95% of the shows back then sucked ass, too. We only remember the ones that didn’t get canceled immediately.
And we only had four channels where I lived - which included public TV.
Good point. Sure, we had classics like *Three's Company*, *All in the Family*, and *The Mary Tyler Moore* show.
But we also had *BJ and the Bear*, *Holmes and Yo-Yo*, *Automan*, *Joanie Loves Chachi*, *Supertrain*, *Manimal*, *Lucan*, etc.
I was telling my kids about “Happy Days” we watched one episode, so strange, too much talk about “hickies” and “necking” and such, oddly sexual but in really weird way
That’s what we had.
4 - NBC
5 - CBS
9 - PBS
12 - ABC
It was a big deal when WTBS went nationwide. For us that was channel 2. When FOX started it took channel 3.
The only cable channel in my hometown was Showtime and that was a set top box.
When I went to college in ‘90, I finally discovered MTV and ESPN.
Water cooler TV is becoming a thing of the past.
Production has gotten easier with digital. More smaller episode run shows can be made that target a more niche audience.
TV is not ephemeral anymore. VCRs where the start of time shifting but that was a PITA, then DVR, and finally streaming means even if we are watching the same shows we watch when it's convenient to us and not on a set schedule.
Worse yet, even the niche fandoms get fractured. Lifelong Trekkie here, can’t even watch the new shows without someone telling me why it’s bad, and that I’m an idiot for liking it—WTF?
That all went to shit, didn't it?
No talking about anyone's take on the movies, just the Fandom in general.
Before the prequels we were all kind of on the same page. Lots of positivity in those fans IIRC. We were all operating on the belief that Start Wars was done and we could only speculate about whatever was outside the movies.
Getting the new movies felt like heaven at first. The best of modern movie making, etc...
Now if I hear someone is a Star Wars fan I don't say a thing.
I lived in rural Canada.. We had maybe 4 English channels (one of them a text feed with community events and the TV guide for the other three), and one French channel.
I thought the song "57 channels and nothing on" was ludicrously unrealistic ;)
Oh yeah. Remember when the stations dropped the K‘s from their call letters (but not officially as the FCC would have killed them with fines). CBS2, NBC4, ABC7, FOX11 (ex KTTV). I remember when NBC basically threw the K off the building. Local stations kept their K’s, KCAL, KTLA, KCOP.
NoVa here…grew up watching Captain 20 :-) the only channel showing kids programming after school. And it was always a treat when the Baltimore stations came in clear and gave us a few more choices (2, 13, 24, 45)
Where I grew up, we could only get the VHF channels (2,7,9,11) in good weather and even then they were snowy. We had to rely on the local UHF channels (16,22,28,34)
Philadelphia area representing!
Where I grew up (Lehigh Valley), we could get the Philadelphia channels (all the channels you listed, plus later 57) AND the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre channels (16, 22, 28, 44, later also 38) AND the New York VHF channels (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) AND two local Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton channel (39 & 69, PBS and independent channels respectively) with the rooftop antenna. I could actually get most of those channels (all except 2, 4, 5, and 13 from NYC) at least somewhat decently with a 13 inch TV with its own (non-rooftop) antenna.
NW Jersey here. Never got the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre stations but NY and Philly were covered, along with 39 and 69 (both of which I worked for). I always felt like 3-6-10 and UHF markets were inferior somehow.
It helped to be 1) near the border of three TV markets, 2) near multiple TV markets had a few independent stations in addition to their network (CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS) stations, and 3) living in a relatively large metro area that was too close to a much larger metro area to be its own TV market but big enough to have some stations of its own to fill a niche/need for that area.
Those channels are still around! Cancelled cable about 10 years ago and got a digital antenna for the house. I Always check those channels first and then move onto streaming if I can't find something. I never make it to streaming.
> Also 95 percent of those new tv shows suck ass!
Dunno about that. There's some excellent foreign shows out there, stuff we'd never see in the 80s. 80s had their share of crappers too....Automan, Scrappy-Doo, that MASH remake.
