I was born in 1990 so from as far back as I can remember, we always had a cable box. When did cable TV become commonplace in the US, and how did TV work before cable became common place? Like, how did you have channels and stuff? It seems like a different world to me.

I can speak for the UK, cable television developed in the late 1980s and became popular in the 1990s. Before that it was an aerial on the television set, receiving terrestrial channels, from when the BBC starting broadcasting from August 1932.

Independent Television (ITV) started broadccasting in 1954, making two available channels to watch.

In 1964, the BBC started broadcasting a second channel, introducing BBC1 and BBC2, making three channels for viewing. In November 1982, a fourth channel started, called Channel 4.

At the time when Cable TV was starting to become popular, a fifth channel started, called Channel 5. Since then, it has been the introduction of cable channels. 

Out of interest, BBC2 was the first to broadcast colour pictures from Wimbledon in 1967. By mid 1968, nearly every BBC2 programme was in colour. Six months later, colour came to BBC1. By 1969, BBC1 and ITV were regularly broadcasting in colour.

Ironically, as a 1999 born, my family didn't really have cable until around 2004.

In the 60s & 70s when I was growing up, TV worked with an aerial or "rabbit ears" as they were called, which one moved around until the best reception was received. Often there was a TV antenna on the roof which was a large metal contraption, to help get better reception. It all flew through the air somehow, rather than through a cable (don't you love my technical talk?). Here in the US there were three networks or channels. ABC, CBS and NBC. Plus PBS, which was called NET (National Educational Television) at the time and wasn't as elaborate as it is now, and wasn't always on the air, so PBS (now my favorite of the broadcast networks) almost "didn't count". A bit later there were small time local "UHF" channels as well. There were no remotes and one had to physically get up to switch channels. Many households only had black and white TVs, long into the years of color broadcasts.  Programs were broadcast once and possibly rerun once more  in the summer and that was it. if you missed it you missed it. We were all very happy with this arrangement, and if I was transported back in time today I'd still be happy with it.  One first started hearing hints of talk about cable in the early 70s and it was referred to as "pay TV". I think the general consensus originally was that it wouldn't fly because "nobody would pay for TV".  Many people started having cable in the early 80s and it was commonplace by 1984 or so.

In the 60s & 70s when I was growing up, TV worked with an aerial or "rabbit ears" as they were called, which one moved around until the best reception was received. Often there was a TV antenna on the roof which was a large metal contraption, to help get better reception. It all flew through the air somehow, rather than through a cable (don't you love my technical talk?). Here in the US there were three networks or channels. ABC, CBS and NBC. Plus PBS, which was called NET (National Educational Television) at the time and wasn't as elaborate as it is now, and wasn't always on the air, so PBS (now my favorite of the broadcast networks) almost "didn't count". A bit later there were small time local "UHF" channels as well. There were no remotes and one had to physically get up to switch channels. Many households only had black and white TVs, long into the years of color broadcasts.  Programs were broadcast once and possibly rerun once more  in the summer and that was it. if you missed it you missed it. We were all very happy with this arrangement, and if I was transported back in time today I'd still be happy with it.  One first started hearing hints of talk about cable in the early 70s and it was referred to as "pay TV". I think the general consensus originally was that it wouldn't fly because "nobody would pay for TV".  Many people started having cable in the early 80s and it was commonplace by 1984 or so.


I completely concur.  In Chicago we were fortunate to have one additional broadcast VHF channel, WGN (channel 9).

About the televisions themselves, a lot of people wouldn't remember how the technology evolved.  Before the 70's TVs were generally constructed using vacuum tubes - they were big, bulky, the tubes got really hot, and the TV required warm-up time of a few seconds.  This was common.  My Dad fixed TVs (not as his vocation, more of a 'hobby') and it was common to see him pull out a box of vacuum tubes as he was fixing a TV.  As the components were more or less discrete, he'd also have things like resistors available.  Solder, too.  And a schematic.  Pretty straightforward stuff.  I recall him bemoaning the advent of solid state TVs, that they would be harder to fix.  That's probably true, I dunno  :-\\ ...

Around 1969 my uncle, who owned a furniture store, was showing us his brand new wood console color TV equipped with a most enviable gadget - a remote control.  All I could think is, WOW  :o

I completely concur.  In Chicago we were fortunate to have one additional broadcast VHF channel, WGN (channel 9).

