Remember When What Is Now Comcast Cable, Cost $5.00 A Month?

[CK-722]

I first remember when people started to get Cable in Genesee County around 1968. It was $5.00 a month. It was owned by Lamb Communications, which was sold and eventually became Comcast. Except for Northern Michigan, where many small CATV systems had just 5 channels, which often included WJRT-TV 12 and WKBD-TV 50, whose programming was not available on more local channels like 7&4 and 9&10, Genesee County was one of the first midsized markets in Michigan with cable. Larger Northern Michigan systems had all 12 channels including CKLW-TV 9. WNEM-TV 5 (24 hours and movies overnight), WJRT-TV 12, WKBD-TV 50 and CKLW-TV 9 were microwaved to the cable head ends.

You had the VHFs, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 12. The UHFs were 20, 50, and 56. Later, they added 19, 23 and 25. Originally there was a Community Access Channel on 12 (12 was on 10 to minimize cochannel interference), which was no more than a camera panning a thermometer, hygrometer, anemometer, and barometer, and the image had a lot of barrel or pincushion distortion. Someone broke into the head end building once and put a centerfold in front of the instruments. I missed it. We didn't have Cable.

In 1971, the cable company announced that the monthly rate would soon increase to $7.50 a month. I was over at a classmate''s house, and I told his mother about the pending monthly increase. She replied, "Oh, that's just a rumor".

What are your recollections of Cable in your area, when it started and what channels were available?

[sinklair]

Costs are out of control. Cable companies force customers to buy bundles that include stations like Sinclair’s Tennis Channel. If you want to buy the Tennis Channel you should be able to buy it ala carte. Personally, I watch only a handful of stations but pay to subsidize Lifetime, the Hallmark Channel, Oxygen and Disney XD.

[CK-722]

Yes. Now they have it so if the YLs and XYLs want things like Hallmark, Turner Classic Movies, etc., they have to sign up for some Macho Sports Bundle. It's like "Repeat" on shampoo bottles, it doubles signups for that bundle.

[km1125]

Here are a couple videos of the weatherscan systems that were popular back then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGZAs5hkiQ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE4ijBGoGhA

[Dudley]

First reply to a question and stink goes off topic and then others follow off topic. What else is new?

[Dudley]

In case you forgot. What are your recollections of Cable in your area, when it started and what channels were available?

[Beerbong]

In case you forgot. What are your recollections of Cable in your area, when it started and what channels were available?

Oh no you didn’t.

[rugratsonline]

Bay City had Gerity Cable, which started around 1972, a few years after the Gerity family sold off WNEM-TV 5 in 1969. (They retained the FM station, which became WGER-FM.) Our family had it for a time in the mid-1970s, with WNEM on cable 7, WJRT on 11, WEYI on 4 and WUCM (WDCQ) on 3 -- except for WDCQ, which is now on cable 9, the other three stations are still on their original cable positions on the present day Spectrum system.

Gerity also had WKBD on cable 6, which they had into the 2000s, though briefly replaced with WGKI in the mid-1990s (WBSF took that slot after they went on the air). They also had CKLW-TV / CBET, which during the Gerity era was on 9, as well as WKAR and WCMU. They also had a local access channel on cable 2, which also offered network programs that weren't cleared by the local channels (I believe primary sources for those were WJBK (CBS), WXYZ (ABC) and WOTV (NBC, today's WOOD-TV)).

When HBO went national in the mid-1970s, Gerity had a special set-top box, where you tune in to channel 3 and turn the box on to watch HBO. Rumor has it that the signal was not scrambled, and as soon as cable-ready TVs came on the market, they became hot sellers, as it was a way to watch HBO for free. It did not last, though, as as soon as Gerity expanded its cable line-up, they started scrambling HBO, along with, obviously, other premum channels they would pick up.

[Dr. Sandi]

I miss the days when cable used those little bullet filters to remove premium channels from the free view menu. Loved replacing those things with a barrel connector in my apartment building's utility room.

