The Media Thread Emanation

[wknt3]

On 5/28/2019 at 9:07 PM, PentaHookUp said:

Yeah.  What was it--like a total of 7 other channels?

8 hours ago, Magnumfangirl said:

Depends on where you lived.  Some areas had very few independent stations, but by 1983 a lot of people were getting cable.  We got it in '83, but probably later in the year than February.

I couldn't find reliable statistics easily, but my understanding is that cable was in the same place the internet was 10 years later, rapidly growing and getting a lot of attention from media, finance, politicians, etc. but not nearly the force it would be 5 or 10 years later. It was the 1984 Cable Act that really allowed the industry to take off so it wouldn't be anything like a majority of TV households. And the competition was very different - cable networks were still rather narrowly focused and there weren't nearly as many of them. "57 Channels and Nothing On" was 10 years later. So we probably can say 7 other channels is a fair estimate on average with some having only 1 or 2,  many having 4 to 7, and some having 20 to 50(?) (I remember when we got cable a couple years later we had around 35 channels, but there were around 20 more if you paid more.) In any case we can all agree it was a lot less competition for viewers' attention.