Anybody who is old enough to remember the beginning of the 1980’s will know that in the UK we were stuck with just three television channels. Â In 1982 Countdown was the first thing to air on Channel 4, giving us an amazing total of four channels, assuming of course you were lucky enough to live in an area where the signal for Channel 4 was strong enough and your TV aerial was up to the job.
By the mid 1980’s experiments into cable and satellite television broadcasting began, increasing the channel count dramatically, although obviously not to the extent that we’re bombarded with today. Â Only trouble was that cable television was only available in certain small areas of the country, and satellite TV had yet to get fully off the ground (sorry, terrible joke there).
The biggest problem many people had with satellite TV though was the fact that they had to have a thumping great dish screwed to their wall or roof or installed in the back garden. Â Many people disliked this idea, and I believe you even had to get planning permission at one stage (although that may have been if you wanted to put up more than one dish).