving areas beyond their OTA signal footprints?

I do not know the details, other than the fact that ON TV was one of the two original subscription channels Avenue offered and that they continued to offer same post-merger until KWHY turned off the encoder for the last time (that detail, I do know ... it was April 1, 1989).

Is it alternatively possible that neither were hyperband, but that they were instead located on the special FM/aircraft midband RF channels, with their numbers virtualized as 39 and 61 (see the table here)? Note the common -- but not mandatory -- virtualized channel numbers they were often given. I would tend to suspect this possibility myself, considering increasingly expensive cable trunk cascade amplifiers tended to be sold in those days with their maximum bandwidths incremented every 50 or 100 MHz. This is why many cable systems often stopped at channel numbers like 36 (300 MHz), 53 (400 MHz), 69 (500 MHz), and 78 (550 MHz) in those days. That said, I immediately noticed that your 1988 lineup happened to go to precisely channel 36 (once correcting for the typo), after which your friend only had two extra channels, separated by gaps.

Given the technology of the day, John likely would have gone for the solution that worked with the infrastructure in place. Remember that I said earlier that he was an engineering perfectionist. He would have seen the amplifiers with the extra bandwidth as something he didn't want to experiment with, risking uninterrupted service to his customers as a result.

Not sure if you would have wanted this technical background, but since you have such technical memories of his system already, I thought I'd throw this extra food for thought in as well.

I only remember it as well as a layperson could. I still find it to have been a wonderful compliment that John thought me worthy of being part of the pre-launch testing.

I still remember being able to call up my local system and talk to the headend and public access techs as a kid and ask questions -- questions they never minded answering. "Can I see the Prevue Guide's menus? What does the 'Diagnostics Mode' option do?"

Now you have me trying (in vain) to remember what channel Prevue Guide ended up on. I think it may have replaced Z Channel after its demise.

 

[yeoldeschool]

Now you have me trying (in vain) to remember what channel Prevue Guide ended up on.

When you need a TV guide to find out what channel the TV guide is on...

I think it may have replaced Z Channel after its demise.

There was a documentary made about them, if you don't know. Look for Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession.

 

[K.M. Richards]

There was a documentary made about them, if you don't know. Look for Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession.

I saw it when it first came out. Very well done, judging its content against what I already knew.

 

[K.M. Richards]

When you need a TV guide to find out what channel the TV guide is on...

I am now thinking that it may have ended up on 36 and The Weather Channel moved to 24 after DirecTV folded. Or maybe PPV was on 24 after that and TWC was on 16.

My difficulty in remembering the channel lineup from those years is because I moved to L.A. for professional reasons in 1989 and after that I only encountered Avenue's lineup during weekend visits back home, an hour up the 101 freeway.

But for that matter, I don't remember Time Warner Cable's lineup in the West San Fernando Valley either, even though I was a subscriber for about ten years after the move.