It was almost 4 p.m. and they had not yet put the filter on my cable service, so I thought maybe I’d get a last weekend with extended basic. No such luck; they got here right around 4.

The good news is that budget cable stops at 23, not 22, so at least I get AMC — a pathetic husk of its former self, to be sure, but still better than the Home Shopping Network.

My brother was saying during his visit last weekend that AMC would be the perfect destination if “Mystery Science Theater 3000” were ever to be resurrected. Mike Nelson seemed to quash that during a recent interview, however, saying the rights to the premise and characters are “spread out.”

ESPN Classic is on the digital tier here, so even before today I didn’t get it. But my brother was kind enough to TiVo some episodes from “Cheap Seats” for me, burn them to DVD and drop them off during his visit. The assortment included the episode from March with a cameo appearance by Mike and the ‘bots. For the uninitiated, “Cheap Seats” is a 30-minute show which does for old sporting events what MST3K did for bad movies. Hosts Randy and Jason Sklar add their own wise-crack voiceovers to clips of goofy pseudo-sports from the ESPN and ABC Wide World of Sports libraries. Funny stuff.