MINDLESS MUSINGS

So, you say there’s nothing to watch. 2026 and you can’t find anything to watch? When I was your age, we had four channels to watch on the television; 5 if you had really good reception. 3 commercial stations: Channels 7, 9 and 10. These were the channels that had the money to pay for the latest and greatest shows.

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) was the government sponsored station and was rather dull despite being ad-free. It was channel 2 and although it was considered uncool, it had many of the shows we all adored and still look back on wistfully scattered among the boring shit.

Channel 0 was the dark horse. SBS: Special Broadcasting Service; the one only certain houses could get. It was special alright! These people scored an extra channel through some TV signal lottery people called reception. Unless you had a high-quality antenna you just had to be living in the right spot. Fair dinkum! Your neighbour might have it, and you don’t. As a kid this felt most unfair.

Funny thing is that most of the shows on SBS were shit (or so we thought back then). It was the multicultural network and mostly had programs from non-English speaking countries. Subtitles! Fuck that! Subtitled shit and British soccer were all I can remember. That and the common knowledge that the evening movies on channel 0 had a very good chance of female nudity! I don’t think those foreign films were scrutinized quite as much as the mainstream fair on the commercial channels; subtitles gave a film more artistic flair perhaps.

That was it. If you couldn’t find something among those slim pickings, tough shit! Go read a book or listen to the radio kid. If the station had technical difficulties or it was closed that was that. Yes, I said closed; most stations simply shut up shop not long after midnight in my younger days.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the average house only had 1 television, so you also had to share who chooses what to watch. There were times you just accepted you would have to find something else to do because someone in the house was watching something crap.

If I visited someone’s home and they had 2 TVs I would think they were rich! A TV in your room? Un-fucken-real!!! They only have that shit in the USA! I would see kids in American movies with that luxury, and it seemed so awesome! That was nothing compared to the absolute marvel that was cable television! Holy shit! Those Yanks had how many fucken channels? We wouldn’t see that until the mid-1990s.

When my pop lived in the converted garage out back, he had a little black and white television. I remember our neighbours having one too. Wow! I was around during that phase out. I can also remember a pretty even split between FM and AM radio stations for that matter.

That was it. No video for a long time yet and if you were fortunate enough to have an Atari or other gaming system you had to wait until the television was free before you could play it. No wonder we spent so much time outside.