3 Channels...and UHF

[RCMerchant]

 3 Channels...and UHF.

 MY kids got up this morning , got ready for school...and turned on the f3cking TV to watch before they leave.
 "I don't like MTV!"
"SO what?!? You watched cartoons all day yesterday!"
"Nuh uh!"
YEAH-HUH!"

 SHUDDUP!!!!

 "Turn it to channel 3 news! For now on in the morning...I want the TV on channel 3 News-or turn it off!"
What the hell ? I'm thiking of grounding them to 3 or four local TV channels for a month...just to show them what it was like when I was a kid. Mebbe they won't argue about TV so much. When I was young...we had channels 3 (CBS), 8 (NBC) and 13 (local). And select uhf channels...46-religious station...played Hopalong Cassidy films sometimes.
 41-(ABC)-Had SHOCK Theatre late Saterdays.
 32-(PBS)- Good for WORLD at WAR and old silent films.
 28-after school Bugs and Woody cartoons. Saterday late Double Creature Feature!
 22-crap
 16-more crap. But good for Late LATE Nite movies on weekends. Good obscure sh1t!

 Kids got to much for there own good,I think. And we're relativly poor!

[Jack]

When I was a kid we got two channels, and maybe one day a month when atmospheric conditions were just right you could sort of pick up a UHF channel.  Enough to tell what show was on at least    I remember we had a rotor on the TV antenna, because you had to turn it in one direction to pick up one channel, and the opposite direction for the other one.  Technology - high technology!

[RapscallionJones]

Now we're talking!  I lived in the last town in Massachussets to be wired for cable so until late 1985 we had out choices of

2 (PBS), 4 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 7 (CBS) each showing their usual daytime soaps/talk routines followed by the news and the prime time stuff that rarely, if ever, interested me.

Then there was:

56 (WLVI) Now an CW affiliate.  My preferred channel.  Looney Tunes, Mighty Mouse, Transformers, GI Joe, Brady Bunch followed by the news then reruns of Welcome Back Kotter, Good Times, Night Court (in later years), Three's Company and then an 8 o'clock movie which I credit partially with crafting me into the movie lunatic that I am today. 

56 did their best to broadcast quality movies, but they were also limited by a tight budget so a couple of times a week they would show something tasteful and appealing to the broader market, but most of the time it was a horror movie, Chuck Norris, cheap-o action movies, revenge, whatever.  They cut out only the most absolutely offensive stuff like nudity and grisly graphic violence, but for the most part, they left their movies intact, trimming only what they needed to for ads. 

Saturday afternoons meant The Creature Double Feature from noon to four which featured kaiju, Hammer and Amicus horror and kid-friendly drive-in fare.  I miss it dearly.

Then:

25 (WFXT) now a Fox affiliate.  In 1981 this channel ran an afternoon double whammy of Force Five followed by Starblazers which anime nerds recognize as the Americanized serial of Space Battleship Yamato.  Force Five was five different Japanese animated shows: Monday was Dangard Ace, Tuesday was Grandizer, Wednesday was Spaceketeers, Thursday was another space opera sentai show whose name escapes me, and Friday was Gaiking.  None of them were particularly good but I liked Spaceketeers the best.  Giant Mecha fans will recognize this as one of the many shows to feature Gettarobo.  Not until years later would I hear the term anime used but that was what this stuff was.  I loved it but my brother and sister hated it so I rarely got to watch either show.  Somehow I kept up on all of them.  FXT also did a movie but it was never worth watching.  The only other thing I ever tuned in for was Different Strokes reruns.

38 (WSBK) is now whatever UPN became.  Before this you watched them for either Red Sox games or The Bruins.  They got a lot of viewers because they reran Cheers but I hated Cheers even as a little kid.  Their 8 o'clock movie was occasionally watchable.  They called it The Movie Loft and it was hosted by this guy named Dana Hersey who would drop trivia between commercial breaks.  They were best known for running movies completely uncut.  I saw both Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter this way.

They also had Black Belt theater on sunday afternoons so I discovered a lot of fantastic martial arts this way.  From Jackie Chan to The Shaw Brothers to Sonny Chiba.  Samurai, shaolin monks and street fighters.  Since I was about 8 when I discovered it, the remaining afternoon following the movie was spent bouncing off the walls punching and kicking the air.  Also, like their regular movies, they never cut these so when I saw Shogun Assassin, I saw it with all the blood geysers firmly intact.  I was a fan of asian action from a very young age because of this.

