Forgotten Cable TV Channels

In the early days of cable TV, there weren't many channels. In fact, they were mostly your local over the air TV stations (with a few from the hinterlands, or over the border if you lived near Canada or Mexico.) The places where cable TV at that time was most frequently used were in areas too distant from cities with TV stations, where signals were too snowy and ghosty to watch - if they could be received at all.

That changed in the early '70s with the introduction of HBO and Showtime premium movie channels. By the late '70s cable began adding "super stations", over the air TV stations that offered their programming to nationwide cable (WTBS Atlanta - now known as simply TBS - the original Atlanta TV station was sold in the mid '80s. And WGN-TV Chicago and a few short-lived channels.)

The lineup was vastly expanded by 1980. And along the way, there were countless startup channels that grew and morphed into household names we know today: Lifetime, Fuse, MSNBC, Bloomberg, ABC Family and so on.

And now, let's take a look at the cable TV grid of yesteryear.......

- Cable Health Network (1982): Featured mostly medical and health related programming with some programming aimed towards women. Became Lifetime in 1984.

- SPN (Satellite Program Network, 1980-1988): Really low budget affair, ran mostly old public domain films from the '30s and '40s, some foreign programming and low budget, often politically biased programming. changed it's name to Tempo before being bought by NBC and relaunched as CNBC.

- The Video Music Channel (early '80s): One of the few pre-MTV video music channels and seen on selected cable TV systems as well. The VMC, like WTBS and CNN was based in Atlanta (but unrelated.) And it was one of a few major market over the air UHF TV stations that ran all music videos (others were in Boston and New York.) It's been said the original plan for Seattle's KTZZ-TV (now KZJO-TV) was to run primarily music videos, but the idea was scuttled after Viacom threatened to not carry the station on it's vast Seattle area cable system, lest it harm it's precious MTV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJcg0ZPf8NU 

- The Nashville Network: Cable TV's first video music channel aimed primarily at country music fans. The Nashville Network had some modest success, but later expanded into programming for men, adding wrestling, action movies and other fare and briefly rebranded as The National Network before becoming Spike TV. The Nashville Network however has been relaunched in 2012 as an over the air DTV sub-channel network.

- The CBN Family Channel: Launched by evangelist Pat Robertson as a "family friendly" TV channel  Initially all religious, it moved towards mainstream classic TV with sitcoms and westerns from the '50s. It was eventually sold to Fox and later Disney/ABC. But as a precondition, the network MUST to this day carry Robertson's own show, The 700 Club. Why? Because Pat Robertson owns the word "Family" (as trademarked/marketed as a TV network.)

- FNN (Financial News Network) An early business news channel. A pretty interesting one I must say - you never saw Frank Zappa hosting a show on CNBC did you?

- Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS): One of the first highbrow fine arts cable TV channels (along with Bravo and The Entertainment Channel.)

One of the early predictions of the expanding cable TV boom of the early '80s was these channels would be so successful, there would be no need for government-funded PBS (which the Reagan administration and all Republicans afterward absolutely HATED.)

Unfortunately, advertisers for these channels were hard to come by. Commercial advertisers were never big on classical music, opera, ballet and the fine arts to begin with and most finicky arts-oriented viewers resented the whole idea. Period. ARTS merged with The Entertainment Channel to form - what else, Arts & Entertainment or simply, A&E. 

Originally, ARTS aired on Nickelodeon's channel after Nick signed off. After A&E was formed, the evening hours formerly used by ARTS became Nick at Nite, originally running rerun sitcoms from the '60s and '70s.

- Kaleidoscope: A channel for those with disabilities. Looked like a great idea, but disabilities are far too wide ranging for one channel to specialize in.

- MuchMusic USA: MuchMusic (or simply Much) is a Canadian video music channel that stepped into the American market. with limited success. It rebranded as fuse in 2003 and has for the most part replaced MTV as the primary TV source of music videos, which the original MTV ended in the early 2000s to focus on solely on teen oriented "reality" shows.

- Fine Living Network: A network targeted to upscale viewers. It was replaced by The Cooking Channel.

- The International Channel: Became AZN, targeting Asian Americans. AZN folded in 2008.

- Trio: An unusual cable network. A joint venture of the CBC (yep, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and NBC, this channel specialized in American TV shows that were largely forgotten or unseen in most of America and Canadian and UK TV programs such as The Littlest Hobo, Follyfoot and Coronation Street and then-current Australian programs such as The Blue Heelers. It also showed the infamous American Pink Lady & Jeff show for the first time in nearly 25 years in 2002.

This is likely to be the first in a series. So many cable TV channels have come and gone, it's hard to name them all.

Your Boss Sings The Hits

When we look for employment, even in record stores, the last thing you expect to get is a free record (that came later in your record store career ;) ....)

Until the '80s, when video tapes and later in the 2000's when DVDs became standard, many employers used records to either train employees or boost morale (in that special way only a nameless, faceless and often clueless mega-corporation can.)

When this practice started, it's hard to say. Instructive records and messages from employers to workers of some sort have been around since the 1890s (and on wax cylinders!)

It wasn't until the 1920s did the major record labels set up custom record divisions. They were initially for businesses or organizations with a large nationwide or regional subscriber/client/employee base, but later allowed their presses to be used for smaller regional music record labels. 

If you were a lucky McDonald's employee in early 1979, you got this Eva-Tone soundsheet to prep you for the latest summer advertising campaign blitz for McDonald's.

I'm not sure what the message is here. Are the employees supposed to remember the lyrics of this jingle?

Z-Rock Radio

Remember these guys?

Z-Rock was a national hard rock radio network from the late '80s to December 1996. Z-Rock was very popular with the headbanger metal crowd. They were heard over some FM stations, but most of Z-Rock's affiliates were third tier local AM stations that didn't find much success in any other format.

Z-Rock's days were numbered once the Seattle Grunge Revolution hit nationwide in 1992 and music tastes started changing towards alternative rock. In October 1993, the network further exacerbated their demise by pulling the plug on their AM affiliates and going FM only. As the network dwindled, so did their remaining affiliates until Z-Rock was taken off the air by their parent company, SMN Networks. However, the remaining local affiliates were allowed to retain the Z-Rock logo and imaging for their stations.....

It Seemed Like A Good Idea - Part 2

Now here was a disaster waiting to happen: The packaging was nice, a prepackaged gourmet meal (utterly the biggest oxymoron) and a little bottle of wine. There was just one problem. The wine wasn't for drinking, it was for preparing the meal with....

Yes...THIS existed in the '70s too.......

An actual food product of the '70s.....Gerber Singles.....for ADULTS.....

Your First Phonograph/Stereo - Part 2

Click here for Part One