On TV , Ch 15 and Playboy on Ch 25

[202 East]

Another trip down memory lane. I will quote from CH 15's Wikipedia's website , Please add to any info or stories about this. Also any info on the Ch 25 attempt to have Playboy on a OTA station.

" In Phoenix, ON TV held telecast rights at various times to ASU sports, the Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Giants minor league baseball and Los Angeles Kings hockey. By July 1982, ON TV had 39,000 subscribers in Phoenix, but signs of trouble were emerging rapidly. In 1981, the Suns signed a 13-year agreement to telecast games through American Cable (resulting in the launch of the Arizona Sports Programming Network), which sub-licensed games to ON TV in part because they had not wired all of the metropolitan area. KNXV-TV also proved itself a tough partner for Oak's subscription service. The station resisted a request to expand ON TV to start before 7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 5:00 p.m. on weekends, while the station also threatened to stop airing ON TV's "adults only" late-night fare. ON TV took the station to court over its refusal to cede early evening hours, which generated 60 percent of the television station's revenue.
Phoenix was one of the first ON TV markets to show serious subscriber erosion. By April 1983, its subscriber base had dipped below 25,000, a drop of more than 35 percent. Oak Communications ultimately shuttered ON TV in Phoenix on May 4, 1983, resulting in the loss of 140 jobs. " Wikipedia . I'm sure the pirated boxes for ON Tv didn't help as well as Storer Cable and other cable systems wiring the Phoenix Area didn't help .

I remember Ch 25 being in the news for I believe leaving the audio in the clear and not having good enough scrambled picture to not offend the offended.

 

[KeithE4]

Not only pirated boxes, it was possible to unscramble the picture using the thumbwheel tuning on the VCRs of the day. The out-of-phase sine wave method of scrambling the picture was a joke. IIRC, all ON-TV stations nationwide used that method. If you wanted to hear the game, radio was your friend.

 

[202 East]

I had seen a speaker from RS that some had added a board to with an rca style connector , then a wire into the inside of the tv.
Don't want to get into the bad side of the forum...

 

[The Media Observer]

Yes, I remember ON TV vividly. However, I only knew one person at my elementary school who had it.

 

[Sammi Brie]

Not only pirated boxes, it was possible to unscramble the picture using the thumbwheel tuning on the VCRs of the day. The out-of-phase sine wave method of scrambling the picture was a joke. IIRC, all ON-TV stations nationwide used that method. If you wanted to hear the game, radio was your friend.

I wrote the ON TV section in KNXV's article (and the even longer article on ON TV — a Good Article), and I'll add a few thoughts.

The first Oak ON TV closures were Phoenix and Dallas–Fort Worth (Detroit, which was owned by another firm entirely, went right before them). Those three had something in common: bad station partnerships.

The owners of the stations resisted ceding valuable early evening hours to STV operation, which hamstrung them badly. Detroit had it the worst, because they came on at 8 p.m. It kneecapped the Detroit ON TV service's ability to show sports (among other problems). But Phoenix and Fort Worth had restive landlords too. KTXA outright refused to air adult programming from ON TV, and that was a major moneymaker with high uptake across the STV subscriber base nationally. KNXV was acting similarly.

STV boosters generally underestimated the rate at which cities were wired for cable, too, and Phoenix got wired pretty quickly in the early 80s. American Cable also had the MDS SuperChannel service which brought HBO (and PPV Suns games) to non-cabled homes, so they were in. The economy was also lousy.

STV fell as fast as it went up. It's no mistake that the markets where it lasted the longest were the ones most receptive to running it all day, and Oak happened to "own its own building" in Miami–Fort Lauderdale (WKID), Chicago (WSNS) and LA (KBSC). In Chicago, Oak also was able to absorb a competitor in a city that was not wired for cable. Cincinnati also lasted a long time somehow; that was one of two stations where the ON TV brand was straight up licensed out to someone else. (Portland/Salem had bad finances, so no wonder it closed.) Oak also had all sorts of other corporate problems (it lost $166 million in 1983, there was an SEC investigation, etc.).

 

[202 East]

Good Info , Thank You Sammi Brie. Anybody have anything On Playboy on Ch25 . I know that was very short time on air. I couldn't find a AZ republic article on it. I do remember one about it though..

 

[EricStein]

Good Info , Thank You Sammi Brie. Anybody have anything On Playboy on Ch25 . I know that was very short time on air. I couldn't find a AZ republic article on it. I do remember one about it though..

Low power station K25DM (using the fake call letters "KDMA") aired Playboy programming (I believe they might have been using decommissioned subscription TV equipment - the station's owners sold broadcast equipment, If I remember correctly) from June to December 1993. There were a few articles in the Republic during that time about the public outcry over the station's adult broadcasts.

 

[KeithE4]

In Chicago, Oak also was able to absorb a competitor in a city that was not wired for cable.

Oak Industries bought 49% of WSNS/44 Chicago. It never had majority ownership of the station.

It also had partners in Jerry Reinsdorf and Dollar Bill Wirtz, owners of the White Sox/Bulls and Blackhawks, respectively, beginning in 1982 with Sportsvision on WPWR/WBBS Channel 60. If there ever was a more brain-dead decision in the history of broadcasting, taking those teams off of free TV and putting them on a pay-TV system that could be decoded with a VCR with the sound via radio, I'd like to hear it.

By the time Sportsvision gave up on Channel 60 and moved over to 44 in 1984, most of the Chicago area was wired for cable, and OTA pay-sports was a moot point. Eventually it became a basic cable channel, right about the time Michael Jordan and the Bulls were taking off, but the Sox and Blackhawks weren't doing well.

Channel 44 was the last ON-TV outlet still operating. It shut down in 1985, and WSNS has been a Spanish-language station ever since. It's now owned by NBC as Chicago's Telemundo affiliate.

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