Best Era of Cable/Satellite In General

[Jimmy Owen]

I would have to say when CBN started the game show blocks in 82 or so; USA expanded on the idea in 84-85 and lasted until 95, when the niche channels came into being.  I\'m too old to have appreciated the NICK blocks, but I\'m sure they brought great joy to kids.

[clemon79]

I may be in the minority, but I consider the downward spiral at the point networks started squeezing credits and inserting pop-up ads to get more advertising in. That was 1999 or 2000.

Dude, I *totally* know someone you should meet.

[BrandonFG]

Excuse the hyperbole...\"downward spiral\" is a bit much, and I typed that before my cup of coffee. You know I\'m sane. :-P

 

/Still don\'t like it though

[Jumpondees]

 
Being among a bunch of geeks, was I the only one who watched the original Prevue Guide channel for entertainment?
 

I will own up to that, to the point where when there wasn\'t anything else good to watch on TV at bedtime, I would put that channel on to fall asleep to.

[aaron sica]

The best time for cable in my opinion was also the mid-90\'s. We had niche channels that appeared, showing us some shows and things that hadn\'t appeared on TV in years, and those channels were absolutely dedicated to them.  Examples:

 

* GSN (of course!) Literally back then, \"all play, all day\". One could go 6am to midnight (until \"Late Night Games\") with no repeats, and no original shows (unless you count the phone-in games). Many short-lived shows thrown in there, too.

 

* TV Land. Another channel that dusted off some short-lived shows every once in awhile. Like a 24-hour N@N (which was its intention, no?), even commercial-free at the start. I did a double-take the first time I saw an old \"In the News\" from CBS\'s Saturday Morning days on there.

 

* Cartoon Network - back before they started with their original shows which eventually took over most of the schedule, this was another place to see shows that hadn\'t been on in awhile.

 

One last thing, nothing to do with the mid \'90s, but more like a decade earlier - I remember the early days of N@N, enjoying Dennis the Menace (which I hadn\'t seen in a few years) and being introduced to the Donna Reed Show (at 10 1/2 I had no idea who she was). I could have sworn, however, that Nickelodeon was testing those late-evening waters with their OWN shows before it became N@N. I specifically remember an episode of \"Lights, Camera, Action!\" coming on at like 9 or 10 in the evening. Anyone else remember them doing that?

[Jimmy Owen]

The best time for cable in my opinion was also the mid-90\'s. We had niche channels that appeared, showing us some shows and things that hadn\'t appeared on TV in years, and those channels were absolutely dedicated to them.  Examples:

 

* GSN (of course!) Literally back then, \"all play, all day\". One could go 6am to midnight (until \"Late Night Games\") with no repeats, and no original shows (unless you count the phone-in games). Many short-lived shows thrown in there, too.

 

* TV Land. Another channel that dusted off some short-lived shows every once in awhile. Like a 24-hour N@N (which was its intention, no?), even commercial-free at the start. I did a double-take the first time I saw an old \"In the News\" from CBS\'s Saturday Morning days on there.

 

* Cartoon Network - back before they started with their original shows which eventually took over most of the schedule, this was another place to see shows that hadn\'t been on in awhile.

 

One last thing, nothing to do with the mid \'90s, but more like a decade earlier - I remember the early days of N@N, enjoying Dennis the Menace (which I hadn\'t seen in a few years) and being introduced to the Donna Reed Show (at 10 1/2 I had no idea who she was). I could have sworn, however, that Nickelodeon was testing those late-evening waters with their OWN shows before it became N@N. I specifically remember an episode of \"Lights, Camera, Action!\" coming on at like 9 or 10 in the evening. Anyone else remember them doing that?

I do believe you are correct.  Some of the other originals I can recall were \"Turkey Television\" and \" On the Television\" with Tim Conway Jr., among others.

[Ian Wallis]

I\'ll also vote for the mid-90s.  I got a C-band dish in \'92 and finally had access to Nick @ Nite, USA, FAM, eventually GSN, etc.  Even ESPN, which carried the NHL back then!

 

As others have mentioned, the lineups of all of those channels were (mostly) great.  Around the late \'90s, most of those shows started disappearing from those channels - in many cases never to be seen again. 

 

I haven\'t used my C-band dish in a few years now because everything\'s gone digital, and I never upgraded to that type of receiver.  Based on what those channels are airing now, I\'m not really missing a lot.

 

The \'90s were the best! 

[DYosua]

I\'ll also vote for the mid-90s.  I got a C-band dish in \'92 and finally had access to Nick @ Nite, USA, FAM, eventually GSN, etc.  Even ESPN, which carried the NHL back then!

Ditto for C-Band.  It had virtually everything you could get on cable, plus the unscrambled \"wild feeds\" for just about anything.  Before the move to Ku-Band/Digital/HDTV, you could often find a feed for any sport, any game, and either team.  And C-Band gave us a few oddities as well.

[JMFabiano]

Being among a bunch of geeks, was I the only one who watched the original Prevue Guide channel for entertainment?

 

I\'ll see your Prevue Guide, which I was amused by as well, and raise you THE WEATHER CHANNEL.  Especially the local forecasts and that music (which is how I discovered Mannheim Steamroller, among others). 

