Free pay channel previews

[Deleted User 15835]

I always used to get The VCR ready and record some movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl1qmSyCZVs&t=10s

[Mega Hertz]

I used to get pissed when a channel we had was doing a free preview weekend. We didn't get any discounts for it lol. TMC was good for people like my dad. I much preferred HBO, Showtime if we were pushing it.

Plus, I seem to recall TMC was only about 5 bucks a month with Comcast in Sterling Heights. HBO was 12.95, Cinemax was about 9 or 10, and after a while, they would bundle them. HBO and Cinemax for 15 a month. Showtime and TMC for 12 a month. PASS was 9.95, Disney was 4.95 and we didn't even consider Encore and Starz.

Cable in the 90s. When it was actually worth it.

[Deleted User 15835]

I think that's why my parents had TMC, way less then HBO.

[paul8539]

I was in Cleveland when channel 61 went active on pay-tv. They did a freebie preview of 'Dances With Wolves' before they scrambled everything. It only lasted a few years; over the air pay TV is not economically sustainabie. Even some years ago.

[km1125]

Well, there were the intentional previews designed to hook new customers into paying monthly for the additional service, and they were usually pretty successful.

There were also the unintentional previews, typically on one of the adult channels. A lot of times the adult programming shared a channel number with some other programming that would only broadcast during the day. Frequently that was some kind of religious-based programming, which was ironic. The adult programming was scrambled and needed a decoder, which the paying customers were provided so they could receive the programming.

Sometimes the electronic switching gear would get messed up - sometimes due to a power outage - and it would switch in the adult programming in an unscrambled mode, so anyone viewing that channel at the time would be able to view it "in the clear".

There were complaints though. I probably still have the newspaper article of one woman in Madison Heights, who was quoted saying something like "It was shocking! It was horrible! I had to watch that for three hours before it finally got fixed!!"

[organman95]

Sometimes the electronic switching gear would get messed up - sometimes due to a power outage - and it would switch in the adult programming in an unscrambled mode, so anyone viewing that channel at the time would be able to view it "in the clear".

There were complaints though. I probably still have the newspaper article of one woman in Madison Heights, who was quoted saying something like "It was shocking! It was horrible! I had to watch that for three hours before it finally got fixed!!"

LMAO - That's hilarious. I do remember playing with the "parental controls" - ie, just hitting certain codes on the standard cable box channel remote (before the interactive boxes) and somehow putting Playboy in place of one of the other channels (like Starz or something). You can imagine my father's reaction to flipping through channels and coming across a scrambled porn channel close to the Disney Channel LOL

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

Watching Cinemax on a free preview weekend late at night was a rite of passage for most people born male over 12 in the 90's.

Showtime and TMC for 12 a month.

They actually had this package on Comcast until around 2012. I definitely had it when I moved in here. The horror movies were great on TMC.

[rugratsonline]

I was in Cleveland when channel 61 went active on pay-tv. They did a freebie preview of 'Dances With Wolves' before they scrambled everything. It only lasted a few years; over the air pay TV is not economically sustainabie. Even some years ago.

Dances With Wolves came out in 1990, which by then channel 61 was Home Shopping as WQHS. When they signed on as WCLQ in 1981, its first film was "The Deer Hunter", which was already syndicated to stations nationwide.

[paul8539]

I stand corrected. Thanks Rugratsonline.

[djb]

Always found it strange that PASS was a pay-channel on (most) CATV systems. Up here in the Tri-Cities, Bresnan (Charter/Spectrum) offered it on the Standard CATV tier, on Channel 28.