Television, cable television and stuff

@ElicBxn (63878)
United States
August 10, 2023 9:52am CST
When I was a child, KTBC was the only TV station in town and it was owned by Lady Bird Johnson. My father did not have the highest opinion of LBJ, her husband, back in the 1950s, and honestly LBJ was a bully and a braggart. Dad said we lived behind the "Johnson Grass Curtain" because LBJ did his very best to keep any other stations out of Austin. (And Johnson Grass is a thing here...) KTBC showed mostly CBS programing with a few NBC shows if LBJ liked them. Back then radio and TV could have the same letters and KTBC radio was also owned by Lady Bird Johnson. I don't remember listening to the radio much, but on one memorable occasion Mom gathered us about it to listen to Dad on it. They later had to change the radio call letters, they changed them to KLBJ. They also had an FM station KLBJ-FM. Lady Bird sold both the TV station and the radio stations. Fox got KTBC, kept the call letters but changed it to a Fox franchise, and the CBS station was forced to swap with the old Fox station and changed the call letters to KEYE. When the Johnsons' lost the monopoly on the Austin TV scene they then created one of the first cable companies in the nation, Capitol Cable. There weren't too many stations they could hook up to, but they got the 3 stations from San Antonio and the one station out of Temple. Because we had cable and that San Antonio NBC station, I got to watch the first season of Star Trek because the Austin NBC station also ran some ABC stuff and didn't run Star Trek. Did you live in a place with only one TV station? I remember going to my grand parents and where they lived had both New York City TV stations and Philadelphia stations.
4 people like this
3 responses
@KarenAnne (257)
• United Kingdom
11 Aug 23
We had a grand total of three channels to choose from when I was younger. BBC1, BBC2 and ITV and those didn't broadcast all the time either, often finishing at midnight or soon after and BBC2 might not broadcast in the afternoon - in the morning they showed educational programmes for schools. In the very early morning (before 8 a.m) there were often Open University programmes. Imagine having to get up at 5 a.m. to watch a physics lecture!
@ElicBxn (63878)
• United States
11 Aug 23
YIKES! ITV had a show called The Tomorrow People on in the 1970s. Nickelodeon showed it in the 1980s after it started. My wife was a huge fan of the show and of the lead actor. 2003 we flew to London to go to a reunion and we got to meet the actors. I was the oldest fan at the event. I got to meet the actor who did the voice work and some walk ons of Tim, Philip Gilbert. That was in May. In August I got a white cat and I didn't want to name him Tim, figuring people were just thinking I didn't go for Tom, so I named him Timus for one of his walk on parts. My wife let the Tomorrow People group know about it and the lady who did the reunion, who had befriended the actor, let him know. At Christmas that year he asked after the cat. He passed away 1-6-2004. My cat, Timus, passed away 12-26-2017.
1 person likes this
@ElicBxn (63878)
• United States
11 Aug 23
@KarenAnne true... and I was in my late 20s and early 30s when it was on Nick here. My wife was in her early/mid 20s. That 7 year difference was quite a thing, heck, I'm only 4 years older than my sister and I still graduated college before she got out of high school.
• United Kingdom
11 Aug 23
@ElicBxn I remember the Tomorrow People. I suspect it was one of those shows originally written for adults but because kids TV had plenty of funding it ended up there. That happened a lot with anything sci-fi, fantasy or horror.
@AmbiePam (97999)
• United States
10 Aug 23
As far back as I remember, we always had three stations, even when we didn’t have cable, the stations that were CBS, ABC, and NBC. In 1986, FOX became a station, but I never paid attention to the call letters for any of them.
2 people like this
@ElicBxn (63878)
• United States
11 Aug 23
You are lucky. I do remember visiting my grandparents in New Jersey and hating to go home to 1 TV station...
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@sallypup (64199)
• Centralia, Washington
11 Aug 23
Thanks for the interesting view of American history. I don't remember much about TV stations when I was a kid. The only TV I watch these days is through youtube.
1 person likes this
@ElicBxn (63878)
• United States
11 Aug 23
Me too, mostly. I discovered at my sister's that I can only stand about 2 hours of TV. Happily it can be paused like YouTube when you are watching recorded shows or on places like Amazon Plus, where her wife and I watched Good Omens, both seasons. I got her hooked and now she wants to know when the third season comes out.
1 person likes this