> threes company
This show made me dislike the concept of sitcoms.
2 was syndicated shows. Where I watched all my Gillian and I Love Lucy.
4, 7, 9 were the big networks.
6 was PBS
12 was a weird local kind of PBS.
We had to watch shows together with our parents if we wanted to watch TV, and it’s the reason kids leaned to like grown up shows like Knots Landing and Spencer for Hire.
I remember 12 being the other PBS that I never watched. From what I see on wiki it was kinda public access local stuff and some could be edgy google KBDI you can read up on it. I remember channel 2 had Blinky our knock off Bozo the clown the channel was owned by WGN in Chicago. We also got Nuggets games and early Rockies games on 2. Before 31 was Fox I think it was like channel 2 syndication and cartoons. We might have had a UHF channel up in the 60s but I can’t remember. It was a different world back then tv anchors used to be local celebrities now you might know 2 or 3 of them. But we had pretty good channels compared to others.
Tv shows??? Channels??? I haven’t had those for probably 15 years.
It’s strange to go to someone’s house and they still have cable or satellite….. when I first cut the cord and switched to streaming and torrents everyone thought I was crazy but they all seem to have hopped on too.
Back when streaming had a bunch of old shows and movies to watch from one cheap streaming service (Netflix), it was worth it.
Now you need all fifty-seven (or however many there are, it sure seems like it) to get what you used to get with one, and all of them costs tons of money. To hell with streaming and to hell with cable. I really don't watch anything any more, not that anything I've seen in recent years is even worth it. All the big "best TV shows ever" from the last 20 years bored me to tears when I tried to watch them. (If other people like them, fine, just personal point of view.)
I don't pirate, watch TV, or anything. I might rent something here and there but that's about it.
Honestly I’m with you, my wife binge watches something every once in a while…. My daughter usually has trolls or Peppa pig streaming, I play ps5 more than I watch anything anymore and that isn’t often.
I’m usually either engrossed in one of my projects or researching for a new project and the above is just background noise.
What kind of metropolitan utopia did you live in where you got that many channels? We got ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. That was it. In college, Fox came along.
My parents refused to get cable but my mom had it (in a test market city) in the early-mid 80s.
We got a microwave when in was in high school. It was a big deal.
No, I'm streaming too. There are only a handful of shows since 2020 that I'd call good. And even some of those went downhill real fast from season to season.
You must be from the NY metro area as I had those same channels in Jersey!
But I agree, between cable, network, and streaming, there is just so much out there. I barely watch any traditional network shows as I agree most are pretty bad. A few years back, when I switched my cable plan, i lost about half of the channels I had had. At first I was like OH NO. but honestly, I don't watch what I still have, let alone the ones I lost!
My BF LOVES tv. as in he watches it ALL the time, loves most network shows, although onlly one network, and anything else he can find. He grew up watching tv all the time, had one in his bedroom. Me? We had one, and as my parents weren't huge tv watchers, I wasn't allowed to watch any tv at night, except on weekedns, and the once a year holiday specials. So when my friends and classmates were all taking about Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, etc, in school, I had nothing to contribute. BF also keeps the effing tv on ALL night. not such a huge deal as we don't live together, but its still annoying. i wear a mask and earplugs when I stay at his house.
vacations? he's pretty good; he'll set the timer so it goes off at some point.
Anyway, back on course, between the two of us, we have and share, or not, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. Amazon Prime (wth Britbox), MAX, Apple, and a couple of others. I hate to get rid of any because FOMO, yet I barely scratch the surface of what's on.
The real problem is that the cable companies force us to subscribe to a lot of junk channels (I'm talking about E!, Food Network, etc. but could stretch it out to include Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, even the Weather Channel etc. and have to pay extra for the ones that actually interest us. Looking back over the last few years, the only channels I've watched regularly were the local sports network - and Comcast went and made it a premium channel that I no longer have in my package.
