January 27, 1985

A look at how local public access channels have changed over the past 21 years.
On
April 17, 2006
Let's go back to January 27, 1985. Why this date you may ask? It could be any date. Nothing special may have happened in your life, and nothing did in my life...at the time. Then, about 15 years ago, I found a tape. A tape with one of the greatest 3 minutes ever captured on film. For you see, either my Mom or Dad accidentally recorded channel 3 for a few minutes. For those of you outside the Salem, Oregon area (which means pretty much all of you), Channel 3 was KVDO, a PBS affiliate in Salem. Apparently, OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting, for PBS or something.) took ours away. The cable company, Viacom Cablevision, replaced it with something that looks like this:


Now, this may seem boring to you, but it's a little slice of history for my life. I bet most cable companies had a channel like this. I've seen one in Lincoln City. But, now Public Access either means crappy shows made with a camcorder or 24 hours of infomercials. But, I'd rather see this:


I wonder if Don Wilkerson ever saw this. I wonder if he's still alive. If you happen to be Sue, Mike, or Connie, e-mail me at [email protected] please.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Channel 3. They tried to make it be for everyone.
Heloise, are you listening? It's a good thing that the VCR was on channel 3, because if it wasn't, I might have never seen this:


Of course I had just turned 3 at the time, but now I wonder if any of those 78rpm records are valuable. And the phone numbers bring me back. Now you have to dial 503 before any 7 digit code because they added a 971 area code to the same area code even though, like 5 phone numbers use it.
And this is a little landmark of Salem history:


Now, there's over 100,000 people living in Salem, and an additional 20,000 in Keizer. If this same incident happened today, Channel 3 is now the WB (and soon to be CW), and Mom and Dad might have gotten three minutes of a Jerry Springer epsiode, and what parent would want their 3 year old watching Jerry Springer.

I have a whole bunch of old tapes. I call it "The Vault." There's at least 50. Meg Ryan on "As The World Turns," Johnny Carson's 21 and 25th anniversary, the Smothers Brothers 20th anniversary and a few episodes of the revival show that summer in 1988. The opening ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, up-to-the-minute news on the Challenger explosion, But, the one that will always stand out in my life was the tape that was recorded 3 minutes worth of channel 3 that fateful day in 1985. And it's a good thing I got it on DVD because the tape broke. I must go and make some more copies of this DVD.
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