About the televisions themselves, a lot of people wouldn't remember how the technology evolved.  Before the 70's TVs were generally constructed using vacuum tubes - they were big, bulky, the tubes got really hot, and the TV required warm-up time of a few seconds.  This was common.  My Dad fixed TVs (not as his vocation, more of a 'hobby') and it was common to see him pull out a box of vacuum tubes as he was fixing a TV.  As the components were more or less discrete, he'd also have things like resistors available.  Solder, too.  And a schematic.  Pretty straightforward stuff.  I recall him bemoaning the advent of solid state TVs, that they would be harder to fix.  That's probably true, I dunno  :-\\ ...

Around 1969 my uncle, who owned a furniture store, was showing us his brand new wood console color TV equipped with a most enviable gadget - a remote control.  All I could think is, WOW  :o


Yes, many of the TV "consoles" of the 60s were designed to be pieces of furniture as well as television sets. Some of them quite nice looking, I might ad. The TV repairman was practically a member of the family in those days. If a tube blew he would show up with a toolbox full of mysterious looking tubes in colorful little boxes.

TV Guide and most local newspapers began to include listings of cable channels sometime during the early '80s, so I'd say that's the point that cable became common in the US, especially around 1982-83 since that was when MTV became a big phenomenon and was the reason why many first subscribed to cable, with the popularity of the VCR being another since premium cable networks (an additional fee in addition to the standard basic service that predominantly showed movies) was another factor. If you didn't have cable, your best bet was to live in a large city. For instance, if you lived between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD, even in the '70s, you still would have gotten both ABC's, NBC's, CBS's, as well as THREE PBS stations, along with FOUR unaffiliated independent stations, for a total of thirteen channels. On the otherhand, if you lived in the sparsely populated Montana or something, there would be as little as TWO channels in many places, often with one station sharing the programming of two networks, and not broadcasting every show in the process. That's another reason why cable took off a bit sooner in rural america, especially CATV systems which allowed for a more distant station to be broadcast. This was also who some "superstations" like WGN as well as TBS, then just a typical Atlanta independent station became popular and eventually standard cable channels.

But in general, the 1970s as being available and sometime during the 1980s in terms of when the average American first got hooked up.

Question: Would a TV still have rabbit ears on top if it had cable? I ask because in some early photos of our first TV, it has rabbit ears. It was a 1980s 19" Zenith - very small old school set. We didn't get a "modern" TV until 1993 and I know after that we definitely had cable.

Question: Would a TV still have rabbit ears on top if it had cable? I ask because in some early photos of our first TV, it has rabbit ears. It was a 1980s 19" Zenith - very small old school set. We didn't get a "modern" TV until 1993 and I know after that we definitely had cable.


If a TV has cable there is no need for rabbit ears. I'm not sure if any of the old rabbit ear TVs were cable compatible either. Incidentally, many old 60s sitcoms used the old "installing a TV antenna on the roof" routine for a plotline.

Question: Would a TV still have rabbit ears on top if it had cable? I ask because in some early photos of our first TV, it has rabbit ears. It was a 1980s 19" Zenith - very small old school set. We didn't get a "modern" TV until 1993 and I know after that we definitely had cable.


I doubt it but do you think it could still work? ???

http://i65.tinypic.com/330z9ko.jpg

That's why I asked.

Early on with cable, consumers could get specialized packages where only specific groups of stations were paid for; some people in urban locales perhaps opted out of cabling over-the-air stations, to save money.  In that scenario, the rabbit ears would still be needed.  Another possible scenario is, the TV had a clip on the top and it didn't look right without the included rabbit ears (a decorating decision).  One other possibility is, maybe no one even thought about it - it just seemed automatic to install the rabbit ears on top of the TV, needed or not.

I was born in 1990 so from as far back as I can remember, we always had a cable box. When did cable TV become commonplace in the US, and how did TV work before cable became common place? Like, how did you have channels and stuff? It seems like a different world to me.


The answer (to the first question) is going to be very region dependent.  I first saw cable TV in the mid 1970s in the high rise condo of one of my parent's coworkers.  My parents didn't get cable until a decade later.  My college in the rural Midwest didn't get cable until the late 2000s.

I think Hawaii was one of the earlier places to adopt cable.  Due to the mountainous terrain, many areas had poor or no reception.  Also, reception was poor in many areas with lots of highrises.

Before my parents signed up for cable service, we had an antenna TV.  The TV broadcasting spectrum was divided into VHF (very high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) channels.  VHF was channels 2 through 13, inclusive.  UHF was 14 through 83.  (That upper number was trimmed down over the decades.)

