Letters to the Editor
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tomreedtoon, remember when...
... HBO programming was delivered to each cable system on a videocassette, began broadcasting at 7PM and concluded at 11:30PM?
... USA Network would show new wave / avant garde video on "Night Flight" from late Friday until 6AM with the likes of Frank Zappa, Devo, Thompson Twins and The Residents? You never knew what you might see, and it was always surprising and entertaining.
... MTV didn't have enough commercial sponsors, so they would stitch together 50s-era industrial films and old NASA / sci-fi animation set to synth-pop and broadcast 10 minutes of it to fill out the unsponsored time? Many times these were better than the music videos.
... SPN (Satellite Program Network) would broadcast ANYTHING that the sponsor would pay for, and a test pattern when nobody was paying?
... People would run after the cable guy driving through their neighborhood and flag him down to ascertain when they would be getting hooked up? They called 'em "truck chasers". Back then, everyone LOVED cable tv.