When I was a kid growing up in Southern Colorado, my grandfather had one of those black-and-white TV sets with a screen a few inches across that sat in a box a little bit smaller than a tower PC case. He kept it near his regular chair at the kitchen table, where he smoked cigarettes and worked crossword puzzles. I can’t remember exactly how, but I discovered that under certain conditions you could use that set — and no other TV in the house — to tune in the independent channel 2, broadcasting out of that metropolis 120 miles to the north, Denver. And if you tuned in weekdays at 5 p.m. and squinted through the snow, and were willing to sit there at the kitchen table staring at a tiny, black-and-white screen, you could see the Adventures of Superman series in syndicated reruns. It seemed like it was worth going through just about any inconvenience to see Adventures of Superman.

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