Willinois

I know it might be hard for you young kids to remember, or even you young adults, but back in the day we did not have cable TV. Television was actually broadcast from the big cities, across the air, to a huge hunk of medal on the roof of your home. Wire connected the medal, know as an antenna, to the back of the TV, and this is how you got your programming.

There were some limitations to this system or delivering entertainment. The first was you only received a handful of channels, like 10 or 12, compared with the hundreds now a day. The second problem, because they were broadcast through the air, the FCC could put strict restrictions on what could be broadcast. I guess the idea was that since there was no way to prevent the signal from entering the home, the government took responsibility for what you can watch. Swearing, nudity, and anything politicians thought might disturb you or your kids would be illegal.

Cable, while available is selected areas, was still years away from being mainstream. The idea, however, to provide uncut films and unique programming that broadcast television were not allowed was still the goal. Finally, in 1977, Oak Industries came up with the way. The idea was simple; the signal would be broadcast but as a scrambled signal. In the home, you’d need a converter box to unscramble the signal. This way, the TV station could show new, uncut films, commercial free to those that paid the subscription fee.

I remember a friend buying plans for a bootleg converter box that I was to put together. It never happened.

There were many more subscription TV services, but ON-TV (Channel 44 in Chicago) is the one I remember. They aired a selection of movies, sports events, and concerts as well championship boxing. I remember the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawk’s were all at one time on On-TV. They even showed probably the first unrated version of a mainstream film that had been shown with an “R” rating in the theater. They showed My Bloody Valentine with a few extra minutes that the studio had cut out originally to avoid an “X” rating.

Late at night, these stations, and we had two of them in Chicago that I remember, ONTV and Spectrum, would switch to adults only podcasting. While the films they showed weren’t hardcore “X” films, they were heavy “R” films.

Now, to fully understand what this meant to young teenage boys at the time you must first understand UHF TV. You see, the higher-class stations, like networks and the better local stations, like WGN and PBS were on VHF, but UHF had the cheaper stations. The thing about UHF is that you had to tune the station in, more like tuning in a radio station. If you didn’t have it exactly right, you reception wasn’t good. This was good for horny teenage boys.

It was discovered that by playing with this tuner, you could get the picture on these sexy, late night programs to almost be watchable. If memory serves me right, you couldn’t get sound, just a jumping picture. Oh, that’s from what I heard . . . I would never have tried it myself, as far as you know.