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Unintentional (DX, etc.) pick-ups on old cable systems

hipman2 said:
In July of 1979 one night, I fell asleep while watching a movie on HBO. When I woke up at 5am, "Today" from NBC came on the air, on the cable system's HBO channel slot. Then it went into a test pattern again, then the cable company blacked out the feed until 2pm when HBO came on showing TV and radio promos for stations to use. At 3pm, the HBO channel went into pre-sign on mode until 5pm when it signed on again.

Can anyone explain that Today on HBO thing? I'm guessing that it was the first hour of Today from an hour ago refeeded for the Central time zone stations to use, and NBC refed the second hour of Today at 9am ET (8am CT) for Central affilliates to use.
Click to expand...

If it was just a one-time anomaly, sounds like maybe the cable company was reconfiguring their dish(es) in the overnight hours, and temporarily had the "wrong" transponder feeding that channel. Maybe even by design -- perhaps they had to test something and needed a video source for that channel, but with HBO off until the next afternoon (boy, hard to believe that they used to NOT be 24/7, isn't it?), they just grabbed any old downlink that was convenient, and the ET/CT NBC feed just happened to be on the same bird (Satcom I).

But, wait -- would NBC have even been feeding by satellite as early as 1979? Had to be the East Coast feed if you were seeing it at 5 am PT, and no terrestrial Left Coast affiliate would have been carrying the show live at that early hour, so either satellite or long lines.

Any better theories?
 
Back in the mid to late 1970's, on my cable system in Columbus, WBNS 10 was on cable channel 11. When WBNS signed off at night, you would get a snowny picture and static.

One time it picked up WHAS 11 from Louisville, KY and another time it picked up WIIC 11 from Pittsburgh, PA. The picture came in black and white and snowy from both stations.
 
Stanislav said:
hipman2 said:
In July of 1979 one night, I fell asleep while watching a movie on HBO. When I woke up at 5am, "Today" from NBC came on the air, on the cable system's HBO channel slot. Then it went into a test pattern again, then the cable company blacked out the feed until 2pm when HBO came on showing TV and radio promos for stations to use. At 3pm, the HBO channel went into pre-sign on mode until 5pm when it signed on again.

Can anyone explain that Today on HBO thing? I'm guessing that it was the first hour of Today from an hour ago refeeded for the Central time zone stations to use, and NBC refed the second hour of Today at 9am ET (8am CT) for Central affilliates to use.
Click to expand...

If it was just a one-time anomaly, sounds like maybe the cable company was reconfiguring their dish(es) in the overnight hours, and temporarily had the "wrong" transponder feeding that channel. Maybe even by design -- perhaps they had to test something and needed a video source for that channel, but with HBO off until the next afternoon (boy, hard to believe that they used to NOT be 24/7, isn't it?), they just grabbed any old downlink that was convenient, and the ET/CT NBC feed just happened to be on the same bird (Satcom I).

But, wait -- would NBC have even been feeding by satellite as early as 1979? Had to be the East Coast feed if you were seeing it at 5 am PT, and no terrestrial Left Coast affiliate would have been carrying the show live at that early hour, so either satellite or long lines.

Any better theories?
Click to expand...

I can remember when HBO wasn't 24/7, hard to believe soon it would close to 30 years !!!. But even before they had gone 24/7, HBO did feed some things during their "off the air" period.

My parents had HBO installed ( again ) in late 1979 and I can remember turning on the box on the HBO channel one day in mid afternoon and saw some butt-ugly woman with zits doing sit-ups to the tune of "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers..some grade Z exercise show..then a few HBO promos( which was brought up ) for such shows as "Remember When with Dick Cavett"..then they went off the air. Still not a clue to who this woman or that show was. Was it HBO? Was it something else?
 
mleach said:
My parents had HBO installed ( again ) in late 1979 and I can remember turning on the box on the HBO channel one day in mid afternoon and saw some butt-ugly woman with zits doing sit-ups to the tune of "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers..some grade Z exercise show..then a few HBO promos( which was brought up ) for such shows as "Remember When with Dick Cavett"..then they went off the air. Still not a clue to who this woman or that show was. Was it HBO? Was it something else?
Click to expand...

It could have been a feed for cable systems or broadcast stations - I know that during the 80s, after Bravo or A&E would shut down (2am-ish), they'd run promos for their channels and other cable channels that systems could insert in the local insertion blocks of programming (remember the touch-tones just before some "local" commercials?).

Likewise, it could have been a wild feed for local stations...

Jim
 
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