Digital Television is Sad

Undoubtedly, digital television is better than the old analog. The national switcheroo going on--due to culminate in February--seems to be going relatively poorly, but, nonetheless, the switch to digial is long overdue.

Nonetheless, the process seems bittersweet. While the technological world I inhabited as a child has long since gone--a phone with a wire attached to the wall? Who uses that?! Who even has a landline?--the digital revolution sort of seals the deal, separates the past from the present.

What is left from those days of my childhood, the early 1980s?

Pay television is gone. Perhaps you’re confused? If you’re under a certain age you are most definitely. But I mean pay television, not cable. Long ago, there were certain channels that broadcast over the airwaves, and to which you could subscribe. If you watched them without the box that came with the subscription, they were jumbled lines, though the soundtrack usually seemed fine. They would show newer movies, uncensored, and were much like HBO was when it started out, though, as I said, over the air.

Looking back, such technologies seem quaint, even ridiculous. Anyone could just go out and buy a decoder—and often did. But still, I remember being upset that my family didn’t subscribe to the local pay station, called Prevue, and playing on Channel 27 in my hometown (the station has since become WUNI-TV, the city’s only Spanish-language station—at least it’s worthwhile, right? Not some stupid CW crap) each night I would watch as the station came on the air: At first, the logo would come on, the music would play, they’d announce the movie…and then the signal would scramble.

I wanted that goddamned channel!

Further up the dial, and a little bit further up in years, there was V-66. WVJV-TV, Channel 66. I don’t know if they had such stations in other parts of the country, but in Boston it was awesome. It was a frickin’ music video channel like MTV—but it broadcast for free! Anyone with a TV and an antenna could watch it. We didn’t have MTV, so previous to that the only way I could see music on television was to watch Solid Gold or, if I stayed up late, Friday Night Videos on…was it NBC? And then, a certain magical moment, typing through stations (the TV we had had buttons on the front, arranged like a phone. If you wanted channel 44, you would type 4-4. I used to type through all the numbers once in a while to see if there was a new station. Every so often, I would be rewarded; I remember being pleased at finding channel 44, 64 and 68, but none so much as V-66!) I came across the V.

The station wasn’t just a lame attempt at recreating MTV—it was the real deal. Remember the video for A-ha’s “Take on Me”? They premiered it. Unfortunately, V-66 faded and was replaced by the Home Shopping Network, later replaced by WUNI. But the memories remain. I’m told someone’s making a documentary on it.

Also—kids of the future will no longer have any understanding of the difference between VHF and UHF. Actually—do they understand that now?!

Remember, though? Remember when the UHF stations were generally those independent stations? They weren’t part of any network—they were usually just some local station putting stuff out. I can still hear their jingles—they all had their own jingles. They were much simpler than TV now; if you woke up early, you would see them “signing on”—that is, turning off the rainbow-like test pattern, announcing that they were going to begin their broadcasting day, playing the national anthem, and explaining t you where their transmitters were… And who doesn’t remember falling asleep by the TV, only to wake up to the national anthem as these stations “concluded their broadcast day”? Between opening and closing they would show an amalgamation of syndicated shows, religious programming, and movies—sometimes uncensored and free (as Channel 27 did, after it was Prevue and before it was the home shopping. I remember turning on the TV, turning on that broadcast station, seeing an announcement that “the following movie is rated ‘R’ and is not appropriate for younger viewers,” and then watching the full, uncut, nudity-included, Animal House.)

Of course, most nights you wouldn’t watch The Movie Loft (Channel 38); you’d be watching one of the three networks that the rest of America was watching: ABC, NBC or CBS. I remember these networks, now fallen giants with the parasitic Fox and CW networks nibbling at them, in their prime. They were what people watched—they played things, and the next day people talked about what they had just seen. They were pretty much divided by audience—NBC was young and hip; CBS was pretty much for old people (think “Murder, She Wrote”). And though there were less channels, there was almost always something worth watching; I really can’t think of anything on TV now better than Cheers; it seems unimaginable that someone could consider Law and Order better than Hill Street Blues.

VHF and UHF… The UHF stations were exciting. There were a couple knobs on most TVs…the one with the VHF stations and the letter “U,” which let you use the second knob, which sort of just turned waywardly until you found a station. I remember many late nights playing with the antenna and the UHF know trying to get the movie show Elvira hosted to come in, not trying to get rid of the snow—that would be impossible—just trying to minimize it.

So things changed. We eventually got cable, back when MTV still played music, and VH1 played music for seemingly old people. How exciting it was that we had almost 60 stations in 1988, all thanks to Greater Media Cable! I was able to see all these previously hidden stations, like Nickelodeon, with its “You Can’t Do that On Television.”

Now all that, like my childhood itself, is gone. Channel 56 is, I think, CW; Channel 25 is Fox. Stations seem to run around the clock now, and there are millions of stations on cable. With all the networks, there doesn’t seem to be a distinction between VHF and UHF (a distinction so culturally ingrained that a movie was made about these low budget stations, starring Weird Al, and called, simply, “UHF”).

And now there will actually be no more VHF and UHF—everything is merged. The past is gone; the shows are gone; even the electronic format they were in is gone.

But at least I can still watch them on Youtube.