I was thinking of cable TV, from 10, 20 years ago.

[Archae]

A & E channel had Arts and Entertainment.
MTV had...(gasp) *MUSIC VIDEOS!*
CNN had news. Headline News had news on the half-hour.
Discovery Channel had "Wings" which was about airplanes.
USA Channel had the weird stuff, especially on Friday and Saturday night.
Sci-Fi channel had Harlon Ellison saying "Rush Limbaugh's brain has turned into bat guano." :-)
Fox "news" didn't exist.
Michael Weiner was the loon selling vitamins on late-night infomercials.

Any more?

[Drunken Irishman]

1. And there were like maybe three cable movie channels...

HBO, Shotime and Starz.

And they were actually good.

[RoyGBiv]

4. In the beginning ...

There was Home Box Office.
But HBO was too mainstream for some people.
They wanted variety and non-mainstream movies
And then there was Showtime.
And it was good.

But then the people wanted boobies.
There were not enough boobies on HBO and Showtime.
And then came Skinemax Cinemax.
And it was ok.

Then there was The Movie Channel and Starz and Encore and TCM and countless others.
And there's never anything on anymore.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. Cinemax is fun. Too bad I don't have it in HD.

Fucking HD.

[Odin2005]

8. You owe me a new keyboard!

:spray: :rofl:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

17. Brilliant!

Thanks to the DUzies (and JeffR), I was able to find this piece of wisdom!

[nytemare]

2. Hell, I remember the changer box from the 80's.

It had a wood-panel look, and a slider thingy to change channels, with a wire attached. I was pretty good at switching between Nikelodeon and MTV.

[RoyGBiv]

3. KOKH ...

It was out of Oakland, one of the original so-called superstations that went away on cable. It had TV-POW and Starblazers, which were awesome.

'Course that was when cable had, at most, 12 channels (2-13) and no box ... just a big ol' wire from a giant antennae somewhere on high ground strung into a main hub and then fed out to homes.

[OhioBlue]

6. The History Channel had programs

about History.

[baldguy]

23. Other than Nazis & space aliens.

[Odin2005]

7. 10 years ago Discovery Channel was awesome. Now it's crap.

One of the first things I did when I got home from school was turn on the TV and watch the Discovery Channel science and technology shows Beyond 2000 and Next Step.

[Crazy Dave]

9. Every time I check to see what's on Discovery

All I see is "Dirty Jobs" back to back for over 12 hours.

[Odin2005]

10. Or the latest Monster House/Garage/Makeover show.

:banghead:

[pokerfan]

21. Discovery has a couple of things worth watching

Survivorman, Doing Da Vinci, Time Warp, Mythbusters, Cash Cab, How It's Made

Everything else is crap.

[Kat45]

11. AMC showed American Movie Classics, emphasis on classics.

IIRC, Bravo showed good movies, uncut. And I'm not sure, but they may not have had commercials interrupting them.

When cable first came along, people strongly objected to paying for television, which they hadn't been doing. We were told that because we were paying for these stations, they wouldn't have commercials. Gee, I wonder what ever happened to that idea? Now they're full of commercials and cut the shit out of the movies. The only stations that don't censor the movies are the premium channels, which we have to pay even MORE for.

[Initech]

12. No ads for boner pills, masturbatory aids, girls gone wild videos, or birth control pills.

[Danger Mouse]

13. Everything keeps getting dumbed down more and more.

It's depressing.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

14. CNN was much more reliable, informative and enjoyable in those days

I used to watch it all the time

Sad to see how it's gone downhill

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. I miss the hell outa 'Wings'

They had a marathon one day around 1995 and I taped as much as I could. Got some great stuff, including the two-hour doc on Jack Northrop and the YB-35 and YB-49, "The Wing Will Fly."

[bbernardini]

16. TLC actually had high-brow educational programs. nt

[JitterbugPerfume]

18. TLC had

Connections and real honest to gawd science!


Whoops! great minds--or something like that?:hi:

[pokerfan]

22. Connections was awesome

but then again it was a BBC production.

Connections² and Connections³ weren't as good.

[Vidar]

24. It was. I met James Burke when he spoke at my grad school.

[Deja Q]

19. And Microsoft Windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s

How did this company get anywhere, again? Not via commercials like that one...

:rofl:

[AmyDeLune]

20. Nickalodeon had some pretty cool stuff...

A lot of British stuff like The Tomorrow People, Children of the Stones (genuinely creepy and now available on DVD), Black Beauty, loads of stuff I've never since seen on any other channel.

They also had Lights! Camera! Action! hosted by Leonard Nimoy, in the pre-special edition DVD days, pretty much the only place to see documentary and behind the scenes footage of films.

...I miss Old Cable...:(

[Midlodemocrat]

25. I remember the 'original' cable where you were literally tethered

to the tv with a 'cable channel selector' that was corded. How times have changed.