Hazleton Community Bulletin
Service Electric Cable TV (1987)
If you grew up in or around the Hazleton area in the 80's or 90's, there's a good chance that you're familiar with this channel. This was the Community Bulletin channel for Service Electric Cable TV customers as it was in 1987. If you were hosting a community event, like a church bingo or a spaghetti dinner fundraiser at the fire hall, you'd send the details in to the cable company, and they would add it to the rotation of announcements on this channel that was broadcast on television (on channel 13 if I remember correctly). There would also be some messages from the cable company to let you know where you could pay your bill, or if there were any pay-per-view events coming up. You can see an ad in this video for the first WWF Survivor Series event.
They usually broadcast a local radio station on the Community Bulletin channel. The one that is playing in this recording is from WWSH - Wish 98. It was a local easy listening station that was found at 97.9 on the FM dial. They switched formats when I was in junior high school to become our local rock station, first known as The Mountain, and then The Bear. The radio station that they used for the audio on the Community Bulletin may have changed over the years, but the channel itself didn't. It looked exactly like this from my earliest memories of it in the mid 1980's straight through to the mid 2000's. I think it finally updated it's look sometime in 2007 or 2008.
This was on a VHS tape that I recorded on Thanksgiving when I was seven years old. I actually remember recording this. We were at my grandparents house, and we typically ate Thanksgiving dinner pretty early in those days; like at around noon or just after. Then we'd all sit around the table eating pumpkin pie and talking until folks would eventually start to meander toward the living room. This was usually started by my dad and my grandpa, who had both eaten too much and retired to their respective recliners to take a nap. My grandfather had just gotten a VCR about a year ago, and he bought me some blank tapes that I could use to record movies, or cartoons, or shows on Nickelodeon, or whatever else I wanted to watch later. One of those tapes was in the machine, and for some reason, I hit record on the Community Bulletin channel, and I taped it for a few minutes while my family was snoring around me. Somehow I've managed to save that tape for all these years. I get sentimental over the silliest things sometimes, but what can I say... that's who I am.
So from my family to yours, from the past and present, have a happy Thanksgiving!
