One might argue that when viewed, there is current draw, and that additional channels typically means more viewing. But I was thinking of overall service theft

One might argue that when viewed, there is current draw, and that additional channels typically means more viewing. But I was thinking of overall service theft, and did not think of the filter. That case is different. This makes me think, though. I lived through this time, and adding the filter makes zero logistic sense. EG, why have anyone, who isn't paying, even connected? Then I remembered something. I lived in a house, where there was a shared box for 2 units. Someone had pried open the box, and removed the filters. As a result, the cable guy disconnected the wire at the pole. This resulted in something different. Instead of a cutoff, most channels came through, just very fuzzy. And as a kid, I lived in a rural area, and we owned an antenna booster/amp, which had made signals poorer than this, crystal clear. It seemed that leaving an uncapped end inside a box on the pole, with loads of signal, bled enough for a usable signal to get through. So this is probably why a filter was placed. And of course, to prevent the long wire from picking up local over the air stuff too. Ah well.