this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Yes, but no. Cable didn't used to let you watch all seasons of a specific show on any given day and time of your choosing.
I'm old enough to remember when cable didn't have ads. I was really young, maybe 5ish, but even then it was confusing to me when they started adding commercials. That was for bad TV with the antenna. Then it was only HBO that didn't have ads, but we couldn't afford that until I was much older.
EDIT: I guess my memories of being 5 years old aren't very accurate.
Basic cable has always had commercials along with the over the air channels. Premium channels didn’t.
Yep, cable was first used to allow people to watch the same channels that were available over the air just from a more locations than what was available via antenna at their home (and with better reception), so it had the same commercials.
Premium channels were commercial-less for 7 or 9 years (can't remember exactly) before the first premium channel decided to start running adverts.
There also used to be product placement ads during the shows too. I feel like that’s also more insidious when Jed Clampett and Granny are telling you every episode to smoke a Winston and eat Kellogg’s.
You're right. I guess I was remembering premium channels and some niche channels that were cable-only. Most channels available on early cable were just piping non-local broadcast channels down a cable.
If you got it over antenna, it most definitely was not cable.
I didn't say I got it over antenna. I said TV with commercials was for TV that came from the antenna.
Until the show you want to watch gets removed because they don't want to pay the licensing fee for it anymore.
The original content is often very mid.
Pretty much.
If you missed an episode of a show on cable television. Well, you're shit out of luck unless it's a show that the network didn't mind running re-runs of, but re-runs only applied for shows that were popular. And if you missed an episode of a show that wasn't popular, again you were shit out of luck and hope to one day acquire it through a VHS or a DVD or these days, blu-ray or on streaming.
Network programming was always like this.
That is also the reason everything reset to the status quo at the end of every episode.