Crappy TV reception in motel rooms then and now!

[vibe]

There have been a number of "hotel cable TV reports on various sections of the board including Canada. I would venture to say that the folks posting may be slightly spoiled (or addicted) to the myriad of choices (mostly mediocre) on today's cable and sat lineups.

Do you remember staying in out of the way motels (or no tells) where one was lucky to get one or two good signals? (and no bedbugs). If you were there because you were tired and needed a cheap (but clean and presumably safe) place to stay, television reception IS a big deal.

I've stayed in a lot of cheap (inexpensive) motels in my time but I had standards which included clean and safe. I didn't care if the rug had a funny, musty odor (i was more concerned about the sheets) but I wanted to watch a show or 2 before turning in.

My worst experience was a long forgotten (1971) motel on the Indiana-Ohio line where one had to use rabbit ears to get 2 snowy Toledo stations from 60+ mi away. I also stayed at a motel in West Branch Iowa (2 months after THE transition); the motel simply did not bother to make the changes to their in room TV's: result no networks (Big 5) whatsoever. But I did get ESPN, and a great view of the cornfield out back! Not bad for a 3 star place. Same thing happened to me this year in SC on New Year's Day. Brand new motel. Great way to get repeats!

THAT was probably the pits aside staying in a room in Tucson in 1977 that required a coin slot to watch TV. ALL in all the hotel cable lineups are far better than in many places I've been. I've gotten far better reception (pre digital) while camping...

Anyone else want to rant, rave, or share their experiences??

 

[DToTheJ]

Back in the late 80's, I recall a family vacation on Eastern Long Island. The TV could only get five major signals: the two VHF's from Hartford and the three VHF's from Providence. The funny thing was, their signals were duplicated on their adjacent channels. Putting it in perspective: One Sunday afternoon when CBS was carrying a golf tournament, I scanned through channels 2 through 6, and each and every channel was either WFSB or WLNE (a CBS affiliate at the time) carrying golf. I thought it was hilarious.

 

[KML0224]

Many of those hotel cable reports have been from me. The most recent was a return to the Super 8 on US Route 5/VT Route 9 in Brattleboro, VT. Their "cable" only carried channels 2, 4, 5, 7 and 25 from Boston, with WGBH-TV (PBS) channel 2 listed on the channel chart as "Family". It was only a black screen with audio. Room 122 had an old 27" Panasonic tube TV circa 2000. When I stayed there the first time, room 125 had a 32" LCD HDTV with a brand name of Haier. Thinking that this second room would have the same TV, I brought along a small RCA batwing antenna in my bag. Of course, that old TV would be analog-only, so the antenna was a no-go. I was told that I'd be lucky if I got any digital signal from PBS in Keene, NH or Windsor, VT. Those are the two closest licensed stations to Brattleboro. That, plus the fact I was in the middle of the Connecticut River Valley. There's a huge hill that looms over the town from the New Hampshire side of the river, which probably would block any decent signal from the southeast.

As for the reception on Long Island, I'm assuming you meant channel 3 from Hartford and channel 8 from New Haven? In the analog TV days, my little 5" B/W tv, which was part on an old Yorx AM/FM/dual cassette combo from 1987-88, picked up a faint signal of WLNE-TV channel 6 from Rhode Island about twice a week (I live in New Britain, CT).

 

[mjlarochelle]

I like the hotels/motels that simply transmit the local cable signal, if there is one available. I stayed at an independent motel outside Kingston, Ontario in 2005, and they had the full Cogeco digital cable lineup for the area.

The HoJo in Barrie, Ontario I posted about in the Canada forum has no excuse - it's an urban area. To me there's no reason they can't have had at least the Rogers basic lineup with CBC Toronto, especially if they're going to offer channels like TSN and Food Network.

Also in the Canada forum I mentioned a motel outside Barry's Bay, Ontario that got all its TV from an outdoor antenna pointed at Ottawa. Back in 1995 I stayed at another hotel in that area, that had a C-band dish. All of the rooms got whatever channel the motel manager decided to air! I was there the night the Braves won the World Series, and he aired the movie Angels in the Outfield for part of the evening and then aired the final couple innings of the game.

