Although I can’t claim to be old enough to remember a world without television, I can well remember when there were only three TV channels, compared to the hundreds on offer today.
In those days, if there was nothing on BBC1, BBC2 or ITV, you turned the TV off. Oh how I wish it were like that in my family today!
Anyway, the arrival of Sky TV and its cable alternatives may have brought with them acres upon acres of unwatchable drivel, but there were a few gems sparkling through the gloom.
Which is no doubt why it was that when the Jones Cable Group, which had the franchise to provide cable television to all residents in south Hertfordshire in the early 1990s, chose Bart Simpson, son of Homer and Marge, from runaway Sky hit The Simpsons to promote itself.
The picture above was accompanied, in the Watford Observer of July 24, 1992, by the following words:
“Cartoon character Bart Simpson got the thumbs up from five-year-old Terry Cole in South Oxhey on Saturday.
“The famous brat, who stars in Sky One’s series The Simpsons, entertained children in St Andrew’s Precinct as part of a promotion for Jones Cable Group.
“The company has just installed a cable television system in South Oxhey and Carpenders Park.
“Sky One is among 19 other channels on the cable television service now on offer.”
Progress, eh?
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