Taking a trip down memory lane - defunct music providers

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fedupwithcablevision590

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
May 26, 2007
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I have a question that's been bugging me for the longest time. Before we got digital cable here on Long Island, Cablevision played background music on the channel 14 programming guide that WAS NOT Music Choice. This was prior to 1999 or so. It was very similar to the muzak FM1 program but not the same music.
I have narrowed it down to two defunct satellite music providers, AEI Music and 3M. From what little information I was able to dig up on them, they were analog and mostly C-Band. That means they were FTA-able. I still see the big C-Band dishes on CVS, though when the company that provided the music went "belly up", CVS switched to muzak and has one of their Ku-band dishes on top.
From what I read 3M sold their music service to DMX. Ditto for AEI.
One of my local malls played this "channel 14 music" and now plays DMX Familiar Favorites.
So I am wondering does anyone remember what channels the 3M and AEI Music had? The only one I remember was similar to muzak's FM1 (which I like to call WIDE adult contemporary).
Cablevision now has Music Choice and plays the smooth jazz channel in the background of channel 14 mixed with ads.
Still can't get over 3M actually running a satellite music service. Back then must've been more fun. Sure most everything was C-Band but you had Muzak, DMX, AEI, 3M to choose from.
 
I have a 76CM AEI Music dish, unfortunately its unusable because I don't have the feedhorn for it (which was designed to bolt to the feed support arms). I suppose I could fabricate something, but for a 76cm, that's a lot of bother. I do have the feed support arms for it.
 
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