In the 70s, we had 5 VHF TV stations.  This was quite unusual.  Most cities the size of Honolulu had only 3 or 4 VHF stations.  These typically corresponded to the three major for-profit national networks (American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Company (NBC)) and the government-funded public network (National Education Television which later became Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)).  In Honolulu, Channel 2 was the NBC affiliate, KHON.  Channel 4 was the ABC affiliate, KITV.  Channel 9 was the CBS affiliate, KGMB.  Channel 11 was the PBS affiliate, KHET.  Channel 13 was the independent Japanese language station, KIKU.  I don't think we had any UHF channels in the 70s, but by the time I came back from college, there were a handful of them, I think.

I think some very large cities on the US Mainland would have as many as several UHF stations.  However, most of the United States only had ABC, NBC, CBS, if even that.  This, together with the limited number of radio stations, resulted in much more of a shared culture, or shared set of cultural reference points than we have today, I think.

http://i65.tinypic.com/330z9ko.jpg

That's why I asked.


Looks like your household had a lot of other cool technology of the day, from what I see to the left of the TV.  I loved it when electronics had knobs and switches on them. So much cooler than touchpads as we know them now.

Looks like your household had a lot of other cool technology of the day, from what I see to the left of the TV.  I loved it when electronics had knobs and switches on them. So much cooler than touchpads as we know them now.


My parents still have most of those pieces. They're CD/tape players, a bass I think, they told me one day but they're all still in perfect working order and actually sound as good as my modern sound systems despite being over 30 years old. Here's a better pic showing them:
http://i67.tinypic.com/11hut13.jpg

We were lucky. In the '60s-early '70s, we were close enough to NYC so we got all of their channels: 2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 5 (WNEW-independent), 7 (ABC), 9 (WOR-independent), 11 (WPIX-independent), & 13 (PBS). I had moved to other places where we usually had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and maybe a independent station-usually a UHF. I never understood why our tv had a whole bunch of other channels (UHF) until we moved when I was 8. You never had to pay for your tv.

We had an aerial antenna on the roof:

https://cdn6.bigcommerce.com/s-8em24nxp/product_images/uploaded_images/Aerial-antenna.jpg

And rabbit ears on the tv set. There wasn't a remote so you had to go up to the tv to change the channel. To improve reception, sometimes you would put aluminum foil on the rabbit ears. Some people were brave enough to go up on the roof to adjust the antenna. (My brother fell off of the roof while doing that because some kids were throwing snowballs at him-but the snow saved him.  :o :o ) 

We didn't have a color tv. I remember seeing shows advertising "In Color" and couldn't understand why they weren't in color when they said it would be.

At one point, we had a small portable black & white tv which at the time was our only tv. I'm not too sure what was the first to go but several things went. The rabbit ears disappeared to be replaced by a clothes hanger. The knob to change the channel disappeared to be replaced by a pair of pliers. The knob to turn the tv on & off disappeared-we just plugged it in to turn it on and unplugged it turn it off. Sometimes it didn't turn on when I plugged it in-so I started banging it which it would turn on after a while.  ;D ;D ;D  We were VERY glad when our grandmother gave us her older tv-which turned out to be our VERY FIRST color tv. And we didn't have to use pliers to change the channel.  ;D ;D ;D  This was about 1976 or '77.

I think it was in the mid-late '70s when my sister went back to our old neighborhood (the one I mentioned in my first paragraph) to visit a friend. She came home and told me that her friend had something called Home Box Office where you can watch movies without commercials. I KNEW that I wanted that. It wasn't until I got my first apartment in the early '80s that I got it. By then cable was "the thing" and tvs advertise as being "cable ready." After that, you basically paid for your tv.



Cat

...To improve reception, sometimes you would put aluminum foil on the rabbit ears...

...The rabbit ears disappeared to be replaced by a clothes hanger. The knob to change the channel disappeared to be replaced by a pair of pliers. The knob to turn the tv on & off disappeared-we just plugged it in to turn it on and unplugged it turn it off. Sometimes it didn't turn on when I plugged it in-so I started banging it which it would turn on after a while.  ;D ;D ;D  ...


;D  ;D  ;D

I'm not laughing at this but laughing with this - I recall the same or very similar experiences with my growing-up TVs!

At one point, we had a small portable black & white tv which at the time was our only tv. I'm not too sure what was the first to go but several things went. The rabbit ears disappeared to be replaced by a clothes hanger. The knob to change the channel disappeared to be replaced by a pair of pliers. The knob to turn the tv on & off disappeared-we just plugged it in to turn it on and unplugged it turn it off. Sometimes it didn't turn on when I plugged it in-so I started banging it which it would turn on after a while.


All of these EXACT same things happened to me.  ;D  ;D