North Korean Pop Culture

Morning rush hour traffic snarls in downtown Pyongyang......

First, before I go into this, I need to say I'm not a sympathizer of the North Korean regime and I'm aware of the atrocities and miserable human rights record of it. It's no joke.

But the contradiction between the North Korean 'official' line of "Paradise On Earth" and reality are embarrassingly visual just by viewing and listening to North Korea's own media and raise far more uncomfortable questions than the regime can explain or live down. So you don't ask questions. Who asks questions in North Korea?
 
That said, what I'm showcasing here is the regime manufactured pop culture of this strange country. It's one that is strangely fascinating to me because it is so far off the grid from the rest of the world, it's one that needs an illustration. There is nothing anywhere else in the world like it. (Even Cuba has loopholes.)

In most ways, North Korea is The Land That Pop Culture Forgot. Because in North Korea, the regime dictates what you have for fun, recreation, music, food and style. It must conform to "revolutionary" principles (or at least not be a threat to them.)


That kinda stifles things a bit in the pop culture development department.

First, it's hard to get a real look inside the country. You can't just arrive, check into your hotel and freely stroll around Pyongyang, meeting and talking with people, taking pictures and visiting the locals without a minder (a government official designated to guide you around to specific places and people only) Tourists are forbidden to stray beyond their hotel without one.

This isn't London, Sydney or Tokyo.

Americans in particular are viewed with suspicion in North Korea. It's been that way since the 1950s when America backed South Korea in the Korean War. A war that never actually ended (a truce was signed but never a formal peace treaty.) But there are always skirmishes along the De-Militarized Zone - a funny name for one of the most heavily armed places on earth, with a million soldiers on either side, waiting for the other side to blink. (And as long as there is a DMZ, the war is still on.)

Americans still aid the South Koreans, but in nowhere near the numbers of the Korean War itself. And a few American soldiers even went turncoat and defected to North Korea.

The funny thing about James Dresnok is while he looks like he's got it made, he sure drinks a lot. Note also all the full unopened bottles on the table. Most of us would stick that in the fridge already....

And they still like taking American POWs (as Merrill Newman, Laura Ling, Kenneth Bae and Euna Lee can tell you.)

So that kinda wipes it off most people's travel plans.

The only factor it does have going for it is outside curiosity. Because many people want to peek over the bamboo curtain and see what it looks like. Not that there's much to see.

So let's look at what's there:

Music

There is no rock music in North Korea. Or ever has been. There's been buzzing talk all over the record collector forums of The Beatles having official North Korean albums. But that's just amateur vinyl collectors trying to psyche the novices with South Korean Beatles albums and there's no actual evidence of any official North Korean Beatles releases.

Nice try.

Or ANY Western pop music. Ever. No blues, country, jazz, punk, rap or thrash metal either. Not for North Koreans.

Even in the Kim family's better moods.

North Korean music is the only music in the world in North Korea. You do not get to play the music the Dear Leader does not approve. Any other music, especially from capitalist countries, is punishable by (assume the worst.)

The only pop music in North Korea is a hybrid electronic Easy Listening / Classical / Soft Adult Contemporary kind of propaganda delivered via acts such as The North Korean Army Band, The Moranbong Band, The Pyongyang Gold Stars and The Ponchonbo Electric Ensemble and simply everybody's favourite, Unknown.

These aren't exactly The Greatest Hits of All Time in the rest of the world.

(But that doesn't mean Western pop doesn't sneak in in some strange and subtle way. Take The Pyongyang Gold Stars accordion reworking of a-ha's 1980's classic "The Sun Always Shines On TV")


Going through the North Korean YouTube channels, here are the current hits. Not in any particular order. There are no pop charts in North Korea and only a more dedicated music eccentric than I outside of North Korea would know WHEN they were actually released to the public there. If ever. Or WHO they actually are.

It's been said members of the North Korean bands change line-ups worse than Styx, Kiss, Van Halen or even Jefferson Starship. And not exactly by petty egos, drug abuse, solo ambitions or infighting either....

