Whatever happened to Channel 1? • Hacker News Board

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#51

Post by noxToken » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #49

noxToken wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. There were always a lot of commercials, but they were always enjoyable commercials. If you're going to eat up air time with commercials, at least make them entertaining. Middle school me loved most their selection - especially a specific soda's advertising campaign.

> If you're going to eat up air time with commercials You mean education time, right? You're using up classroom time to watch commercials. I don't understand how enjoyable they were is relevant. Of course a bunch of eight year olds getting sold sugary drinks to enjoyed them more than learning, that doesn't remotely address why it is wrong.

I'm not trying to address whether or not advertising belongs at all. I'm speaking from the viewpoint of a child aged 10-13.

Targeted advertising back then (can't speak for that same age group today) was largely boring. They may have moved units by showing us how fun their toys were or how deliciously awesome their products tasted, but they were still just filler between programming in our eyes. The commercials for Channel One were largely entertaining.

Yes, they pushed a product in hopes of us getting our parents to line their pockets during education time. I don't think that anyone can deny that that's pretty scummy. Point is that at least their scummy practices were entertaining. Silver lining and all that junk.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#52

Post by tsuru » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

gherkin0 wrote: post #50

ams6110 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not so much propaganda as being fairly heavy on advertising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_News#Controversy Though I would not be surprised to learn that it has the same sort of biased reporting we see in other news media.

> Though I would not be surprised to learn that it has the same sort of biased reporting we see in other news media. I remember it as not being very biased, just watered down, often with some kind of "teen" angle. Channel 1 was basically a vehicle to deliver captive audiences of teenage schoolchildren directly to advertisers. They bribed schools with TVs and justified the programming with the minimum proportion of ed…

Yep, Anderson Cooper constantly talking about his flak jacket and Lisa Ling. And the force feeding worked. I still remember the damn Pepsi Clear commercials and some big vote for a new m&m's color. ugh.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#53

Post by mlucero » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

tsuru wrote: post #52

gherkin0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though I would not be surprised to learn that it has the same sort of biased reporting we see in other news media. I remember it as not being very biased, just watered down, often with some kind of "teen" angle. Channel 1 was basically a vehicle to deliver captive audiences of teenage schoolchildren directly to advertisers. They bribed schools with TVs and justified the programming with the minimum proportion of ed…

Yep, Anderson Cooper constantly talking about his flak jacket and Lisa Ling. And the force feeding worked. I still remember the damn Pepsi Clear commercials and some big vote for a new m&m's color. ugh.

You are probably right about the forced advertising but I have mostly positive memories of Channel 1. I actually think those programs/TVs probably help peak a lot of kid's interest in media. The school I went to had their own news broadcast that came on every Friday. It was entirely produced by the students and everyone really enjoyed it. A good friend of mine was a part of that program and went on to become a TV camera man. It wasn't all bad and we probably could have used some Clearasil.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#54

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

pwg wrote: post #32

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't select cable channels with the tuner, though. My recollection is that you attached the cable box to the TV, tuned the TV to whatever channel was used to display hardline input, then selected channels on the cable box. Eventually cable-ready TVs came out with the cable selector built-in, but they still weren't using the radio tuning mechanism to select hardline cable channels.

> You didn't select cable channels with the tuner, That heavily depended upon what the CATV provider did in your area. In many areas, TV channels 2-13 were transmitted verbatim on the coax, and could be tuned by a NTSC TV just by hooking up the coax (usually via an impedance matching transformer) to the antenna inputs of the TV. This, of course, did create a 'leakage' problem. If the coax leaked somewhere, people wit…

CATV started as a long-distance antenna for communities where signal was bad or impossible to receive (hilly areas, etc).

The addition of premium channels, etc came much later.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#55

Post by drblast » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

tjohns wrote: post #25

I always wondered why cable networks couldn't have a Channel 1, even though it wasn't allowed on broadcast. After all, there's no other radio traffic in a coax cable to compete with. I suppose it could have posed a problem if there was any RF leakage from the cable network.

When I was growing up channel 1 (on the cable box) was used for pay-per-view.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#56

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

dandrews wrote: post #36

ryaneager wrote: post #2

Answer starts in the last section. 1946-1948 Manufacturers quickly began producing television receivers, transmitters, antennas, etc. New television stations were built all over the United States. The FCC had identified the top 140 metropolitan cities and assigned each at least one channel; a total of 400 were to be allotted. The FCC received many more applications than it had available channels. In an effort to prov…

Apologies - I fat-fingered a mobile downvote instead of the upvote you deserved. Aargh.

I don't know if I would say a quote of the last section 'deserves' an upvote.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#57

Post by mikeash » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

robzyb wrote: post #10

Animats wrote: post #9

Not all the channels were usable in one area. Tuners were not very good at rejecting harmonics back then. Today, we have phones with four or five radio receivers and three transmitters operating without interference. It's amazing that works. Receivers are far, far better than they were in the tube era.

> Receivers are far, far better than they were in the tube era. Only two "far"s? That's a significant understatement :P

For something like this, I think SI prefixes would be useful. "Kilofar" or "megafar" might be appropriate here.

Re: Whatever happened to Channel 1?

#58

Post by electrum » Sun, Dec 13, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #40

Another historical note, within a locality it was almost always the case that only every other broadcast channel was used, e.g. 2-4-6-8... or 3-5-7-9... to reduce interference from adjacent channels. That's why old VCRs, DVD players, home computers, and other devices that used an RF modulator to connect to a TV display could typically be set to transmit on channel 3 or channel 4, because one of those was almost alway…

The Kansas City area has channel 4 (WDAF) and channel 5 (KCTV).