The Remix: Watching TV Ain't The Same

On this episode, Danny remixes a 12Kyle Podcast episode, talking about the evolution of TV programming. He discusses the early days of local television, watching cable at his Grandparents' house and the impact it left on him, his parents purchasing a satellite dish, cable finally making it to the neighborhood, watching Monday Night Raw with his Grandmother, the advent of streaming services, what Danny currently watches and more!

Intro-Late Night Jam by Infrared Krypto

Listener questions/comments:
foxworthpodcast@gmail.com

Instagram:
instagram.com/dannyfoxworth843

X:
x.com/dannyfoxwrth843

Bluesky:
dannyfoxworth843.bsky.social

YouTube Channel:
youtube.com/dannyfoxworth843

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

On this episode, we talk about how TV is going from analog to digital, the various mediums on which you can watch programming now, what it was like growing up in a rural area with no cable, and what I'm watching now. Without further ado, what is good, good people? You are now listening to another episode of Since We Last Spoke with Danny Foxworth. I am your humble narrator, Danny Foxworth. And on this episode, I'm actually going to take a page from the Good Brother 12 Kyle, who put out an episode maybe about a month ago, talking about how the TV watching experience in general just isn't what it was back in the day. And it left such an impression on me. I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to remix this episode. So this one, I'm just going to talk about what the TV watching experience was for me as a child of the 80s and how the technology is involved and the options that you have to watch programming. So taking it all the way back to the beginning, like I said, I'm a child of the 80s. So I it's crazy to think that I actually grew up in a time period where the internet didn't even exist yet. Like everything was still analog. And we had the big back CA TV in the house. And back then, the channels would were uh divided by frequencies. So you had a VHF channel, which was basically channels 2 through 13, and then the UHF channels would were on the bottom knob, and those were channels 14 to I believe channel 50 or 51. Back then, you had the big gigantic antenna outside to try to get a good reception for your local TV channels. And where I grew up in Monks Corner, our neighborhood was so rural, cable wasn't available in that neighborhood literally until like the mid-90s. So if I wanted to watch cable, I would have to go to my grandparents' house in the next town over in Somerville. And I mean, they've had cable like since the mid-80s. So that was a fun experience. But I'll get into that in a second. Keeping it in the Foxworth household. In Charleston, we had four local channels. It was Channel 2, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Channel 7. Two back then was ABC, 4 was NBC, then Channel 5 was CBS, and then Channel 7 was PBS. Now, Channel 2 and Channel 4, they flipped their networks. So now channel 4 has ABC, Channel 2 has NBC, but it's the same networks with Channel 5 and Channel 7. And like Kyle mentioned, there was a point in time where TV wasn't on 24 hours a day. It was like right around 2 a.m. They would play the national anthem, and then TV would just go off. And it would just be a test pattern from like 2 a.m. till I'd say probably either 5 or 5.30 in the morning, and then the local program would start back up. But what's really cool was also in the late 80s, we got a new local channel, which was channel 24, which is the Fox affiliate now. But back then, when Channel 24 launched, Fox wasn't a network yet. I think Fox, I think the Fox Network didn't launch until I want to say 1990. But Channel 24 launched in, I want to say it was 1987, 87 or 88. And their program was a lot different from the other channels because it wasn't a network affiliate. So they had basically had free reign to show whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. So like it wasn't any news on that channel. It was mainly cartoons in the morning, and then it would show like Bewitched in the Afternoon and I Dream of Genie and stuff like that. And then on Saturdays, it would have Kung Fu Theater on all day long. And also, when Channel 24 launched, this was right around the same time that the Charlotte Hornets became the newest NBA franchise. So they literally would show all of the Charlotte Hornets games on Channel 24, like every game. And now you can't even do that anymore. You gotta, well, they're doing it periodically on local TV now, but I'll get into that also a little bit later. And then, like I said, if I wanted to watch cable, I would have to go to my grandparents' house. And that was a really cool experience because I'm getting exposed to so much other programming, and that's how I got exposed to baseball was spending my weekends over at their house some summers, and then after we ate dinner, we'd sit down in front of their magna box, and they had, I believe it was Storer Cable, S-T-O-R-E-R. And they would flip the knob to uh WTBS and we'd sit and watch Atlanta Braves games, and that was cool, and that's actually how my love affair with baseball started. And then I remember being enamored with two cable channels specifically outside of TBS. It was the weather channel, because at that time, honestly, my childhood ambition was being a meteorologist, and the fact that they talked about weather 24-7 on that channel was just mind-blowing to me. So it was the weather channel, and then it was another channel by the name of