So here's The Latest Hits in North Korea:

"The Leader's Bright Smile" The North Korean Army Band
"Socialism, We Love You" Unknown
"If Mother Party Wishes" The Moranbong Band
"We'll Become Regiment No. 7 of Today!" Unknown
"Let's Study!" The Moranbong Band

This isn't exactly Casey Kasem's Top 40.

Pyongyang 105.2 FM - This is the local FM radio station of Pyongyang. It broadcasts only in the evenings and plays a daily mix of anthems, arduous marches and easy listening pop. All of which praise the regime or are nationalistic in some way.


No "Hit or History" new song battles, no wacky morning zoos, no Top 40 countdowns, no love songs and dedications hours (unless they're for the Dear Leader. Your boyfriend can go boil an egg for all they care.)

Concerts: Did I mention there is no thrash metal in North Korea? Good. Your codpiece is invalid anyway in North Korea. No mosh pits, no festival seating, no Bic lighter waving power ballads, no shouts of "PLAY FREE BIRD!", no high decibel volume levels or risque stage antics. You can take your most conservative grandma to a North Korean concert with confidence.

Some people take a video cam to a concert, others take their hashpipes. Dear Leader takes his big oak office desk. When was the last concert you did that? Slayer?


The Moranbong Band (North Korea's answer to....I guess the closest thing this side of Pyongyang to these girls would be Celtic Woman) is currently the most popular band in North Korea. Because the Dear Leader says so.

Shopping

Shopping is a tricky subject in North Korea. Because there isn't any.

Actually, there is - in  Pyongyang. But what's there is mostly for display. There is always new construction going on in Pyongyang and what comes up are usually big gorgeous department stores with everything.

Except customers.


But this isn't the real North Korean shopping experience.

This is.

TV


First, there is only one TV channel in North Korea. And only in Pyongyang.

It broadcasts 6-8 hours a day. Usually in the evening hours There is no weekday television, filled with gossipy entertainment talk shows, soap operas, infomercials and trailer trash. People are either working or going to school.

The only other daytime broadcast option is a state controlled radio channel that wafts in through most Pyongyang apartment kitchens with programming mostly for housewives.

These radios are built-in and tuned to the main state radio channel. It is only capable of receiving that station. No others. In fact, there's a seal on the back that if broken could send you to the prison camps because it would indicate you were trying to listen to foreign broadcasts. And while you can turn down the volume, you can never turn them off. 

The TV broadcast day begins at around 4:30pm and features a test card with a soundtrack of instrumental easy listening music similar to the kind you hear on Pyongyang 105.2 FM.

The hottest prime time TV programs in North Korea stars the Dear Leader as he goes around inspecting all sorts of new construction, making comments and gestures as if to say "You know I hate that shade of blue, don't you?"

Often, he is flanked by several army members and an entourage that writes down his comments on little notepads.

 You can watch it live online here: http://112.170.78.145:50000/chosun. Note that program start times are very erratic. That's because there are no commercials on North Korean TV. The only break up between programs are the music videos (again, only of nationalist music. No titillating girls shaking their butts all over the hoods of sports cars.) 

Food

North Korea is one of those places that would even make a dedicated foodie like me nervous.

Purple beer?

But in a country that starves the majority of it's citizens (except for Dear Leader of course), they take what they can get.

Even the names of the factories that make North Korean food are gross...

It's "crabonated"!

But the first indicator you may have strayed too far (if you missed the Beijing airport, the Air Koryo terminal and the Ilyushin IL-62 you are boarding) are the infamous Air Koryo in-flight hamburgers. 

Computers & Internet

First, there's two platforms of internet access.


For you, the tourist with your tablets and smartphones, there's 3G mobile service thats limited to the special tourist hotel you'll be staying at (P.S. Watch what you tell your Facebook friends and Aunt Sadie in Peoria. It's monitored.) You have to have a special SIM card to call out or receive incoming calls/texts.

For you, the North Korean in Pyongyang, a special intranet that connects only to a government server with only regime approved (and created) sites. There is no home internet service (so much for "Paradise on Earth".) All access to this North Korean-only network is for university students and higher-ups and only at The Great Study Hall and certain universities. The two networks do not connect at all.

Newspapers will be alive and well in North Korea long after the civilized world has abandoned them.

