Early Cable TV
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| 10! We would have killed for 10! |
I remember
in the 60’s people would occasionally talk of “Pay TV.” The mere mention of pay TV would get my mom’s
hackles up. Her depression senses
tingled whenever anyone talked of spending money needlessly.
“Why would I spend good money for
something I now get for free?”
My first pay
TV, cable TV, was 1967 in college. What
was a college student in 1967 doing paying for cable, especially when his mom
breathed fire if anyone even mentioned paying for TV? I went to school in Easton Pa., the Lehigh
Valley. The key here is valley. Without a direct line to a TV signal, TV was
worthless. It is for this reason that
the earliest cable TV companies were simply big old antennae on a mountain with
a heavy-duty cable feeding TV’s in the valley.
In the
Lehigh Valley in 1967 that meant you received a crisp picture for channels 3,6,
and 10 plus 2 or 3 UHF (Ultra High Frequency) channels that existed back in the
day.
The charge
for this magnificent reception was $1.50 a month. It was charged to our fraternity house and I
was to reimburse it every month. No one
ever asked me for the $1.50 a month, so I had free cable TV which would make
mom very happy.
These 6
channels of cable TV were shown on an 11-inch black and white TV. We did not have a cable box; the signal went
direct to the TV, later referred to as “Cable Ready” except in those days since
there were no independent “Cable Channels” every TV was “Cable Ready.”
This set up
might not seem like much, but my room mates and I had the only TV in the
fraternity house except for the color TV in the rec room. “Frog,” (He wore glasses like ‘Froggy’ on the
Little Rascals) “Globe Head” (He had a really big head) and myself (“Jowls”…it’s
a long story) were TV kings. When people
got voted out of their viewing choice in the rec room they came to our room for
a second chance. There was no vote on
our TV, the three roommates ruled. A
beer or a couple of cigarettes could, however, change our preference.
As I recall
we either watched old movies or one of the UHF stations played Mc Hale’s Navy
around the clock. News was absolutely
forbidden. The popular news show at the
time was the “Huntley Brinkley Report.” This show was generally on at 6:00 PM in
the rec room, but occasionally it was voted down in favor of something less cerebral. “Big Fat John” (one of our least imaginative nick
names) was addicted to the Huntley Brinkley Report and he would come to our room
and beg to watch his show.
“Big Fat
John” did not smoke, did not drink beer, and we really didn’t like him very
much, so he had nothing to offer in the way of bribery. We let him beg a while, but “Mc Hale’s Navy”
always won…Hey, you take your fun where you can get it.
I don’t know
where I’m going with this, so I may as well cut it off here.
I probably
owe the fraternity house $13.50 for my cable TV, but sadly the chapter no
longer exists. These days I have to pay
$13.50 extra a month just to have access to a channel that still shows “Mc Hale’s
Navy.”
.JPG)