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Old 10-21-2017, 10:41 AM
crt89 crt89 is offline
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What are your TV memories

When I was a toddler, some of my first memories are watching Sesame Street, Mister Rogers Neighborhood and sometimes Shining Time Station and Reading Rainbow most mornings while my mom crochet or cleaned house. Can vaguely recall staying up very late one night and seeing Jack Horkheimer's Star Gazer program, which was the last thing PBS aired before signing off. I can also recall getting up early and seeing the colored bars before they signed back on.

In the afternoons my mom would fix lunch and sometimes we'd eat in front of the TV. Usually the news would be on while my mom fixed lunch, and then the soaps would be on - Young and the Restless and As the World Turns I recall most.

I remember once, a weekend when my mother had gone shopping, Star Trek being on, I don't recall my dad being a big fan, but for some reason it was on the TV for a while.

Also remember Roy Leep doing a report on a hurricane with the little symbols on the screen - it may have been Hurricane Andrew.

Sometimes I'd get a box and sit behind it and have pictures drawn on paper and would pretend I was doing the news. I think I also drew pictures and hung them up like a weather map.

Sometimes I'd spend the night at my grandparents, they had a pull out couch in the living room and my grandma and I would sleep there. I can just vaguely remember staying up one night after my grandpa had gone to bed and my grandma shutting off the TV and the lamp on top of it before we went to sleep. It seems the TV had dials from my memory BUT I think in actuality they had a remote TV by then.

My other grandparents had a big screen Sylvania. I used to watch the Weather Channel on it when we visited, I liked to dance to the jazz music. In later years after my grandpa passed away and my grandma moved closer to us, when I visited, my grandma would "channel surf".

In elementary school I would come home and watch shows on PBS. They would air older Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episodes then, and sometimes my mom would watch them with me. In summers, they would air the older episodes early in the morning, and sometimes I'd get up early to watch them.
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Old 10-21-2017, 11:41 AM
centralradio centralradio is offline
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The 60's to the 80's for me.1990's was the start of decline of interest in TV for me.Today I dont waste my time turning on the tube because of the rubbish programing ,Fake news and loads of adverts.Dropped extended basic cable years ago.Tired of the numnut reality shows ,Fake news channels,Weather Channel was trashed .YouTube and other free video sites are my source of old classic TV shows and other interesting stuff like cab rides in trains and how to videos.
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Old 10-21-2017, 01:10 PM
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My paternal grandparents had a Zenith color set. VERY BIG deal in the mid 60s. Papaw Fritz took it to his office, where it stayed for a long time. He gave it to the guy who cleaned the offices -& chauffeured my granny around. He gave it back to me, some day I intend to take it to see Terry...It is one of those Zeniths that has a wood grained vinyl/metal cabinet. I remember it having a pretty decent picture-No cable back then- & it wasn't run to death..I had a maternal cousin/ uncle who had a color set that was in a light olive green metal case about the same time. Pretty sure it was a Zenith too. My family was a bunch of CHEAP bstrds-They always bought lowline sets.
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Old 10-21-2017, 01:54 PM
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In Boston area it was Big Brother, Bob Emery on WBZ TV 4.
http://www.tvparty.com/lostboston-big-brother.html
Link has him & notes on the other Boston Kids shows I remember.

This cat would NEVER be put on today. Every day we drank a glass of
milk, saluted the flag & a pix of Ike while "Hale to the Chief" was
played. Also lots of basic & universal morality lessons taught.
On top of that lots of Kid appropriate stuff. If he came back I am sure
ANTIFA would kill him.........
Also had our local Bozo but I refused to watch him. He scared the
crap out of me !

73 Zeno
LFOD !
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Old 10-21-2017, 05:42 PM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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One of my first TV memories was the space program and the moon landing. We were all glued to the TV for that. I lived in a backwoods so they were still playing Kukala, Fran and Ollie and all kinds of old reruns. We only had one station that came in well and one that came in poorly. Sometimes when propagation was right we would get a third. Dad was always too cheap to buy good sets or an antenna. I got hold of a small B&W TV and set up my own antenna made from an old antenna and some magazine article. It worked much better than Dad's so I was immediately ordered to connect it to the family set. Never shoulda said anything but I just had to boast. I made another. We didn't get a color set until we inherited my grandparent's in the early 80's.

