Consumers romance with early color

[oldtvman]

I look at some of these color sets on ebay such as the Westinghouse and Sylvania currently listed, and remember back when they were new. Those sets brought joy and excitement to the people who purchased them. I don't know of any product since that has generated such a romance with the public. Color burned the trail and then was followed by the vcr, cd, dvd and hdtv, but to me none of these add-ons hold a candle to seeing these early beauties in action.

[sampson159]

i remember the whole family sitting around the roundie and waiting for something to come on-gunsmoke,bonanza,lucy,etc. it was family time. not so anymore. color tv was your entertainment.you looked forward the nights fare.my favorites were not in color. cheyenne,the fugitive,outer limits,twilight zone. those were the good days.

[Sandy G]

Remember "The following program is brought to you In Living Color on NBC.." the flutey music & the peacock ? And how the early color shows sometimes had lots of exaggerated colors, just for the hell of it ? Remember "Lost in Space" & how colorful the Robinsons' costumes were ?

[ohohyodafarted]

How well I remember those days. I long for them too. I was in my late teens at the time my parents bought a 21" Zenith Roundie. That was 1965. Still have the set, and one day I am going to get it running again.

Prior to when my folks got our set, my younger brother and I would go down the block to the home of one of our buddies. His dad was a dentist and they already had a 21" Admiral roundie. On sunday night we would go to their home 3 doors down and watch Disney and Bonanza. I think our parents figured they better keep up with the Jones down the block so it wasn't long before mom and dad bought the Zenith for our family.

In the beginning we kept a 21" Philco B&W set right next to the color set. We only turned the color set on when there was a color broadcast. We were fortunate in that Milwaukee was a pioneer in Color. The NBC affiliate WTMJ chanel 4 was the 7th station in the country to have color equipment. So chanel 4 had in house local color equipment and all the local programs were in color even in 1965. So the evening news at 6 and 10 and other locally originated programs were in addition to the network color shows.

Before long the Philco B&W was retired and we only watched the Zenith color set. Being an electronic tinkerer by nature, I was always tinkering with the convergence and tweeking the controls to achieve a perfect picture. That set had a fantastic picture, and convergence was spot on.

But I digress.... I think times have changed so much that even the most revolutinary new product would have a hard time making a major impact on our way of life the way color did back in the 50's and 60's. And family is not what it used to be either. Kids don't have the same kind of connection with parents and family as they did when I was growing up. I can't even fathom what it would be like to raise kids today. So many negative forces at work in society that interfere with good family values. And the programs on tv are so lacking in good old fashioned family values today it's no wonder that tv is not the kind of thing that we remember so fondly.

Glad I am so old. The good years are long gone; at least for me, so I like to live in my old memories of what used to be. One of the old AM radio stations (WOKY 920) that I listened to in the late 50's and through the 60's has reseruected it's old top 40 format and are playing all the tunes from my high school days. I think many other people in my age group long for those days too. I am now listening to the old AM station again and remembering all the fun I had as a teenager.

[cbenham]

In 1965, I got two junker CTC-5s, one with a shorted 21AXP22 and the other with a bad flyback. I took the good chassis and mated it with the good CRT and the good mahogany cabinet, and gave the left over pieces to a friend.

After spending a week on my set converging it and tuning it up, it looked really great. It was a table model set but I found a matching mahogany swivel base and surprised my dad with a $25 dollar color set. His first remarks were the sets never looked this good in the store, or he would have bought one.

Don't know what it is about a round tube color set, but I still prefer watching
on one of those instead of a set with corners in the picture.

I have another CTC5 and plan to do a really good restoration on it, but now I need another mahogany swivel base, so if anybody has an extra, let me know. Cliff

[bozey45]

I too remember going to a friend's house in the 7th grade in 1957 or 1958 who lived in a waterfront house in St. Petersburg south of downtown. They had a RCA color roundie (probably a CTC-5 or maybe its predecessor). I Remember the safety glass in front of the tube and it was a thrill to see that peacock for the first time in color then a program called Shirley Temple's Storybook and another time over there a Red Skelton program in color on CBS no less. I remember I got real close to the screen the first time I was there staring at the phosphors---my friend thought I was a nut. Those were the days allright. Hi Cbenham, remember me from Big13???