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Pay Programming Spices UpBrooklyn TelevisionBY ELIZABETH ALVAREZ ANDLINUS GELBERIf you thought there was nothing new or exciting left on the television airwaves anymore, then what's happening on Channel 8 begs to differ. Brooklyn sets are picking up new frequencies now as the waves of the televisionary future sweep over the borough, bringing with them a relief from hack tcyed, soapy sitcoms and the miiquetoas made-for-tv-movie fare.P ay TV, although accompanied by a higher price tag than traditional broadcasting, is host to more extensive programming than regular channels get. Nothing is bleeped out on pay TV; nor is there a ban on nudity or g-uff language. As Fort Greene%u2019s Brooklyn Prime Time company moves into the hrownstones of the borough, audiences are being given the choices of uncensored, unedited, and uninterrupted movies, such as %u201c Carnal Knowledge,%u201d %u201c Midnight Express,%u201d and \ even the whole picture: there is yet another form of television that may soon wend its way through Brooklyn%u2019s living rooms to extend programming choices even further. At a meeting on August 16, the city Board of Estimate voted to allow a cable TV franchise, which heretofore had been confined to Manhattan, to go out for bids, which could put Brooklyn TV in the ballpark with its richer sister setup across the East River.THE NEW WAVEBrooklyn Prime Time is the first step in local TV modernization. A newly-formed subscriber TV firm, it presents to its patrons a diverse program of movies, sports and specials distributed by Manhattan's Home Box Office (HBO) company, broadcast over specially coded signals from the tower aton the Emnire State building. This system prevents non-subscribers from edging in on the signals, described by Roy Hoane from Prime Time as %u201c more like microw aves than television signals,\allowing users of the service an expanded viewing world.Prime Time subscribers pay a one-time fee of $56.95 to have a special receiver antenna installed on their roofs and a matching decoder box perched on their tv sets. Thereafter, $13.95 a month brings them movies, features, sports specials and celebrity interviews whenever they tune into the otherwise-unused Channel 8 slot on the dial. %u201cThe antenna is like a small dish, like the ones they use in radar,%u201d Sloane explained. %u201c It%u2019s about the size and shape of a coffeecan, and it picks up the broadcast waves and sends them down to the s e t.%u201d There, the decoder makes intelligible signals out of what would otherwise be mush, presenting a range that runs from classics like %u201cThe Vintage of W.C. Fields%u201d to more modern blockbusters such as %u201cJaws,%u201d %u201c Patton,%u201d and %u201c Capricorn I.%u201dWhile Sloane says that Brooklyn Prime Time signals come in loud and clear as far as reception (%u201ceither you get it or you don't-and if you get it, it comes in nearly perfect,%u201d he boasts), subscribing to the service does not at all affect reception on any other channels.Both Prime Time and cable TV are under the jurisdiction of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations which at this point do not intefere with programming but instead limit its competition with commercial TV by prohibiting commercial messages. Despite the lack of restrictions as to content and form for the movies shown, the bulk of th shows aired are G. and PG rated. According to John Toland of HBO. nothing X-rated is shown, although the stations do venture into the R domain every so often.SWITCHING STATIONSManhattan's cable setup, on the other hand, not only uproves reception on all 1 1 ' i -- : i _t, ; \\L I l i l l l l K : UUI i i .'j w p i e ; v iv.iv_ .5 a u u o u i u y i owith lit1 to 40 different channels and a far wider range of program choices. In addition to Brooklyn Prime Time services, cable Iso sports extensive news shows,Brooklyn.While the option is now open, it seems that the operation of such a system is not an immediate prospect. According to Daniel Bean, director of Operations at Prime Time, a Brooklyn cable complex would be %u201cone of the hardest in the country%u201d to install, the reason being that telephone company%u2019s blueprints, along where TV network lines would run, are inaccurate.Additionally, antiquated telephone poles, notably in the older areas of Downtown Brooklyn, are rickety, frequently broken, inaccessible or hard to climb, all of which simply makes what might be a routine operation instead a hazardous one.The cost of a cable operation is another reason that potential buyers might shy away, Even in Manhattan, where installation of cable was made much easier by ducts leased from utility companies, profits only began to poke up nine years after the system was established in 1970.Warm-up time is yet anotherfactoncven, in fact, if a cable franchise were to be purchased from the city tomorrow, it would still take two years of groundwork before Brooklynites picked up the benefits from it. CURRENT OFFERINGSWith cable still at best a gleam on the Empire State building%u2019s tower, Brooklyn Prime Time President, James Kingsdaic, reports that business has been moving %u201c very well\Fort Greene. Door-to-door salesmen are making the rounds in Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum, Cobble and Clinton Hills, Crown Heights and Carroll Gardens to toll the virtues of Prime Time programming.A BrooklynPrime Time worker takes signal readings on a Fort Greene rooftop.