 

I\'d say late \'80s/early \'90s too.  Some of us like to think everything was best in the \'80s (but I *am* biased...), but parts of the following decade had bright spots.  You could see the chinks forming in the armor (MTV with more non-music programming, for instance) but it seemed like there was still a happy medium.  1991-92 is a particular nostalgic part of the \'90s for me, mostly cause there were still some decent game shows on USA (I even LIKED TJW and TTD \'90 then!), Raccoons on The Disney Channel, and wrestling (the mainstays like Prime Time and All-American on USA, the weekend 6:05 slots on TBS, and GWF daily on ESPN).  Plus the classic reruns hadn\'t gone away yet, so I could still watch Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and others. 

 

\'97 had some good points too, as that\'s when I first got GSN and Sci-Fi (where MST3K was restarting), back when they were really good.  I know, 1997 prob. couldn\'t hold a candle to the earlier Laura Chambers et al days, but it was still awesome.  Little did I know, October 1997 was coming, and in retrospect, even that wasn\'t THAT bad. 

 

Now, wonder if this could spin off into the best era of LOCAL television?  For the New York area, I\'d say \'70s and \'80s, but again, I *am* biased.  (I am mulling over writing a book about that subject and time period, for the NY area, which is why this cable topic made me think of the other) 

[Jimmy Owen]

Local television was best in mid 60\'s through the late 70\'s.  Shows were seldom shown more than once-a-day.  More varied shows in syndication.  Checkerboards, 4:30 movies, One half hour of news at 6pm and another at 11pm was enough to keep you more than informed. 

[TimK2003]

Local television was best in mid 60\'s through the late 70\'s.  Shows were seldom shown more than once-a-day.  More varied shows in syndication.  Checkerboards, 4:30 movies, One half hour of news at 6pm and another at 11pm was enough to keep you more than informed. 

 

I concur with that.  It seemed that with the 5 commercial channels we had, when there weren\'t any game shows on the Big 3 networks, you could go over to the UHF side and go back & forth between the two indies for either old cartoons or sitcoms which always seemed to be the counterprogramming to soaps.  In Cleveland, it was Channel 43 vs. Channel 61 and if the weather conditions were right, I could add channels 20 and 50 from Detroit into the mix.

 

Loved those days of being home sick and having my eyes glued to the TV from sunup to sundown.

[PYLdude]

I remember watching Nickelodeon in the late 80\'s and a few minutes after 8pm, I would get snow as it would cutover to Nick at Nite which for whatever reason, we were unable to get. (assuming it was a separate subscription)

 

Your cable system probably still had the old arrangement where the Nickelodeon signal would get swapped for the A&E signal around 8- which to the best of my knowledge was commonplace for several years, even after they obtained separate channels for both networks. That\'s my guess.

[BrandonFG]

That was the case for my hometown as late as 1998. It was VH1 during the day, and at 4pm, it became Comedy Central. The cable setup was weird here in that Chesapeake used TCI (which had the VH1/Comedy Central setup)...Norfolk, Va. Beach, and I think Portsmouth were Cox. Other cities used other cable systems as well (Charter in Suffolk, can\'t remember what the other two cities used).

 

Chesapeake finally became part of the Cox system in September of \'98.

[PYLdude]

I had TCI for awhile and don\'t remember a VH1/Comedy Central pairing. Then again I wasn\'t really going too far down the channel listings- most of the channels I watched were in the 2-40 range.


Might not have been in my market though- although I think on the weekend for a little while one of CC\'s predecessors shared the Nickelodeon frequency. Could be wrong but I do remember it switching at least once.

[TheInquisitiveOne]

The late 80s into early 90s were the best for me. Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite was awesome: fresh kids stuff in the day, old school classics at night. As an 8-year-old, I loved it...the latter moreso than the former at times (thank you Mr. Ed!) MTV had their videos and shows that, if they didn\'t play videos, were about videos and music. Everything else had that \"something for everyone\" type of vibe. HBO and Showtime were not so expensive and each had one channel. I even looked forward to the free previews of the Disney Channel when it was a premium network.

 

The 90s were weird for me. TCI of Northwest Indiana dropped Lifetime and MTV (thanks largely to then-fresh Beavis and Butthead) from their lineup in late 1993, but Nickelodeon kept me afloat. The advent of SNICK was a convention-breaker to me; I was always taught that Nickelodeon ended promptly at 7 to make room for Nick at Nite. However, it gave me Roundhouse and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, so that was a huge plus.

 

Count me as one of the people who actually watched the Weather Channel religiously. I remember Mike Bono, Jeanetta Jones, Dave Schwartz (I miss that guy), Jeff Morrow (whom I think was still around), and Vivian Brown (who is still around), among others. I miss the old-school graphics, music, and jazz selections. MTV still held its own (I moved to an area temporarily in 1994 where MTV and Lifetime were still intact), but I sensed the shift of identity when MTV came back to NWI.

 

After 1996, that\'s when things went downhill to me. Channels started to pile up, quality started to water down. When media conglomerates started buying up the networks I grew up watching, I knew it was time to move on. I won\'t even get into detail about MTV, because I know what\'s up.

 

Those 10 years from 1987 to 1996, to me, was cable at its finest.

 

The Inquisitive One