I actually listened to more radio than watching TV anyway. More programming and stations, lots of good SW in those days.
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Old 10-21-2017, 07:53 PM
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As a young child, we had two sets. The upstairs TV was the one my parents bought when they got married, a 21" GE black and white in a metal cabinet. My brother and I watched cartoons and other shows, and never really gave it a thought that it was only monochrome.

We had an RCA console downstairs that was color, but were not allowed to watch it until my father got home from work and would "supervise". At that time, it was a very expensive TV, and not for a childs hands.

My grandparents had a Zenith 4-tube hybrid portable, which I recall vividly. Unlike my parents, they had no "rules" concerning kids and color TV. I remember my grandfather bringing in his tool box one Saturday afternoon (I may have been around 6 years old) and taking the back off the Zenith just so I could see what was inside. As a child, I was always wanting to take things apart and see what made them work, and my grandfather was always more than happy to assist. After getting a good look at the inside of that old Zenith, I decided I was going to be a television repairman when I grew up, and I did. If the bottom had not dropped out of the repair industry in the late 1990's, I'd still be in the repair business today.

Last edited by davet753; 10-21-2017 at 07:58 PM.
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Old 10-21-2017, 08:20 PM
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I Fussed, whined,& held my breath in order to hopefully score a brand spankin' NEW Sony 5-303W. I THINK got it Xmas 1962. It "Lived" til summer 1968. I remember Apollo 11- It was one of the hottest, stiflingly humid summers we'd had up till then. NO central AC then.... Just a ginormous Fedders window unit in my parents' bedroom.. When it would go into its cooling cycle, it would shake the entire house. Now a days,I wonder how we stood it..But we thought we were ASBSOLUTELY "Shittin' in High Cotton", w/just "The Fedderation"..
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Old 10-21-2017, 10:46 PM
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Watching Walter Cronkite on the family room B/W Sears Silvertone TV set in the late 1960's .More likely I watch the moon walk on that same set.Around 1971 or 1972 My parents picked up a Motorola Quasar color set to replace the Silvertone. I wish I remember the model number of the Silvertone set was.I got the Motorola/ Quasar set here. BTW I wonder how Mr Cronkite feels about todays news business.
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Old 10-21-2017, 10:47 PM
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Saw great 1970's and 1980's TV on the Motorola/ Quasar set.Too many to remember all and list them here.
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Old 10-22-2017, 10:49 AM
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One great memory is watching "Lost In Space" reruns in the early '70's before dinner. We had a peach and white 1960 Admiral portable briefcase TV on one of those brass stands with the magazine rack underneath. Another at that same time was The Magic Garden, Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings, the Laurel and Hardy and Three Stooges hours, and, here in the NY metro-area, the "4:30 movie", which in the '70's, consisted of the oddest B-"grindhouse" horror movies. Movies like "Tourist Trap", "Just Before Dawn", and "Race With The Devil" scared the heck out of me!
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Old 10-22-2017, 12:16 PM
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etype2 etype2 is offline
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From my “MEMORIES OF A SELF PROCLAIMED TV JUNKIE”

My father bought our first television in 1954. I was 7 at the time and remember that it was an upright Travler black and white console. Excitedly on Saturday mornings, I planned the entire morning viewing schedule which started with cartoons. Then came The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickcock, (do you remember the raspy throated sidekick, Jingles, played by Andy Devine?), The Lone Ranger, Fury, Sky King, and closing with Mister Wizard. We only had 3 channels back then, and we had to switch to another channel to catch each show. I sat on the carpeted floor enthralled in front of the tube and watched these shows just about every Saturday morning. As a kid, I would set up the “TV dinner tray” (ours was the red/pink roses on black background) and eat my breakfast watching these shows, I did not want to miss a thing.

I saw my first color show in 1956 at my Uncle’s house. We were invited over just to watch his new color television. It was a big deal, we had dinner and then we all sat around the set and he turned it on. It was a drama late at night and the experience was magical. I loved watching television as a kid and now to see it in color was amazing. My parents could not afford a color set and when Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, the color specials, or the Rose Parade was on, I felt left out.
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Old 10-22-2017, 10:17 PM
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The first TV I remember was my parents GE color console, KE chassis, just a little older than me (I'm a '72 model!) Earliest TV watching memories: my mother trying to tune in the PBS affiliate so I could watch Sesame Street or maybe Mister Rogers; it was snowy but she managed it. I remember a news anchor on WBAL who looked a little like my pediatrician. For some reason the newsman scared me (though my doctor didn't). And for some reason I have very clear memories of a scene from the show "Holmes & Yoyo" where they use Yoyo to jump-start an elevator. I would have been about 5 years old.