 

[azumanga]

In 2000 I stayed at the Comfort Inn on the 417 in Nepean, Ontario -- which is the west side of Ottawa. Good news -- they carried Rogers line-up. Bad news -- the cable had poor shielding, which meant signal ingress on channels 4, 6, 9, 11 and 13; whatever was slotted in these channels was practically unwatchable. Also, the higher you go in the line-up, the poorer the reception -- the reception on the lower channels were great (the ingresses notwithstanding), but the highest channels were unwatchable.

 

[briancraig]

When I was a kid, we went on vacation every year to Navarre Beach, Florida which is an out of the way beach town between Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach out on Santa Rosa Island.

You got three channels on the motel TV: WALA (NBC), WKRG (CBS) and WEAR (ABC). They finally got cable in 1983.

But I swear there was more I wanted to watch on those 3 channels back in the day then there is on the 100 channels they get today.

 

[searadiofreak]

To give a differing view on this, I remember a stay in the mid-80's in Rockville, Maryland where all three network affiliates from both DC and Baltimore came in. What a smorgasboard of local tv! Not only was I impressed, but I heard other guys my age (20's) talking about it in the parking lot. And I thought I was the only one who noticed! First time I noticed that many others cared about media, I wasn't alone.

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

A guy I knew told me he once checked into a motel in the Wilmington, Delaware area about 1962 or 1963. This was long before cable coverage yet almost every channel he tuned to had a major league baseball game. He got both the Yankees and Mets from New York, the Phillies out of Philadelphia, the Orioles from Baltimore and the Senators from D.C.

 

[vibe]

Musta been one hell of an antenna system to pick up the local and semi local (Balt and Philly) as well as NYC and DC from over 100 mi away. Hardly crappy reception. I remember staying at a small motel about halfway between Allentown PA and Harrisburg on top of a hill. The B and W TV, with just rabbit ears and a loop got Philly, Harrisburg, Scranton-WB and York-Lancaster with a smidgen of Balt.
A channel surfer's dream... one hell of a tuner in the TV and/or the hilltop location.

 

[charlestondxman]

Here, I've never really been to a hotel that has only had three or four channels to pick from. I'm sure some of the smaller motels in our area had that setup until the Big Switch, though, in the little hamlets of the Lowcountry.

I've been to many hotels where there's only about 20 channels to choose from, like Hilton Head Island's Hilton, and most of the other hotels there. The Holiday Inn Express in Bluffton, however, carries Hargray's entire analog lineup, including two Charleston stations, all Savannah stations and others.

Most of the larger city's major hotels have small cable systems.

 

[vibe]

I stayed in a motel in St. George SC on 1/1/2011, a nice 2 star, clean (otherwise ) room that did not have ANY on big 5 w/ that were remotely watchable. They said they were upgrading the system.
But it was nice to see 60 degree weather and palms trees and nice folks...

 

[DToTheJ]

...As for the reception on Long Island, I'm assuming you meant channel 3 from Hartford and channel 8 from New Haven? In the analog TV days, my little 5" B/W tv, which was part on an old Yorx AM/FM/dual cassette combo from 1987-88, picked up a faint signal of WLNE-TV channel 6 from Rhode Island about twice a week (I live in New Britain, CT).

Indeed I have... Did you ever try tuning into 87.7 to see if you would get WLNE? That's another memory of being out on the East End, listening to the O.J. trial on 87.7 via WLNE.

 

[radiorob2.0]

Slightly off topic....

Most Holiday Inn back in the day offered FM radio through a TV channel. They fed the audio side of the modulator while the video side was terminated so you had a black screen.

There were hotels with crappy reception but then again there were those who used their TV's as marketing campaigns. This was especially true in the infant days of satellite program delivery as some motels had better head ends than the local cable system. I first saw ESPN in the summer of 1980 while staying at a Lake City, Florida motel.

