Remember 15 Years Ago? (Apr 10, 2009)

Wikipedia has more on that

Also 15 years ago, what was going on in the middle of the 1990s?

First off, I wasn't on the Internet yet. I still trolled with the Compuserve and a local BBS POTS dial-up for access to their services, yet no access to the Internet that was easy to get into for the most part. Computer stores had stuff like "Internet in a Box" but I waited a while until I signed with Delphi a few months later to get some kind of text Internet access.

I didn't have a website and no USENET prescence. Instead, my prescence was limited to several forums on Compuserve, years before AOL bought it up.

This year of 1994 was the turning point in most everybody's lives as the Internet was just beginning to gain some kind of traction into part of our lives. Phone-like books of Internet websites were sold at bookstores. Yahoo was founded earlier that year.

Books about the Internet at bookstores were being put on shelves. A year later, Amazon.com was launched a year after it was founded, so people in 1994 still bought books at bookstores.

People got their free streams of music only on terrestrial radio. There wasn't such as thing as mp3 downloads, streaming, iPods, or anything else that involves the Internet. Real Audio, a proprietary audio format for streaming, was launched a year later. In the early years of streaming, most radio stations used a low bitrate of Real Audio streaming such as 8kbps, 11kbps, or 20kbps for listeners who still had dial-up modems ranging from 14.4 to 28kbps. In 1995, KPIG-FM was the first to put their signal on the Real Audio stream.

Back in 1994 and a year before, radio station companies began buying other radio stations to increase the number of radio stations a company can own in a market up to four.

Cable TV was just beginning to top out on its analog broadband service with about 70-80 channels. TV Guide was still in existance as a regional listings magazine. There were four broadcast networks instead of seven. Fox had just gotten the rights to broadcast NFL NFC games from CBS earlier that year. Daytime soap operas were getting interrupted so much by the O.J. Simpson trial that viewers began searching the cable dial for other options, and the exodus began. O.J. did it...he murdered the soaps.

Prime time was buzzing with Melrose Place being the hottest show in 1994. Friends and ER debuted in the fall of that year. People were watching The Simpsons, Beverly Hills 90210, Party of Five, The Critic, Married...With Children, Home Improvement, Roseanne, NYPD Blue, and Lois and Clark: The Adventures of Superman, which produced its first hot Internet download, Teri Hatcher.

A little cable network called fX was launced by Fox in June of 1994; it showed live shows mixed in with reruns of older shows. Broadcasting from a large "apartment" in Manhattan's Flatiron District, fX ushered in a new era of interactive television, but did not exist long enough to see the eventual success of such interactivity. The network centered around original programming, broadcast live every day from the "fX Apartment", and rebroadcasts of kitschy shows from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. fX had two taglines: "TV Made Fresh Daily" and "The World's First Living Television Network".[1] The "f" was lower-case to portray a type of relaxed friendliness. The stylized "X" represented the network's roots: the crossing searchlights of the 20th Century Fox logo. The network prided itself on its interactivity with viewers. fX, in 1994, was an early adopter of the Internet, embracing e-mail and the World Wide Web as methods of feedback. Most of the shows would feature instant responses to e-mailed questions, and one show, Backchat (hosted by Survivor host Jeff Probst), was exclusively devoted to responding to viewer mail, whether e-mailed or mailed traditionally. Select viewers were allowed to spend a day at the "apartment" and take part in all of the network's shows. Guess who got many of his letters on "Backchat?"

Also back in 1994, an AAA station called KSCA 101.9 was launched with an adult alternative format that lasted only three years. KMPC 710 launched a new talk format in May of that year, and began the syndication career of Tom Leykis's talk show.

Beverly Hills Internet was launched that year, but changed its name to Geocities a year later. This let people create personal websites. It was well until 2001 when Yahoo, two years after it bought it, messed with it to a point where it became unfriendly. Many pages on the site that were popular in 1999 had disappearred, many moving to Tripod and other competeting services, leaving Geocities as a shell of its former glory. Nowadays, Myspace and Facebook lets you make a webpage far easier than Geocities did, and has no bandwidth limitations.

Also in 1994, radio wise, B100 flipped its format to Star 100.7 playing Hot A/C. Jeff and Jer were still on Q106, which, and then sister station KOGO 600, were purchased by Par Broadcasting, owner of Rock 102.1 Oceanside and what is now Palomar college's KKSM 1320 AM. KKOS 95.9 was still a 3kw AAA station coming from Carlsbad. 92.5 The Flash was giving 91X hell in the alternative rock wars. DSC moved to Rock 102.1 after leaving KGB. The Beach 102.9 was launched playing 70s hits for a short time. 93.3 was still a religious station. 94.1 was playing classical. 94.9 was oldies from the 60s and 70s. 105.3 was oldies from the 70s and 80s. 103.7 was light A/C music competeting with KYXY in the ratings.

And Howard Stern wasn't heard in San Diego yet, though North County listeners could get 97.1 back when it was a adult rock station and not yet a talk station.

The most popular TV show in the world that year? Probably Baywatch, which just added Yasmine Bleeth to the cast.

And of course there was no Youtube. Everybody watched TV the regular way.

One thing that had become more mainstream by 1994: e-mail. No spam or Internet viruses were transmitted yet.

That's 1994 in a nutshell.