I really enjoyed writing that weird bizarre mess of an post about YTV. It was fun to discuss the actual channel that I watched things on. It had personality and it was fun to discuss that. I’m sure there’s even more that I can discuss involving YTV so who knows a second part might end up coming. I really don’t know. There are shows that I can’t really talk about as an actual article themselves but they might pop up as an actual article. I dunno, I’m writing this at like seven thirty after only a few hours of sleep so who knows how bad it will be but I feel like talking about these channels too.
The Family Channel started on September 1st, 1988, same day as YTV. The thing was The Family Channel was a premium cable channel and I don’t think YTV was (and if it was it was not for a very long time as I remember having it very early on in my life, like maybe five years old.) For I believe at least seven years from 1988 to 1995 The Family Channel was something that only came to me several times a year. I think it might have been twice a year. It would show up along side TBS and I think maybe a movie channel. There was three channels that would be scrambled (and yes I would sometimes just watch things like DuckTales scrambled because I didn’t feel like playing NES or with my toys) and the second they became unscrambled I would watch for that weekend or week. It was never longer than a week and sometimes I’d be watching the same damn thing that was on the other channels but it felt like I HAD to take advantage of watching that episode of Scooby Doo on TBS instead of ASN or whatever. Man I should talk about ASN too.
Anyway in like 1995, our cable provider just popped in more channels. I remember that’s when we finally got a Fox affiliate because that’s where I would watch Sailor Moon or Mega Man on because watching those shows very early in the morning was much better than being completely rested for school and Mr. Kelly’s shitty classes. The Family Channel was mostly for Disney related things, Like when the Disney Afternoon stopped being a thing you had to go to Family Channel to enjoy most Disney things (except weirdly enough ASN showed Duck Tales) they would also show the British show Art Attack! which my sister liked but man I was like HEY GET TO DARKWING DUCK. The Family Channel pretty much lost everything related to Disney by 2011 when Disney finally decided to bring the Disney Channel to Canada themselves. Yes, it took that long. I was legit surprised when I saw that The Family Channel is still around when watching TV recently. It was wild. They show Wild Brain shows now which is like the corpses of DiC, Cinar (a canadian cartoon creator for like at least a decade or two) and other companies I don’t care about. Except for weirdly enough 1989-1998 sitcom Family Matters. Urkel is still an amazing thing in 2023!
Now this was something pretty wild. On October 17, 1997 this channel popped up. It was in the 40s on my TV if I recall correctly, or late 30s. I remember how happy I was when I realized I could program my silly TV from 1992 to skip channels. I had around 50 or so channels and I got them down to like 12 because those were the only ones I cared about. It was honestly enough channels for me at the time. It was impossible at literally any time of day not to find at least something to enjoy on at least one of those channels. I remember I think I kept the car channel (or something like that) because it showed reruns of Speed Racer.
Anyway speaking of anime Teletoon showed all kinds of stuff. Like they would show the crazy violent anime like Ninja Scroll. Then show you weird Canadian cartoons. I think I saw The Cat Came Back at least 12 thousand times thanks to Teletoon. Teletoon wasn’t a channel I really watched for it’s morning or even afternoon shows. Not even early evening, no Teletoon was a channel for 8:30 and later on weekends (unless Futurama, Family Guy and King of the Hill were on Tuesdays and not Sundays because it seemed like Fox wanted to kill those shows because they didn’t get Simpsons numbers day one.) At one point Teletoon pretty much became my “leave this on in the background and maybe stop to watch some TV shows” while I fiddled around on the Internet talking to people about NES games and horror movies. Among other things. Teletoon would literally show weird British Cartoons like Pond Life and Captain Star (this is when I would realize I was up way too late), animated series like Duckman, Mission Hill, Undergrads, The Oblongs, Clone High and many others I can’t remember at the moment. Oh and tons of Hanna Barbera stuff and for a fan of that stuff like me it was very entertaining. I would literally start watching at like 8:30 and not stop until the channel would go of the air for like 3 hours because tv channels needed to sign off for like decades. It was glorious.