BET, Black Entertainment Television. And I was just so mind-blown that literally all of their programming and involved people that look like me and talk like me. And it was just it was really neat to see representation like that at such an early age. We got cable in our neighborhood eventually, like I alluded to earlier, but we were tired of waiting for the cable company to extend their coverage. There was a guy that would go to door-to-door in our neighborhood, and we would all sign his petition, and he would take it to the cable company literally every year, and it would fall on deaf ears. And my parents were like, you know what? We're tired of waiting. Let's just put our money together and we're going to get a satellite dish. And buddy, that was a game changer. Man. Like, just more channels than you could shake a stick at. And I don't know if y'all remember the C-BAN satellite. It's like the huge satellite dish. This was prior to the little Direct TV dishes. With this one, like you couldn't get all of the channels all at once. Like the satellite would actually turn outside to line up with different satellites that were in space in order to get that particular satellite. Then I believe it was like 20-something channels on each satellite. So you had a total of, I want to say, probably 200 channels. We didn't have all of them because that required extra subscriptions that my parents weren't feeling paying the extra fee for those extra channels. But no, just sitting down and being able to uh catch Sonic's games and Texas Rangers games, that's how I became a fan of those teams. It was an earlier episode I talked about how I became a fan of the sports teams, but it was via the satellite dish. And then that was also around the time where ESPN 2 launched. And I just remember watching that, and that's how I first became familiar with Stuart Scott and uh Jim Rome. The channels I spent the most time watching was ESPN 2 and the Cartoon Network, because Cartoon Network had Space Goes Coast to Coast, and they had Tom and Jerry on and uh a bunch of other cartoons that I loved as a kid that I could just watch at my disposal. And then once cable was available in our neighborhood, my grandmother, who lived next door to me, she got cable. I'm in high school now. Well, high school and heading into college, I would actually go to my grandmother's house and we would sit and watch Monday Night Raw and we would watch The Real World. And how many people can say that they love watching the uh Monday Night Raw and the Real World with their grandparents? That was our Monday routine. I would always come over, and um, my man, she was a huge Stone Cold fan, like huge. And she especially loved when he would just beat the hell out of Vince McMahon. She got she got such joy out of that. And then The Real World, it was the season with uh Coral and Mike. I can't, I can't remember right off the top of my head what city that was, but those were the two things that I enjoyed that we always just bonded over. And also, and we used to watch Jackass together on Sunday nights. And one of the things that my grandmother loved the most is the thing that would turn the tickle box on the most is watching people fall and like watching people get hit in very stupid ways. And Jackass just provided that in droves, and that was it was just nonstop laughter with her. And also on Sunday nights, once that went off, we'd watch that's how my love affair of Kirby enthusiasm started. And yeah, and we would sit and watch that together too. Man, that was a lot of great times sitting watching TV with uh with my mamma, and God rest her soul, she's no longer with us, but I always cherish those memories. And then the at it was the advent of the dish network, and then eventually she ended up getting rid of her cable and then got dish network. And then subsequently I ended up getting dish network, and it was cool that I could get all the programming at my disposal, but man, it was just so doggone expensive. And this was right around this was like right before COVID. And then during COVID, the streaming services really started to come into play. So now you have a cheaper, more um you have a cheaper option in the in the form of YouTube TV. And YouTube TV was intriguing to me because I could get all of the same channels that I could get on the Dish Network, but as far as sports channels, all of the sports channels that YouTube TV offered in a basic package, I would have to pay extra for a sports package on the Dish Network in order to get those same channels. And at that point, my subscription fee for Dish Net was almost three times what it was versus with uh what I would pay with YouTube TV every month. So I was like, man, I gotta cut the cord because it doesn't make any sense to me for me to pay this much money on Dish Network when I could just get everything plus the channels that I have to pay extra for on YouTube TV. And at that time, I think YouTube TV was like$64.99 a month. I was like, yeah, it made sense to uh cut the cord. And so I had YouTube TV for the longest time. And the thing that I loved about YouTube TV is that not only could you watch it on your television, you could also stream it on your laptop and you could stream it on your phone, and that was an absolute game changer. Like I could watch programming and I could watch sporting events on my phone. Like, this is this is crazy how much technology has evolved. But then all of these other streaming services started floating in, and then what ended up happening was during that time period, all of these streaming