After spending most of my childhood with nothing but the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), plus PBS, when FOX first came on the air it was quite a big deal. (Finally, a new station!) This was around 1986, and they built a huge UHF tower halfway between Lincoln and Omaha. The station (KPTM 42) sent out these UHF loop antennas to everyone in the area as a free promotion to generate interest and to make it easier to receive their signal. I remember having my doubts as to whether the new network would last very long, since the other networks were so well-established.

I remember when FOX came out, but my cable system never got a FOX channel until a few years later.

Yes, we always liked watching "Married with Children" and "In Living Color" every Sunday night.  When Fox won the bidding for NFL football, thats when you knew they would be around for awhile.

I remember the first full night of programming. April of 86 I believe.

It showed 3 shows over and over from 7 to 10pm. 21 Jump Street, Married with Children and Tracey Ullman.

If you didn't see it once, you had two more times to see it.

We used to watch "Married.. with Children" as one of the first FOX shows. And then they had the Tracey Ullman Show and then the Simpsons, which also was sort of controversial at the time because of it being not your average cartoon. I didn't watch a lot of FOX growing up in the 80's because a good portion of it didn't have as much programming as it has now. It's really expanded since then. It had the cop shows and America's Most Wanted, but as a kid in the 80's, I favored more light hearted entertainment (although my Dad liked watching those shows, I kinda branded COPS as kinda cheap programming).  For us, FOX has always been referred to as Channel 2. It's the first channel on the dial for us.

I believe it was 1987 when FOX priemered, not 1986.

Here in Greensboro, North Carolina, our FOX is FOX-8 WGHP. I obviously don't have any experience in the pre-FOX era, but I do know that the WGHP network used to be part of ABC until FOX came along. Then, WGHP moved from ABC to FOX.

Yeah, I remember seeing Married... 3 times; and then Tracy Ullman with the Simpsons cartoons featured.  my family watched Married... and then discussed, then watched again.
I felt a new era of TV emerge; I also felt unusually like a Nielsen family household...

next thing I woke up and X-files was on.
KKay

Yeah, I remember seeing Married... 3 times; and then Tracy Ullman with the Simpsons cartoons featured.  my family watched Married... and then discussed, then watched again.
I felt a new era of TV emerge; I also felt unusually like a Nielsen family household...

next thing I woke up and X-files was on.
KKay


It's very weird to see a channel evolve like FOX has, especially since I have seen the channel from the very beginning.

First, I'd like to quote myself, from the thread, "How old were you when you stopped trick-or-treating for Halloween?".

Funny thing, this question happens to be asked.

Yesterday marks the 20th anniversary of my retirement year of trick-or-treating. 16 years old, in 1985.

And today marks the 20th anniversary of the 1st, and only, independent TV station we ever had in the Tri-Cities area. (NE Tenn./SW Va.) - WETO, Ch.39, Greeneville, Tenn.
Then the Fox network came along, and it gradually stopped being so "independent". I could go on about this on another, more appropriate thread. But I remember it signed on the day after Halloween, and I watched it while eating my last Halloween candy.

Talk about your "things you just can't go back to."

Well, I think I've found that "more appropriate thread."

I will say that we did have a couple of small stations since then. But one of them was almost all home shopping, but now it's a UPN station. Another one is almost all home shopping, and our cable system doesn't carry it.

But WETO was different. We never had an independent station in the Tri-Cities before this one came along. ETO meant "East Tennessee's Own", and you could believe it, because it had its own identity. For what it was worth, it was the first station in our area to be on 24 hours a day, showing country music videos from 12-6.

Over the course of the next year, they had reruns of shows, some of them I never heard of until then. They had the old 1-star movies. They had reruns of 1981 episodes of "Family Feud" for a while. "Great Space Coaster". A Canadian sitcom called "Hangin' In". It was just an interesting station.

Then the Fox network came along, and slowly, it stopped being so independent. Oh, they still had the 1-star movies for a while. They had the 30-min. "SCTV" reruns Mon.-Fri. when no "normal" station would dare. But in 1989, someone bought it and changed the name to "FOX39, WEMT". The neat stuff they had been showing slowly gave way to the run-of-the-mill stuff like you see on every station.

Now, we don't have a true independent station in the Tri-Cities (although we have one that could be, if some people made an effort).

But dang, it was good while it lasted!

Just to Correct everyone, "FOX Network" launched on October 9th, 1986

Just to Correct everyone, "FOX Network" launched on October 9th, 1986

That would put it at just after WETO's "1986 Summer FilmFest".  ;D