When did cable become available where you live?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by James Slattery, Oct 16, 2018.

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  1. James Slattery

    James Slattery Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Long Island
    I lived in Queens, NY and we didn't get cable until November 1990. The only thing we had before that was HBO via microwave, which we got in August 1976.
     
  2. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    This neighborhood was built on an old horse ranch in 1998, so then.
     
  3. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    I bet the horses were happy that they could finally watch Mister Ed. :)
     
  4. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Sadly, in my home-cesspool along the western border of Indiana, you could actually read about cable for years in TV Guide, before you could actually get it there....
     
  5. Dude111

    Dude111 An Awesome Dude

    Location:
    US
    Yes well you asked in the title "WHEN DID CABLE BECOME AVAILABLE WHERE YOU LIVE" (Not when did you get cable)) -- AH MAN!!

    Anyway....Cable became available in the late 70s in my town (I think) but we didnt get it till the early 80s and man was it good!!!!!! -- GOOD CARTOONS EVERYDAY!!!
     
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  6. m5comp

    m5comp Classic Rock Lover

    Location:
    Hamilton, AL
    My hometown got cable 3 years before I was born (in 1957). My father was one of the original subscribers; for years he got a discount on his monthly fee because of that.
     
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  7. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    Good Idea! Microwave my cable box...
     
  8. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    I definitely remember our house having cable in 1969 -- because I was watching SF stations we'd never have gotten through an antenna. It's possible it was around before that.
     
  9. clayton

    clayton Senior Member

    Location:
    minneapolis mn
    Early eighties as I recall
     
  10. Damien DiAngelo

    Damien DiAngelo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    In Kalamazoo, MI it was sometime in the '70s IIRC. We got it around 1978-'79.
    Our family was one of the first that I know of that got cable. We were also the only people we knew that had HBO. It was on channel 2, and you needed a descrambler filter to be able to watch it.
     
  11. Comet01

    Comet01 Forum Resident

    Viewing certain types of entertainment was quite a challenge before cable arrived. :rolleyes:
    Those brief moments of unscrambling provided quite a sense of achievement!
    [​IMG]
     
  12. Holerbot6000

    Holerbot6000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    1975-ish. We lived in a remote place with one TV channel so it was most welcome. Early days though. HBO had like 3 movies that they showed over and over again and the Food channel was just Mario, Emeril and the two hot tamale girls who used to fight on the air all the time. Everything seemed to be owned by Ted Turner in those days. MTV came along some time later.
     
  13. Where I grew up (Southbridge, Mass) we got it in the late 60’s via CATV (Community Antenna TV). The town is in a bit of a valley and actual antenna reception was not good, so they erected a tower on a hill overlooking the town.
     
  14. runofthemill

    runofthemill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Harrodsburg, KY
    It still hasn't.
     
  15. theoxrox

    theoxrox Forum Resident

    Location:
    central Wisconsin
    Somewhere in the 1976-78 range, as I recall.....
     
  16. ky658

    ky658 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ft Myers, Florida
    1973 when I lived in NY. It basically consisted of the local channels and Madison Square Garden network.
     
  17. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    We got cable in Panama City, FL in 1970. It was a godsend in those days because we had only one television station: WJHG which at the time was an NBC/ABC affiliate. If you had an outdoor antenna and the weather was cooperative, you could pick up the Dothan, AL CBS affiliate WTVY. The cable added several other broadcast stations along which included PBS from Tallahassee. There was also a "weather" station which was simply a TV camera panning back and forth showing a clock, thermometer, barometer, and wind gauge with music playing in the background. By the late 70s they had added a few cable-access only channels such as what would become TBS, CNN, and HBO.
     
  18. ibanez_ax

    ibanez_ax Forum Resident

    1974 or 1975 in Norristown, PA.
     
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  19. jojopuppyfish

    jojopuppyfish Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    So I didn't get cable in my house til about 1990. That was when I was 18.
    Our family would move to another house and then the old one would get cable installed.
    I remember neighborhoods use to complain that cable companies had to dig to put the cable in the ground.
     
