Cutting the cord. While this seems to be a redundant theme I figured I'd approach the subject one last time - for now anyway. More people are cutting the cord and saving money; more than that they are spending more time with their families. I find it funny every time I get a look from some "kid" born after 1980 whenever free tv is mentioned. "What? You didn't have cable when you were a kid?" No we didn't. We had rabbit ears with bits of tin foil to bring in some kind of picture and tried to ignore the ghosting if the program was interesting enough. I lived for Saturday morning and CBS with its Archies and Wacky Races; I loved being home during the day and watching channel 56 from Casper in the morning through The Jim Nabors (or Don Ho) talk show through Love American Style and That Girl all the way to the Partridge Family, Banana Splits and the Flintstones. And we didn't have to have Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. We even watched Dialing for Dollars if the movie was good. And who could forget Creature Double Feature on Saturdays?
With that in mind and to assure the nay-sayers that yes, you too can live without cable, here is a list of what is available locally for this author and some sort of comparison list for those who must have their specialized stations. Unless yours truly is reporting on a new station this will be the final article on the subject. Yeh, right.
All stations are listed as Boston or Providence due to their geographical area. Yes, some are in Milford or Needham or whatever but this author couldn't really care a rodent's behind
Local networks
4-1 WBZ boston, 5-1 WCVB boston, 6-1 WLNE providence, 7-1 WHDH boston,
10-1 WJAR providence, 12-1 WPRI providence, 25-1 WFXT boston, 28-1 WLWC providence,
38-1 WSBK boston, 56-1 WLVI boston, 64-1 WNAC providence
Local networks have always been free on over the air television. There was no cable in the stone age b.e. (before eighties) We lived with ghosting and didn't care. Channel 56, 38, etc were the no man's land where anything could happen (Prisoner Cell Block-H and Benny Hill come to mind)
PBS
2-1 WGBH boston, 2-2 WGBH World, 36-1 WSBE providence, 36-2 WSBE Learn,
36-3 WSBE V-Me (spanish), 44-1 WGBX boston, 44-3 Create, 44-4 PBS Kids,
Educational television as a kid, weaned on British comedy and drama as a young adult. My grandfather loved "Are You Being Seved" and "Keeping Up Appearances". While I don't watch Masterpiece Theatre I am hooked, hooked I say, on "Call the Midwife" and "As Time Goes By". While sub-channels are discussed separately in other genres, the sub-channels for PBS are listed above because, like it or not, as entertaining as they are all the programming can fall under one major heading: Education. That and it's my article and that's how I'm listing it. The Big Three, 2, 36 and 44 are the major players still broadcasting Sesame Street, Curious George, Charlie Rose and such (and the pledge drives); it's the sub-channels that are the real meat of the educational cow. These compare with your specialized channels where Learn and Create double for HGTV and Food Network with a little dash of DIY; PBS Kids is the Nickelodeon Junior of the bunch. World is comparable to National Geographic and I still find it strange to see a green Big Bird on Plaza Sesamo (V-Me) Well worth the pledge drives
Movies/Variety
6-2 Grit, 6-3 Escape,12-3 Get-Tv, 25-2 Movies!, 28-2 Movies!, 66-3 Get-Tv
Of these Get-Tv and Movies! are the favorites. Grit is the manly-man channel, the Spike channel with a lot of adventure and westerns; Escape is action channel with mysteries, crime and forensic-type programming. Get-Tv and Movies! are never dull; Get plays movies, older variety and talk shows (Merv Griffin, Judy Garland, Mitzi Gaynor) and old cartoons (Popeye marathon one week-end!) while Movies! is exactly that: movies which can range from Mr Moto to Boston Blackie, Elvis to Beach Party
Comfort TV
5-2 Me-tv boston, 7-2 This Boston Tv (boston) 10-2 Me-tv providence, 25-3 Laff, 62-1 WMFP Cozi, 62-2 WMFP Cozi, 62-3 The Works, 64-2 My RItv 66-4 Laff, 69-1 ION
With Me-tv making inroads and basically knocking RTV out of the ball park, other channels are lining up with like programming. With TVLand a ghost of its former self, Me is what TVL/Nick@Nite used to be, specializing in family-enjoyable reruns, such as the Brady Bunch, Hillbillies and Perry Mason with Cozi moving up with the more modern programming (Murder She Wrote, Quantum Leap, Cagney and Lacey). Laff is an over-air Comedy Central and not sure yet what to make of Works. Why WMFP duplicates the programming is beyond this writer.
