Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 13, 2015

Yup, one of the 4 stations you used to get for free back then.

Yeah … y’know, can anyone think of a reason why he’d WANT to marry her, other than a fear of being alone forever?

He should have known from the beginning that like her mom she’d develop wanderlust and flee. I’m surprised she stayed around long enough for Alex to pop up. Kim manages him much better than JJ ever did.

not to get too technical.(and there were more channels in the eighties than just 4)

Depended where you lived, but I think they’re in Washington, D.C. or environs, so plenty of choices.

And I paid $6/month for cable in 1978 — couldn’t pick up anything without it, Amelia, LA.

Look at that old Coca Cola bottle she has.

Heh. In North Jersey growing up I was line-of-sight to the Empire State Building (and later, WTC) antennas. No cable for us. Now they have digital, and when visiting they turned on channel 5.3 —wait, what?

On a clear day, I could see Doctor Who on WPIX.

That’s Mike Doonesbury, babe magnet, turning on his mojo.

Don’t forget there were a bunch of channels on the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) band; including MTV.

Also, when channels grew in number, both on VHF and UHF bands, things got redundant and boring.

Bruce Springsteen wrote his great song, “57 Channels and Nothin On” in the late 80’s (released in 1992).

IIRC, MTV was never a broadcast channel.

Eagerly awaiting the day when you can select your cable package ala carte, and not have to pay for the inclusion of theBosnian shopping channel. Hope it lowers the rates at least a little.

Your hi def Tv can get signal from antenna for local channels with better reception than cable as cable often compresses signal to save money on their end

rick mcdermott GoComics PRO Member said, 7 minutes agocongress saw to that when they quietly passed a HD only tv bill. now no dish or cable you’re dead in the water. always have to screw the American public for big business…………………………………………………………Your kidding right? If not then your just misinformed. Simple antenna if your in a city, large antenna if your out in the country.

I live like 50 miles out of Monterrey in Mexico, There was 6 channels there, but two of them were too weak to reach us, except under very good conditions. In the 90´s they put repeaters in different municipalities and we were able to see them all.Before they discovered they could use night time to sell you trash, some times when they stopped transmitting we could see TV signals from the Texan border. Once I even could see a very strong signal from Chicago, grainy but clear enough to seee what was what.

Er, there are HD broadcast stations, they’re just on different frequencies so you have to use an adapter antenna to access them. Most modern TV’s have HD tuners built into them.

In the sixties we had ABC 3, CBS 5, NBC 1O & PBS, WSRE 23 (on foggy nights)

With my digital rabbit ears I can pull in two Canadian and one American channel — the same ones my analog rabbit ears could get fifty years ago!