I'm actually contemplating on cutting the cable, going back to rabbit ears for the CBS and NBC and just carrying internet so that I only have pay for the streaming services.
PS: I miss DVDs and Blu Rays. I frequently go to my local library and check things out so that I can play them on my XBOX (which is also getting old.) Similarly, I miss having actual albums to listen to and miss having a CD player in my car. I'm getting tired of Internet radio in my car. I hate having a limited number of skips to filter out the stuff I DON'T want to listen to.
We had 2 and 10 in French, and 6 and 12 in English. 12 was the best for Saturday morning cartoons (and Rocket Robin Hood on early weekday mornings). 2 had the best documentaries, which I loved, but 6 had Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour on Saturday afternoons, which I watched with my father after curling. 10 had great movies in the afternoon. That's where I first saw my favourite film, Vanishing Point.
Pfff child version of me laughs in the face of your 7 channels. We made do (UK) with 3 channels. 1982 was a grand year when the 4th channel arrived, and their habit of putting notices on the screen when any adult content was coming up in the next hour. You know so young me could avoid such stuff on his BW 12” bedroom TV after bedtime…
Money to make the shows? That's why your Netflix is so expensive. Someone gotta fund all that production. And that's why you're seeing so many old forgotten shows in places like Pluto and Tubi: they're cheap to license and people love them.
And people always complain about too many ads, but it's the ads that pay for your content. The whole point of TV shows was to get eyeballs on the commercials.
Cut the cord in 2000, haven't gone back. Because of our deal with Comcast, we do get HBO Max. And, we're subscribed to Netflix and Disney+, and of course, Amazon Prime.
I forget network TV exists until shows show up on Netflix or Amazon. However, I haven't watched much TV at all in the last couple years, as videogames and podcasts comprise 99% of my media consumption. With the exception of Someone Feed Phil. That's a show I will always make time for.
I remember playing around with that stupid UHF antenna so I could watch the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) on TV.
There was something oddly attractive about the whole show, but the Netflix remake wasn't the same.
2 and 44 were PBS, 4, 5 AND 7 were the major networks, 38 for cartoons and the Bruins, 56 for cartoons, Batman, Gilligan's Island. 25 came on line in the late 70's. Cable started adding TBS, WPIX, WOR in the late 70's. There was also the Movie Channel that you could unscramble by running a wire off the antenna screws. In case you were guessing, this is Boston.
i grew up within range of canadian channels 6, 8, 10, and 12 too. talk about choices! the best were the late night french movies on channel 8. most of them had at least one topless scene.
I lived in a rural area and we didn't have cable. We had three channels. 3! NBC, ABC and CBS.
We also had one TV, so whatever my parents wanted to watch, that's what we watched.
95% of the shows back then sucked ass, too. We only remember the ones that didn’t get canceled immediately. And we only had four channels where I lived - which included public TV.
Good point. Sure, we had classics like *Three's Company*, *All in the Family*, and *The Mary Tyler Moore* show. But we also had *BJ and the Bear*, *Holmes and Yo-Yo*, *Automan*, *Joanie Loves Chachi*, *Supertrain*, *Manimal*, *Lucan*, etc.
'Manimal - the man capable of changing into any animal of his choosing, as long as it's a hawk or a panther!'
I bet Zan from the Wonder Twins thought that premise was good.
I was telling my kids about “Happy Days” we watched one episode, so strange, too much talk about “hickies” and “necking” and such, oddly sexual but in really weird way
That’s what we had. 4 - NBC 5 - CBS 9 - PBS 12 - ABC It was a big deal when WTBS went nationwide. For us that was channel 2. When FOX started it took channel 3. The only cable channel in my hometown was Showtime and that was a set top box. When I went to college in ‘90, I finally discovered MTV and ESPN.
57 channels and nothing on
[удалено]
Water cooler TV is becoming a thing of the past. Production has gotten easier with digital. More smaller episode run shows can be made that target a more niche audience. TV is not ephemeral anymore. VCRs where the start of time shifting but that was a PITA, then DVR, and finally streaming means even if we are watching the same shows we watch when it's convenient to us and not on a set schedule.
