IIRC, when I left DC in '86 we could get NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, sometimes channel 20 (whatever that was), and one in a blue moon you could make out a picture on 50 through all the snow. No one I knew even bothered watching TV for the most part, though our friends out in VA & MD watched MTV and HBO until blood was pouring from their ears. By the time I returned in the mid 90s, everyone had a million channels and just lay on the couch drooling and masturbating to infomercials like lobotomised apes. Progress. But yeah, you could get non-O's games by then, if you could find them amidst all the garbage pouring through that cable.
