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

[Lincoln | 230]

5 hours 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.

 

 

Ah yeah, tbs not tnt. I was thinking "atlanta braves channel" and blanked on the callsign.

@Estilwas right though, only channels to 13 were available. It was a very small town with a local provider, so it was either cable or not, and when the lineup changed it did for everyone. We did need converter boxes after that for the old tvs.

Never had uhf service I'm aware of, and im sure i cranked that dial around a few times out of curiosity.

[RH | 4,906]

Unrelated but just a story about cable.

I mentioned that my family didn't have cable and we didn't have anything like that until we got Dish in the late 90s. We weren't being cheap or opposed to it, we just didn't have the option.  I lived about 15 minutes outside of Columbia, SC.  We lived on a country highway, about 5 miles outside a small town from where we were, going out of Columbia.  The same cable company that serviced my grand parents (the ones with the free HBO) had a cable line right on our street, across the road, running to the small town.  You could live in the suburbs of Columbia, or in the small town of a few thousand people right down the street, but we couldn't because teh cable company had said (and they still says) it's not worth it to split the line out to our house.

The sad thing is that even though it's a rural stretch of road, my parents know many of the families that live on it. We've all wanted cable and, eventually, broadband.  To this day, my Mom and Dad don't have a broadband option because of that stupid cable line that Time Warner refuses to cut to the 10 families on a one mile stretch of road.  My Mom's internet is a satellite option.  It's expensive and even still reminds me of dial-up days, which they were still suffering from up to about 10 years ago.

Edited June 10, 2020 by RH

[Estil | 1,265]

5 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

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

Well where do you think their famous "I want my MTV!" ad campaign at the time came from?

[Estil | 1,265]

8 minutes ago, RH said:

My Mom's internet is a satellite option.  It's expensive and even still reminds me of dial-up days, which they were still suffering from up to about 10 years ago.

DSL = Dismally Slow Line  

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Lincoln said:

Ah yeah, tbs not tnt. I was thinking "atlanta braves channel" and blanked on the callsign.

@Estilwas right though, only channels to 13 were available. It was a very small town with a local provider, so it was either cable or not, and when the lineup changed it did for everyone. We did need converter boxes after that for the old tvs.

PS: I'm pretty sure those old fashioned double dial TVs are NOT cable ready!!

Edited June 10, 2020 by Estil

[noiseredux | 232]

16 minutes ago, Estil said:

PS: I'm pretty sure those old fashioned double dial TVs are NOT cable ready!!

but you could sometimes get some extra SCRAMBLED channels with them!

[Estil | 1,265]

14 minutes ago, noiseredux said:

but you could sometimes get some extra SCRAMBLED channels with them!

Lot of good scrambled channels do...

[NESfiend | 1,515]

I'm on the list of hell no the cable company wasn't giving us anything for free. I cant believe people got HBO free? Where the heck was that going on? I thought it was like hitting the lotto when they would unlock it for a weekend preview promo. 

[The Count | 527]

We couldn't/wouldn't afford cable back then. Look at me now!

[Hammerfestus | 3,851]

It wasn’t the 80s or 90s but at some point we got rid of cable so we called time warner to come out and shut it off.  Well at first the guy shut off everything including internet and so were like that’s not right we’re just getting rid of the cable, the internet stays.   So he went back out and turned everything back on.  We spent like 3 or 4 years with free basic cable with no box.  Only got shut off recentlyish when they switched to digital or whatever.

[Tanooki | 4,934]

We got Showtime, pretty positive Disney was included in the usual extended cable package that had TBS, TNT etc with it.  At one point I think they even threw in also Cinemax, but HBO was always pay as was Starz when it eventually popped up.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

On 6/9/2020 at 5:46 PM, 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.)

 

Man not around me. I think Disney only got on our package around 97-98, about the same time encore movies got added to the mix.

[Pikkon | 19]

I remember back in the day my family had pretty much every good channel,my dad had one of those big ass satellite dishes and I think he didn't pay for most.

In the 90's he had a little black cable box that basically got every channel you could think of.

Edited June 15, 2020 by Pikkon