The main computer operating system is North Korea's own Red Star OS. Which is based on Linux and functions similar to Windows XP. It is only in Korean and accesses the North Korean intranet only. There are download links to a pirated copy and if you dare with an old computer, you can install it. But you won't be able to access the North Korean intranet, as it is completely off the grid from the main internet.

These are screenshots from an older version. The newest version which came out earlier this year resembles Mac OS X.    

 

There is now a little tablet computer for North Koreans, based on Android called Samjiyon. It comes with a North Korean version of Angry Birds. It doesn't have any internet or even North Korean intranet access.

 

Style & Fashion

Note the pictures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on the walls. They are mandatory in every apartment, every house, every building and every office and in every public room in North Korea and are to be treated with the same reverence a religious person would give their most cherished symbols. If not more so... 

You know those big books of modern hairstyles you see in most beauty salons? In North Korea, they have those too. Each one carefully selected by the regime (lest your hair become a subversive agent in itself.)

There's even a TV show in North Korea called (and I'm not making this up) Let's Trim Our Hair In Accordance With The Socialist Lifestyle

No slacker shags. No dreadlocks, no poofy curls, no punk mohawks. You can't dye your hair or go totally bald. Or deviate and create your own look in any way. What you see is what you get. 

But more recently, it's been said all male university students must now have the same Operation game haircut as the Dear Leader.

I must say that's not a look that works for every guy. Not even Dear Leader. But who's going to tell him "Dear Leader, your hair looks like a mustache glued to the top of an egg"? Who?

You can't get tattoos in North Korea. No string bikinis for the ladies. No badass leather jackets. No t-shirts, no jeans, no sneakers.

The military look seems all the rage. When a third of the population is conscripted to some military service, that's to be expected.

When all is said and done, you're probably thinking "These people will never change. They will live forever in this existential hellhole of make believe on one end and brutal repression, starvation and very bad taste on the other." 

That's not entirely true...

Outside pop culture is sneaking in (as it always does.) On black market thumb drives and DVDs filled with South Korean TV shows, movies and other material. However, DVDs are becoming a less favoured option and here is why. Electricity is scarce in North Korea and blackouts are frequent. But most especially, some of the blackouts are planned. So police can conduct door by door searches for any contraband and should you wind up with a naughty illegal DVD stuck in your DVD player because you can't open the thing (not an easy thing to do in the dark with cops banging at the door), you and your entire family are doomed. Thumb drives are easier to hide and most modern Chinese made DVD players have thumb drive players built in. Little wind-up shortwave radios are also coming in. 

You see, any totalitarian regime begins to collapse when it suppresses pop culture. It's simple human nature to have fun and colour in our lives. To not only see and dream about the outside world, but to travel beyond our own borders. Be they geographic or in our own minds

Rock 'n roll itself caused more rust to the Iron Curtain than any of Reagan's tough talk in the 1980s through smuggled records and tapes in the '60s and '70s.

A magazine ad from 1980.

By the 1980s, Gorbachev himself knew the totalitarianism of his predecessors was impossible to maintain. The people of the former Soviet Union were demanding change. He had no other choice but to begin glasnost (or "openness".) Which led to fall of the Eastern Bloc nations, the Berlin Wall to where we are today. China itself, once one of the most hardline of totalitarian states, now has freewheeling pop culture.

Will North Korea change?

It will. But not overnight. Change doesn't work that way. You just have to keep chipping away until the wall finally collapses.

But it will collapse. History doesn't lie.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Ahhh...Cinco de Mayo. The day we Americans celebrate Mexican Independence Day by throwing parties, quaffing margaritas, tequila or Modelo beer and enjoying a fun super tasty South of The Border feast.

But that's not entirely correct. There's lots of fun parties and the alcohol does flow freely. The food is always marvelous and super tasty.

Yet Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican independence day. That's September 16th. Cinco de Mayo is in fact, more of an American holiday than a Mexican one. And one that deserves more recognition than it gets.

Cinco de Mayo's roots begin during the French occupation of Mexico. Mexico at the time was in a real mess. They had 15 years of wars (The Mexican-American War, The Mexican Civil War and The Reform War) and everybody was getting tired of it. Finally in 1861, Mexican President Benito Juarez told Britain, Spain and France to hold off on their debt collection for these wars for two years until they can financially reorganize and get the country back on track.