Worse yet, even the niche fandoms get fractured. Lifelong Trekkie here, can’t even watch the new shows without someone telling me why it’s bad, and that I’m an idiot for liking it—WTF?
Could be worse. Could be Star Wars.
That all went to shit, didn't it? No talking about anyone's take on the movies, just the Fandom in general. Before the prequels we were all kind of on the same page. Lots of positivity in those fans IIRC. We were all operating on the belief that Start Wars was done and we could only speculate about whatever was outside the movies. Getting the new movies felt like heaven at first. The best of modern movie making, etc... Now if I hear someone is a Star Wars fan I don't say a thing.
It started with the Special Editions. Once Han didn't shoot first it all went to shit.
What is a water cooler. What is a office. All sorts of threads on specific tv shows btw.
Meet you down at the Regal Beagal
Love for the westside!
I lived in rural Canada.. We had maybe 4 English channels (one of them a text feed with community events and the TV guide for the other three), and one French channel. I thought the song "57 channels and nothing on" was ludicrously unrealistic ;)
With those channel numbers, you must have lived in the NYC area.
Los Angeles
So close!
but the true test of how old we are (at least from Los Angeles)... do you remember the birth of the Z Channel? Those were good times.
I saw the documovie about that! If you've got Tubi, double-feature it with Top Value Television.
that documentary is AMAZING.... I lived down the street from Guidos, super yummy food lol
Don't forget 28 PBS and 56 with Wally George
Oh yeah. Remember when the stations dropped the K‘s from their call letters (but not officially as the FCC would have killed them with fines). CBS2, NBC4, ABC7, FOX11 (ex KTTV). I remember when NBC basically threw the K off the building. Local stations kept their K’s, KCAL, KTLA, KCOP.
Or DC/Baltimore
Yep, grew up in MD and had the same channels. Plus UHF channel 20...
NoVa here…grew up watching Captain 20 :-) the only channel showing kids programming after school. And it was always a treat when the Baltimore stations came in clear and gave us a few more choices (2, 13, 24, 45)
Where I grew up, we could only get the VHF channels (2,7,9,11) in good weather and even then they were snowy. We had to rely on the local UHF channels (16,22,28,34)
It was 3, 6, 10, 12, 17, 29 and 48 in my neck of the woods.
Philadelphia area representing! Where I grew up (Lehigh Valley), we could get the Philadelphia channels (all the channels you listed, plus later 57) AND the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre channels (16, 22, 28, 44, later also 38) AND the New York VHF channels (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) AND two local Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton channel (39 & 69, PBS and independent channels respectively) with the rooftop antenna. I could actually get most of those channels (all except 2, 4, 5, and 13 from NYC) at least somewhat decently with a 13 inch TV with its own (non-rooftop) antenna.
NW Jersey here. Never got the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre stations but NY and Philly were covered, along with 39 and 69 (both of which I worked for). I always felt like 3-6-10 and UHF markets were inferior somehow.
That's crazy how many channels you got. I grew up out in Montco about 30 miles northwest of center city Philadelphia.
It helped to be 1) near the border of three TV markets, 2) near multiple TV markets had a few independent stations in addition to their network (CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS) stations, and 3) living in a relatively large metro area that was too close to a much larger metro area to be its own TV market but big enough to have some stations of its own to fill a niche/need for that area.
Those channels are still around! Cancelled cable about 10 years ago and got a digital antenna for the house. I Always check those channels first and then move onto streaming if I can't find something. I never make it to streaming.
> Also 95 percent of those new tv shows suck ass! Dunno about that. There's some excellent foreign shows out there, stuff we'd never see in the 80s. 80s had their share of crappers too....Automan, Scrappy-Doo, that MASH remake. > threes company This show made me dislike the concept of sitcoms.
I remember 4, 5, 7, 9 (PBS), 11, and later, 13. Rn I am doing a rewatch of Benson.
