I only rarely got to experience the \'80s-\'90s cable time frame (at home for less than a year in 1984 and over 2 more years via a big dish from \'85 to \'87). For the first one, I and my siblings mostly watched Nickelodeon and the L.A. indies when we didn\'t have the San Diego locals on. For the second it was almost always The Disney Channel (received free via sat, and later test-scrambled for about 2 hours every afternoon).
From December 1987 to March 1989 we had no TV at all (except during times when both my parents were out of the house and I would sneak in the small portable black-and-white from their closet to watch syndie Double Dare with my siblings).
From March 1989 to September 1998, all TV at home was exclusively OTA Huntsville (Orlando-Daytona Beach from June 1991 to September 1992) locals.
In September 1998, my parents (having grown tired of having to adjust, or having me adjust, the antenna for just about every channel) finally bit the bullet and re-subbed to cable. From this point until Februrary 2001, it was just broadcast basic containing the Huntsville locals, WGN and TBS Superstations, and the Prevue Channel (the latter moved to another channel when WHDF, the former WOWL, went market-wide with a UPN affiliation).
Our household finally re-obtained full basic cable roughly 16.5 years later. Over the next couple of years, as my siblings were marrying and moving out, my viewing of cable channels was scattered between Cartoon Network (for the classics, The Powerpuff Girls, and later Dexter\'s Laboratory), Disney Channel (though it was much different than the last time we had it, I still enjoyed a lot of their offerings like a quite good movie library, including originals, and series like Even Stevens , Lizzie McGuire , and later Kim Possible), and, later, Game Show Network (which quickly pushed most of the others away until a year later when we moved and lost GSN).
From about that move on, I started being less entertained by the cable channels and started watching and collecting DVDs (particularly Star Treks The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, as well as Farscape). I still had some favorites in that timeframe, like Iron Chef, Good Eats, the early seasons of Spongebob Squarepants, and the aforementioned Kim Possible (which was the only good series on Disney Channel by then; the original movies were still pretty good up until the post-High School Musical period). For a while I also watched the fading/zombie Nick GAS just to watch some of the old Nick game shows I never got to see when they first ran. In the last year before I moved to my current location, I got G4 for about a month, during which I discovered Ninja Warrior.
In conclusion, while the general state of TV may not be too great right now, and I never really got to experience cable in the \'80s and \'90s, from my reference point the early 2000s were the best I\'ve experienced. But even now I can still find a few favorites to latch onto (especially in the current age of HD and the DVR, the latter of which without it, I might hardly watch TV at all since I can\'t stand the high commercial loads anymore).