They sent armies to confront Mexico and collect their debts regardless. Britain and Spain negotiated and backed off. But the French, under the rule of Napoleon III would not hear of it and another war began. Napoleon III wanted to turn Mexico into a French territory and since the Americans at the time were in an ugly civil war, he thought he could establish a strong enough foothold in Mexico, which he could then use to invade America (which was still a very small, very rural country at the time.) By using the Confederate South as proxies.

Napoleon sent 8,000 troops to attack Mexico's 4,500 troops at Veracruz. But on May 5, 1862, the much smaller Mexican army sent the French into retreat. The news reached the border communities of America where people celebrated the news.

While there would be more fighting, a major turning point had begun. Had Napoleon III defeated the Mexicans at Veracruz, the Civil War could have ended very differently.

So Cinco de Mayo is very much an American holiday. (More on Cinco de Mayo)

It was the expanding Latino communities that brought the holiday across America. But it was beer companies in the '80s that helped bring Cinco de Mayo into the American mainstream.

Because if there's one thing everyone LOVES, it's to party.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

The Regina Hexaphone (1908-1916)

 

The Regina Hexaphone (no, we're not talking about the popular North Carolina band) was the very first successful fully automatic coin operated jukebox. It played six cylinder records in a rotating selector instead of flat discs.

The Regina Company, established in 1889 originally made music boxes (among them, coin operated jukebox prototypes.) But competition from the phonograph forced them to expand into coin operated cylinder phonograph players

Photo: Mr. Victor

But you may know Regina best for their vacuum cleaners.

The Oso Landslide Disaster of 2014

 

I do not normally talk about tragedy on this blog. A fun pop culture nostalgia blog titled History's Dumpster really isn't an appropriate forum for that.   

On Saturday, March 22, 2014 at 10:37 a.m., a massive landslide devastated the tiny unincorporated village of Oso, Washington. With 26 confirmed dead and 90 still missing as of this writing.

Oso, Washington is located between the small towns of Arlington and Darrington on the north fork of the Stillaguamish River in north Snohomish County, near the Skagit County line in northwest Washington State. I've been through Oso several times and while the place looks very sparse (it's only retail is a tiny general store, with a lumber mill and some farms), it's population is near 200. Over half are missing or dead. And no picture can do this justice

What I do want to talk about is how you can help. The recovery effort needs your help. And so does Oso.

Here's how.

- Visit the Red Cross online @ https://www.redcross.org/donate/index.jsp?donateStep=2&itemId=prod10002

- Phone: 1-800-RED-CROSS (733-2767) Direct your donation to 'Snohomish County'

Or mail your donation to:

Red Cross Snohomish County 

2530 Lombard Avenue 

Everett, WA 98021

Thank you for your help.

  

   

What A Local TV Newscast Looked Like In 1965

KGO-TV Morning News, San Fransisco, February 8, 1965

50 Facts About The United Kingdom

All About The United Kingdom - 50 Facts by Direct Holiday Cottages

The History of UHF-TV

After television was launched to the public, there was a problem.

Everybody loved it. And they wanted in on it.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, radio stations began adding or moving to more spacious studio spaces in anticipation of the time they will be able to add the delicious letters "TV" to their station letterheads and business cards. They were assured that TV would eventually make radio obsolete. So they began planning for the jump to TV.

But there were only 13 original VHF channels originally assigned for television in the US.

And there WAS once a VHF TV Channel 1. The VHF dial didn't always start at Channel 2.

Here's what happened.

In the early 1940s, the FCC was in a pickle. They had to find spectrum space for FM radio, TV and early mobile phone/emergency radio use. They originally settled on 42-50 MHz for FM radio.

A 1940s radio with the original 42-50 MHz FM radio band.

But TV channel 1 used 44-50 MHz. So they moved the frequency range for Channel 1 around the lower VHF spectrum, causing confusion with viewers, broadcasters and manufacturers. Finally, they concluded there would be no Channel 1. And VHF TV channels would begin at Channel 2. The FM radio band was also moved to 88-106 MHz, then completed at 88-108 MHz.