I loved sitting on the floor in front of the GE, my toes against the base of the cabinet. During commercials I would often turn the volume down & press my ear against the side of the cabinet to listen to the warm hum from within. Sometimes I'd get a peak in the holes in the back & see that neat glow. Yep, a weird kid...I haven't changed much!
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Old 10-23-2017, 06:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bgadow View Post
The first TV I remember was my parents GE color console, KE chassis.
Like Bryan, that was our first color TV too, a GE 21" KE chassis tabletop on a cart, circa 1969. Complete with Alliance Tenna Rotor. Unlike Bryan, I'm a 1958 model, so I remember TV all the way back to about 1962 or 63.

My first TV memories are sitting on the couch watching Amos & Andy and the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour on my parents' 27" B&W Philco consolette, a 1955 model. Specifically the episode where Fred MacMurray gets stuck up in tar in a 1957 T-Bird. That chase scene at the end is a masterpiece, where they all race to get the uranium discovery claimed, and I was a car nut at a very early age and that scene was memorable.

I have B&W Polaroids of me and my sister sitting next to that same TV during John F. Kennedy's funeral procession. It was replaced with a GE 19" portable and then with the 21" color TV. My parents were frugal and never bought a console version of anything.

Like Bryan, I remember looking inside the back of that GE color TV and seeing all the glowing Compactrons inside. It lasted a long time and I eventually fixed it several times before it was replaced by a cable-ready 1988 Magnavox solid state with remote. I still have the old GE in my living room. It needs some more work.

Dad always ruled the TV viewing as long as he was in front of the TV. So we always got to see what dad wanted to see. We did have two little B&W GE portables elsewhere in the house, and a little Westinghouse B&W portable too. I kept the Westinghouse in my bedroom and it worked a long, long time.

I also remember watching Dark Shadows on that GE since we could finally get Charlotte's UHF station, channel 18, with the outside antenna. It wasn't carried on the local ABC station. Dark Shadows came on after school was out and watching it felt a bit like forbidden fruit. Both my younger sister and I watched it and loved how different it was. It didn't warp our minds. Or I don't think it did.

As a young child I also watched Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room a lot. Sometimes I saw local shows called The Old Rebel and Bob Gordon Theatre and Fred Kirby and the Little Rascals. Mornings we would watch Arthur Smith and The Good Morning Show before going to school.
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Old 10-23-2017, 03:26 PM
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Up here in mid Canada we had no TV whatsoever till 52-53 B & W that is.My Father bought a 21" Viking at Eaton's 6 months before we got any programming. Got use to watching the Indian Test Pattern for 3 months until some programs were featured here and there!Remember Tommy Dorsey hour then some Duffy's Tavern(From England)Amos & Andy,The Howdy Doody Show and eventually Disneyland.Good times back then and later some real good Comedy like The Shows Of Shows with Sid Cesar
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Old 10-23-2017, 07:34 PM
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The little Sony- I could ALMOST pick it up w/ONE hand after I got it. There was a family of Girls who lived up the street from me. There was one my age, the older ones sorta had "Guard Dog" duty over the rest of us. My Dad had the guys at his plant make up for me a ginormous chest that had double doors on the front. I'd wake up real early, & would grab the Sony get in the Chest, & see what stations I could pick up w/just "Rabbit Ears". Nothing really great, the best I could do, generally, was WSPA in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The BEST TV dxing I ever did was in the 80s-Me & a bud loved "Hill Street Blues" & "St Elsewhere", I hada JVC CX-500 4.5" color set,AM/FM, & cassette, we'd load up the JVC, some "Adult Beverages" for Us, head up to the City Dump, which was at the top of this mountain/big hill. You could get all kinds of stations up there, lots of 'em that weren't on the CATV system. You generally had yr choice of 2 or 3network feed stations, a gaggle of PBS stuff,& new UHF stations that were just then making their debuts...Weirdest thing was one night we went up there,& there was one mountain ridge that was ALL lit up-Kinda freaky. I went by the police station & they told me it was part of the DEW line-Something to do w/ the Air Force. Drat ! I was hoping I'd just seen the next "Area 51" or something.
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