(Occhiogrosso Photo)Not everyone can be fitted with Prime Time apparatus, warns Roy Sloane. Before any equipment is ever installed, staff members will scout out your rooftop with meters: since the signal is a %u201c line of sight%u201d one, it can be blocked by hills or even large buildings. %u201cThe Slope is really good for reception,%u201d he assures, although he doeswarn that some Heights residents may find themselves out in the cold. %u201cThere are a lot of big buildings in the Heights,\shrugged. If the borough ever converts to cable TV, this will not be a consideration as cable signals arc carried, as the name implies, over cables and not through the airwaves.Falling Into Love Lane Can LameBY BEATRICE VERNEI turned down Hicks. If I had walked another block on Clark, I would have turned off onto Willow but I%u2019d made no conscious choice.The very name %u201c Willow%u201d beckons. There is a little stab of love, sad but verdant, in that name. Hicks is a clicking, arid sound and these sounds and colors are reflected, quite by chance, in the diverse auras of these streets. One feels something smaller and more intimate on Willow, closer to oneself, more affection and gemuetlichkeit.Well, I really didn%u2019t mean to talk ofaspects of streets, only to observe that some essence of me seems attuned to Willow and 1 am less lost %u2014 or more found, there. But there 1 was hurrying along Hicks, carrying a plant and, as I dimly recall, noting some young boys playing in the road and as I even more dimly, perhaps, inaccurately recall, hearing some comment made about me or addressed to me. This is all vague but what is very clear, though how it happened quite unclear, I fell into Love Lane. My arm was in a sling for some time after that. There had been much pain and inconvenience.On another occasion, a couple of years later, when rain was falling heavily and an umbrella could not be held open against a wdnd raging at 50, I raced down Hicks with my mind centered on the single thought of reaching cover. Stepping off the curb at Love Lane, a funnel of wind at hurricane fury pushed me diagonally across the street where I.ovc Lane is a dead-end. Dead end, very nearly, because against the force of this Love wind I had lost all control over my movements and was driven with such violence as to be carried like a helpless dying leaf. What crossed my mind in a flash was that I would not be able to raise my foot over the curb, that I would go smashing down to smithereens on the pavement and in quick succession, having negotiated the curb that 1 would crash intoBeatrice Verne is a Brooklyn Heightsresident.the iron fence toward which 1 was heading and get pinned there by a stab of iron prong into my heart. Well, the movement was diagonal enough for me to escape this fate as the approaching gale fell just out of range of the funnelled wind. The terror of this experience was shattering for a while.This had been a near fall that was curbed, quite literally. Both of these small luckless events are microcosms of the point 1 wish to make, namely, that falling in love has dire consequences and, 1 would go so far as to say that falling in Love Lane (and by adding just one small hump to the 3rd letter) has us falling in love lame and further, more grammatically, falling into love lame better suggests the pit of this catastrophe from which our lameness precludes escape.It may be that the first Fall was not at all the fall of man/woman into love, lame, without knowledge and most certainly, without wisdom. I have only to look at my own misadventure in this direction. I fell (or tumbled) into bed and while space does not permit my elaboration of this lameness front nightfall to rude awakening, 1 will say that my fall out of bed preceded that of my husband%u2019s who would not rise (or descend or condescend) out of bed before the aroma of coffee tempted his nostrils.1 have been talking of descent fn falling in love which docs not correspond with the ascent of our dreaming spirits. Our youths are dappled with blind spots. A horse, wearing blinders, would recognize a pickle. He could sntcll it out before he allowed it to seriously impair his essential horseness. Well, pickle or not, (he human species has not lost its essential speciesness, though a good case can be made for the loss (or at least depletion) of its essential humanness as it, the lameness of the process s, if not inherited, caught, so to speak.Love is a universal preoccupati; n. It iswritten about, sung about, tough very nearly said bought abt a t t y U l g C U u p u i l L V U I I l i i C ifoday, I am in limbo, neither it nor ascent and being just .is accid as any other, I%u2019ve rallied cverv being to avoid i pping.e n \-am*Aug 2? 1979, The PHO1%u2019 JiX, i%u2022bout (1t ) an,t J i l l I U'scent ( prone