While checking out the Retro Cable forums I noticed most every systems carries stations like CNN, TBS, ESPN etc. Do you know of any systems that didn't carry a channel you would expect? Let's omit MTV , because as been mentioned before many systems in conservative areas wouldn't carry it due to content concerns.
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Cable systems that didnt carry popular channels
- Thread starter installLSC
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Service Electric in Bloomsburg, PA did not carry WTBS until 1998. Sammons Communications in Harrisburg, PA did not carry The Family Channel until the mid '90s.
Many cable systems only added Comedy Central when South Park and The Daily Show began to take off.
Many systems that did not carry popular channels were simply unable to, because their coax trunk and feeder amplifiers only worked up to so many MHz. The most common upper frequency limits for the successive generations of cable system amplifiers manufactured during the analog era were 300 MHz (up to channel 36), 400 MHz (up to channel 53), 450 MHz (up to channel 61), 500 MHz (up to channel 69), 550 MHz (up to channel 78), and 600 MHz (up to channel 86). You may have noticed during that era that when visiting various towns, their cable systems would generally have one of those figures as their highest channel number. This is why. (Reference chart.) You can find an old document from 1984 in the archives of the city of Rancho Cucamonga, California discussing this phenomenon. Evidently, 400 MHz was the "latest and greatest" technology in 1984. Anyway, by the time trunk/feeder amplifier technology got past 600 MHz, digital cable was becoming so common that the 1:1 relationship between bandwidth and number of channels started vanishing.
Incredibly, my worthless cable system had 53 channel 400 MHz amplifiers (and these antiquated boat anchors) all the way into the early mid-2000s. So we were deprived of many of the networks that were common for everybody else by then, including Comedy Central. I never got to see South Park unless I was visiting relatives out of town.
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in 1997, the small capacity cable system in Eminence MO didn't have MTV, yet had CMT and even WNBC
did a local station carry the 700 Club?
No cable provider anywhere in the Seattle metro or even in the outskirts of Seattle carried WGN, whether pre or post-SyndEx. The saturation of KSTW, KCPQ and KTZZ may have had to do with it, and also the Central time zone difference (primetime movies at 5PM). Yet WTBS was carried from around 1980 onward. The irony is that WGN was carried in Portland and Vancouver on just about every cable system!!
Viacom Cable, and AT&T Broadband (Seattle/Everett), did not carry The Family Channel/Fox Family either.
TNN (in the country days) was not carried on cable in San Francisco proper. Probably a lack of interest given the urban and Asian population.
In my current town, Cascade ID's cable provider wasn't carrying MTV, Lifetime or A&E even into the millennium. I believe the cable system is defunct now. There was even a time where USA wasn't even on cable up here (early '90s).
I wonder how many had C-Band here. They would have all qualified for Denver affiliates, I'm sure, given Boise was on weak translators.
Viacom Cable, and AT&T Broadband (Seattle/Everett), did not carry The Family Channel/Fox Family either.
TNN (in the country days) was not carried on cable in San Francisco proper. Probably a lack of interest given the urban and Asian population.
In my current town, Cascade ID's cable provider wasn't carrying MTV, Lifetime or A&E even into the millennium. I believe the cable system is defunct now. There was even a time where USA wasn't even on cable up here (early '90s).
I wonder how many had C-Band here. They would have all qualified for Denver affiliates, I'm sure, given Boise was on weak translators.
Cablevision (with it's systems mostly in the Northeast) was the last large operator to add The Sec Network
Did they carry WNBC to address not having an easily available NBC affiliate?
KYTV-3 Springfield should have been receivable, but in hill country, the terrain can create unique problems depending upon location.
I can't find anything about Eminence cable in any of the Broadcasting Yearbook or Television Factbook archives to which I have access.
Northern Kentucky, especially considering that it is heavily urbanized, has been historically a very conservative area, strong German Catholic influence. I'm not surprised they would have taken a pass on MTV, assuming it was for reasons of content.
on some systems, Vh1/and Comedy
I remember the pictures being semi fuzzy, they also had KAIT and KFVS
As a kind of side note, I stayed at the Motel 6 on Tunnel Road in Asheville in 1998 (it's now a Super 8) and the MATV system carried "NBC America" instead of WYFF. I'm assuming there were reception problems, as there is a mountain right across I-40 from the motel as you face Caesars Head. IIRC there were no problems with WLOS or WSPA (don't recall if they carried Fox or not).
Pretty sure it was a direct feed of WNBC, possibly without local content.
Yes, that was the WNBC feed on GE-1 (satellite setups displayed as W1), channel 6. Like with WSEE, lots of the 800 number commercials replacing local NYC ads. I think some programs may have been preempted by infomercials.
The Odessa American (Aug 1992) lists (oh the irony) KMGH and KUSA available on cable in Denver City, Texas. At 69 miles from Lubbock (67 from Odessa), those were carried as well, and the default NBCs were KCBD and KTPX. Why add the Colorado stations as a bonus, I wonder? It's not like it was 150 miles from the nearest full-power TV station.
The Odessa American (Aug 1992) lists (oh the irony) KMGH and KUSA available on cable in Denver City, Texas. At 69 miles from Lubbock (67 from Odessa), those were carried as well, and the default NBCs were KCBD and KTPX. Why add the Colorado stations as a bonus, I wonder? It's not like it was 150 miles from the nearest full-power TV station.
I know, I saw that video this evening too, after we got to talking about this here. I honestly don't remember if the "4" designation was used, I think it was just "NBC America". But that's been almost 30 years ago, so my memory might not be completely accurate. I just remember the "NBC America" part.
They carried KUSA from Denver on the Cedar City, Utah cable around 2004 (might have been a year or two earlier). Might have been, in both cases, a carryover from when carriage of OOM affiliates from large markets was more common on cable systems than it is now. There was one county (I think it was Lander) in Nevada that was in the Denver market for a time.
Denver seemed to be a favorite throughout the Intermountain West and adjacent areas. Look at how far-flung their market still is in Wyoming and Nebraska.
what did NBC America air during the regional AFC games?
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If I had to guess, probably the Jets for AFC, and the Giants for NFC, what with it being a feed (at least partially) of WNBC.
The WNBC feed strikes me as similar to how NBC is handled in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. WKAQ carries WNBC ("NBC Puerto Rico") on 4.3. The situation in the USVI is a little harder to figure out, per Wikipedia, WVGN-LD-14 simulcasts WNBC's newscasts, but it doesn't appear this way on their own programming schedule. They have no obvious Virgin Islands-localized content. Without having the schedules for WNBC and WVGN side-by-side, I wouldn't know, aside from the news, to what extent their schedules differ.
Here's the schedule for WVGN per their website:
Programming Schedule – NBC U.S. Virgin Islands
And TVTV.us is different, but has neither the WNBC newscasts nor any obvious local content for either NYC or the USVI:
Local over the air: 00802, St Thomas, Virgin Islands TV Guide - TV Listings - TV Schedule