But this now meant there would be one less channel for TV, leaving only a dozen channels. And the FCC was swamped in TV station license applications.

And more importantly, due to short spacing between stations on the same channels and unforeseen atmospheric conditions, there was interference. Lots of it. Especially in the Northeast. New TV spectrum had to be carved out to satisfy everyone.

Finally in 1952, the UHF TV band was created out of was once surplus radio spectrum for the military. UHF had 69 extra channels, boosting the overall TV channel selection to 82 channels (but later down to 81. In 1963, UHF TV Channel 37 was reserved for radio astronomy purposes and to this day, there are no UHF TV stations - or anything permitted to operate on Channel 37), but still enough for nearly every well financed radio station to have a TV station of their own. With room to spare for many others.

There was one little problem. People didn't know what UHF was then. And until 1964, TV set manufacturers weren't required to even include UHF TV on their sets.

So some enterprising electronics manufacturers invented the first "set-top" boxes, tuners for UHF TV

These were still made well into the '70s and even early '80s for older TV sets made before the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1964!

Most dealers offered them as loss leader freebies for your new TV set or as a low price upgrade for your existing set. You could set it up yourself (if you were more technically inclined.) Or have a serviceman from the dealer do it for you.

They were also sold by mail order.

This automatically created a new problem. Broadcasters began viewing UHF from the start as a lesser TV band. Most viewers still had VHF only TVs and didn't want too much fussing around with the adjustments (they weren't very stable in the early days of TV. As someone who's had to fix a wonky picture on an old 1950's black and white TV set, I can assure you they weren't much fun. There was a pretty good reason why parents rarely let their little kids near the TV in those days.)

And most were satisfied with that few choices they had. Adding a UHF converter meant more knobs and thus more things to go wrong.

And 20 years after the All Channel Receiver Act, some people STILL didn't know what UHF was!

Also, UHF signals by nature travel shorter distances than VHF channels. They also more easily blocked terrestrially by buildings, hills and even trees. To gain a similar broadcasting range as a typical VHF station, they needed 50x the power because of their higher frequencies.

For example, to get the same signal coverage as a VHF TV station on Channel 5 at 100,000 watts, a UHF TV station on Channel 22 needed 5,000,000 watts - that's right - FIVE MILLION WATTS.

That also appears the power bill of the station. Which means you had to sell more advertising and/or charge more for it than the VHF stations. And for a brand new TV station on a fairly unknown and problematic TV band and dubious programming with few, if any stars, the odds didn't look good.

So the many radio stations with ambitious TV plans that couldn't get a spot on the VHF-TV dial simply gave up on them. In fact, contrary to the predictions that radio would become obsolete after TV was introduced, radio simply moved into the era of the disc jockey and specialized music formats as the old-line network radio programming model moved off radio and onto television.

However, there were HUGE areas of the country that were too far from metropolitan areas with VHF stations. And adding stations to the already overcrowded VHF band would increase interference to the existing stations. Some areas, such as Yakima, WA, Peoria, IL and Huntsville, AL became UHF-only "islands", areas where all local broadcast TV is UHF. Public TV stations and upstart TV networks such as DuMont and the fledgling ABC network had no other option than UHF in most areas.

In the 1950s, some of the very first UHF TV stations often came on the air wealthy and often left the air broke - often within a year. These were often stations within the receiving area of VHF stations with established programming and network affiliations. Simply because no one was watching them outside of people who worked at the stations and their families. And even most of them were watching the other channels!

And that was another problem. When a major TV network initially affiliated with a UHF station in an area where a VHF station would later sign on or lose another network affiliation, the network would habitually create loopholes in their already lopsided affiliation contracts that allowed the network to end their affiliation with the UHF station with little notice to go onto the VHF station.

And this even happened with some higher number (Ch. 7-13) VHF stations in areas where VHF dominated. (NBC's original affiliate in Puget Sound was KMO-TV 13, and CBS was on KTNT-TV 11, both out of Tacoma, WA. And both lost to lower-number channels in Seattle.)

In fact to this day, lower number TV channels are preferred to higher ones with TV advertisers because most TV viewers tune from the lowest channel numbers up first. And more slowly and carefully than higher channel numbers, thus increasing the chances the viewer would see the advertising.

