Canadian family parties like it's 1986, technology-wise

Really? My town had cable throughout the '80s, maybe even by the late '70s, plenty of time to watch Aussie football and the NIT every year.

 

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Wouldn't trade it to be a teenager today. We lived in major cities an had basic cable, so plenty of viewing options.

 

What cable channels were worth watching before ESPN came along?

 

Love how the guy wants to live likes it's 1986 but he is wearing one of the new-style Jays jerseys.

 

I paid $120 for this out of paper-route money in the early 70s.



Also spent about $100 a couple of years later on Odyssey video game system. Ugh.



Maybe that's why I'm so jaded against "gotta buy the newest thing out there" today. When you get burned that badly as a kid . . .

 

Nice to know the Leafs will still suck, though. Some things never change.

 

CNN and ESPN both started within months of each other in 1979. Prior to that, having cable usually meant getting a couple of out-of-town stations (WTBS, WGN, WOR, etc.) and a station that had the weather forecast 24/7. Maybe also getting a station from a nearby metro area that the antenna didn't pull in very well. But there weren't many (any?) designated cable networks in those days.

 

Nickelodeon began before ESPN, and as I recall it was a bigger deal for quite a few years. That could be just a sampling of my own neighborhood where the kids were more likely to be watching cable, but I think it was that way in most places.

ESPN had tons of college basketball including the tournament, and that was cool, but I don't recall them becoming a major, massive force until they got the NFL in 1987.

 

USA Network had some fairly major sports shows and were the nearest thing to music television until MTV came on in 1981.

 

Our cable "remote" was about 3 inches by 10 inches and was wired directly into the TV. It had a grid of numbers and a selector switch. To pick a channel, you toggled the switch to the row and pushed the button under the number to get that channel. There was also a dial you could use to fine tune the channel. Occasionally, you could fine tune it enough to get a fuzzy view of a pay channel.
Nickelodeon was once a pay channel.
MTV came out, providing the the perfect combination of radio and TV with videos with VJ's. How radical. For something that was supposed to be so bad, a lot of "good" people sure made sure they watched a lot of it.
Until we bought our own, we had to rent a VCR player when we rented a VCR tape. Movie night was big deal and usually meant something special — pizza!!!
We thought it was great when we got our second TV because we could watch what we wanted in the basement while our parents watched something in the living room.
WGN, WOR and TBS were the closest things us non-pay channel cable subscribers had to movie choices, other than VCR tape rentals.
ESPN was an oasis in a sports coverage desert.
Although some people had cordless phones, we made do with a wall unit (yes, one phone). Privacy depended on how far you stretched the cord, and it was never far enough.
A Walkman was the best accessory a kid could have.
It was cool to own or ride a moped.
Teen girls nearly hairsprayed the ozone layer into oblivion, but we managed to Save the Whales, provide Farm Aid and Live Aid, and musically proclaim that We Are The World.
We took the Pepsi Challenge, and went Back to the Future.
New Coke reared its ugly head and quickly went away.

 

HBO was available in the late 70s. The Jessica Lange/Jeff Bridges version of King Kong and Inside The NF are the first things I remember watching on cable - at a friend's house. Must have been 1977. USA was around back then too.

We didn't get cable until 78 or 79 and we had one of the cable boxes fossy described.

 

USA was actually the first cable network to have major league baseball, no? Thursday Night game of the week.

Edit: Not counting Braves on TBS, Cubs on WGN and Mets on WOR.