OT Turning off the TV in 2009

Those of us who have cable are idiots. We pay for 20 (or more) minutes of commercials every hour.. We pay 'them' so they can come in our homes and sell us stuff...??

We cancelled our cable YEARS ago. Who, WITH A LIFE, has time to watch more than a few minutes of TV a day? There are usually SOME off-air channels almost ANYWHERE, you know.

"Sharx35" ...

Luddite.

Natalie

Dern tootin.

Charles the Curmudgeon.

So that's what they mean by the L-word.

but, but you gonna miss obamma and the billary debate.

ill be watching my favorite sports teams on my wide screen huge ass plasma... count me in as a sheeple

I have Dish TV, lots of commercials and channels. Military channel is one of my favorites. And all the science, history, health, documentary ones, I try to watch the news a little but it's usually a crock of s*it. Occasionally a movie, but I usually go to sleep or wind up watching the last half. Financials are on when the markets are running. You can watch the price of crude go up all day on CNBS ! but when CNBS is on I almost always have the sound off. Way to many commercials,on all channels that's what the remote is for, I've got mine programed to automatically change the channel whenever Hillary comes on. For pure entertainment, Jerry Spinger it's really funny and TV evangelists. The things they can come up with amazes me. The green prosperity prayer cloth. Get one today and wait for the check to arrive. Nothing replaces a real life sunset, sunrise, or attractive woman.

Back in the forties in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania we could receive the TV broadcasts form Philadelphia and NYC but the picture was so poor one could not see the baseball during a ball game.

Jack Large a former US Navy radioman was selling TV to the locals in Tuscarora Pa. To improve the reception to the valley town he installed a tower on one of the mountains above the town and built "repeaters" to receive the signal and boost it via a "cable" system to the home of anybody who purchased a TV set from him at not cost.

A fellow former US Navy radiomen, from nearby Mahanoy City named John Walsonavage who also sold TVs asked Jack how he did it and Jack told him. In 1948 Walsonavage Ne "Walson," strung coax-cable all around the area that provide 11 channels, for $3 a month, and named it "Service Electric Cable Company" after his store "Service Electric."

Today John Walson, now deceased, is known as Cable's founder, and SECTV as the oldest cable company in the world. Today SECTV is all CF and supplies over 400 Cable and broadcast channels, high speed internet service, as well as unlimited use telephone service anywhere in the US and Canada, for $84.95 a month.

One still can not recieve decent TV via antenna in that area and the name Jack Large, who also invented a radar intrusion alarm system for his home and store and gave that idea way as well, is lost to history

Luddite - is that the opposite of erudite?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Well, not lost to history:

Jeff

Ahh - I see. Then opposites only in that one is almost always used as a compliment, the other almost always in a negative sense.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

And that's being charitable, IMO.

Cathy

yes, I did.

Your original post on this is the only reference to his role in this invention. If it's important to you that the record be corrected, particularly if you have evidence, like old newspaper clippings or other documentation about Large, then you can correct the record and post the references on wikipedia.

Jeff

That sound like something you would have the time and inclination to do. Go to Tuscarora, it's only about thirty-five miles north of Allentown. Ask the people there about Jake Large and how long they have had a broadcast TV signal connected by wire to their homes.

Everything SECTV says is factual about "COMMUNITY CABLE." It was the signal booster Jack invented that made it possible. What Jack used was the conventional flat TV wire of the day that went o each home not coax-cable strung on the utility polls, and he did not charge a fee.

Actually, neither. Between teaching, taking courses and doing some web work, I don't have enough time.

But there's no documentation to back up the story. So it would eventually get removed from wikipedia. Perhaps if you write a newspaper story and interview residents for it...