[ilya]

[ QUOTE ]
If the contacts aren't faulty, then whatever circuit board those contacts connect to is probably fried or there may be a short somewhere. No easy fixes, that's for sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

I gave up too soon. All it took was pressing the TV/VCR button on the universal remote. This flipped the TV to CH 2, and this let me do a channel auto-search. This found CH 3, so cable works just fine now.
Sorry for bugging you guys, thanks for the help.