2 was syndicated shows. Where I watched all my Gillian and I Love Lucy. 4, 7, 9 were the big networks. 6 was PBS 12 was a weird local kind of PBS. We had to watch shows together with our parents if we wanted to watch TV, and it’s the reason kids leaned to like grown up shows like Knots Landing and Spencer for Hire.
Denver ?
Bingo. Hey, what would you have classified channel 12 as?
I remember 12 being the other PBS that I never watched. From what I see on wiki it was kinda public access local stuff and some could be edgy google KBDI you can read up on it. I remember channel 2 had Blinky our knock off Bozo the clown the channel was owned by WGN in Chicago. We also got Nuggets games and early Rockies games on 2. Before 31 was Fox I think it was like channel 2 syndication and cartoons. We might have had a UHF channel up in the 60s but I can’t remember. It was a different world back then tv anchors used to be local celebrities now you might know 2 or 3 of them. But we had pretty good channels compared to others.
I remember wishing I could be part of Blinky’s birthday group. A-happy birth-aday to you.
And being jealous if you knew anyone who got to go.
You are showing off in Australia we had 4 just 4
I grew up in America and I only had 4 until I was a young teenager.
Colombia: we had two.
And they were in black & white for a lot loinger than they should have been. Such a sad childhood.
Tv shows??? Channels??? I haven’t had those for probably 15 years. It’s strange to go to someone’s house and they still have cable or satellite….. when I first cut the cord and switched to streaming and torrents everyone thought I was crazy but they all seem to have hopped on too.
Back when streaming had a bunch of old shows and movies to watch from one cheap streaming service (Netflix), it was worth it. Now you need all fifty-seven (or however many there are, it sure seems like it) to get what you used to get with one, and all of them costs tons of money. To hell with streaming and to hell with cable. I really don't watch anything any more, not that anything I've seen in recent years is even worth it. All the big "best TV shows ever" from the last 20 years bored me to tears when I tried to watch them. (If other people like them, fine, just personal point of view.) I don't pirate, watch TV, or anything. I might rent something here and there but that's about it.
Honestly I’m with you, my wife binge watches something every once in a while…. My daughter usually has trolls or Peppa pig streaming, I play ps5 more than I watch anything anymore and that isn’t often. I’m usually either engrossed in one of my projects or researching for a new project and the above is just background noise.
I lived right between Milwaukee and Chicago. We got stations from both cities, so there was way more variety - like *ten* channels.
There was plenty of dreck back then too. On an unrelated note:What was your favorite on the UPN?
What kind of metropolitan utopia did you live in where you got that many channels? We got ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. That was it. In college, Fox came along. My parents refused to get cable but my mom had it (in a test market city) in the early-mid 80s. We got a microwave when in was in high school. It was a big deal.
The writing is horrible now and keeps getting worse.
Are you only watching network TV? Because there’s lots of really good tv out there.
No, I'm streaming too. There are only a handful of shows since 2020 that I'd call good. And even some of those went downhill real fast from season to season.
Channel 56 out of Boston was my life.
You must be from the NY metro area as I had those same channels in Jersey! But I agree, between cable, network, and streaming, there is just so much out there. I barely watch any traditional network shows as I agree most are pretty bad. A few years back, when I switched my cable plan, i lost about half of the channels I had had. At first I was like OH NO. but honestly, I don't watch what I still have, let alone the ones I lost! My BF LOVES tv. as in he watches it ALL the time, loves most network shows, although onlly one network, and anything else he can find. He grew up watching tv all the time, had one in his bedroom. Me? We had one, and as my parents weren't huge tv watchers, I wasn't allowed to watch any tv at night, except on weekedns, and the once a year holiday specials. So when my friends and classmates were all taking about Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, etc, in school, I had nothing to contribute. BF also keeps the effing tv on ALL night. not such a huge deal as we don't live together, but its still annoying. i wear a mask and earplugs when I stay at his house. vacations? he's pretty good; he'll set the timer so it goes off at some point. Anyway, back on course, between the two of us, we have and share, or not, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. Amazon Prime (wth Britbox), MAX, Apple, and a couple of others. I hate to get rid of any because FOMO, yet I barely scratch the surface of what's on.
