We in Atlantic County NJ got 'wired' for cable TV in the mid 60's,but not ALL neighborhoods got hooked up then due to technical and legal glitches! Our first cable providers in Atlantic County were:
South Jersey Cable(Shore towns)
Alpine Communications
and
McGinty Cable

Now we just have Comcast in my area. I can't complain about Comcast,whenever I have a problem with my service they fix it ASAP! And Comcast has an awesome channel lineup!!

We first got cable in my neighborhood (Columbus, OH) in the early 70s.  It was All-American Cable.  It basically was just better reception of local channels with about 3 or 4 out of town channels, which was great because I could watch Speed Racer 3 times a day!   ;D

Columbus was also the first town to get Qube (which was a project of Warner, later Time Warner, etc.), which was an interactive cable box, where you could vote on things like favorite music videos, and had an incredible 30 channels!

Now I have WideOpenWest and about 300 or so channels along with internet.  Life is good!

A cable channel we USED to have was VIDEO JUKEBOX NETWORK,aka "The Box" People would call the 900 number,use their touch-tone phone to dial up the 3 digit number of a fave video,and in a few minutes,their request would be aired.

Early 80's here--it may have been available sooner, but that's when I remember getting it.

IIRC, it was Rollins cable (now part of Cox).

July 30th,1987.I remember we first got HBO and Showtime.So,it's been 16 years. ;D

Howard

It was in 1986.  I remember because I was very happy that we got Nickelodeon and MTV.  That meant no more Night Tracks.  

I know I was living in Boise when they got cable, it must have been 1980 or 1981.  Was something like 30 channels.  No MTV, but Showtime, HBO, and WTBS (SuperStation) out of Atlanta.  THis was a big deal, because at the time we only had 4 local channels.  About 2 years later, we finally got our 5th local channel, an independent station.

I was surprised when I moved back to LA in 1982 and they did not have cable yet.  But they had something kinda similar.  There were 2 stations, "On" and "Select".  They were surscribe over-the-air stations that showed movies you saw with a special decoder box.  They were both in the UHF band, and are long gone now.  The channels they ran on are Spanish stations now.

The cool thing about those 2 was if you did not have a decoder box, you could tune your TV carefully and see a kinda scrambeled video feed with no sound.  Many times at night I would tune them in to watch the dirty movies they ran from 11pm-2am (what do you expect, I was 17 at the time).

8)

I remember the PRIMITIVE cable TV system we had in the mid 1960's to the mid 70's(When HBO and other movie channels were added to cable).But where I lived in southern New Jersey,it was the ONLY way you could get decent programming and passable reception! Not to mention the cool horror movie shows that were around at the time,such as Creature Double Feature on WOR out of NYC, And Dr.Shock's SCREAM-IN on WPHL out of Philadelphia. And of course,when MTV came to our cable system in 1982,WOW!!

Early 80's...I was in the third grade....I remember night tracks too. Then MTV...When they actually played videos.

I first heard about HBO in the early 70s. My sister was visiting a friend and they had it. I was so excited and wanted it. But, never really got it until I had a place of my own in the early 80s. I remember getting for work in the morning and MTV on. That was when MTV was GOOD.



Cat