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Anyone remember "Z" TV- old pay television service H'wood Hills area?

K

kinphoenix2

Mods- if cross posting not allowed sorry (I asked this in another board here) I can't find a lick of information on this service I KNOW existed in the 1970s, my grandpa had it, I think it was one of the very first pay cable TV services in the country. It was called Z TV (or "Zee"?) the machine was a tan/beige box, about the size of a clock radio- connected to the TV via a wire. You changed channels by pressing one of the tab-like buttons on the box, I think I counted them once- around 30 buttons? I am finding NOTHING searching online. I know it existed, and it was a small market it served in the Hollywood Hills area.

I have a distinct memory of the Z TV box and there's nothing I can find doing days of web searching to prove it existed. Anyone remember this, and do you have any information on the company or how it worked? It was fascinating to me as a child and it's odd there doesn't seem to be anything I can find online about that system.
 
ah- too late to modify my post. I was looking for Z TV, it was actually "Z Channel" and there's a wikipedia on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Channel

Wikipedia says it was a Los Angeles market, but I had only seen it used in the Hills area. Maybe it wasn't very popular, and that's why I thought it only served that particular area.

Did any of you have that service back then? What channels did it have? I remember watching it, but was too young at the time to have remembered enough to keep the channel IDs in memory. I just thought it was pretty neat!
 
Z Channel was immensely popular especially among movie lovers and the Hollywood elite alike. Quentin Tarantino was a big fan of the channel growing up and it may have been an important factor for him to pursue movie making. I vaguely remember Z Channel. Most of what I remembered was seeing what Z Channel was airing when I looked at the LA Times TV schedule. Z Channel was around when Select-TV and ON-TV were also competing which each other in the LA market. Unlike the latter two, Z Channel could only be received via cable (which in the 70's was sporadic at best in it's availability). Select-TV and ON-TV were broadcast scrambled over the air from local stations KWHY-22 and KBSC-52 (which is now NBC/Telemundo O&O KVEA) and subscribers were issued a converter to unscramble the signal.

Z Channel's biggest draw was in it's eclectic programming and how the movies they aired were presented. Z Channel aired blockbusters just like HBO but Z Channel often dug deep into the film archives and aired classics that were rarely shown including many foreign language films. If available, Z Channel aired all of their movies in widescreen format (a revolutionary concept at the time) and could be the very first channel to air a letterboxed picture. Z Channel was also apt to show Director's Cuts of films when available. Most notably was Z Channel airing the Director's Cut for Heaven's Gate.

I highly recommend tracking down the 2004 documentary "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession". It's as good of a time capsule as you can get to what Z Channel was during it's heyday and it's unfortunate tragic demise of it's creator.
 
Thanks I'll check out that documentary, did some more web searching and found that title also. Z Channel was such a happy memory (grandfather gone now...) and yes it was Show Biz "industry" types that usually had the service. I've yet to hear from anyone outside my family circle that had it. It sure had some cool movies and things on, directors cuts was invented on Z. I DO remember SelecTV and ONTV also! ah the old days.

I just remember how novel it was to me to see pay TV in action when I think it was the very first pay cable service? NO one had it. None of my friends in school heard of it. I just read an old LA Times article that one of the founders killed himself and his wife one day. How sad.
 
Z Channel and its early competitors were a tough sell in Los Angeles because over-the-air signals tend to be pretty strong and the market had, in the late 70s, three network O&Os, four indies (five if you could get KDOC from Orange County), PBS and some Spanish-language.

Until cable networks began to sprout and gain traction, there wasn't much reason for L.A. viewers to pay for TV. Services like ON and the others tended to do better in cities that already had decent cable penetration...viewers were accustomed to paying for additional choice.
 
michael hagerty said:
Z Channel and its early competitors were a tough sell in Los Angeles because over-the-air signals tend to be pretty strong and the market had, in the late 70s, three network O&Os, four indies (five if you could get KDOC from Orange County), PBS and some Spanish-language.

Until cable networks began to sprout and gain traction, there wasn't much reason for L.A. viewers to pay for TV. Services like ON and the others tended to do better in cities that already had decent cable penetration...viewers were accustomed to paying for additional choice.
Click to expand...
I was out of the house by 69, but I recall that my parents had the Z Channel, and loved it. But they were in a poor OTA reception area (Tujunga), and started paying for cable TV about 1966. So my father (a great guy, but kind of a cheapskate) was OK with pay TV, even though he walked around turning off all the lights at night (and complaining he "wasn't made of money") and also refused to ever pay the extra $2 a month for an "extension" telephone.
 
Z was available in the early 1980's in San Bernardino on a microwave transmission from Box Spring mountain in the riverside area. You could subscribe, but a guy in riverside ran newspaper ads selling receivers for $100. The signal was not scrambled. I purchased one and put the dish up to my 2nd story window, ran the cable into the little box and pluged it in to my set. Z came in over Ch.3. Crystal clear reception and great movies !
 
that is so cool. What memories! I read that the "Directors Cut" was practically invented by the Z people. It did carry some really super programs, excellent choices that I would call a "thinking persons" cable TV. I'd love to get my hands on one of those boxes they used for Z- as I wrote in my 1st post it was a beige and tan box about the size of a 1970s clock radio, with a row of buttons on the top that one used to switch channels. I'm interested to find out how the signal was transmitted and received.
 
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