In the 80s/90s, did your cable provider give you a "free" premium channel?

[RH | 4,908]

After a bit of discussion in the Gummi Bears game thread, someone mentioned that their family had The Disney Channel on cable when they were a kid, for free.  That's pretty cool.  When I was a kid, we didn't have cable (because we lived out in the sticks) but my grandparents did.  For as long as I can recall, they had HBO.  The thing is, they didn't pay for HBO and they didn't even want HBO.  We were a conservative, Christian family and there was a lot of stuff on HBO they didn't want even in the home, mostly because when the grand kids came over, we had free rain of the TVs and they wanted us to be limited to more decent material.

Anyway, I even remember my grandparents every few years would even call up to ask that HBO be cut off.  They wouldn't, even though it was exclusively marked as a premium channel.  The odd thing was, some of my friends who also had cable had free HBO, but not all of them.  Others had a single, free premium channel (like The Disney Channel) but only one.  Just like in the Gummi Bears thread, and other times in my life, I've heard of random cable customers having a free, single premium channel.  My guess is that it was a form of randomized, guerrilla marketing, where if they gave out a free channel, they hoped those individuals would watch it and talk it up.

I've always thought it was odd and since we're all nostalgia nerds, I thought you would all recall if you, your family or friends managed to get a free sub for such a service.  If so, what was it.  If not, did you guys know anyone with free premium channels (that weren't bootlegging it with a hacked TV console box?)

[Estil | 1,265]

At least when the Disney Channel was a pay channel it actually lived up to its name  

My grandma had cable (no pay channels) but sadly we lived too far out in the sticks to be able to get cable service.  Believe me, having to put up with regular snowy TV up to the mid-to-late 90s (when we finally got around to getting Primestar though by this point I was almost ready to go off to UK anyway) was NOT fun.

At least with the help of YouTube I can finally get caught up on some of the awesome Nickelodeon stuff (and yes the old time Disney Channel stuff) I missed out on back then!

Edited June 9, 2020 by Estil

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

When Disney Channel was paid, we used to have "Disney Week".

What is so crazy, is this was back in the day of PHYSICAL FILTERS at the cable box, so the cable company had service techs running around removing and replacing filters (though I think they were probably doing it at a node further up the chain, in some way).

One year, they never refiltered the channel and we had Disney Channel for "free" for about a YEAR before it went back off the air.

 

My dad was big into consumer A/V stuff, so he had a couple of high-end VCRs, and he would run both of them, filling tapes, during "Disney Week" so that my sister and I could revisit the content throughout the year.

The most memorable standouts, other than Gummi Bears, was obviously taping Super Ducktales (the arc with Gizmoduck), and then a couple of odd-ball movies (Milo and the Phantom Tollbooth, and Tommy Tricker)

 

EDIT: in terms of the randomness -- as far as I am aware, it was a fixed calendar week every year that Disney sponsored to boost their own subscriptions, and the people getting it were notified ahead of time.  I never heard of anyone in my market getting anything other than Disney -- I only had one friend with a full premium package of Cinemax, Showtime and HBO... which of course we had a lot of late nights watching during middle school sleepovers.

Edited June 9, 2020 by arch_8ngel

[Tulpa | 3,509]

I don't remember any free ones until Disney started to become free in 1991 or 1992. I can't remember when we got it (online it says Alabama cable cos started getting it in 1991.)

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

We had HBO back in the mid 80s when I was a kid. I didn't get to go to the movies often, so it was a much bigger deal back then compared to now.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

19 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

I don't remember any free ones until Disney started to become free in 1991 or 1992. I can't remember when we got it (online it says Alabama cable cos started getting it in 1991.)

 

Reading about the history of the channel, from 90-97 they were "hybrid" where they were premium in some markets and standard in others.

I wonder if our market went "standard" for a year (i.e. the year we thought they forgot to put the filter back on), and then switched back to premium for a few years before finally defaulting to being part of basic cable...

(the year that we had it for free was definitely in the 91/92 timeframe)

Edited June 9, 2020 by arch_8ngel

[RH | 4,908]

I forgot to mention the preview Disney Weekends because IMHO, those don't count.  I remember they were actually advertised about a month in advance and, yes, we are always so pumped when it came around.  When my brother and I spent the night at my grandparents, that's what we watched.  When we were really young, my mom had a job and we'd go over to my grandparents house after school.  Again, the only channel we'd watch was The Disney Channel that week.

But, it was HBO that was 100% free, all the time and my grandparents were told countless times by accounting "you do not have HBO!"  Um... yes they did.  They had it for decades and never paid a dime for it.