Way off in the distance, practically in the ether, was southshore UHF channel 68, whose called letters I can't remember.  They were in a desperate way and only ever seemed to rerun episodes of Emergency and Quincy but they also did Speed Racer and Robotech.  You had to really mess with the rabbit ears to get this channel to come in clear but the Robotech was worth it.  They also ran a show called The Invaders, which I seem to remember being a very grim, paranoia fantasy somewhat in the vein of The X-Files meets The Fugitive where a guy has secret knowledge of aliens infiltrating regular society but everyone thinks he's crazy so he has to constantly stay on the run while tyring to blow their cover.  I doubt it's as good as I remember it.

There was also channel 66, V66, which showed a short rotation of obscure music videos like MTV.  I remember that Art of Noise video where the guys trash the music instruments while the punked out little girl yells "HEY!".

UHF had such an innocently trashy aesthetic that I miss so badly these days.  There isn't a channel on TV with the low budget charm and the movie round-ups that they used to have.  With so much competition these days, regional little guys don't stand a snowball's chance in hell and it's really too bad.

[Allhallowsday]

Rapscallion Jones, Jack, Bela: 
I really admire the fact that you guys not only remember the details (like call letters) of your old TV stations, but the programs you got to watch on them. 

I must have been very lucky since we had:
2 (CBS) 4 (NBC) 5 (WNEW which showed "Creature Feature" and had films like FRANKENSTEIN particularly Halloween, Saturday 1970) 7 (ABC) 9 (WOR home of "Chiller") 11 (WPIX home of the "Yule Log") and 13 (PBS)... UHF was not really viable, and weather seemed to matter as Jack pointed out, though later I recall having more luck getting in UHF channels (in order to watch movies).  Remember "rabbit ears?"    

[Scott]

Here are the two intros to CHILLER THEATER which was a New York WPIX channel 11 show.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ux3laLkueZk
	Small | Large

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7CafM97ifNc
	Small | Large

RCMerchant, World At War and Biography where two of my favorites.

[Allhallowsday]

Here are the two intros to CHILLER THEATER which was a New York WPIX channel 11 show.

NO!!!  It was WORTV channel 9!!! 

[RCMerchant]

Here are the two intros to CHILLER THEATER which was a New York WPIX channel 11 show.

NO!!!  It was WORTV channel 9!!! 

 I lived in Milton,NY in the Late 60's...and I do believe it was channel 9. That b+w CHILLER into used to give me bad dreams...

[Scott]

Here's a complete list of the films shown on CHILLER THEATER on WPIX and even the dates. Use to watch it all the way from Horseheads, New York back when we only had the 12 channels on our cable system back in the mid-70's. 

http://www.dvddrive-in.com/Chiller/chiller.htm

[Trevor]

  Thanks, RC: karma for that.

When I was growing up in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] we had one channel. Yes, that's right. One. Yes, One.  

In black and white, no colour transmission at all. 

I saw colour TV for the first time in 1987 when I moved to Pretoria.

[frank]

Hey Trevor, you've beaten me!

We had two main channels and one local. Program would stop at midnight, at the local channel considerably earlier - no cheezy late nite flicks for me in my youth.

Try yourself and look at the picture below for 8 hours straight to participate in the nightly visual entertainment of my younger self:

[Jack]

Just before they went off the air for the night, I remember one of our channels would show a video of an airplane (X-15?) flying through the air, and someone recited HIGH FLIGHT by Pilot Officer John G. Magee Jr.:

Oh! I have slipped the surely bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlight silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew –

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Then you knew that your daily TV viewing was well and truly ended.

[Allhallowsday]

Here's a complete list of the films shown on CHILLER THEATER on WPIX and even the dates. Use to watch it all the way from Horseheads, New York back when we only had the 12 channels on our cable system back in the mid-70's. 

http://www.dvddrive-in.com/Chiller/chiller.htm

That's troubling to me, but not too deeply since it's been such a long time... guess I don't remember correctly (still a little stunned...)  Thanks, Scott. 

[Scott]

It's been a while for everyone.  30+ years.

[Eyesore]

I remember when "staying up to watch the Indian pray" (the last image before the test pattern came on) was a rite of passage. Proving that you could stay up late without falling asleep meant a lot more in those pre-insomnia days!