Me and TV

[susandennis]

I was born in 1949 to a family who got one of the first TV's. It was a huge wooden number with a teensy weensy screen. The was programming only at certain times of the day - the rest of the time all you got was a test pattern.

I watched John Nagy Learn To Draw and I had the 'home' kit. Never did learn to draw but I swear the gum eraser that came with the kit was a forerunner to silly putty which still fascinates me.

I watched Industry on Parade where they went into factories and show you how stuff got manufactured.

I watched Winky Dink where a little stick figure drew on the screen. You could get a home kit that included plastic to put on the TV and crayons so you could follow along with Winky. Like every other child, I quickly lost the plastic. Probably the difficulty of getting crayon off the screen led to the cancellation of that gem.

I watched Pinky Lee and saw him have a heart attack on the air - ya gotta love live TV.

Howdy Doody, Romper Room, and all the cowboy shows. Hey, Cisco!!!!

When my dad got promoted, his customers got together and gave us a color TV - we had the first one in the neighborhood. The only shows in color were Disney's Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza and the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. We were each allowed to invite a friend once a month to watch color TV. It gave me decent 'hood value.

In 1978, I had heard of VCR's but didn't pay attention. Until, one day on the way home from work, I stopped by a friend of my husband's house to drop something off. When I walked in she was watching 'All My Children' which aired at 1 p.m. and this was at 6. I totally got it in a flash and had one of my own by the weekend.

I paid $500 for that beta max. The remote control was not wireless.

I've never bought into the TV is Trash movement. I've always loved it as much as I do today. Thanks to technology, I can watch more of what I want when I want to watch it. I rarely watch 'live' TV. The evening news sometimes and baseball games are about it. The rest is TiVo'd or VCR'd.

At one point I had 2 VCR's hooked to the living room TV and 3 to the bedroom TV with a complicated systems of switch boxes to run them all. TiVo helped that situation a great deal. Now I have TiVo and 1 VCR on the living room TV and a VCR on the bedroom TV. This works pretty well if I plan.

And my planning for this new season is done... Here's where you collect the evidence that I am totally nuts.

Yellow is TiVo, green is one VCR and salmon is the other. As you can see we have a bit of a situation on Tuesdays and one on Fridays. Past history says that except for maybe 1 night or 2, enough shows will get cancelled so that all I need is TiVo.

I'm ready... Let the season begin!

Comments

[mickeytor.livejournal.com]

Susan ... are you familiar with www.tvparty.com ? Great site about television history -- and most of those children's shows you talk about are on there ... with clips!

[susandennis]

What a trip! I had never seen that site before and the clips were wonderful! What in the world was so compelling about that stuff? The clip from Winky Dink is hilarious. That girl is the only child in the world that still has her plastic!

Thanks so much for the tip!

[melodysk.livejournal.com]

I am So with you on the TV thing..I love TV. I was born in 1955 but spent a lot of time abroad and didn't get to see TV until 1963 ..saw the news about JFK on UK TV ....then watched Star Trek before the Ukians did as they showed it in Singapore where we lived for a while.

Didnt get to see colour TV until the learly 80s I suppose ..but we did get a VCR quite early and also satelite

I love the Autumn listings here in the UK but there is one HUGE drawback ..our series (except for soaps and casualty) are SOOOO damned short. Sometimes 6 episodes and BANG! Nothing else :( It is so disappointing...plus they change the listing all the time to pop in a damned fottball game GRRRR

[susandennis]

Your system of series is really mean. About the time you get bonded to a show, it's over. That's just not right - especially with the good stuff you get. And interupting regular schedules for sports is wrong. Period.

[susandennis]

ohmygod... A nagy-ite! I was such a loser at the drawing but I loved the kit to death - that pad of newsprint and the special pencils. Wonder what happened to old John.

You know... K of Q is kind of growing on me. They are doing reruns here every night at 6 so I may just add it to the fold... Jerry Meara makes my teeth grind but maybe I can overlook that.

[susandennis]

You are brilliant..I don't think I could have ever figured out that it's Gnagy! That Learn To Draw kit dosen't look like mine did. You don't suppose they changed the design sometime in the last 50 years do you? But the list of contents is exacly as I remembered it. What a find. Thanks!

[edbook.livejournal.com]

wow, how can you remember all that? I do remember some about our first tv... it was loaned to us by our neighbor who was a tv repairman (he knew we'd buy one and he'd lend this one to someone else).. it was about '52 and there was one station KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA. A windstorm blew down their antenna and so the public television station switched from transmitting on UHF to transmitting on VHF to take over their spot and most of their programming... they were able to bring some of their own programming to the VHF bigtime... I remember watching a program that had a young Fred Rogers on it as an assistant... who took us on a trolley ride to the land of.... that's how Mr Rogers got his break... I've been a fan of his my whole life...

I had the Winkie Dink crayons and film to put on our screen too... I remember it making our tv into a color one with the stripes of color on it.

I thought John Nagy was a local Pittsburgh program... and my mother bought his kit but gave it to us kids after she decided she couldn't do anything artistic and took up sewing...

I remember when I bought my first color tv... it was when I was at a video store looking at the new invention: VCR I was hooked and bought a VCR for about $1100 (a lot of overtime $ saved up... the salesman threw in a 19" color tv with it because our b/w tv had no connection for the VCR.

thanks for the memories...

Peace

[susandennis]

Your memories are nothing to sneeze at either! I had totally forgotten about UHF and VHF. But I do remember the first time I heard about cable. It was in the mid-60's. We had a house in the moutains of North Carolina. You could get about 1 channel and it had bad shadows. Our next door neighbor was putting in the first cable tv system. They had 6 very clear channels... lesson learned - cable good.

[joyofmacs.livejournal.com]

I love TV, too.

I can remember sitting with my sister, our tv snacks laid out before us, while we watched Roller Derby. The Bombers. What women they were.

Great post. BRAVO

[susandennis]

I totally forgot about Roller Derby! What a riot! TV snacks... Charles Chips... in the can.