Sadly it all had to end. They removed all the shows (I mean most of them had only 13 episodes but still!) and replaced it with stuff like Futurama. I’m not trying to trash Futurama, Futurama is fucking great, I’m just trying to say that it was kinda special that they had a weird mix of shows instead of stuff you could easily find (or new stuff I did not care about period). It was way more charming then reruns of something that you could easily find at that point. One more thing I have to say is that the last TV channel I really watched, well the last three where Deja View, Comedy Gold and Teletoon Retro (are you really surprised that the guy who would probably watch stuff no one cares about from the past before the most critically acclaimed stuff from right now (or honestly since like 2010). Like I’d rush to find a complete set of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea before I’d go to watch Breaking Bad or something new?) I don’t think I even got to enjoy any of these channels for a very long time (they came out in 2007 and I think I got them sometime in 2014 or 2015 and they were cancelled in 2015 well bought out by Cartoon Network Canada and man was I fucking pissed. Transformers and He-Man and all that stuff was so much more fun to watch to me then most new Cartoon Network shows. I’m sorry, I don’t care how much you tell me Steven Universe is an amazing show with great lore, I still would watch the silly ass wacky Adventure of the Week 80s cartoon over it. I don’t care. The worst fucking part of it all was the fucking sweet ass fact that they didn’t even do anything with the channel thing for 8 more fucking years.
Yeah, earlier this year, 2023, Cartoon Network Canada finally took over Teletoon for good. It was sad but the main channel had pretty much lost all of its charm and all of the shows I cared to even watch except for like two or three. Still I guess we have another place to watch thirteen thousand episodes of Teen Titans Go now because I think that’s all Cartoon Network shows (not to trash Teen Titans Go like tons of people do these days because I think the show is actually kind of amusing, or at least the movie was.) Still it’s sad because YTV would find a place for the cream of the crop of Cartoon Network shows anyway. At least thats how it was in the 1990s. Anyway they wanted the money I guess.
I figured why not make this a threesome because that’s some EROTIC STUFF. I don’t know how much stuff I can discuss for ASN but why not because I loved tons of ASN stuff that was shown there. ASN started in May 29th, 1983, 40 years ago and was headquartered in Atlantic Canada. Halifax, Nova Scotia in fact! ASN was pretty amazing, it was your local “a bit of everything” channel. It showed kids shows, movies, a show called Breakfast Television that I remember watching way too much of for a show like that because it was on early in the morning and you want to see something to help yo uwake up. It was okay enough wake up television. I don’t remember the entire kids stuff line up but I know that I LOVED The Jungle Book anime they showed because it sort of counted as Canadian content because the entire dub cast was Canadian. It was enough to show on TV in Canada to count as Canadian content. I do not remember a single thing about it but I did love it. Shere Khan and Tarbacky (which now sounds like kind of a weird racial slur thing now) were the best.
Another great thing about ASN was the movies they would show. A movie would come on around like 7:30 or 8:00 and was a mainstream affair, I remember watching The Sandlot on there and I had that VHS tape for so long. The Sandlot is still the best movie about baseball ever and I don’t care what you have to say about that. They would also show non-mainstream horror movies in the night time, like after 12 o clock. I remember that I got to stay up to watch the remake of the Fly with Jeff Goldblum (awesome movie by the way) one night because it was Summer and also a weekend. I also remember trying to stay up to watch The Fly 2 the next night but really couldn’t because I had stayed up the night before. Another classic I got to enjoy thanks to ASN for the first time wasw the movie Dolls. I think my Dad stayed up to tape that one for my sister and me, I dunno. ASN is still going on like Family Channel and YTV but it has no real charm anymore. It’s not even called ASN, just CTV 2. Boring.
Well, let you thank you for letting me blather and bloivate over Canadian TV channels. Not even the shows. I have no idea if I will come back to this but I had a great time talking about this stuff.
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