We didn’t have a TV set in our home until I was about 9. TV was still relatively new, and because of the novelty value, many kids my age watched 20-30 hours a week. Not long after we got our first (rented) TV set from Granada TV rentals, I was on holiday in Kent with my older brother and parents, where we met a young American lad a little younger than me. We were in the TV lounge and the American lad was having trouble getting the TV to work. He said he could only get two channels, and so we had to tell him:
Erm, well actually, there ARE only two channels!, as was the case back then. And he said something like
Back home we get 13. Thirteen channels!
In Britain at that time we had BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and ITV (Independent Television) – and that was it. In the Midlands where I’m from, these channels could be selected on Ch4 and Ch8 on the VHF tuner. Yep, back then it was VHF and the picture was made up of 405 horizontal lines. Some time later, we got another BBC channel, so we had to have BBC1 and BBC2. BBC2 was a UHF channel, and the picture was made up of 625 horizontal lines. This format became known as PAL/625. As far as I recall, colour programmes began on BBC2 – with the famous colour test card picture of a young girl with balloons and a blackboard. She’s probably in her forties now! Very soon afterwards, BBC1 and ITV became UHF channels with programmes in colour, and then Channel 4 came along in 1982, Channel 5 some years later. We’ve had satellite for many years, offering a multitude of channels, many of which are crap.
As I was later to find out, America did indeed have something in the order of 13 TV channels, but by the time Pink Floyd released their Wall album, I was in no need of any explanation of the line
”I've got thirteen channels of toejam on the T.V. to choose from” in the song “Nobody Home”.
America uses a different type of screen format, with only 525 horizontal lines making the picture. This picture/signal format is called NTSC, also known as
Never The Same Color. I couldn’t say which is better – PAL/625 or NTSC.
I never found an area in the US where there were
exactly 13 channels. In Chicago NW ‘burbs, my TV set with a V antenna on top of the set could pick up all the network channels – 2, 5, 7 (CBS,NBC,ABC) and also 9, 11, 32 and 54. Of course, the first thing I noticed about American network TV was the sheer volume of commercials. This is how America offsets the need for any TV licensing tariff. The costs are recovered through advertising. On our very own BBC1 and BBC2, there was never ever any commercials. On ITV in a half hour program there might be one commercial break, or if the program was one hour long there might be two. But on American TV, Gawd!! There would be a TV commercial slot
right after the opening credits but before the programme started! And another one about ten minutes later, and ten minutes after that, and between the last segment of the programme and the closing credits! As to the programs...
dozens of game shows, and half hour sitcoms were shown between commercial breaks. But there was one program I used to enjoy on CBS, and that was
60 Minutes. I loved old Harry Reasoner, and was sorry when he died. His No. 2 was Mike Wallace. Wow! What an interviewer! You didn’t get away with getting your facts wrong with
that guy. I once saw one of his interviewees leave the stage, almost in tears because Wallace was using material they had agreed would not be used. And finally, there would be Andy Rooney. I enjoyed his slot. And then back to the commercials. Whenever a long one came up, you knew that at the end of it they were going to say
To order now, call toll free 1-800-555-1234. That’s something else. Any time a phone number is used in an American movie or TV show, it always starts 555! And the price of those awful order-off-the-TV products that Homer Simpson might have in his garage was always $19.95 or $29.95.
Of course, there was a chink of light in an otherwise depressing never-the-same-color picture. Channel 11! WGBH Boston. This was a different channel entirely, on which there were no commercial breaks, and the programmes were intelligent documentaries and dramas, often imported from Britain – shows like
Poldark and
All Creatures Great and Small. There was one other American programme I did like, and that was hosted by the American scientist Dr. Carl Sagan and was called
Cosmos. Fantastic series.
I was transfixed, and sat glued to the set through every (commercial free) episode. Every time I came to watch TV, I would realise that the tuner was already on Ch11. It was the only channel I ever seemed to watch. Every couple of months they would have “Pledge Weeks”. A program would be interrupted while an announcer would explain that this channel was commercial free, and relied upon voluntary donations to keep it going. Viewers were invited to make a donation, and I even sent in a $25 “single person’s” donation. I had decided by then that instead of 13 channels of toejam, I would rather have one good channel – and 12 channels of toejam.
Later on I was in Concord,CA. On the day I moved into my apartment, I could receive only two TV stations – just like England in the 1960s! The difficulty was that because of the surrounding mountains, none of the San Francisco stations could be received. I got one channel from Oakland, and another from Sacramento, and that was it. One evening, I watched (or at least tried) a WW2 film (movie). But it was impossible. The commercials just broke it apart. I timed them with the stopwatch function on my wristwatch. There would be 8 minutes of movie, then 5 minutes commercial – all the way through – 8-5-8-5-8-5... This did not matter with some of the American shows because they were so devoid of content that no concentration was needed. But what to do about the two channels problem?
I had a word with the maintenance man. He and I were friends. He knew I was English from the day when I asked him if there was an outside tap for washing the car.
”You mean a faucet?” Anyway, he advised me to get Cable, and that all the apartments were already wired up for it. As far as I recall, the cable company didn’t even need to visit the apartment. I was hooked up and ready to go. Oh, and a $28 monthly fee was payable - $300+ per annum – quite a lot more than the British TV licence fee which even now is only in the order of £120. The difference is that with cable, I could get 23 channels. This is most important in America, where they like big numbers. I always remember how the Audi 80 and Audi 100 cars were marketed in the US. Those numbers were multiplied by 50, and the cars sold as the Audi 4000 and the Audi 5000. With TV, the all important parameter was the number of available channels, rather than content. Thus, I might crow that the BBC broadcasts
Masterpiece Theatre and the
Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts from the Royal Albert Hall. But in the US, they might crow about the number of available channels! But in fairness, cable provided more choice than before, and there were now THREE educational channels like WGBH Boston. And Ch20 showed reruns of Mission Impossible! So whereas I had felt tempted to sell the TV at times, I decided to keep it on until returning to England.
In Britain, that licence fee is used to pay for the production of programmes. Is it the right way to do it? Well, it does mean that people without a TV don’t have to pay, but trapping the licence fee evaders is costly, with detector vans going round checking up! The fine is £1000, but I never heard of anyone getting done for non-payment. The fee payable is less for those aged 75+, and is also quite a lot less for a monochrome set. There is talk about scrapping the TV licence and collecting the money through other channels (excuse the pun), but I am happy to pay the licence fee which, in view of the alternative, is worth every penny.
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