God, Infinity, and Channel 62

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There is an order in life. The sun comes up in the morning and the moon comes out at night. Christmas comes in the winter and Easter in the spring…and so on. These are things on which you can count. It gives one constancy. Several weeks ago, my secure world was disrupted. Armstrong Cable changed my cable line up. What happened to Channel 62?

Whenever I travel, I am always glad to get home to my own cable company’s channel lineup. Armstrong Cable has always had a certain symmetry to it channels. This divinely inspired natural order was probably created on the sixth day. After all, God rested on the 7th, and probably wanted to watch some television.

So…NBC, CBS, and ABC were on Cable 2, 4 and 7. CNN was on cable 3. HBO was always on cable 5. Cable 6 was always some stupid station like Disney or something else. Channel 8 was ESPN. As Armstrong added stations, it followed a natural progression. USA, Nickelodeon, and TNT were next on the lineup. Then Channel 12 which was the local PBS affiliate, and Channel 13 which used to be WUAB out of Cleveland. The teen channels were saved for MTV/VH1 type channels. 19 and 20 were public access, and were difficult to navigate through with the clicker. Cable 21 was Cinemax. Then came the shopping channels, then the movie channels, then Channel 36 and WQED out of Pittsburgh (the best PBS station in America). Up next, the snob channels: AMC, A&E, Discovery, and History; followed by the food and home improvement channels. Then came the gender channels: Lifetime, WE and Spike TV.

Crowning this inspired sequence of stations was Cable 62 and Fox News. It was the last and best stop on your remote control. I started with Law and Order on Channel 2, then CNN news on Channel 3, then surfed through 60 more stations of total gar-BAGE to end up at Fox News, the station all discriminating viewers should be watching. Like a great, big American flag billowing in the wind after being planted on a mountain’s summit, Fox News was a shining beacon in the vast wasteland of cable, shedding its light on all the lesser channels beneath it. God Bless America.

Then one day I tuned in Channel 62 for my daily dose of “fair and balanced.” There was nothing. Nada; Nichevo; Rien de tous. I frantically clicked through the channels. 62 was passed over, a sure sign it had been removed for the lineup. It can’t be: 59, 60, 61…63!! Oh no! My wife called me from home. My mother called me. Where was Fox News? I frantically dialed the cable company. How dare they remove Greta and Geraldo and O’Reilly. What about Sean Hannity? I know. It is a vast left wing conspiracy. The libs had triumphed. We were now condemned to the vast wasteland of Chris Mathews, Tim Russert, and Anderson Cooper.

After 45 minutes waiting for an Armstrong “service” representative, and a recording telling me 30 times my call was important to them, a very nice lady told me to look on Channel 21. There it was. Fox was now next to the local access channels, a slum spot if there ever was one. These are the channels I can never could get my clicker to stop on. “No, I didn’t see your lineup change notice between the car ads, the Poland Presbyterian Church Spaghetti Dinner notice and Boardman High School’s 2006 “Winter” concert.” Two weeks later, this dreadful turn of events was still filtering down among my friends and officemates.

Fox News is now in the middle of the channels, which is inconvenient when surfing up the channels looking for something to watch. I now have to go backwards to get to it if beforehand I feel like watching Giada shake her very ample assets while making Tuscan chicken, or Paula Deen put five pounds of butter into her mac and cheese, or watch some lady kill her husband on Lifetime.

To make matters worse, the Sci Fi Channe is in the the channel lineup sweet spot: Channel 5, right next to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. Who wants to see giant bugs devouring buxom women while deciding to watch CSI Miami, CSI, Without a Trace, or Law and Order 1 through 35. On the other hand, it could be counter-programming to Hillary Clinton on CNN.

As the cable lineup begins to approach infinity as HD channels are being added each month, I can only remember fondly when Fox News sat at the top of the channel list. All that is left now is a hole on my dial where Channel 62 used to be, and hole in my heart. Anyone have a Zanex?