Pay-TV History: Before HBO, There was UHF
The forgotten phenomenon of scrambled TV stations
Often, a hunt for an obscure video will end in tears, possibly a dead end.
(Only occasionally, as a writer of mine did recently, will we uncover video after much looking.)
Sometimes, though, it might lead to something else just as interesting. That’s the situation I ran into recently when a reader asked if I could find any info on a public access show called “Tabloid TV,” a possible parody show that ran in Maryland or DC in the late ’80s or early ’90s. I did some looking, but have come up dry so far.
But in my search, I found something that’s possibly even crazier. Let’s talk about the time that UHF tried to compete with HBO. Which, yes, is something that actually happened.
Wait, why would people want to buy TV on UHF? Didn’t they have cable?
As it turns out, cable television just wasn’t moving fast enough for the tastes of the big-city American public, and the early structure of the cable television industry was a big reason why.
