Broadcast TV stations weren't considered "cable channels" even though they also came over the wire. Cable channels were those channels you got that your neighbor who didn't have cable couldn't see. Ad free cable channels were way before MTV. Even the national cable stations were late to the party.

At your age, if you never saw ad free cable you were either a late adopter or you just had a terrible local cable provider.

Again what were these stations? Are you referring to local access TV?

Basic cable delivered in order

- broadcast TV stations - with ads

- “Superstations” - with ads and your neighbors couldn’t get TBS unless they lived in metro Atlanta

- MTV, Nickelodeon, ESPN, USA, CNN etc - with ads and informercials

Everything I find was that HBO was first. But not basic cable in 1972. CSPAN in 1979 (well admittedly that didn’t have commercials). Then TBS

By 1983, I remember I had about 20 channels - two each of NBC, CBS, ABC - CNN, MTV, TBS, Nickelodeon, USA, some medical precursor to Lifetime, CBN, WGN, the weather channel, are the ones I can remember

Local cable providers would broadcast shows on local cable channels. It was mainly movies. Only a few cable channels, plus regular broadcast TV.

The sales pitch was that cable channels didn't have ads because your fees paid for those channels instead, but obviously broadcast TV would still include ads because the ads were just part of the broadcast. Cable programing was very limited, but the promise was it would get better and it was still ad free and looked better than TV over rabbit ears and you got access to broadcast TV in that same quality. It was a pretty easy sell! I doubt many people would have paid for cable if it only offered broadcast TV which most people were already getting for free. I mean, the quality jump was nice, but it's not like most of us hadn't been putting up with it just fine. For people who couldn't get a decent signal I could see it though.

At some point the number of channels expanded to include national channels. Which national channels you got and when depended on your cable provider and whatever agreements they reached for those feeds. Then all you had were national channels. You might even remember ads on some of those channels asking you to call your cable provider and demand certain other national channels that weren't yet avilable in your area.

Eventually cable TV sort of homogenized and everyone pretty much everyone had access to the same set of channels no matter where they were even as some channels changed or went away entirely. Channels were split between premium and basic, then split again to basic, expanded basic, and premium and then split again to multiple package tiers etc. That's how I remember it anyway.

It’s in every history write up of cable that the main draw of cable pre 1979 was the ability to get broadcast TV clearly and HBO. It wasn’t like these local channels - that I can’t find anything about anywhere - had first run content or “pay 1 window” movies as they left the theatres that was HBO.