Instead of reaching for a remote to change the television channel, I used to turn the outdoor TV antenna to change the channel as a child. My family was fortunate to receive three over-the-air channels where we lived in Oakland (at least during good weather). Two stations had translators in Oakland, situated on the Heaton family cross at the west side of town: KPIC 12 and KEZI 7. The third TV signal came directly from KOBI's channel 5 transmitter located atop King Mountain east of Glendale.
So, if we wanted to change from KOBI to one of the other two channels, we would physically turn the antenna from the south to the west to receive the optimum picture. Therefore, one can understand how excited and mystified I was when I came home from school one day and found a mysterious black cable leading into the back of our TV set. When I turned on the television, I was surprised to see the number of channels, most of them with crystal clear pictures, coming in on our television set.
The only problem was there were no satellite channels in those days. Everything was over-the-air broadcast signals from local television stations. In order to fill up all 12 channels on the dial (2-13), Clearview Cable TV for a short time broadcast Portland's KOIN on both channels 6 and 8. Considering there were three NBC affiliates and two ABC affiliates on the cable channel line-up, I suppose it didn't seem too strange to have two CBS channels, even if they were from the same television station.
I used to eagerly wait for Friday nights at 8p.m. when Wonder Woman was broadcast on CBS. Unfortuately, the Portland signals were often fuzzy, and I would switch back from channel 6 to channel 8 to see which picture was best. But they were both the same: usually blurry. Clearview Cable TV had their "head-in" site on a hill west of Interstate-5, where the cell phone towers are now located. Because Clearview Cable TV was a small business, they didn't have the money to invest in expensive microwave technology to bring in distant television stations. They had outdoor TV antennas at their head-in site, just like the antennas we had at home. I often envied cable TV viewers in Roseburg, who were part of a microwave system that brought in crystal-clear signals from Portland, Sacramento, and San Francisco television stations.
But I still watched the fuzzy Portland channels offered on our local cable system. Who would want to miss late-night Portland wrestling live on KPTV? It was also during this time that I became an admirer of KOIN news anchor Mike Donahue's professionalism. While watching a CBS program during the evening, Donahue would break in with a news tease for the 11p.m news., often beginning with: "Good evening, it's currently ** degrees in the rose city. Here's..." Donahue finally retired only a couple years ago.
My memory may not be entirely accurate, but I believe Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network was the first satellite channel offered to Sutherlin-Oakland viewers, in addition to two premium movie channels. The channel line-up looked as follows:
CLEARVIEW CABLE TV CHANNEL LINE-UP
SUTHERLIN-OAKLAND, late 1970s
2 KPTV Portland Independent
3 HBO Home Box Office - Premium
4 KPIC Roseburg NBC
5 KOBI Medford ABC
6 KOIN Portland CBS
7 KOAC Corvallis PBS
8 CBN later became the Family channel
9 KEZI Eugene ABC
10 KTVL Medford NBC
11 Weather readings from Sutherlin cable TV office
12 TMC Twenty-Four Hour Movie Channel - Premium
13 KVAL Eugene NBC
As more satellite channels were born, cable television quickly evolved. Because there was poor signal quality from the Portland channels, Clearview decided to drop the snowy Portland channels, and bring in crystal-clear satellite channels. ESPN bumped KOIN on channel 6, and Ted Turner's "Superstation WTBS" bumped KPTV on channel 2. That move did not go over well with the cable TV viewers who faithfully watched CBS soaps and no longer had a CBS station on the cable system. Clearview bowed to public pressure and re-instated KOIN on channel 10, bumping KTVL from Medford, which at this time was changing network affiliations from NBC to CBS. That was the last time I could watch Newscenter 10 for their fruit frost report. (Yes, I'm kidding.)
Channel capacity was an issue and it would be several years before Clearview Cable would invest in the technology, enabling them to offer more than twelve channels. When Eugene finally launched a third network-affiliate television station in 1983, KMTR-TV, Sutherlin-Oakland viewers lost their last access to Portland news as KMTR replaced KOIN on channel 10.
When I look at the current line-up of basic cable TV channels offered today by Charter Communications, I sometimes wonder just how much television has "evolved" over the years. Here's how the basic cable line-up looks today:
2 Home Shopping Network
3 EMPTY
4 KPIC Roseburg CBS
5 KOBI Medford NBC
6 KMTR Eugene NBC
7 QVC Shopping
8 KSYS Medford PBS
9 KEZI Eugene ABC
10 EMPTY
11 KEVU Eugene MyNetwork/formerly UPN
12 CW/KMTR Eugene
13 KLSR Eugene Fox
14 WGN Chicago CW
15 ION
18 CPAN
19 Public Access
20 Telemundo
21 KTVC Roseburg religious/formerly WB
22 Weather
91 TBN Trinity Broadcasting Network, Santa Ana, CA
92 INSP Inspiration, Charlotte, NC
285 THIS/KOBI Medford
292 THIS/KVAL Eugene
Obviously there are more channels and more viewing options today, even on the basic cable TV line-up. But being the news junkie that I am, I miss the access to television news broadcasts from other cities. As the Eugene television stations have become more amateurish in their news broadcasts, I yearn for the days when I could watch a polished newscast from Portland. Today, I can watch WGN's noon news at 10a.m., if I want to hear stories about two women who were raped in Chicago, or where the warming centers will be located as another cold front hits the Great Lakes.
I became so frustrated in 2012 that I actually allowed a DISH satellite representative sign me up, IF he could bring me the Medford television stations instead of the Eugene stations. After consulting with his supervisor he told me he could do that. But then the day came that the installers showed up to set up the dish. They couldn't get a decent signal! There are locust trees all around our house and there was not one spot where DISH could pick up all three of their satellites. They found spots on our property where the dish could pick up two of the satellites, but never all three.
Sigh! I resigned myself to keeping the basic cable. I thought about the possibility of going back to the old days of using an antenna to pick up our television channels. Unfortunately, high definition technology unveiled a new problem on the horizon. Unlike the old analog television signals that could skip over hilltops, high definition television signals required line-of-sight between the television transmitter or translator and the home television antenna. Thus, KOBI was no longer available over-the-air in Oakland. And KPIC had removed their old translator without replacing it. That just leaves ONE television station that we could pick up on an antenna in Oakland: KEZI.
Do I miss the days of "turning the antenna" to change the channel? No. But I do miss the days of being able to hear a Portland news anchor give the temperature in the rose city. Maybe one day I'll be able to trim the locust trees and call back a DISH representative to hook me up with a dish that brings in the Portland stations. Then I'll no longer have to watch 25-year-old recent college graduates mispronouncing words and offering an amateurish newscast from Eugene. Most of the older, more seasoned and more professional reporters and anchors in Eugene have been dismissed, because it's cheaper to pay a college graduate than it is to pay someone with experience.
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