Do you remember by picturing the color saturation, grain, and resolution? Also possibly by the cheapness of the production?
For my household,
CBS: The picture was fuller and tended towards greens and browns. Kojak, All in the Family, Hawaii 5-0.
NBC: Vibrant colors, but a cheapness to the resolution and the sets sorta. Star Trek, Police Woman, Mcmillan and Wife.
ABC: Also had vibrant colors but a rounder shape to the picture. Love Boat, Six Million Dollar Man.
…or maybe I’m just full of it and I’m remembering via Battle of the Network Stars.
When I remember shows from the 70s/80s, I remember ABC being the channel with the sharpest picture. NBC’s picture always looked washed out, with CBS in the middle.
However, I remember which show was on which network pretty well by memory. That’s what happens when you grow up with only four channels and manual dialing.
I think a lot of the picture and sound quality depended on how good the local stations were. In St. Louis, the CBS and NBC affiliates made a lot of money and had great engineering staffs and the most modern equipment. The ABC station ran a lot cheaper, but still had much better video and audio than the independent UHF station.
When I lived in Kentucky our three network affiliates were actually located in three different states. The one with the best picture was the one you didn’t live 50 miles away from
Keep in mind all these channels got into your house via antenna.
In our house, picture quality would depend on whether Dad had talked one of his kids into twirling the “rabbit ears” around until NBC didn’t look washed out…
We noticed this (that the three networks each had a unique “look”) when I was a kid and some of what we watched was from the NYC flagship stations (WNBC, WCBS and WABC). I assume that the owned and operated flagship stations could afford first-rate staff and equipment.
As a matter of fact, although I don’t recall using it as method to remember what shows ran where, I do distinctly getting distinct impression of quality from the local stations, from when I was a tyke up to the point where I stopped watching a lot of network TV regularly.* My family always had cable growing up, so broadcast reception was never an issue.
The Fox affiliate—KTVU, Oakland—out of the big four, always felt kind of “low rent” Both with network supplied programming (although this slowly improved, over the years), and the station-specific content (bumpers, announcers, the news desk) and their audio/video quality. Cartoons in particular (which I would have been the most well-versed in), tended to be on the cheaper/grungier side.
The NBC and CBS stations were generally top-notch, even for local content—maybe even especially for. The news sets looked nice, lots of friendly, personable staff, and even some recognizable local talent that expanded to the national level.
ABC, too, was generally very decent. The Saturday Morning Cartoons were also the giants, and reliably the best.
*For a number of reasons—changing times, changes to my life style/work schedule, shows I followed ending their runs or losing my interest, with a lack of compelling replacements. And of course, the internet. And specifically, my getting access to high-speed internet.
Did cable have local network channels? I remember it being a fairly big deal when they started doing that. Used to be you had to change your TV back to antenna to get the local stations if you had cable.
Based on the history of cable television in Wikipedia, the first cable systems were set up to provide local broadcast channels to people who were unable to get reception, due to a mountain or other obstruction in the way.
The article goes on to say that the first basic cable channel was what became TBS, and that was in 1976. This is years after cable television systems were developed.
The only difference I remember between stations or networks in that era was between VHF and UHF. But long before my family got any TV at all, my neighbor, who owned a radio & TV sales & repair shop, had a state-of-the-art TV console and we were in an urban area with a roof antenna.
UHF was always poorer and weaker, and hard to tune with an analog tuner, unlike VHF which had click-stops for channels. And where we were located, UHF was useless with rabbit ears, while VHF was respectable if you weren’t too picky.
I think any difference you might have seen between networks was due to distance, transmitter power, and other factors like antenna position and possible reflections causing ghosting.
In the not too distant past cable TV providers literally stuck a big antenna on top of a hill and captured the local stations’ over-the-air signals. Being a bigger, better antenna, the cable version of the channel generally had a better signal. However, in areas right around the local station, the station’s signal might be so strong the cable company would have to move it to a different channel to prevent interference.
One thing I do remember clearly was at a point in the late 1970’s I noticed my local NBC station looked and sounded much better than it had before. It turned out the local station had started taking NBC programming from a satellite, instead of the old coaxial cable they had used since they signed on in the 1950s.
Did they lease telephone lines for B&W tv? My father worked at the NBC affiliate in the 60s, and he said that color Bonanza episodes were mailed to the station on reels of video tape.
Yes. When adjusting an antenna mounted to the roof, we always oriented it for the best picture based on which channel (station) had the most shows we wanted to watch. I distinctly remember having to adjust the antenna when the TV season changed and my parents now wanted to watch a new show more than an old show. The other (less desirable) channels took a back seat as far as picture quality.
When we finally got an antenna rotor, we could see very little difference in picture quality between VHF channels once we got the antenna pointed in the right direction.
Hmm. In the 1960s through 80s, I usually could figure out which network was which by the kinds of shows they showed:
CBS was prestige shows - Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, etc. - shows that were going to end up on people’s “Best show” list
NBC was high-concept shows - “Star Trek” as "Wagon Train in Space, “Manimal,” “Misfits of Science” etc. - shows that were going to show up on people’s lists of “remember that weird show about”
ABC was sex - Love Boat, Charlie’s Angels, etc. - shows that were going to have posters of people associated with the shows on teenage boys’ bedroom walls.
A large national microwave relay network was built out in the 1950s. This was used for phone and network TV distribution.
Stations in major cities would get their feed from such a microwave link. But in some places or if the relay hadn’t reached you yet, there was a cable. (The poor sound quality of old TV audio was due to the original limitations of these systems.)
TV stations did (and still have) relay transmitters all around their region. Usually UHF. Cable TV systems in remoter areas would often get their signal from such a repeater.
As noted, cable TV started as broadcast only. A relative wired our small town in the mid-50s. We got a whopping two channels.
There were various to-home microwave systems in the 70s to distribute things like the new HBO. But satellites soon proved the best way. With either, at that time, you indeed needed to switch between OTA and the other source.