METV And HDTV

     The Rockford Files, Adam-12, Emergency, CHiPs, Star Trek, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, Perry Mason, Ironside, The Love Boat,  F-Troop, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan's Island, Daniel Boone, Bonanza, The Outer Limits, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, and more.
     I don't watch all of these shows, but I'm interested in most of them. Perhaps it's more nostalgia than actually enjoying the television shows, because the shows are mostly from the period of time when I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s.
     Watching all of these vintage television series on one channel reminds me of TV Land, when it first debuted as an offshoot of Nickelodeon or Nick-At-Nite. These television series are on "Memorable Entertainment Television," or METV.  Eugene ABC-affiliate KEZI-TV just launched METV as its secondary channel, offered by Charter Communications on cable channel 186 on the Roseburg-Sutherlin-Oakland cable TV system.
     American society has high definition television to thank for the recent proliferation of over-the-air TV channels. Digital television allows a broadcast station to broadcast on four different frequencies, not just one. The over-the-air broadcast spectrum has increased significantly, as one television station can now broadcast four different types of programming.
     However, splitting one's frequency into four different channels gradually degrades the quality of the signal. Each "new" television channel becomes more and more marginal in picture quality the more the frequencies are split. That's why most broadcast stations have only opted to offer a second channel. Splitting the frequencies into two channels is negligible, or not very visible to the human eye. Some stations like Medford PBS-affiliate KSYS-TV offer three channels.
      Here are the secondary channels offered by some of the local broadcast stations:

KVAL-TV, Eugene, CBS   -   This TV

KEZI-TV, Eugene, ABC   -   METV (KEZI initially launched a 24-hour local news channel as its secondary channel, but later cancelled it.)

KOBI-TV, Medford, NBC   -   This TV (KOBI initially launched a 24-hour weather channel as its secondary channel, but later cancelled it.)

KMTR-TV, Eugene, NBC   -    CW  (CW is an actual network, that originated with over-the-air channels in the larger cities, before HDTV. CW is a merger of the short-lived United Paramount Network (UPN) and Warner Brothers (WB) network. Eugene's KEVU-TV was originally UPN-affiliated and Roseburg's KROZ-TV, later KTVC-TV, was originally WB-affiliated.)

KTVL-TV, Medford, CBS   -   CW

KLSR-TV, Eugene, Fox  --  MyTV (The interesting thing about this arrangement, is that KLSR-TV 34 and KEVU-TV 23 were two separate over-the-air television stations before HDTV. They were located in the same broadcast facility on Chad Drive in Eugene and owned by the same company. However, KEVU was only licensed as a low-power television station on channel 23. When HDTV presented the option of one high-power station offering multiple programs, high-power television station KLSR opted to use KEVU/MyNetwork TV as its secondary channel.

     There are now obviously many more television channels than any one person or family will watch. That's why "a la carte" television appears to be the wave of the future. Instead of being forced to pay for dozens or hundreds of channels by one cable company or satellite dish provider....television viewers in the future may be able to choose which channels they purchase.
     Instead of buying a "bundled" package of most every channel, television viewers may be able to select only a few channels that they actually watch. CBS and HBO recently launched this new phase of television viewing by offering direct access to only their programming.
     Things were so much simpler when we "only" had three broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) and PBS offered on "only" twelve cable TV channels or less for $5.00 per month!