What was going on when I was born?

WHEN does watching television become a crime? According to spokesmen for the Long Island Cable Television Council, the crime begins when a viewer turns on a cable television program that has not been properly paid for. The council is a voluntary coalition of the nine cable television operators servicing Nassau and Suffolk Counties. It was formed last summer to combat theft of cable television services. The council has found that the question of what determines proper payment has in some cases not yet been settled. Along with the music and motion-picture industries, which have been involved in extensive litigation concerning home recording and its possible violation of copyright, the cable television industry is confronting a situation in which the electronic advances of the last decade are reshaping the definition of what the public is legally entitled to.

Critics may be jaded, as members of the public sometimes complain. But they have their reasons: the very nature of their job puts them in constant confrontation with the egregious - which can be amusing, in a grim sort of way - or, more commonly, with the merely mediocre. Thus no one is more happy than the critic who stumbles upon a performance that breathes fresh life into even the most weary of warhorses. Of course, there is no mystical dividing line between revelatory experiences and unutterable boredom. A too-frequently programmed standard played decently and honorably can still give pleasure, even to a jaded critic. But the revelations remain special, in part for the immediate experience they offer but also for their function as standard-setters for more conventional concert encounters.

TRENTON GOVERNOR KEAN showed perseverance in leading the Legislature to accept a compromise package of taxes on Dec. 31, just in time to avert $150 million in service and state-aid cuts over the next six months. Now, with tempers just beginning to cool from the pressure-filled year-end session, Mr. Kean will go before both houses of the Legislature Tuesday to give his State of the State address and talk about further problems. In that address and in his more important budget message next month, he will talk about the built-in escalators that force state spending up each year and make budget crises a recurring and unwelcome annual drama. The Legislature has passed, and Mr. Kean has signed, bills increasing the state sales tax from 5 to 6 percent and raising, also by one percentage point, the state income tax on gross earnings above $50,000.

Local governments and nonprofit organizations are dropping out of the Social Security System at an accelerating rate, aggravating its financial problems. Blaming soaring payroll taxes, doubts about the long-term solvency of the system and a serious local financial squeeze, Los Angeles County dropped out Dec. 31, the country's largest local government to do so yet. The defection by the county, with its 55,000 employees, will mean Social Security will lose more than $130 million a year in this instance alone. Under Federal law, local governmental agencies and nonprofit employers may withdraw after giving two years' notice of their decision to do so.

Inmates at the Ossining Correctional Facility here seized 16 guards as hostages and took over their cell block containing 600 convicts last night, the state Department of Correctional Services said. Inmates in Block B seized the Correction officers at 7:40 P.M. while all of the 2,150 inmates of the maximum-security prison were out of their cells during the evening recreational period, according to Lou Ganim, a spokesman for the department. ''We've been told that the hostages are in a safe place away from the other inmates,'' said Mr. Ganim, at around 1:30 A.M. today. He said that negotiations with the inmate representatives had been going on ''for three hours by telephone,'' with the state being represented by ''crisis intervention teams'' from Albany and from the prison staff. There was no immediate indication what the inmates' grievances or demands might be, Mr. Ganim said.

Two of Mayor Kevin H. White's top assistants live in a $250,000 house that one of them bought in 1981 for less than $1, according to county records. The elegant, three-story brick town house was purchased from a family that had obtained part of the property, now a landscaped courtyard, from the city in a transaction that needed Mayor White's approval. At the same time, the city awarded that family the rights to develop highly sought-after waterfront acreage. Contradictory Statements Made The transactions, which are clouded by missing documents and contradictory statements by the participants, illustrate how close associates of Mayor White have benefited financially while working for him. Four city officials have been convicted in the last year for extortion, bribery or income tax evasion in connection with their city jobs. Nine others are under indictment. In addition, corruption in Boston city government is being investigated by four Federal grand juries.

