Quote:
Originally posted by Jeffhs
I don't know when TV actually took off here or where I formerly lived. However, your post got me to thinking. I live in a small town 30 miles from Cleveland, near Lake Erie. We have had cable here for years (as long as I've been here and longer than that), but I often wonder how folks got along without it back in the '50s and early '60s.
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This is a good point. How did people "out in the sticks" watch tV?
My neighbor (she's 93) told me they were one of the first in the neighborhood to have television in the early 50's. They had a 60 ft. antenna that had to pull in stations from Houston and Galveston... 90 miles away. In most cases, you could only watch television during the evening hours. But in those days, it was all people had time for. Being that work hours at the job and "housework" for wives took up most of the day, TV was not something to sit in front of till the evening.
She says, "We weren't glued to the television then like we are now, and many times, watching TV in the evening wasn't really worth it because it wasn't always clear. We weren't able to get cable till many years later. For the money people had to spend to have television, it really wasn't worth it until our local stations came about."
That got me to wondering when our local Beaumont/Port Arthur stations started broadcasting. Here is what I found....
Channel 6 (CBS) 1955
Channel 4 (NBC) 1957
Channel 12 (ABC) 1961
Anyone here that had television before that needed tall antennas, fresh tubes in the tuner, and lots of patience!