CT Locals Respond to TV Channels Before Cable and Internet

Now you may not even remember using a TV with just an antenna, but before cable and the internet, it was the only way to watch your favorite programs.

This whole conversation started the other night at my house while watching the Yankees / Boston wild card game. The internet went down for a short while, and my wife said in a moment of frustration that she wished we could go back to the days of TVs with just an antenna.

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I told her back then here in Connecticut and in parts of the Hudson Valley you could only get a few local channels, and most of the time the reception wasn't all that good. When we first moved here to Connecticut, and before our cable was installed, we had to rely on the TV antenna to get any reception and we only got two local channels, channel 8 and channel 3. She disagreed and thought people in this area got way more then that.

See we both grew up on Long Island just outside New York City, and it was a lot easier to get more channels. Actually, we got about 13 channels on regular VHF TV, and a few public channels if you switched to UHF. For folks here in Connecticut and parts of the Hudson Valley they were not as lucky with good reception for the big channels like 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11 not being as easy to come by.

So like my wife always does, she put a post on Facebook asking our local friends, who have lived in the area since they were kids, how many channels they got with just a TV antenna. Here are some of the responses.

We tried to get an antennae for our tv because our cable provider took over a month to come. We only got 1 or 2 channels with it and they weren’t too clear.
Grew up with the antenna. Only got a few local channels, picture was always very fuzzy too.
Back in the 70’s we had abc nbc cbs wnew And wpix and maybe another but not 13 channels also wor channel 9.
We got 3 channels. That’s it.
13 Channels growing up in Danbury. All NY City Channels.
13 channels with antenna in Danbury since the beginning of time which is when I was born.
13 channels & if you lived on the border you could tune into a couple other on that vhf dial ….. took awhile but ya got an extra channel.
I grew up with an antenna also I hate to say it but I would rather have cable.
Got 13 channels. Then cable came in and blocked or scrambled all of them so we only had TV if we got cable. We had a rotary antenna, got all 13 channels nice and clear no matter the weather.

So if you can remember back that far, how many channels did you get with just the TV antenna? You can always post a comment below, would love to hear your story.