services are jostling for position, basically, and now you have all of these paid subscription streaming services. It's so much programming, but in order to watch certain programming, you gotta pay a fee. And it got to the point where they just nickel and dime you to death that you were better off just keeping your cable. Case in point. If I want to watch Charlotte FC soccer matches, literally, like not even a year and a half ago, they showed all of the Charlotte FC soccer matches on local TV, like literally on the local channels. But now all of the MLS games are exclusively on Apple TV now. So now I can't watch them on local TV like I used to, and it just bums me out. And, you know, just all of these streamer services that you got to pay for. Only streamer services I pay for are ESPN Plus and NBA League Pass. Mainly because ESPN Plus, they have literally have every single 30 for 30 in existence, and then NBA League Pass. I mean, I can watch every NBA team, you know. I'm repping my squad, Oklahoma City Thunder, but if I want to watch another team, I can watch that as well. So those are only two uh streaming services that I pay for, but man, you got Amazon, you got Apple TV, you got Peacock, you got Netflix, you got Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hulu. I'm like, man, all of that stuff adds up. And for me, I don't know what happened with my television habits, but they've slowed down tremendously. Everybody talks about, you know, like everybody's got their shows that they watch. Like Kyle mentioned the uh TV channels that him and his wife watch, and then having to be wary of not going online because people will be, or they'll be typing spoiler alerts, especially if you live on the West Coast and the TV show hasn't come on yet, but it's on in the East Coast, and you're trying to avoid all those spoiler alerts. Man, I'm so out of the loop with uh these new TV shows and stuff. Like he was talking about Ted Lasso and a couple of other shows, and that's always the hot button topic on social media, but man, I'm just so far out of the loop, and I'm stuck in my ways. I've truly become my grandmother because when I come home, I'll say roughly 70% of the time, I'm either watching Tubi or I'm watching Pluto TV because Tubi, you know, they have all of these different movie options. And if you listen to my podcast long enough, you know that I'm big on tapping in with your inner child. So literally, when I come home, the first thing I do is go to Tubi and I'll either watch Bloodsport or I'll watch The Last Dragon or I'm gonna get you sucker for like the 50-11th time. You know, just tapping in with my inner child. And with Pluto TV, they have a channel that shows the old Bob Barker era episodes of the price is right 24-7. And they also have the uh complete series of Amen and Mama's Family streaming on Pluto TV. Most of the time, that's where I'm at. I'm either on Pluto TV or I'm on Tubi. And yeah, I'm just tapping with my inner child every single night. And it feels weird because all of my friends are talking about all these all these shows that are out now. And even with my parents, and they're like, they're asking me, have you ever heard of this show? I think it was called Tulsa King with uh Sylvester Stallone. They love that show. And they're like, Have you watched that? And I'm like, nah, I haven't. I was like, so what do you watch? I'm like, truthfully, yeah, I just watch old episodes of the prices right on Pluto TV. And they're like, man, we're not gonna ask you what you're watching anymore because you're just you're so out of the loop. But yeah, that's it's wild how much programming has changed. And as a kid growing up, everything was still analog. Our first TV didn't even have a remote control. Hell, if I'm being real, I was the remote control. I would be in my room and my parents would be watching something, and then they would call me, hey Danny, come here. And I they call me down the hall and I walk in the den. Hey, change that channel for me. I'm like, you're right, you're sitting right here. But they God, they they love calling me out of my room. Not to tell me anything, just to just to tell, just to tell me to come down there to turn the TV for them because they didn't feel like getting up. They're like, and why after you change the channel, you can go ahead and close all these blinds too. I'm like, yeah, okay. But the fact that this going from that and you know, the era of black and white TVs to being able to watch TV on your phone, like that's if you would have told me in the knees that you would have the ability to watch basketball games on your phone while you're on the go, I would have laughed in your face. But hey, jokes on me, the future is here. If Ben Franklin were here to see this, he'd probably throw up all over himself. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Since We Last Spoke. Thank you for tuning in. Always appreciative for your eyes and ears. Make sure you tell a friend to tell a friend about the podcast. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can find me at Danny Foxworth843. I'm closing in on 500 subscribers. I'm currently at, last I checked, it was a 468. So tell a friend to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Again, you can find me at Danny Foxworth843. There you can find videos of every episode of this podcast, as well as my baseball podcast at the plate with Danny Foxworth, my candle podcast, The Wicked Good Time with Danny Foxworth, and Grown Up Little Country with Liz and Danny. And until next time, I'll be good. Peace.