I thought about this when I was thinking about the decline of “lesson of the week” sitcoms. In my head I attribute the start of the decline to Seinfeld. Of course that fails to take into consideration Married With Children which was on FOX rather than one of the big three networks. I don’t recall becoming aware of Married With Children, or even The Simpsons until sometime in the early ‘90s. The thing is, I’m not sure if that’s due to my age (I was in 4th grade in ‘87 when Married premiered) or because FOX was still unavailable in the late ‘80s for people in a typical small town.
According to the wiki page, FOX launched on 10/9/1986. The question is when did it become broadly available, either over the air or for subscribers to basic cable?
I certainly can’t answer for small towns. Although my town wasn’t big we did get NYC over air broadcasts. Fox is channel 5 here. We had channel 5 long before it became Fox it just didn’t have original programming. Fox was definitely on basic cable from the beginning. I watched all their early shows including the first appearances of the Simpsons in The Tracy Ullman Show.
Sorry, didn’t intend that as a reply to your post. Fox made a rapid appearance through existing channels in the major markets, which covered almost all of the country by then. Liv Ulman was the highlight of their programming, critically acclaimed, but not picking up huge ratings. Married with Children started before the Simpsons and was limping along until the Simpsons took off like a rocket.
IIRC Fox had two hours of original programming at night but the rest of the day stayed the same as it was before they started. Mostly syndicated reruns.
I actually worked for a TV station in Ottumwa, Iowa, that was pretty much with the Fox network almost from the beginning. I think Ottumwa would be the epitome of the “small towns” you’re talking about, covering a broadcast area of mostly farms and smaller towns in southeast Iowa and northeast Missouri.
I joined the staff of KOIA-TV as a videographer and video editor in the late summer of 1987; this version of the UHF station had gone on the air that June. They were part of the Fox network from the station’s beginning … so while Fox first officially got off the ground in the fall of 1986, less than a year later it was available to farmers and rural villagers in southeast Iowa.
This does bring back memories of those early Fox programs, with some epic failures like George C. Scott and Madeline Kahn in Mr. President, or The New Adventures Of Beans Baxter, or The Wilton-North Report (or Duet, which I actually really liked); and then more successful shows, like the beginnings of The Simpsons in The Tracey Ullman Show, and Married … With Children, and 21 Jump Street.
In 1990 FOX had a station in Washington DC, but in Roanoke VA, I don’t think there was a Fox station even in 1996. I’m pretty sure that in 1993 Richmond VA had a FOX affiliate.
This is all over-the-air TV. I didn’t get cable until 1996.
I know I watched 21 Jump Street, Duet, and Tracy Ullman when they first appeared, but I wasn’t in a small town. (Though since I was in graduate school, I might as well have been in a cave.)
I wasn’t a small town resident then, but my recollection is that Fox appeared in nearly every major market almost simultaneously. They didn’t exist, then boom, they were (nearly) everywhere.
I never saw it until early-to-mid 90s in my town (prior to that, we only had two channels, an ABC and an NBC). Very small town in western South Dakota, near Belle Fourche, TV stations were located in Rapid City, SD.
I grew up in a city of about 100,000 people and am just about the same age as the OP. Fox was available. I was aware of Married with Children pretty much from the beginning; perhaps I started watching it in its second season.
That’s what happened in Houston - local UHF channel 26 got bought out by Fox sometime in the 80s.
In a broader sense, I would bet the availability of the Fox network probably tracks the availability of cable TV in small towns and rural areas outside the range of larger broadcast markets.
My area had it within the first year of broadcasting. I remember because there was constant hype about the upcoming Star Trek the Next Generation, and the runup they had a “Star Trekathon” where they showed around 24 hours straight (maybe more) of STtOS episodes.