RSS FeedIt’s Almost Enough To Make Us Get Cable
As one of the (seemingly) few homes that doesn’t have cable TV, we’ve discussed the Over-The-Air (“OTA”) digital channels which have helped us through these times. First there was The Tube, a music TV channel which folded in October 2007. That loss was tough, but the blow was soon lessened by our discovery of the Retro Television Network (“RTN”) in August 2008. RTN was even better than The Tube, allowing us to catch up on Quincy, Emergency!, and The Rockford Files.
Well on Sunday morning we were greeted to an ominous message on our TV screen when tuning to 7-3, the digital channel for RTN. A quick web search turned up DCRTV notice that RTN had “apparently gone belly-up due to obvious cash flow problems resulting from sluggish ad sales.”
Sure most of these TV shows are available to watch free online via Hulu or (if you’re a subscriber) Netflix; but we can’t imagine going through all that trouble just to watch Quincy (via the computer) on our TV. There is something to happening upon an old show on TV as opposed to sitting down specifically to watch it.
By Monday morning, RTN was available again on 7-3 (although the programming appears to have slightly changed), but there is still some question as to the financial stability of that broadcaster and whether it will be a viable option for the future.
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Comments
It was a blast from the past to watch Street Hawk (I saw the episode with George Clooney) and the Incredible Hulk. Airwolf was truly a horrible series though.
I agree with both of you (dave & Tim). Airwolf is possibly the worst show on RTN. Emergency! has quickly become one of my favorites, although I can usually only catch 20-30 mins when I’m home at lunch. On the weekends I sometimes catch “Run For Your Life” a show I’d never seen or heard of before, but that is pretty interesting (in a The Fugitive kind of way).
And Tim you’re exactly right, 7-3 and 4-3 are almost like cable acess/Wayne’s World style programming. When 4-3 first came on there wasn’t even any sound. I’d put on my own music and it was like watching the Bizarro Wide World of Sports.
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Folks I’m sorry about all those dead links (RTN, and the TV show links), when I wrote the post the RTN website was still up and running. As the station is still broadcasting, I assume the website will be up and running again in the future so I’m going to leave the links as they are. But just so you know, any URLs that start with “rtnville.com” are not working right now.