(You might need to have been living in L.A. to answer this but I’m not sure. Our cable company at the time was Theta Cable which eventually got absorbed by Group W and then Adelphia.)
Some time around 1980, possibly a few years either way to be exact, there used to be this Tempo movie channel on my cable lineup. At that time, for the primary TV in the den there was a corded channel selection box on which each channel had its own button. But on our other TVs there was just the regular dial, with the formerly “in-between” channels now assigned by the cable company to various additional channels.
Tempo was Channel 12, and the content was very similar to Turner Classic Movies except for the fact that they didn’t have someone like Robert Osborne introducing the films; instead they simply played them, one after another. This was a time when the networks were gradually doing away with late-night movies so Tempo was a great way to keep getting my old-time/noir movie fix.
Then one day it simply stopped in its tracks–literally. There wasn’t any kind of onscreen announcement along the lines of “We thank you for watching but are unable to continue these broadcasts”; it just stopped in the middle of a film. I don’t remember what the movie was, but the it was a baseball scene. The camera was looking toward the third baseman and shortstop, if memory serves. And that was it. It was like a still picture on my TV. I checked back a day or so later, and the third baseman and shortstop were still there!
Was there anybody else besides me who ever watched that channel?