The great benefit of a network TV affiliation was the hardest part was already taken care of for you - programming. With the insertion of local TV advertising, a station can become instantly profitable with the big stars and professionalism of the major TV networks. Without a major TV network, you were scrambling for whatever you can get to put on the air. And there were only so many movies, kineoscopes and cartoons available back then. You had to quickly invent programming by the seat of your pants. And it became too much for the upstart UHFs.

So in most major cities, UHF stations were either non-existent or struggling public or even rarer, independents through the '50s, '60s and 1970s. In fact, Seattle only got it's first UHF TV station in 1985 (KTZZ-TV 22, now KZJO "Joe TV")

Most TVs weren't even equipped with UHF antennas (or new set owners didn't know what those little round wire things were in areas where UHF TV was largely unknown and threw them away), The simplest UHF antennas were small cheap loops you could affix to the back of your TV. They worked best in areas closer to the UHF station's transmitter and only fairly in outlying suburbs. I remember after Seattle's KTZZ-TV 22 went on the air installing one of these on my mom's console TV in Lynnwood, WA. But the picture was ghosty and variable and often fluctuated with things as simple as passing airplanes or even the movement of the metal wheels of my mom's wheelchair. That was the most apparent thing about over the air UHF-TV - nearly anything could interfere with the signal if you were beyond a point where you could visually see the station tower.    

UHF was coming to a slow painful death and it took an act of Congress to change that. It became known as the All Channel Receiver Act of 1964, which forced manufacturers to incorporate UHF tuners into their TV sets. This helped UHF TV on the consumer end, but programming, sales and merely staying alive without major network affiliations for the UHF stations were another. In fact, by 1971, there were only 170 full power UHF stations in the US. And over a 1,000 VHF stations. But UHF stations were still dying. Mostly because of the difficulty in getting major advertisers to take independent UHF TV stations seriously.

It was harder to get by on I Love Lucy and Honeymooners reruns and local used car dealership commercials than it looked.

There were attempts at starting a fourth major TV network. DuMont, ironically the very first American TV network, was struggling against better financed rivals NBC, CBS and the upstart ABC TV network and went off the air in 1956. Leaving only ABC, NBC and CBS as The Big Three (as the ABC, NBC and CBS TV networks came to be known for decades) commercial networks and by the '60s, NET (later known as PBS) for public TV.

That wasn't to say people were giving up on UHF TV. Cable TV was still in it's infancy and offered no exclusive programming. Just a clearer relay of TV stations already on the air. And most were required to carry the UHF stations, which actually helped UHF.

Enter The Overmyer Network (later known as The United Network.)

Some United Network affiliates were already established VHF stations with full major network affiliations (such as KOB-TV 4 in Albuquerque, NM, an NBC affiliate.) They just wanted in on the special deal United Network offered affiliates mentioned below

The Overmyer Network began as 5 UHF TV stations owned by Toledo based businessman Daniel H. Overmyer. It's flagship station was WDHO-TV 24 in Toledo, OH.

Overmyer was a social conservative who was against "smut". So there. But he also knew there were lots of entertainment starved independent TV stations across America. Ones that would do anything to move into the "affiliated" category.

And Overmyer gave them a sweet deal; an unheard of 50/50 profit share. Affiliates quickly began signing up.

The network launched nationally on May 1, 1967 as The United Network (and not related to the United Paramount Network or UPN of the 1990s/early 2000s.)

And exactly one month later, the entire Overmyer/United Network was history.

In the final autopsy, it was determined the launch of the network came at the worst possible time of the year. When major TV sponsors were at the end of their yearly advertising budgets. Had the network held out their launch until the new television season in September, they would have had a better chance when the sponsors were in a better spending mood. And since the station used costly proprietary Bell System video lines to relay programming to affiliates, that also ate into costs. It was one thing for 5 affiliates, entirely another for 35.

And more embarrassingly, the national United Network only had one show. A critically acclaimed, but publicly ignored daily variety/talk show called The Las Vegas Show.