They also never had a cable box.  I'm not sure what the difference was for old school cable providers, but I always thought it was odd that people had to have a dedicated cable "box" when I learned about them, probably in Middle School.  We only had one cable provider on our side of town and no one I knew needed a cable box.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

7 minutes ago, RH said:

I forgot to mention the preview Disney Weekends because IMHO, those don't count.  I remember they were actually advertised about a month in advance and, yes, we are always so pumped when it came around.  When my brother and I spent the night at my grandparents, that's what we watched.  When we were really young, my mom had a job and we'd go over to my grandparents house after school.  Again, the only channel we'd watch was The Disney Channel that week.

But, it was HBO that was 100% free, all the time and my grandparents were told countless times by accounting "you do not have HBO!"  Um... yes they did.  They had it for decades and never paid a dime for it.

They also never had a cable box.  I'm not sure what the difference was for old school cable providers, but I always thought it was odd that people had to have a dedicated cable "box" when I learned about them, probably in Middle School.  We only had one cable provider on our side of town and no one I knew needed a cable box.

It was a full week, to my recollection.

 

Also, when I said "cable box" -- I was referring to the curbside utility "box" that is really just a molded plastic cover for a bunch of wiring.

Those used to have a bunch of filters in them that blocked specific channels.

[RH | 4,908]

36 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Reading about the history of the channel, from 90-97 they were "hybrid" where they were premium in some markets and standard in others.

I wonder if our market went "standard" for a year (i.e. the year we thought they forgot to put the filter back on), and then switched back to premium for a few years before finally defaulting to being part of basic cable...

(the year that we had it for free was definitely in the 91/92 timeframe)

I only know this because my wife and I have been watching a few DefunctTV YouTube videos about Disney Channel stuff.  Supposedly, the story is that "The Disney Channel" switch to "Disney Channel" in the late 90s.  Up to that point, it was kid programming and surprisingly much of the content they created in the early 80s, they ran for the entire span of about 12-14 years, before switching over.  When the channel became "Disney Channel", it transitioned to what it is today.  It was no longer a premium network and was more geared to creating fresh content intended to sell new IP.  It essentially became a junk, commercial channel.  Granted, I think it's sad that the old channel didn't innovate much and kept rehashing the old content we grew up with but shows like Gummy Bears, Pooh's Corner, Dumbo's Circus, etc. stayed in rotation for almost the entire run of the channel.  Maybe in some markets it was a standard channel, but where I grew up, it was a premium channel until about 1998.

[zeppelin03 | 314]

I seem to recall my father running out to mess with the box on the side of the house before a tech showed up. I have a feeling we didn't pay for a few channels.

[Estil | 1,265]

1 minute ago, zeppelin03 said:

I seem to recall my father running out to mess with the box on the side of the house before a tech showed up. I have a feeling we didn't pay for a few channels.

Oooooh, I hope none of you guys resorted to this or getting those freeloader eh I mean descrambling boxes from back then!

 

[Abelardo | 154]

I live in Mexico so things were a bit different but not that much, due to an sporting event I know exactly around when my parents signed up for cable TV, we got it because my parents wanted to watch Julio César Chávez vs. Meldrick Taylor fight (March 17, 1990) and the cable TV company was going to broadcast this PPV for free so tons of people signed up, don't remember much of what we had but The Disney Channel was most likely a "basic" channel at least during the mid-late 90s, HBO was premium and you'd need a converter to get any of the premium channels which we never did, Cinemax might've been in the basic package too, there were other premium channels as well mostly focused on recent movies and PPV.

[Tulpa | 3,509]

7 minutes ago, RH said:

They also never had a cable box.  I'm not sure what the difference was for old school cable providers, but I always thought it was odd that people had to have a dedicated cable "box" when I learned about them, probably in Middle School.  We only had one cable provider on our side of town and no one I knew needed a cable box.

Yeah, some markets used descrambler boxes to get premiums.

When digital cable took off, boxes (and DVRs) became more common, due to the encryption technology that was vastly superior to filters (primarily they could be controlled by the home office rather than the outdoor boxes.) Some channels could use the digital QAM tuner in a TV to tune "in the clear", which were usually just the networks affiliates, PBS, and one or two others.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

What's the difference between a free channel and a "free" channel?

Why is free in quotation marks?

[RH | 4,908]

48 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

What's the difference between a free channel and a "free" channel?

Why is free in quotation marks?

Well, free but it shouldn't be.  I was bringing attention to it because it wasn't free, as in a service given by the cable company, but it was free in an unexpected, unexplained kind of way.  You didn't pay for it, it wasn't a "preview".  It was just... free, even though it shouldn't have been.

