I grew up in a part of the UP of Michigan where only one television network, from Green Bay, would come in clearly, and only three would come in at all. One of the television stations that wouldn't come in clearly ordinarily would boost their signal after 11:00 pm on Fridays and Saturdays when everyone else went off the air. Mostly, the television reception was bad. Because of this, probably, most people (including my parents) didn't bother buying a television until sometime in the 1960s. My cousin's parents had television before that, and they lived across the field from us, so I would watch TV there sometimes but the clarity was so bad that it was hard to tell the Cowboys from the Indians, so I wasn't so much into it. When we got a television, it was black-and-white. Because I wasn't exposed to a lot of television as a child, I have been able to stream a bunch of old movies and television series that I can watch for the first time. After high school, when I moved to California, of course, there were a lot of options available as far as television programming, so I bought a color television. I didn't like it. The color seemed to flicker or flash on the screen in a way that was distracting, so I brought it back and exchanged it for a black-and-white television set. It was a tiny one. When it came time to buy another television, I bought a color set. I think my son was insisting on that. Either the technology had improved or I was able to ignore the flickering, so I liked it. This would have been in the mid-1970s.
Don't really remember. But, do remember either, on weekends, watching Lawrence Welk or doing something in my bedroom. My step-dad always, and I mean "always", had control of the tv. But, on Saturday mornings, if I was spending the weekend with my cousins, cartoons were always turned on!
I don't remember exactly when, but my parents bought a huge "console" TV when I was a teenager. I still remember the big outside antennas on everyone's roof back then.
We didn’t have a television when i was growing up until after I was a teenager, so I never watched any of the morning cartoons on weekends or anything that younger kids my age would have watched. Our television when we did get one , was a black and white one. i remember watching programs like Bonanza and The Rebal (Johnny Yuma), and a few other westerns. Mom and dad enjoyed Ed Sullivan , Lawrence Welk, and all of those kinds of live entertainment. Television was only on in the evenings , usually after dinner. My folks didn’t get a color television until after I was grown up, married, and had children. Then, they got one of the large console style televisions, and that lasted them the rest of their life. We didn’t have television for most of my younger married life because my first husband worked line construction, and we had to be able to pack up the station wagon and move from job to job for many years. So, my first color television would have probably been sometime in the 1970’s, when my kids started school, and we could not just pack up and move easily.
Us too Yvonne, adult life was hard till I met hubby. I liked reading a lot while kids were in school. So I didn't miss tv much. We never were into pro sports, but he did like tv after work sometimes.
When we got ours not all the shows were in color. Just a few. The color was not very good as I recall, and not as crisp as the black and white shows. Certainly not worth choosing the color shows just because they were in color. Gradually they all became color. I guess they got better at broadcasting it.
Do you remember the Good Night,Good Luck Murrows? He knew after him and his cronies got thru with us we were going to need all the luck we could get. All our parents thought he was the cats meow of the news.
Seems like I recall Edward R. Murrow, but I don't remember the day-to-day except for the evening news with Walter. I do remember the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and the Kennedy assassination coverage even though I was a kid; I mostly remember that because our family went over to my uncle's house and it was so somber... everyone gathered in the den glued to the TV. Seems that even as children we realized the gravity of that event.
My first color TV, I bought from a fancy hotel that was replacing all their tvs. I paid $50 for it. It was huuuuge and weighed a ton. We had just got cable in our neighborhood and we were so excited. Cable AND a color tv!!!TV!!!! What more could you ask out of life? But wait! Fate intervened. We had had it about a month before disaster struck. I had a large glass of iced tea on top of the TV and promptly knocked it over. It all poured down into the grille covering what I think was called the "boot" in the back. Flash! Sizzle!! Crackle!!! The picture disappeared. I quickly unplugged the TV. Mourning ensued. We let it sit for days with a fan blowing at the boot and then cautiously turned it on. The picture appeared but, alas, black-and-white only. Sigh. OK, we're back to basics. One day, a week or two later, I thought I saw a smidgen of color on the screen. Then a little more, and more... within a few days, THE COLOR WAS BACK! and stayed! Joy once again reigned in my house. We had that set for years and it never gave us any problems again. Of course, I never sat a glass of iced tea on top of it again, either.
I lived in suburban New York as a young child, and we had 13 channels of TV on our television when we first acquired it in 1949. Dad was a mechanical engineer, and I recall a hurricane going through and we had the only antenna still standing due to his guying abilities. At age 7, we moved to rural Pennsylvania where the only way to receive a signal was by the primitive cable television system that had an antenna on a mountain top. We got our first color TV in 1962, but it was a pain with always adjusting the color, tint, etc.
My father managed Murphy stores, and he won a Prestone AntiFreeze sales contest through the store he was running after my parents split up. We got a big console Sylvania color TV and he got a small portable color TV for his mobile home. This was probably 1967 or so. Before then we had a 3 color transparent overlay you would put on the b&w screen: -Blue across the top to simulate the sky -Green on the bottom to simulate grass -Tan in the middle I guess it was only good for for simulating western deserts. Closeups were the stuff of Picasso on acid.
Our neighbor's father did a bunch of odd jobs, like many country folk do. He was "caretaker" for Eric Sevareid's small country place out in Marshall Virginia (50 miles west of DC) where she grew up and her family lived...I imagine he just kept the field cut. I've fished in Eric's pond (he was not around at the time.) His bluegill were tiny.