MTV Hour One (yes, it's what you think it is!)

[nearwildheaven]

@cochrane

I remember in 2006, MTV repeated their entire first 24 hours in honor of their 25th anniversary.

I don’t remember that! I would have taped it if it I had (didn’t have a Tivo yet).

[nearwildheaven]

@oara

Oh, is that why I sometimes saw radios with a TV band when I was a kid? I could never understand why people would just listen to television shows!

People who were camping, or in some other environment where watching TV wasn’t practical, could also listen to the news, or their soap operas, or whatever. The extreme left end of the FM dial often has TV broadcasts as well.

[oara]

@Drum_God

No, that’s not what the TV band was for. The TV band on radio was simply to listen to TV broadcasts. It was usually only VHF band, so they weren’t useful where I lived. In Austin, only one channel broadcast VHF band. The other two networks were UHF.

What gotpasswords is talking about was plugging the cable into the antenna input on your stereo receiver. Cable companies would then assign different channels to different frequencies, just as on your TV. So, they would pick up local radio channels and lock them onto a frequency so that a person could get clear reception no matter where he lived. Some TV channels, notably MTV and HBO also got frequencies so that viewers could listen to the programs in stereo.

Ah, I think I understand now.

[DonLogan]

@Drum_God

What gotpasswords is talking about was plugging the cable into the antenna input on your stereo receiver. Cable companies would then assign different channels to different frequencies, just as on your TV. So, they would pick up local radio channels and lock them onto a frequency so that a person could get clear reception no matter where he lived. Some TV channels, notably MTV and HBO also got frequencies so that viewers could listen to the programs in stereo.

Yes, when I got cable around 1984, in my area it involved a splitter.

My TV had screw terminals for a VHF antenna, and my stereo receiver basically had the same type of terminals for AM and FM antennas. A cheap radio antenna consisted of a 6 foot piece of speaker wire split down most of its length.

So the main cable came into the splitter and then one output cable with clips ran to the TV and one ran to the receiver.

MTV was the only TV channel they fed to the receiver in my area, but they also fed local FM stations and a couple of out-of-market ones.