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

Only remember watching Nickelodeon on channel 16 when I was kid lol we had cable not sure if my parents got anything for free with it

[Deadeye | 1,596]

Gave us HBO during a free week or month, and then forgot to turn it off for a year or so.  This is when the tech had to go on the pole and change it.  

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

We had a descrambler growing up...my parents paid for basic but got everything.

yes, everything.

[DefaultGen | 5,407]

24 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

We had a descrambler growing up...my parents paid for basic but got everything.

yes, everything.

I remember the name of the dude who set this up my house, Javier, but his real name might have been Jesus 

[Lincoln | 230]

we had hbo but I believe we paid for it. that was the only premium channel available for several years. eventually the cable lineup expanded and cinemax and disney were available, but we didn't subscribe to those.

i can actually remember most of the original cable lineup 

2-hbo
3-cbs
4-family channel
5-nbc 
6-? may have been usa early on
7-tnn (the nashville network)
8-pbs
9-abc
10-?
11-wgn
12-tnt
13-espn

later on we got nick, vh1, a&e or amc, and a few others i can't remember. never had mtv so I was deprived of beavis & butt-head growing up, which i consider a travesty. we had fox eventually, but that was notably missing for a long time. i think it ended up on 7, i don't know what happened to tnn

[Estil | 1,265]

Wow, @Lincoln, you got cable back when it only filled up the VHF dial (those were the days...)?  That must've been so cool dudeish (as my wife likes to say) to be one of the first to have cable/satellite...

And check out this neat playlist of early cable TV stuff...and there's even some YT videos out there of some eh, for lack of better term "off the grid" programming from the giant dish days of satellite TV.  For anywhere near this much stuff to still exist and posted for all of us to see with just a click of a mouse is a frickin' miracle, seeing as how you would've had to have taped it at the time, saved the tape for all those decades without someone taping over it or throwing it away and then have the tools needed to properly upload it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFL8aLJDlcAIpwu7v3kZiE_jCKoeCnw5q

Edited June 10, 2020 by Estil

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

6 hours ago, Estil said:

Wow, @Lincoln, you got cable back when it only filled up the VHF dial (those were the days...)?  That must've been so cool dudeish (as my wife likes to say) to be one of the first to have cable/satellite...

 

Cable using the UHF frequencies has been around for a LONG time.  Seems a little more likely that he just happened to have a VHF-only TV, so wasn't able to see the full package.

I guess he could be a lot older than I thought, though.

 

@Lincoln one of the early channels you're missing is TBS (it has been around on cable since the mid-70's).  And Fox wasn't even created until 1986.

Doing a quick lookback over channel history, it is pretty fascinating that Nickelodeon goes back to 1977, and even VH1 (1985) predates Fox.

Genuinely surprised you didn't have MTV, though, since that was the definition of having cable in the 80's.

 

 

[RH | 4,908]

11 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Cable using the UHF frequencies has been around for a LONG time.  Seems a little more likely that he just happened to have a VHF-only TV, so wasn't able to see the full package.

I guess he could be a lot older than I thought, though.

 

@Lincoln one of the early channels you're missing is TBS (it has been around on cable since the mid-70's).  And Fox wasn't even created until 1986.

Doing a quick lookback over channel history, it is pretty fascinating that Nickelodeon goes back to 1977, and even VH1 (1985) predates Fox.

Genuinely surprised you didn't have MTV, though, since that was the definition of having cable in the 80's.

 

 

My other grandparents lived on the other side of town. Their region had a different, smaller cable company (which might have been Cox.) They didn't have MTV for years, but later in the 90s they did get The Sci-Fi channel as part of their standard package and I think even VH1 (but still not MTV?!). VH1 and Sci-Fi were part of an upper-tier package channel, but not premium, for my side of town.

When my grandparents got Sci Fi, I was introduced to all of the Planet of the Apes movies and the one show that would change my geek life. MST3K.

Edited June 10, 2020 by RH

[Gamegearguy | 224]

Salem, Oregon cable line up from 1983:

Don't know what ON TV was...

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

I voted no even though we didn't have cable for the vast majority of my childhood (had it right as I was starting to make memories, then never again after we moved until I brought it back into the house so I could have cable internet).  However, none of my friends or relatives with it ever had any free channels during that time, so I can weigh in on their behalf.  Disney perpetually had a week or two each year where they'd unscramble for free to tempt people into paying for it, but nothing else as I recall--HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc., didn't start doing free days/weeks for friends'/family's accounts until the early 00's.  I did have a friend whose dad had a cable box that was old enough to de-scramble using an index card wiggled around just right, but I don't think that counts as far as this survey intends.