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I remember that....I was a teenager and My friends family got it first and I feel in love, so begged my parents to get it...I worked a part time job and told them I would pay for it (but they decided that they would flip the bill themselves and loved it when they got it! It was seven dollars a month back then, lol!!!) (When the bill went up decades later to over a hundred dollars a month....I cut the cord, got an antenna and Roku....I like this even better than cable,but I have a few paid roku channels.)
Before Cable we had only five channels in Louisville Kentucky....now in Lexington Kentucky there are over
a twenty channels you can get over the air....plus with Roku there are literally thousands of channels.
It's was the mid 70's and we got cable from Warner Cable. It didn't add any channels but allowed to actual receive the channels. We went from 4 clear channels to 8.
NYC always had more channels/programming than the rest of the US. Besides the 3 national networks, there were 3 local channels plus WNET, which morphed into the fist PBS channel. Then, there were the UHF stations. I didn't get cable until after 9/11 when I gave up waiting for the new antenna to be strong enough to create a signal after the World Trade Center went down, I finally caved and subscribed to cable. I lived without any TV at all for about 18 months.
Actually my dad had an antenna in the attic and living where we did in RI we received quite a few channels that way on both VHF and UHF. I remember going to my friends house and they had that antenna that rotated by turning a dial on the box on top of the TV. His dad had it labeled to show the direction for certain channels.
I remember getting cable and my friends and I watching MTV when they actually had music videos.
We went from having an adaptor with the early cable to the TV, then the ability to put the cable right into the TV to now where now we have to pay for a little box for each TV.........................but now America is cutting the cable. Will this post be "Who remembers cutting cable in a few years"?
On a side note or thought:
Way back in 1989 and I move from home and visited Circut City looking to buy my first TV and looking at those sleek new console TV's. They were more than I wanted to spend so I just bought a regular TV not realizing those console TV's were going to be taking a soon to be dive off of a cliff in turns of popularity.
Mid nineties comes and some of my rich buddies had 32" Sony Wega TV's and I thought that was the bomb. Now a lot of my friends and family have upgraded from 55" to 65". Who would have thought!
If only. When I was a kid all the way through high school my mother refused to get cable, thought it was an unnecessary expense. Only time I was able to watch cable was when I was at a family member's or friend's house. When I was 16 I got hoodwinked into babysitting two little girls and there was cable at their house. Most of the day was spent with MTV on, except when the 8 year old insisted on watching General Hospital and the 6 year-old Wonder Woman. Actually, would have watched those kids for free, they were great kids, and spending time there kept me out of getting into trouble with my friends.
Then when coming home on leave during my time in the military my sister & brother-in-law usually had cable so I was able to get hooked on the Detroit Red Wings, a team I had never been able to watch when I was a kid. Their games were usually on at night, and our tower antenna in the backyard picked up mostly snow from that particular station at that time of day, so could barely see the players. Cable tv obviously changed the need for the antenna. I live in Toledo so games were broadcast at least 50 miles from my house. Used to be able to get the Detroit Tigers games before we had cable because they had many during the day and they were on a station that must have had a more powerful transmitter.
Funny how life works out. I've been a cord-cutter for at least three and a half years, and now it's my mother that doesn't want to give up cable tv. Still trying to convince her. Bought her a Roku and if she agrees will buy her an antenna, PVR and external hard drive to use with the PVR since it doesn't come with an internal hard drive. Her main problem is not wanting to give up the Hallmark Channel. I know there are other options to get Hallmark and will be exploring them further for her. Sling TV has a couple Hallmark Channels but that service is overpriced for what you get. There's also a free Hallmark channel on Roku but you don't get many movies on it. Plus, my mother loves recording things to watch when its convenient for her.
There was a time I couldn't give up cable due to sports, but cable companies kept raising prices higher and higher, and cable channels were fleecing the consumer, getting greedier and greedier, ESPN most of all, but even local stations insisted on more per subscriber with each new contract. I think every local station here, with the exception of PBS, has not allowed their station to be carried by one cable company or another for a time, demanding more money per subscriber than the cable company would agree to.
I enjoyed the days I had cable, but content became so bad on most of the channels I once enjoyed, that I haven't missed it since giving it up. Even the sports that I once couldn't do without.
Who remembers going from three or four networks with an antenna to getting at least double that with cable?
We had excellent antenna reception, thanks to my father installing a rotor.
We got the three major networks in Cincinnati, plus an independent network (now FOX), two networks from Dayton (OH), and three PBS channels (Cincinnati, Oxford and Dayton).
My friends and I used to watch Big Time Wrestling out of Indianapolis, Indiana early Saturday mornings (about 4:00 AM).
We got cable in the Fall of 1979. I can't remember the company, but fortunately it wasn't Warner.
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Actually, would have watched those kids for free, they were great kids, and spending time there kept me out of getting into trouble with my friends. 