The Overmyer/United Network was such a complete and thorough disaster that it was pretty much decided a fourth broadcast TV network was too many and was not attempted again until 1986 when Fox TV came on. And coincidentally, the headquarters of Fox are in the same New York City building that once housed the DuMont network 60 years earlier!

So UHF trudged along. Stations were still frequently sold, still went dark (off the air) or were converted to public TV stations. Outside of those "UHF Islands" mentioned earlier, there wasn't much money in UHF.

With not many stations on UHF, the uppermost channels of the traditional UHF band, Chs. 70-83 were reassigned for the fledgling cell phone industry (In the days before spread-spectrum analog cell phones, it wasn't unusual to pick up entire cell phone conversations on these channels!) But there were no actual TV stations that far up the spectrum (remember, the lower channels are the most preferred) and the various translator (relay) stations in that area were eventually moved to lower channel numbers. Few stations were ever licensed above Channel 69 anyway. And none existed at the time of this switch.


One early experiment merged the concept of pay TV with broadcast TV in 1977. A New York TV station WWHT-TV 68, owned by Wometco Enterprises, offered The Wometco Home Theater. It was essentially a video descrambler box and WWHT ran uncut, often first run movies and sports programming. And it was actually successful (WHT lasted until 1986 and even spawned imitators.)

(Click to enlarge)

The Wometco Home Theater box

The 1970s and 1980s also brought evangelical TV networks such as Trinity Broadcasting Network, Spanish language networks such as Univision and Telemundo and home shopping networks to UHF broadcast TV.

But most commercial UHF TV was still viewed by major sponsors and TV viewers as scrappy, unpolished, unprofessional and weird. The college radio of TV. A fact not lost on parody king "Weird" Al Yankovic who released a parody movie of UHF TV called, what else?, UHF.


In the 1980s, some markets such as New York, music video channels began appearing (After Wometco Home Theater folded, WWHT-TV changed to this format.) Boston and Atlanta, GA also had all music video channels on UHF. However, this proved to be problematic. First, cable video music channel giant (then) MTV flexed it's muscles with the music industry and by the late '80s, effectively cut off the flow of new music videos for these stations and these music video channels converted to the regular third or fourth rate programming of the typical UHF TV channel. Secondly, even with music videos, these few over the air free music video TV stations were still struggling.


It took Fox TV, with it's heavy roster of UHF affiliates and trendy hit shows such as The Simpsons and 21 Jump Street before the tide finally began to turn for UHF TV. The once scrappy programming of UHF began being replaced by more polished programming. Syndicated daytime talk programming such as Jerry Springer, Montel Williams and countless others came and replaced the boring afternoon movies.

And infomercials. LOTS of hour long, boring infomercials. often running 12 hours or more consecutively each day. Something had to pay the bills.

With the success of Fox, potential fifth and sixth major networks sprang up. Such as UPN and The WB (now merged as The CW), PAX (now iON) and expansion of the Spanish, home shopping and religious networks put more UHF TV stations on the air.

But a massive change was coming. A new system, known as DTV or "digital TV" began being implemented in the late 1990s. This system actually used UHF TV channels to relay higher definition programming and all but the smallest, low power stations made the upgrade. In 2009, most analog TV broadcasting came to an end in the US, and most TV stations now broadcast in digital on UHF. The low power stations must switch to digital in 2015.

The benefit of digital broadcast TV was it used less bandwith than analog broadcast TV, freeing up precious bandwith for first responders, wireless internet and other services. With the need for less bandwith, the UHF TV band was cut even further from Chs. 14-69 to 14-50.

The drawback is you really have to be in an area close to the TV tower, as over the air digital TV signals show absolutely NO mercy. In the analog TV days, you could watch TV with a slightly "snowy", slightly fluctuating, but fairly acceptable viewing signal if you were in outlying areas away from the TV station's tower. With over the air DTV, you have to be a LOT closer to get a perfect, interference free signal. Otherwise, the video would freeze in a pixelated mess and even the audio would cut out at times, something that never happened with analog broadcast TV.
   
And there's talk of cutting the UHF TV band even further. Or even ending all over the air broadcast TV, thus freeing up the entire UHF TV band for other, more high tech purposes.

(UPDATE: More on the history of UHF here: http://www.uhftelevision.com/ )