Magnavox school TV system

[radiotvnut]

In late-'89, they started installing the 19" Magnavox "channel one" TV's in all the local schools. I believe the deal was that the company that produced "channel one" would provide the equipment and install it, in exchange for the school showing the daily 12 minute program.

The ones we had were in a grey plastic case and had the larger square buttons. I never actually saw the inside of one; but, I know that they were specially designed commercial grade sets. The ones we had only had an AC power cord and a single 75 ohm coax connector. For channel one, they'd send a signal down the cable line to turn on the set and when the program was over, they'd send another signal to turn off the set. There was also a set-up in the library, where a tape could be played to any particular room, at any given time (this set-up pretty much did away with the old big TV's on the roll-around carts). Before the "channel one" sets, they had 23" and 25" TV's on roll-around carts. Some of the TV's were tube-type RCA's that had jack panels on the back. The other TV's were newer 25" Zenith's with a pull-on/volume control and pushbutton keypad with green LED channel display. In Elementary school, most everything was on 3/4" U-Matic format. When I was in the 4th or 5th grade, the school finally got some VHS players.

On the channel one sets, I don't recall ever seeing a remote; but, they were probably remote controllable. I think they either said "total control system" or "digital control system" on the control panel (it's been many years and I don't fully remember).

From what I'm told, a lot of those Magnavox "Channel One" TV's are still mounted to the walls; but, they are not used much.

When I was in school, we'd usually use the "channel one" time to talk and cut up; but, we had one English teacher who would unplug the set, if 100% of the class was not paying attention to it. We didn't want to do classwork; so, we learned to pay attention to the TV.