TV in Hill Valley

Here are various channel lineups in Hill Valley at various points in its history. More "unnecessary background detail"!

Contents

1955

There were few TV choices anywhere on November 12, 1955, let alone in Hill Valley. Only four channels could be counted on to have clear reception, all of which aired out of the Sacramento area: KCRA, KBET, KOVR, and KCCC. Further, KCCC, on channel 40, could only be received by TVs capable of tuning in to UHF channels, which were far from prevalent and usually needed a separate converter.

KZTV, a station airing out of Reno, could be viewed under ideal conditions, and contained a mixture of programming from the big three networks as well as DuMont. It survives today as KOLO, and ABC station.

Of the stations below, KCRA was the newest, coming on air only on September 3. KBET signed on on March 19; KOVR begain airing September 6, 1954; KCCC began airing September 30, 1953, and would go dark on May 31, 1957; and KZTV went to air on September 27, 1953. Additionally, NBC station KTVU (Channel 36) went dark on April 30, 1955.

On the morning of November 13, 1955, Doc's TV was tuned to KCRA Channel 3.

1985

At this point, Hill Valley was getting its TV out of Reno, and cable television was slowly coming to the city. Most TV viewers, however, still got their TV over-the-air through antennas—including the McFlys in both the Twin Pines and Lone Pine timelines. But both Doc and Jennifer had cable, and their lineup was broadly similar to the 2000 lineup shown further below.

The antenna lineup is shown below. Channels in italics aired out of Sacramento and had spotty reception, being viewable only under ideal conditions.

2000

The channel lineup in Hill Valley, under their default cable provider in the 1990s through the early 2000s. Jules and Verne grew up with this lineup, and it was current when Junior and Marlene were little kids.

Channels with an asterisk (*) after their name were premium channels. These include channels that are now basic cable! Chanels with two asterisks (**) were pay-per-view channels.

2025

The "present-day" channel lineup in Hill Valley, under their default cable provider (which is not the same as the 2000 cable provider). Some of these channels may be unfamiliar, as they don't exist (or have undergone network decay) in our universe.

In 2015, Marty Junior was watching: MeTV (18), Grit (24), NBC Sports (63), Science Channel (109), Game Show Network (87), and the Weather Channel (247 uh, 61).

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