Cultural
6-3 Escape, 12-2 Bounce, 27-1 WUNI Univision (spanish), 27-2 LATV (spanish), 50-1 WRIW providence Telemundo (spanish), 50-2 WRIW providence Telemundo (spanish), 66-1 WUTF Telefutura (spanish), 66-2 Bounce
The Bounce channel began as CoolTV, a sort-of MTV/VH1 hybrid; think V66 if you're old enough. Unfortunately this programming went the way of V66 (belly-up) and became over-air BET-type programming.
Home Shopping Channels
46-1 WWDP infomercials, 46-2 WWDP infomercials, 69-4 ShopTv, 69-5 QVC, 69-6 HSN
Home shopping and infomrercials have long been a staple of cable, the 69- channels present the same shopping
programming over-air as on cable. I am not partial to the 46- channels and don't
know why the duplicate programming
Other specialized
4-2 Decades, 10-3 Comet, 56-2 Buzzr, 28-3 Decades, 62-4 Comet, 69-3 ION Life, 69-2 Qubo (children's programming)
I think when a channels become successful, lazy or takes their audience for granted they wither and die, losing what was once their core audience. Witness TVLand and the Game Show Network (referred to as snooty GSN); striving for the all mighty dollar and younger demographics (same thing, different wording) these two networks did themselves in, running endless Rosanne repeats or rebooting The Newlywed Game, which was fun with Bob Eubanks but is downright toilet trash in its present version (same thing can be said for Steve Harvey's Family Feud). Decades is a combination TVL with National Geographic thrown in. While the channel could be listed under Comfort programming it's got one think different: no day is ever the same. Depending on what happened on a given day (moon landing, Barry Williams' birthday, whatever) the programming reflects events of that given day. Lucille Ball? Programming may be The Lucy Show, I Love Lucy and the movie Mame. Every week day starts with the documentary program "Through the Decades" highlighting events and the programming repeats every 3 hours, with week-ends "binges" on a particular program such as "Car 54, Where are You?", "Love Boat", "Celebrity Bowling" (to name a few). Buzzr (which in our area took the place of a CMT-type channel) is what GSN is no longer, playing old game shows including TattleTales, Super Password, Body Language; affectionately known as the Bill Cullen network. Comet is a low-rent Sci-Fy channel. Such high hopes for this channel when announced, it arrived with a thud; endless episodes of Stargate-SG1, Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot with its $2 special effects and the repeated movies; one can hope it gets better. ION Life is the HGTV/Food Network?DIY and Qubo the Nick Jr hybrids of the bunch (see
PBS)
While this may be a rehash of my previous articles it's more of a celebration. We cut the cord about a year ago and haven't looked back. Sure there are times that certain channels don't come in - so what. We don't always get Buzzr and Cozi only works in certain rooms. Such is the nature of the beast. Same thing happened when we were kids. Get up and change the channel, you lazy bum. More than likely you have a remote in your hand anyway.
55 channels without a cable box, fees or extra wires. If this isn't enough to cut the cord, maybe we should talk about Roku...
I am 51 years old. My son is 36 years younger than me. He just had his birthday a few days ago and in a year he will be driving. At my age my mother's father was a grandfather 4 times over. We thought we didn't have a shot in heck of having this kid. Well, maybe not. We had been married ten years and lived through so many disappointments that when it finally happened it was unbelievable. Once conceived this kid gave us no end of trouble from day one and it still hasn't stopped. We found out on my birthday...what a heck of a birthday present I got! The pregnancy was troubled and tortured and I don't think there was one week end (or week night) we weren't at the hospital with Bakelady's high blood pressure. After eight months of in and out of the hospital the doctors thought there was something wrong. Suddenly we found we had to go to St Elizabeth's hospital. Did they send the wife by ambulance? No. Radiopapa had to drive to the hospital for the emergency ultra sound; after several miles the husband found he was going the wrong way down the Mass turnpike only to turn around at the rest plaza and beat feet back the opposite way to the hospital where the attending physician was waiting to do an emergency ultrasound. Everything ok. And now we took up residency for two weeks at our new home of St Elizabeth's. Just like his mother he was very indecisive, couldn't make up his mind whether to come out. Then one night in March the evening ultrasound wasn't going too well, again there was no movement. Against the odds and with Mom's bp 165/115 the decision was made and Bumper entered the world. 4 and a half pounds and so small premie clothes didn't fit but healthy just the same.
I am 51 years old. My son is 36 years younger than me. And my life started over 15 years ago.
