WBIN-TV 18?

[Ed Hennessy]

This is interesting, since in one of the systems in suburban New Haven (which my parents subscribed to back in 1976), the VHF channels were aligned with their on-air channels. Channels 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 13 were all on their same channels. I recall that HBO was on channel 6. Can't recall what was on 10 or 12, but it may have been one of the local UHF channels (20, 24, 30, 49, or 65), nor do I remember where WSBK and WLVI or the NYC UHFs went (we got at least 41 and 47, since I recall my dad watching "boxeo" many times).  Hartford's 18 and 61 were not on the air then. 

Other than 10 and 12, all the other cable channels available would have had letter labels (remember those 12-button selectors with a 3-position switch on one end and a fine tuning knob on the other? ;-) I do recall that the town access/high school channel was channel S.

I'm not sure why they did it that way, since there was definitely egress (so ingress was possible)--I recall setting up a portable TV in a bedroom on an outside wall where the drop came down and finding a staticky picture on a channel that would not have been received over the air either at that distance or on that channel.  It stayed set up that way for many years, probably up until the AT&T Broadband timeframe (with at least 3 companies in between).  

Ed Hennessy

 
On 10/24/12, Matthew Osborne<mattosborne1976@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
Garrett's explanation below must be the reason why all of the cable systems in Plattsburgh NY, Burlington VT, and the surrounding areas put all the local network affiliates on locations different than their actual air channel. Back in 1998, WPTZ (channel 5) was (and probably still is) on cable channel 2, WVNY (channel 22) was on channel 4, and WCAX (channel 3) was on channel 8. I always though that was odd, and never understood why this was done until now. Those channel locations were (and probably still are) the exact same ones used on cable systems in Montreal; the stations must've wanted consistency across cable systems and simply requested that local US-based systems use the same lineup as the much bigger Montreal market.

Matt Osborne
Rotterdam, NY


<<On Saturday, October 20, 2012 11:23 PM Garrett Wollman<wollman@bimajority.com> replied:

The rule in Canada was (and so far as I know still is) that stations
*must not* be placed on the same channel on cable systems as they are
over the air. In the days of analog cable, there was a lot of
leakage, and broadcast stations (particularly VHF stations), if placed
on their broadcast channels, would receive objectionable ingress
interference from their over-the-air transmitters.