I discovered this wonderful digital subchannel from the tv repair forums and thought I would draw some attention to it here.

The Retro Television Network schedules all older and mostly forgotten shows. Battlestar Galactica, A-team, and Rockford Files to name a few. They are stictly selling their network to tv stations for use only on digital subchannels. They have affiliates nationwide, so if you have your converter box hooked up, you may get them. Although here we watch it on Comcast channel 246.

What's so great about this network is just how zero budget it is. Commercial breaks are rare, and they seem to only have about five sponsors so they don't have much to advertise when they go to break anyway. A quick look at their website shows just how little they care (only a few links lead anywhere).

Just tonight, we discovered that they play Off Beat Theater, basically a bad movie hosted by beatnicks! Tonight's film was Dr. Sardonicus, which from viewing their website seems to be a pretty mainstream film for them.

Other favorites that we regularly watch are The Incredible Hulk, Voyagers!, Buck Rogers, Night Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. With cable tv networks mostly showing original new programming (read: reality tv) RTN is now our most watched station. I just told my Dad about it and he is thrilled! Just wanted to get the word out on this before this flimsy channel collapses.

"Retro" is something of a time tunnel, with not-always-great prints of the old shows (adds to the authentic feel) and quite a selection of nostalgia.
Late at night, I have gotten hooked (again) on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" when I happen to turn it on.

And yes, the family-owned gun manufacturer seems to be the big sponsor of this; they are on regularly :D

A lot more fun this way than if it were slickly packaged.

C.

I enjoy RTN a lot, it is our most watched channel.

thanks for the info,

our cable service, charter, has it on their basic line up, channel 13, coming from KEYT out of Santa Barbara

Had never heard of RTN. I went to the RTN site to who their affiliates are in MA and found out why -

RTN MA Affliliates (http://www.myretrotv.com/programming.html#massachusetts)

:thumbsdn:

Figures.....

No RTN in Mass, that's lame. It seems like they are having a hell of a time getting affiliates in major cities- in my state, there isn't one in Philly, for instance. The worst has to be the fact that there aren't any in New York City!

Cosmic-you're totally right on about those commercials for Henry rifles! I guess RTN's demographic includes "wild west action shooters" as the Henry commercial states. We also never get tired of the crummy station ID bumpers that they play-especially the ones that play that godawful synth horn music.

RTN isn't the only game in town-THIS TV seems to be better organized, but they primarily play movies, using old episodes of The Outer Limits and Bat Masterson as filler. Having Bat on is especially exciting, as I don't think this has been on in any format for at least 15 years.