Comedy Central / Vh1 on same Cable channel during the 90s

[chimike20]

When MST3k was on Comedy Central in the 90s our cable had both Comedy Central and Vh1 on the same channel.  3 am to 3 pm was Vh1 and 3 pm to 3 am was Comedy Central.  The local cable company said that was how CC-Vh1 sold it to them.  CC-Vh1 said it was what the local cable company wanted. It was very annoying for the Turkey Day Marathon.   Did anyone else have this problem back then?

[JLH]

I was lucky enough not to have that problem (though I have heard about it), but instead, for the first 2 years of my watching CC, we had the West Feed, despite living in the Eastern time zone. So if you wanted to watch MST3K, you had to always remember to add three hours to the time on the commercials (so it'd be on 1pm Saturday afternoon instead of 10am, and 10pm Saturday night instead of 7pm).

[majorjoe23]

We didn’t have Comedy Central in the 90s, but at 6 pm VH1 would switch to another channel. AMC or A&E, I think.

[davidbeegah]

Yes. I discovered MST3K in the Fall of 1991. My cable company at the time Viacom had VH-1 from 4am to 4pm and Comedy Central from 4pm to 4am. It did suck during the Turkey Day Marathons. But at least I got to tape the 12AM-2AM regular weeknight broadcasts. I remember one afternoon. They had a local Viacom representative doing an "Ask Viacom" special. One woman who called in and asked if they could switch the times around CC and VH1. Fortunately for her, the guy said that was not possible. I thought of MST3K right away of course. If they would have said yes. I would have hunted her down..

[christmas]

This was also how my cable was set up. The other weird one I remembered was having CNBC during the day and then at night it switched over to The Spice Channel.

[sol-survivor]

I don't remember what channel it was, but our system (Charter) tried out The Comedy Channel for a week or so in probably early 1991. By that time I had read about the show in People Magazine and was interested but had no way to watch. It was still 10 years before I got online. No idea at all about fandom or anything. I was able to see the show once during the tryout period and saw part of an episode (Rocket Attack USA) but fell asleep during the Phantom Creeps short and woke up again near the end of the movie. I had no idea where Bela went. I wanted to watch it again but as far as I recall that was the only showing the show had during the tryout. I don't remember what other channels Charter tried out but eventually they did select The Comedy Channel. I remember a very long wait before it started up again, and of course when there was finally an episode scheduled it was Rocket Attack USA again. Of course, I fell asleep and woke up in almost the same spots. The first complete episode I saw was Rocketship X-M. I did eventually see Rocket Attack USA all the way through. I do have a vague memory of VH-1 sharing with something but don't remember what. It could have been about the time we lost all the Milwaukee channels off our system except for Channel 4 (NBC) going part time and sharing a number with another channel. That may or may not have been with VH-1. I don't think the sharing lasted very long and Channel 4 was gone for good. I think we only had 40 or 50 channels at the time so there wasn't a whole lot of room. As the system expanded The Comedy Channel/CTV/Comedy Central kept getting pushed to the higher channel numbers which had a snowier picture quality. I clearly remember a sports ticker switching back and forth with a weather ticker back in the later 1980's. The graphics were white on blue for both, and both tickers frequently overlapped each other which made it pretty difficult to read. It was possibly something local, maybe public access, but I have no idea after all this time.

[comedyc]

They did the VH1/CC combo switch on my cable provider around 94 and lasted until digital cable came around, sometime around 98/99. That probably explains why I drifted away from the show during those years, I couldn't see it!

[kmorgan]

In my neck of the woods, The First Network Which Shall Remain Nameless was, for a time, sharing a channel with our local PBS channel (the late, lamented New Jersey Network). They'd sign off at midnight, then TFNWSRN would come on. Which meant that I'd usually miss the first couple of minutes of the 12M MST showings.