CINCINNATI THIS week has been a combination of crisis and anticipation for the New York Jets -the sort of will-he, won't-he-play atmosphere missing from their camp since the days of Joe Namath. And like the Namath era, everyone on the New Yorkers is affected by the emotion and logistics surrounding one player. This time it is another Joe - Klecko. He is considered the top defensive end in pro football. The effects of his absence have rippled across the defensive line, stirring the linebackers and secondary as well. But if he can perform in today's playoff game against the Bengals, he will not be in all-pro form. He has not played in almost four months.

Jonathan Hutchinson died in 1717, but his tombstone is not at rest. In fact, it has traveled far and frequently since it was stolen by modernday grave robbers a dozen years ago from Hutchinson's final resting place in the Jonathan Trumbull Cemetery in Lebanon. For more than 200 years, the ranks of colonial tombstones were thinned as one by one they fell to their greatest foe: New England's brutal freeze-thaw weather cycle. Others were thrown away by groundskeepers or destroyed to make room for roads carved by an expanding civilization. Even fewer are standing up to a more recent pelting by acid rain. The survivors are being assaulted by vandals and stolen by thieves. Fragmented or whole, colonial tombstones command a price.

PARIS Normally, no one would worry very much about the future of culture in a country whose president brings Ambrose Bierce short stories with him on his recent plane trip to the United States, and totes Thomas Mann's thoughts on the predicament of Semhazai, God's unworthy messenger, for examination at 35,000 feet en route to Athens. Francois Mitterrand reads, and reads again, and will offer as a throwaway line the fact that his look at Semhazai and Jacob's Ladder somewhere over Greece was really his second time through Mann's ''The Young Joseph.'' For the French president, the composer Berlioz reaches the solar plexus, although not the heart or the guts, and Mikis Theodorakis's adaptation of Pablo Neruda's ''Canto General'' is a masterpiece. His eye cares, too. Any half-diligent student of the rise of French Socialism and Francois Mitterrand knows that the president, in an earlier life as mayor of Chateau-Chinon, imposed beauty on the recalcitrant town by decree, ordering ''that all its roofs be covered in slate, genuine Anjou slate.''

The Miami Dolphins, who had not won a postseason game since their victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl VIII in 1974, defeated the New England Patriots today, 28-13, and advanced to the second round of the National Football League playoffs. The Dolphins' next game will be here next weekend, and their opponent depends upon the results of two American Conference games that will be played Sunday. If Cincinnati beats the Jets, the Dolphins will face the Bengals. If the Jets win, Miami will play the winner of the game between Pittsburgh and San Diego.

The North Atlantic allies last week got an offer they couldn't brusquely refuse - a Warsaw Pact proposal for a nonaggression treaty that appeared to be addressed at least as much to the West's people as their leaders. The offer came from Prague where Yuri V. Andopov met his Communist colleagues for the first time as the new leader of the Kremlin. Similar proposals as far back as 1955 have been rejected by the West but the Soviet bloc seemed to be counting heavily on public opinion to make some headway, and divide the United States from Europe in the process.

Benedict Nightingale writes frequently on cultural events in England. LONDON When the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of ''The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby'' rolled its massive and majestic way into dramatic history on the stages of London and New York, even those critics who applauded rather than raved were agreed on one point: It was distinctively, unmistakably, quintessentially theatrical. You could see the same actors in up to a dozen different parts each, watch them miming their special effects, even chat to them on their occasional forays into the audience. How could all that informal excitement possibly be transferred to a small shiny screen in the living room? Well, the attempt had to be made, was made, and has generally been proclaimed a success in Britain. All nine hours of the R.S.C.'s ''Nickleby'' were seen on the nation's new Channel Four on consecutive Sundays this past November. Beginning tomorrow evening at 8, the Mobil Oil Showcase, an ad hoc network, brings the first of its four episodes to U.S. television sets (in the New York City area on WNEW-TV/ Channel 5), and Americans can see if they agree with The London Daily Mail, which proclaimed the show ''a television tour de force throbbing with a raw, wondrous vigor,'' and The Daily Express, which applauded its ''vibrant, rumbustious glory, tumbling onto the screen.''