I grew up in Montreal, but my folks couldn’t/wouldn’t get a TV antenna till I was 10. So until then it was three Canadian channels (two really, if you dont’ count the sucky French CBC). Occasionally Plattsburgh (NY) would come in…but chances were 50/50.

I got glimpses of American Network TV when I played with the kids next door. I wasn’t aware of PBS (or Mr. Rogers) till I was in Grade 2.

I had SUCH a deprived childhood.

Friar’s last blog post…The Dog who Came Back

I can beat that but not by much…

Graham,

I lived 26 miles outside of Chicago when I was a young’un. It’s all built up now, but it was the middle of nowhere then. (Amazing how old this makes me feel, when it really wasn’t so long ago…) We had five channels. The networks, PBS, and a Chicago channel.

Sounds like Thunder Bay was the height of Ontario cosmopolitan. Whoo-ee.

Until later,

Kelly

@Kelly — That would be cool, especially since I never did find out if they used it or not. Finding it on YouTube would be way too much to hope for I suppose…

~Graham

Graham Strong’s last blog post…5 Steps To Better Brainstorming for the Intrepid Freelancer and Independent Business Owner

I know what you’re talking about but as I grew up in good old Deep River and we had *one* channel. A local affiliate of CBC, that we picked up on an antenna…

-Brett

Brett Legree’s last blog post…a tale of two bridges.

Maybe they saw you in the segment you did. How cool would that be?

The best I could find was that a couple of cable companies in Canada bought up some regional specialty channels (including Treehouse) and created YTV. From Wikipedia:

“Launched on September 1, 1988, YTV was the successor to two prior special programming services operated by various Ontario cable companies beginning in the late 1970s.”

Treehouse then became a programming block on YTV until it was spun out as its own channel once again, Treehouse TV.

Because it was regional, I don’t remember a whole lot about it. We visited my grandparents in the Toronto area (Cambridge) every summer, so that week or two I guess I was exposed to it. But I vividly remember the whole Treehouse script running on the computer — it was pretty cool back then.

Brett and Friar may have some recollection of the original Treehouse…? You guys know what I’m talking about here?

~Graham

I love your Radio Shack camp. I’m sure they didn’t even notice that their instructor would stun 12 y.o. boys into awed attention.

Is that the Treehouse TV that’s still around? Wow, that is a very cool story. You should see if they could search their archives for you. After all, you knew them when!

Alex,

If there is a difference… boy, they’d have to explain that one to me pretty well…

I’ve had the same (bad) experience with my local office superstore as Andy, too. Way to give amazon one more edge, folks.

I love amazon, but sometimes I wonder why people are just handing them the keys to a future monopoly on everything. Hmm, hmm.

Jeff Bezos is still smiling…

Regards,

Kelly

As for the Apple Camp — I went to computer camp myself when I was about 12. It was at the Radio Shack, and we all learned how to use the Tandy Color Computer. The woman who ran it looked a bit (a lot!) like Farrah Fawcett and drove a Corvette. Talk about your Customer Experience for a 12-year old!

Anyway, same ploy back then and it worked. I got my own (first) computer after that, though it was the entry-level model. Had to save up a few months to get the cassette loader…

(Just remembered — I did my first graphics/computer gig at that computer camp. A kids TV station called Treehouse came to film us one day, and I did a quick program that wrote out “Treehouse” like handwriting on the screen. They filmed it and I assume it made the show, but I never did see the episode. Soon after we went back to Thunder Bay which didn’t have Treehouse at the time, and video recorders back then were only for rich people… Ah well.)

~Graham