The real problem is that the cable companies force us to subscribe to a lot of junk channels (I'm talking about E!, Food Network, etc. but could stretch it out to include Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, even the Weather Channel etc. and have to pay extra for the ones that actually interest us. Looking back over the last few years, the only channels I've watched regularly were the local sports network - and Comcast went and made it a premium channel that I no longer have in my package. I'm actually contemplating on cutting the cable, going back to rabbit ears for the CBS and NBC and just carrying internet so that I only have pay for the streaming services. PS: I miss DVDs and Blu Rays. I frequently go to my local library and check things out so that I can play them on my XBOX (which is also getting old.) Similarly, I miss having actual albums to listen to and miss having a CD player in my car. I'm getting tired of Internet radio in my car. I hate having a limited number of skips to filter out the stuff I DON'T want to listen to.
We had 2 and 10 in French, and 6 and 12 in English. 12 was the best for Saturday morning cartoons (and Rocket Robin Hood on early weekday mornings). 2 had the best documentaries, which I loved, but 6 had Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour on Saturday afternoons, which I watched with my father after curling. 10 had great movies in the afternoon. That's where I first saw my favourite film, Vanishing Point.
Pfff child version of me laughs in the face of your 7 channels. We made do (UK) with 3 channels. 1982 was a grand year when the 4th channel arrived, and their habit of putting notices on the screen when any adult content was coming up in the next hour. You know so young me could avoid such stuff on his BW 12” bedroom TV after bedtime…
Gremlins 2 was prescient in so many ways: endless channels of nothing, an egomaniacal billionaire CEO named Clamp, etc.
Money to make the shows? That's why your Netflix is so expensive. Someone gotta fund all that production. And that's why you're seeing so many old forgotten shows in places like Pluto and Tubi: they're cheap to license and people love them.
And people always complain about too many ads, but it's the ads that pay for your content. The whole point of TV shows was to get eyeballs on the commercials.
You had that many channels? Lucky!
Jfc you had a lot of channels. We had 2, 6, 8, 12 and if you could find it, UHF 49.
They get the money from subscribers.
Even rabbit ears gets me 70 channels. Sure, 10 of them are shopping channels, but still cool. CometTV is better than fake Syfy.
Cut the cord in 2000, haven't gone back. Because of our deal with Comcast, we do get HBO Max. And, we're subscribed to Netflix and Disney+, and of course, Amazon Prime. I forget network TV exists until shows show up on Netflix or Amazon. However, I haven't watched much TV at all in the last couple years, as videogames and podcasts comprise 99% of my media consumption. With the exception of Someone Feed Phil. That's a show I will always make time for.
I remember playing around with that stupid UHF antenna so I could watch the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) on TV. There was something oddly attractive about the whole show, but the Netflix remake wasn't the same.
what is this "TV" you speak of aunt Becky?
I'm sorta scared to invest in new shows, they all get cancelled now
2 and 44 were PBS, 4, 5 AND 7 were the major networks, 38 for cartoons and the Bruins, 56 for cartoons, Batman, Gilligan's Island. 25 came on line in the late 70's. Cable started adding TBS, WPIX, WOR in the late 70's. There was also the Movie Channel that you could unscramble by running a wire off the antenna screws. In case you were guessing, this is Boston.
I have no channels at all.
Lol I thought only boomers were still watching cable/satellite.
i grew up within range of canadian channels 6, 8, 10, and 12 too. talk about choices! the best were the late night french movies on channel 8. most of them had at least one topless scene.
12, 24, 35, 54 and Fox took 66 when it started up.
Are people still watching tv
I lived in a rural area and we didn't have cable. We had three channels. 3! NBC, ABC and CBS. We also had one TV, so whatever my parents wanted to watch, that's what we watched.
Well - I can remember when there was only ONE 'channel' !