  20. jupiter8

    jupiter8 Forum Resident

    Location:
    NJ, USA
    As a kid I moved from the eastern to western slope of Colorado around 1974- they had cable there since around 1960 or so (they called it "the carrier" or some such thing- sounds like a great Stephen King novel). They used to test channels and you could watch them by sticking toothpicks in the brown Jerrold box that was the channel switcher- it looked like the box was undergoing an acupuncture treatment but I remember my brother and me watching Nickelodeon way before it was added to the system (it was also weirder and better than what it is today).

    They only had one TV station in the town when I moved there- it was primarily a CBS affiliate but it would cherry-pick shows from all 3 major networks.
     
  21. Michael Rose

    Michael Rose Forum Resident

    Location:
    Davie,Fl
    My neighborhood in South Florida gained cable around 1981. My fam started partaking around 1982. I remember the "remote control" an Atari-like, wood grain mini consule that had a 10 ft wire attached . 37 clickable channels to choose from. A few months into our cable journey, my father got rid of it. Never fear, we quickly got it back for FREE. The 1980s were pretty simple times and neighborhood cable boxes were pretty easy to access and connect with some "found" or "donated" equipment. I miss the 80s.
     
  22. Spaghettiows

    Spaghettiows Forum Resident

    Location:
    Silver Creek, NY
    1978 just south of the Buffalo NY area. Cable was available earlier in the city of Buffalo and some of the higher populated suburbs, but our town didn't get it until 1978. Our family didn't get it until 1979. No box, but all 13 VHF channels had something, including WOR, public access, HBO and channels from Canada that we were able to pick up on an outdoor antenna previously, being very close to the Canadian border. The boxes with additional channels showed up around 1981 with USA, ESPN, WTBS, CNN, MTV and (sigh) shopping channels.
     
  23. AJH

    AJH Senior Member

    Location:
    PA Northern Tier
    I grew-up in Northeastern Pennsylvania (where many of the first CATV systems were located), and we had cable (or CATV) services in several of our towns in the 1950's. Most of those early systems didn't even require an in house box of any kind to deliver the channels. Service was brought into the house via a 75 ohm cable attached to a small 300 ohm converter at the back of each set. Only the broadcast channels from Philadelphia and New York were delivered on those early systems (via channels 2 through 13), and my father told me there were a total of seven channels. Very simple cable boxes, at least on the system my family subscribed to (which claimed to be the first in the country), didn't even arrive until the late 1970's or early 1980's, and they originally were only required for pay services like HBO and Prism.
     
  24. entropyfan

    entropyfan Forum Resident

    In 1981 my dad subscribed to basic cable, which was new to our town.

    In early '82 my dad subscribed to premium channels. I think HBO had recently begun 24/7 programming, and HTN (ha!) was available for only part of the day.

    In early '84 my dad, claiming that it would save money in the long run, purchased a fiberglass C-band satellite dish. He destroyed my mom's flower garden in order to make room for it. Domestic turbulence, but it was worth it because we soon had all the premium channels, plus raw news/sports feeds, weird church services, and pornography (my dad forbade me to rotate the dish away from Galaxy I). No more cable bills.

    In early '85 everything worth seeing via satellite got scrambled. Nothing stays free for very long, but we could still watch weird church services and raw news feeds. The cheap tuner we had was also sensitive to sun outage, so there were times when we couldn't really see anything at all.

    Sometime in 1986 the cable box returned. It sat atop the useless satellite tuner we didn't use anymore. The fiberglass dish, which grew uglier and more weather-worn with each passing year, remained in my parents' yard until my father passed away in early 2000. My mom had it removed soon afterwards. She got her garden back the following year.
     
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  25. fuse999

    fuse999 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    We got cable in El Paso in 1975, the best thing about it for me were the Los Angeles channels, which included the comical Cal Worthington ads. The cable was controlled by a box that had about 40 push buttons on it, one for each channel available.
     
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