 This is the SF Productions podcast network Whose channel is it anyway from the pop culture bunker I'm Mindy and I'm Mark you can check out our audio podcast How I get my way free comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network comm Now when you look at the 500 plus channels on your TV, yes, plus internet and streaming It's hard to remember a time when we only had a handful of local stations to pick from three You're lucky for yeah, and back then it was simple and kind of necessary to know the channel numbers for those local stations Now this month this past month NBC in Boston dropped their existing affiliate Which was owned by a third party and became an oh and oh, which is means owned and operated station, okay by NBC slash cable town slash sign art wig company However, it's not a single station They bought three stations two of which are these digital sub channels, which we'll talk about in a minute in order to get full coverage of the greater Boston area and Rename them collectively NBC Boston with no channel number Now if your cable or satellite user there, it's no big deal But if you're a cord cutter like we are it's gonna be a bit of a mess because if you go to a friend's house It's like oh, it's not the same channel here. It's just something else So that means NBC is on different stations depending on where you are in greater Boston Time will tell if this actually works and people will continue watching yeah, or or what But how did we actually get to this point where cable or channels really don't matter that much anymore? If you go all the way back to radio, it was critical for your audience to know where to tune in Mm-hmm, especially since it involved moving this tuner up and down the dial yeah Yeah, and if they didn't know the channel number or the station number they might never find your stations At least not very easily TV at least give you a clue in the form of a picture Know you're in a channel, but it's still important. Yeah So after a lot of technical and legal wrangling TV in the US ended up with channels 2 through 13 Which were on the VHF stations VHF standing for very high frequency Which were much clearer channels and More desirable mainly because they actually had a larger bandwidth of their station Yeah, and I remember well, I'll let you talk about UHF and then I'll so channels 14383 were UHF for ultra high frequency more static kind of the low-rent district of the spectrum And I remember on the earliest TVs that I remember the VHS It actually had like a click when you yes the channels But the UHF was still sort of like a toony thing like the radio there wasn't a specific click Yeah, a station although there were for some TVs, and I remember distinctly burning out one of those tuner things going So Yeah, yeah two through 13 you got 14383 what happened to channel one Well, it was the victim of early experimentation and reassigned to public safety and land mobile use in the very early days of television Is that where you would have been told to tune in case of emergency? I think at some point That's what they were going to use it for but it just ended up falling off and used for other purposes and then cable TV came along and At that time you're not talking about 500 channels It was just a way for people living in valleys to get local TV Some local entrepreneur would go up to the top of the mountain Hook up an antenna and run a cable into the valley and then sell TV to people there It was actually known as community antenna TV CATV The first was reportedly in Mahoney City, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania going all the way back to 1948. This is back when virtually no one had TVs really Yeah, it was the first year. There was a significant amount of TVs in the US So for the longest time local stations were generally on the same station as they were on cable as for broadcast At least for the VHF stations, so it was we're no real change for the viewers Plus very few people overall had cable TV Could get it over there, which by the way you still can yes, I by the way I love there's there's these ads you see for this amazing device to let you pull TV signals antenna that's how we used to do it. That's how we still do it and Then the super stations came along in the 1970s Distant stations began selling their signal to cable companies And this was all made possible with new cheaper satellite technology So you could actually you didn't have to be a Moni National Corporation in order to get A transceiver on a satellite, you know our rent one in order to beam your signal So the first one was WTBS now, of course TBS out of Atlanta, which basically made their mark Showing Atlanta Braves baseball, okay? We had WSB K in Boston WOR later W. WOR in New Jersey And I always remember watching that because we were we actually had cable fairly early We had it didn't you have one of those satellite? Well, we did we did later Oh, okay, but but we had cable like circa 78 79 and that was one of the stations on there, you know Carvelle ice cream and yeah beautiful Mount area Lodge and you know Then you had WPI X out of New York WGN out of Chicago KWGN out of Denver and KTLA in Los Angeles Not to mention the true the early true cable only networks HBOs your ESPNs your MTV's etc which meant that the Channelists started filling up right and so a lower numbered station was always more desirable Cable companies began to bargain with stations for channel rights Say if you pay us more we'll give you the station number you want Local stations begin to lose their original locations that they didn't play ball And really when it first started local stations didn't have to pay to be on cable They were they were a must carry exactly, but this was a way that the cable company could get them to pay They had to carry on but they didn't have to give them the channel Yeah, we can give you one way out there or you can get something low-numbered the people are gonna find you on and As more and more channels came along this mushroomed to the point where local stations rarely get a matching state channel on cable and why it's so hard to find them sometimes I Mean if you look at a a modern Channel guide it's just like Pays out pays out pays out pays out pays out a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot Yeah defined which again was another reason why channels became less and less important because you have a guide now, right? This has been further muddied by digital sub channels, which was a result of the move from analog to digital TV in the 90s So the FCC provided sufficient digital bandwidth for stations to either put out a single super high quality signal Split it up into a set of channels. Well, guess which one they did Yeah, most of them had split it up and the result is this plethora of sub channels like 10.2 or 4.3 If you're a cord cutter and use an antenna, they're actually kind of easy to find Good luck finding them on those 500 cable channels if they carry them at all because they're not required to Most fall into one of three categories Classic TV and movies channels like me TV antenna TV Cozy get TV decades Ion that's just some of them and then they're foreign language channels that are mostly in the major markets Then finally home shopping channels So as technology allows us to directly select a show we want to watch maybe the channel They're on isn't important anymore. I mean, I mean like probably 80% of the shows I watch I watch either streaming or Things that you've recorded for me, right? And I wouldn't be able to tell you what channel they run much less what network, right? You go to Hulu and you don't say I'm gonna go to this channel on Fox and watch new girl You just say I'm watching new girl, right? And so channels are being Intermediated to the point where we're not gonna care about them anymore And that's why they're trying to figure out what to do in this brave new world Which is leading us to things like CBS all-access, right? Is it gonna be their online channel, right? Which they're gonna charge for as well as NBC Boston. Yes, that's how we got to this point I don't care what they do to TV channels, I'm still gonna watch TV and in the meantime While you're not watching TV, you can check out our audio podcast how I got my wave-treat comics on iTunes Or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com From the pop culture bunker, I'm Mindy and I'm Mark. Thanks for watching