That any Better?

Growing up on back home, we didn’t have hundreds of channels at the click of a button. No, we had exactly two.

First, there was CBC—channel 13, beaming in from the transmitter over in Port Rexton. Then we had NTV on channel 10. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure where that channel 10 signal was broadcasted or rebroadcasted from, and unfortunately it never really worked well at our place.

Later on, they added a new tower for CBC near Random Heights on channel 7. You’d think that would make things better, but for us, it just meant watching a screen with multiple, ghost-like images overlaid on top of each other.

While lots of folks around Apsey Brook got by with simple rabbit ears on top of the set, for whatever reason, probably because our house was sort of surrounded by a hill on 3 sides, we never got much luck with those. Out in the garden, we had a pole with two massive antennas clamped to it. I could be wrong, but I think they were bought specifically to be attuned to a different channel?

Getting a clear picture was a two-person operation. One of us would have to go outside into the wind, grab the pole, and slowly rotate the pole. All the while, we’d be bawling out at the top of our lungs to someone standing by the window inside:

“Any better?!”

“No, worse! Go back a bit!”

Even with all that twisting and turning, channel 10 was always a snowy, fuzzy mess for us. On a bad day, it was completely unwatchable, leaving us with nothing but a screen full of grey static and high-pitched hiss.

Old Antenna Wire

To get the signal from the garden to the living room, we ran that classic, flat brown two-strand antenna wire. Instead of any fancy modern jacks, we just had it strung right through a rough hole cut straight into the wooden window frame. It kept the draft out well enough, I suppose.

Analog Video Game Connector

Not that I had one, but often borrowed someones, or Bernie’s Sega Genesis, but if we wanted to play the Nintendo? That was a whole other project. You had to get behind the TV set, wrap those little U-shaped spade connectors around the two tiny screws on the back of the set, tighten them down with a butter knife, and slide the box over to channel 3.

It was a far cry from the instant streaming we have today, but there was a certain magic to finally getting a clear picture after working for it.

What about you? Did you grow up spinning antenna poles in the backyard, or did you have a trick of your own for getting NTV to come in clear? Drop a comment below and let me know.