|
It's hard to remember, but twenty to thirty years ago cable TV, especially the 'educational' channels, had shows that were not designed to pander to the lowest common denominator. Before TLC, The History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were tire fires of cheap and lazy reality shows they had actual programming that a person could argue was informative. So here, in this thread, have a think about what cable TV used to be like. Since I was a major dorkus malorkus even as a little girl I watched a lot of the educational channels and was legit psyched when The History Channel got added to our cable line-up. On TLC- My favorite was Great Books on TLC, back when The Learning Channel meant something. It was cliff notes for notable works of literature and I'd plop down and watch marathons of these. Was it the same as reading books? No! But it was much better than shows about marrying some scam artist or running a predatory pawn shop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPxovAcCUrU There was also The Operation, which made me extremely nervous while watching but I saw a lot of it because my parents were fascinated by it. Real life operations! Inside of the body, if that's your thing! (Rescue 911, not a cable show, also made me nervous for the same reasons). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3QrSVcYJzY The History Channel History's Lost and Found was light-hearted telling of the story behind fun historical items like Lizzie Borden's Hatchet and Louis the XXVII mummified heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwXAIKMLPvI&list=PL_eqBZGVxBN9jmCRZvE_ClaDCGi9OFOKz A&E Kicking off a lifelong interest in true crime was American Justice on A&E. Not surprising that it ran until 2005. There was a companion show to it that was also themed on smaller town/lower profile murders but I can't remember the name of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1XzaVqYffY The Travel Channel I have fond memories of two types of show on The Travel Channel 1. Shows about how fun Vegas is! 2. Spooky ghost British castles. I'm still delightfully scared of this reenactment of when an old ghost lady frightingly loomed over a sleeping guest one night! I don't live in America anymore so I don't get American TV and we don't sub to cable at our house, but when I go back to visit I look at guides at my mom's house and ho boy, it has gotten bad! 57 channels and there's nothing on? The Boss knew what was up. I'm chattering away when we could all be watching TV! Post your favorite cable shows of days gone by here!
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2022 19:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:21 |
|
|
I have a four-year-old and I love getting on my old lady hat and saying "in my day we didn't have YouTube, we had to watch a channel to tell us what was on or look it up in the newspaper!"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2022 20:43
|
|
|
Meatball posted:The history Channel was primarily about ww2 history At least ww2 happened and is still a relevant event as opposed to chucklefucks looking for gold or pawning fake historical documents to low level criminals.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2022 20:52
|
|
|
Bonzo posted:That wasn't bad when you had 40 channels, but at 400 its useless. This channel is also something I remember waking up to many times, but not recognizing the TV or room/couch/trailer that I woke up in. I miss an easily accessible community events calendar / notification system like this. I never know what's going on in town.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2022 06:03
|
|
|
Bula Vinaka posted:Here's what I know about TLC... Capitalism is to blame for all our problems pretty much.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2022 08:45
|
|
|
Jose Oquendo posted:I assume it's an attempt to imitate the Netflix binge model, but a lot of cable channels just air giant blocks of shows through out the week. There's not much variety anymore. I think it pre-dates Netflix, or at least binge-streaming, cause that's been going on for over a decade. It's just lazy, non-risk-taking behavior to rerun a bunch of popular shows and bet that there's an audience for them as opposed to taking a gamble and making your own programming.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2022 19:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:21 |
|
|
Nigmaetcetera posted:I remember on TLC they had a documentary about sex, and it had a man and a woman rawdogging it. THEN they switched to the vaginacam, and it was like holy smokes, wasn’t expecting that. They showed us either this or something like this in our child development class in high school and all I could think was "how did they get the camera in there?"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2022 20:58
|
|