 

[LKellerIII]

Lately, my major complaint with hotel rooms isn't the reception - which is generally fine these days, with a decent variety of cable and network channels...not as many as home of course, but a few dozen choices is enough for a vacation, especially since I'm not in the room much.

My complaint is about many hotels' crappy conversion to HDTV. Some have switched to HD, but still supply the same old universal remote controls, which have no buttons to control the more advanced HDTV functions.

I stayed in a Sheraton about a year ago (Universal City, yet!) with an HDTV stuck on wide-screen. There was no way (at least not that I could figure out) to change the aspect ratio back to the standard 16:9. So I had to watch artificially short fat people on TV for a couple of days. The color tint sucked, too.

Why do so many viewers prefer to watch people with bright orange skin? I don't get it. I noticed the same thing in a sports-bar I was in recently - all the athletes looked like they had carotenosis (a condition that causes orange skin).

 

[pqgeorge]

I recall staying at the Suisse Chalet in Lenox, MA in February, 1977. No cable, just a minimum MATV system. The only stations we were able to get with a fairly good signal were WKTV/2 (NBC/Utica, NY), W07AI/7- Pittsfield, MA (translator for WAST/13, ABC), WRGB/6 (NBC/Schenectady) and WCDC/19 (CBS/Adams, MA //WTEN Albany). It was surprising to see WKTV some 100 miles away. Probably a lucky catch. Several years later in the early '90's, the same hotel had full cable service, with HBO and whatever.

 

[KML0224]

Yes, I occasionally got the audio of channel 6. I always got that living in Old Orchard Beach, ME, just that it was from channel 6 of Portland instead. (Yes, I knew about the channel 6 82-88 MHz thing!)

 

[vibe]

Re: post of Peter George-getting ch 2 Utica was really a catch-which reminds me of 2 visits to the Berkshires one of which was definitely in this century probably 2001-2002. My bteer half and I stayed at a nice one story, park at the door on Rt 7 N of pittsfield and S of Williamstown. The only reception was on ch 6-10-13 Albany-no UHF reception on 19. Definitely not cable or sat. But we went out that nite and didn't need TV except for the news.
But in 1999 I went with a date to near N.Adams MA-a hilltop location w/ old cabins from the 1940's or so and the tV was B and W with just a rabbit ear and loop. Got the same 3 stations plus a couple fuzzy ones. Great LOS to the west only. (TV that is)

 

[mbayus]

In about 1960 or there about, we stade at a Motel in upper Michigan and the only TV we could get was WTOM-TV Channel 4. It was an RCA portable. I remember that TV, and I am still looking for one just like it.

 

[RBW]

When my parents and I vacationed on the Maine coast in the 70's, we'd spend the night at HoJo's in Syracuse, NY ... (their exit 35 location). They always had RCA tv's in their rooms. No cable of course. And since most of the New York State cities are quite evenly spaced in distance, they only got the Syracuse locals. So it was 3,5 & 9! But IIRC- the sets "might've" had UHF, so PBS 24 could've been tuned in as well. But no Utica... at only 40 miles away.

Then similarly, we'd stay at HoJo in Albany on our return trip. I believe they only got locals 6,10, & 13. Not sure about 17.

The hotel we stayed at in Maine HAD NO TV's! :'(

Then on another mid 70's venture, we stayed at a local motel in Kingston, Ont. VHF sets only...w/antenna system. But I recall being impressed with the reception since they got pretty much something on every channel 2-13. Kingston, Watertown, Utica, Syracuse, & Ottawa, I believe.

 

[vibe]

with a better TV system, I'll bet that motel got a much higher % of repeats that would easily offset the cost of building a good system. On a different note, we used to go to Poland Spring ME for a week each summer. Management recently upgraded the old B and W sets with a rabbit ear and loop (but still good for 5-6 stations, and several fuzzy ones from Bangor to digital TV's with just rabbit ears and loop. I remember getting about 3 digitals; lots of unhappy folks who couldn't get their multi channel fix and others who could care less.