Back in the 80's and 90's, my wife and I lived in the northern reaches of Greene County- 46 minutes north of Charlottesville. Greene was VERY rural back then. We could reliably get one TV station on our rec room TV-Channel 29 in Charlottesville on the UHF antenna. If I spun the rooftop antenna, I could drag in a snowy picture from WHSV in Harrisonburg (channel 3) and WTVR in Richmond (channel 6).

I was and am a basketball junkie, and I stumbled onto a gold mine back in 1987- WNVC Channel 53 in Goldvein, VA. If I positioned the UHF circular antenna on the back of my bedroom 13" GE color TV, I could reign in this gem of a TV station.

Here's how Wikipedia accurately describes WNVC back then:

"On weekends in the late 1980s, WNVC had an unusual reputation for sports coverage. The station showed as many syndicated college basketball games as possible, including from the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in the era before every game was on national television. As there was generally only demand for Big East and Atlantic Coast Conference games in Washington, WNVC picked up games from major and minor conferences in other regions for relatively low cost. Its noncommercial status in turn freed it from the prospect of having to sell advertising for games that were likely to draw microscopic audiences. Director of development Mike Baker went on air during commercial breaks and halftimes with live appeals for donations. This stream of programming began to dry up in the early 1990s, when CBS and ESPN began national coverage of the entire tournament and increased coverage of regular-season games."

But here's the treasure. Mike Baker, station GM, would get on the air during conference tournament week and offer up a slate of potential basketball games that the station could purchase broadcast rights to for under $500. Invariably for reasons that escape me, the Wyoming Cowboys always won these pre-game auctions. Wyoming also tended to host the conference tourney. So, I watched every snowy game on my tiny TV.

As fate would have it, Fennis Marx Dembo was Wyoming's stud player. He wasn't very tall. He wasn't very fast. BUT he was one of the most dynamic and intelligent players I've ever watched. I loved watching him and rooting for his team. I fell in love with the Cowboy's arena, which to this day is one of the most intense and personal places from which to watch a game. It's one of the rare arenas where snowy TV actually did it justice.

[Post edited by Newt at 05/02/2024 5:35PM]