[CK-722]

I miss the days when cable used those little bullet filters to remove premium channels from the free view menu. Loved replacing those things with a barrel connector in my apartment building's utility room.

One of the true geniuses from our HS, who eventually got a Ph.D in Physics, got inside his TVs and retuned the ferrite slug in the Channel 7 inductor to Cable Channel I (AKA Cable Channel 22) as I recall, just below Channel 7, which carried a movie channel called Channel 100. Another undergraduate genius, who was later in Medical School and managed his apartment building in Ann Arbor for free rent, used to pull in cables from the roof and route them into apartments to give them free cable, which had been disconnected by previous tenants. What's the deal with people with Dr. in front of their name, and pirating Cable, Dr. Sandi? Don't worry. I won't turn you in, and besides, "the statute of limitations has probably run out on that one".

[Dr. Sandi]

"the statute of limitations has probably run out on that one"

Can't say when or where, but I want to believe it was TCI cable I was ripping off.

Besides, when you can steal $100s of millions from investors and have a 2 year statute of limitations, how long can it be for stealing cable. Probably like murder, it never expires.

[CK-722]

I spent some time with the now Surgeon in the Utility/Laundry Room in the basement of that apartment building. They had a Winegard CL4 antenna on the roof of the three story building, fed into a distribution system for the MATV system for the apartment building. The MATV system received Channels 2, 4, 7, and 9 from the Detroit Area. He asked me what would be required to make Channel 50 available. I told him he would need to add a UHF antenna, a preamp, and a converter to change Channel 50 to a VHF channel to feed the existing distribution system. He decided that that was too expensive. He then asked if he could just input one of the disconnected cables on the roof into the distribution system. I told him that might really open him up to pirating charges by the cable company, as it would be too obvious, and all the signals might overwhelm the input of the distribution amplifier. He decided to just drag the cables in on a case by case basis. This was in 1976.

Winegard CL4 Antenna:

https://books.google.com/books?id=o0kEA ... ge&f=false

Good VHF antenna, BTW.

The Physicist built a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) unit while an undergraduate. NMR eventually evolved into Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

[ftballfan]

From newspaper archives I've seen (and the 1980 edition of the Broadcasting Yearbook), Traverse City never had WJRT, but did have WKBD (on cable 3!), as well as WBAY, WFRV, WLUK, and WZZM. Side note: 7&4 was on 4, 9&10 was on 10, 29&8 was on 8, and WCMU was on 6, as they all are to this day.

Some notable carriage examples: WZZM was carried as far north as Traverse City, WVTV (independent from Milwaukee) was carried along the Lake Michigan shoreline in lieu of WKBD, both WMVS and WPNE had carriage along the Lake Michigan shoreline before WCMW came on, Menominee/Marinette had both 7&4 and 9&10, WBBM had some late night carriage in southwest Michigan

[thatonedude]

Here are a couple videos of the weatherscan systems that were popular back then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGZAs5hkiQ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE4ijBGoGhA

That is quite an oddity. As I wasn't around for that (obviously), this is the Weatherscan that I'm most familiar with:

Now that should be brought back.

[km1125]

Here are a couple videos of the weatherscan systems that were popular back then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGZAs5hkiQ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE4ijBGoGhA

That is quite an oddity. As I wasn't around for that (obviously), this is the Weatherscan that I'm most familiar with:

Now that should be brought back.

And that's like a 3rd or 4th generation of the Weather Channel's version of "weatherscan"!! I installed a lot of the first, second and third generations. I don't have any examples of the 1st gen, but it was basically a crawl across the bottom of the screen and four or five graphic pages that would cycle though. One would be current radar, one current weather observations, one weather forecast and I think one was "cities near you". You also needed to connect (and maintain) local weather instruments to those early generations. Now they just use local NOAA weather data stations. Even before The Weather Channel units were installed, we had a weather radar feed from DTW and had that on a channel by itself, or shared with some other content.

Back to the OP question: I do remember back in the very early 70's the cable system at Sault St Marie with 12 channels. They did have the original weatherscan there and I also remember wondering "how do they get all those channels in that one little wire" that was attached to the back of the set.