Canal Plus: football nostalgia, El Día Después and Lo + Plus

Why Canal Plus still lives in the memory of a whole generation

There is an image that comes up every time the topic arises: two people leaning over the decoder remote, a sheet of paper, a comb and the hope that the picture will stop looking like a scrambled puzzle. Canal Plus arrived in Spanish homes at the same time as Antena 3 and Telecinco. It was the only one of the three you had to pay for, and the thread mixes memories of its programming with those of the signal many people watched decoded at home.

What could you watch when the signal came scrambled?

As the thread explains, the scrambling was analogue, not digital. A correct signal that a machine jumbled up and broadcast anyway, turned into a scrambled puzzle with distorted sound. At home, the device reversed the process using an algorithm and put the picture back in place. The system is attributed to Nagravision, and analogue radio used something similar: the secraphony.

From there came all the folklore: the legend that the signal could be decoded with a sheet of paper or a comb, and the trick, recounted in the thread, that match previews aired unscrambled and the signal was encoded a few seconds after kickoff, so some people stayed glued to the TV in case something slipped through.

Football and El Día Después: the engine of subscriptions

The theme from Total Recall before every match works as a generational marker. El Día Después, with Michael Robinson and Carrasco, and its section Lo que el Ojo no Ve, are remembered even by those who couldn't care less about football. Add to that Trans World Sport, the NBA and the lunchtime free-to-air highlights of the Premier League and Serie A, at a time when, as one participant recalls, there was no internet and television was the main leisure available.

The box in the living room: taped films and complaints about the bill

There is another memory that has nothing to do with the schedule: the square box with its cards sitting on the cabinet. There were fathers who made a living installing decoders and, by the blacksmith's law, didn't have the channel at home. The uncle who brought the device for the matches and stayed for weeks. The mother complaining about how much it cost. The cartoons taped on VHS. In many of these memories, Plus entered homes because of the gadget before the programming.

Lo + Plus, the puppets and a schedule unimaginable today

Lo + Plus, presented by Máximo Pradera and Fernando Schwartz, later passed into the hands of Ramón Arangüena after Pradera left. Anthony Hopkins, Constantino Romero, Pepe Navarro, Andy García, Phil Collins, Jeff Goldblum, David Attenborough, Pierce Brosnan, Johan Cruyff, the actor who played Mr. Bean and Sigourney Weaver all appeared on the set. Alongside it, Magacine with Jaume Figueras and Ana García Siñeriz, Del 40 al 1, Pinnic, Más te vale with Javier Coronas and the puppets. In series, Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends.

A premiere every day and every film repeated seven times

The schedule was organised into time slots and announced in a monthly magazine. According to one participant's recollection, there was a premiere every day of the year, with the biggest one on Fridays. The same recollection indicates that each title was repeated a minimum of seven times, always at different times and days, with many of those screenings in the early hours. The absence of advertising breaks made it possible to watch Akira at night, straight through, and Reservoir Dogs, Miller's Crossing or Goodfellas passed through while the free-to-air channels were showing the Police Academy films.

The scrambled adult content and the joke that sums it up

It should be said without embellishment: the channel also broadcast scrambled adult content, and in the thread there are people who say they had their first contact with porn there. Nobody brings it up at the start of the conversation, but the joke always resurfaces. The line someone remembers from an annoyed acquaintance —that "Canal Plus was much more than porn"— is quoted with laughter, precisely because the channel was many other things and none of them appear in the headline memory keeps.

Community video and local television: the fact that surprises

Before Plus there was community video. In the early 80s, cable strung through neighbourhoods, rented films and amplifiers, with a ridiculous monthly fee in pesetas and a legal loophole nobody pursued, because sharing what you rent had no protection. It didn't last long, but it anticipated the entire model.

Then came the local television stations that emerged alongside the regional and private ones. In Bilbao, Telebilbao, Tele 7, Canal Bizkaia and Getxo TV operated, with local programming, teleshopping and adult content in the open on Friday nights. With digital terrestrial television and the switch to digital, many disappeared without a trace.

And a detail that sums up the thread: what is remembered most about pay television is the legend of home decoding, while the adult content ended up being broadcast in the open on local television stations that no longer exist today. The memory is not of the channel. It is of the signal.