Television...when did you first have it in your life

I do remember that first TV being a tube type Zenith which had the repair man out for most of my childhood. Around 1980 Dad bought another Zenith, but was a solid state. It had the weirdest quirk that it would blink and go black after a few hours. One would have to do the Fonzie move on it or jump up and land hard on the floor and it would flash and turn off, then come back on just fine for another two hours. It went in for repairs a dozen times or more for that issue, they never could figure out what was causing it. It worked that way up until the late 90's when they sold the house.

I can't say for sure, but the first one was a round like tube and it was made by Phillips. That was in the mid 50's. I was pretty young then and the only reason I remember it so well is it was stuck in the garage for a long time after it was replaced by some behemoth in a cabinet. The cabinet was huge but the screen was probably only about a 20" B&W. I remember the first show I saw in color was at a friend's house who had just bought a color set. That first show was a Christmas special on Bonanza that had leprechauns on it. That's all I remember about it.

Around 1962 or so, when I was 3 {according to folklore}, don't recall it or ever hearing any stories, but, I do remember seeing color TV at my Aunt & Uncles home in the late 60's-early 70's IIRC. They had the standard black & white set, and bought one of those glass screen thingies, that when placed in front of the tv screen, gave an illusion/optical effect of watching in color, well 3 colors Lol.

We had TV in the house since before I was born, a B&W set, the brand of which I can't recall. During the late '60s, we'd go to my Grandpa's house on Sundays because he had a color TV. We'd watch Bonanza and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. We got our first color set around 1969 or 1970, I think. For my entire youth and into adulthood, I only had access to 4 channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS). One of the bonuses to touring with the band in the early '80s was staying in motels that had cable TV, so we could watch that newfangled network, MTV. (Back when MTV was actually music television.) I didn't have cable TV (and 200 channels of nothing to watch) in my house until my first marriage several years later.

These days I very seldom watch any TV. LOML has her TV on a lot as background when she's doing other stuff.

OH THANK YOU ALL FOR THE GREAT MEMORIES!!! Each memory brought back scads of other memories. I really got a crack-up about the 3" TV that Joe Shanklin had. I mean, when you got 5 or 6 people watching it we were so close to each other it was almost X rated. When Joe purchased a 5 inch screen it looked huge. And then later when he got a 7 inch it looked like CinaMax.

Myrna and I still did not have a TV. I had managed, with lots of Myrna's help, to get out of school with the degree I went after and NO student loan debts. We spent several very thin money years after that but we were way better off than those with debt.


Thank's again and Enjoy,
JimB

Vaughn McMillan said:

For my entire youth and into adulthood, I only had access to 4 channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS). One of the bonuses to touring with the band in the early '80s was staying in motels that had cable TV, so we could watch that newfangled network, MTV

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One thing about living in Barstow is that we did have cable...we had to. Antennas wouldn't work out in the desert like they did in LA. I guess us desert rats were just ahead of our time.

Remember the Million Dollar Movie? Where they would play the same movie, over and over and over for a week? I probably watched each one 3-4 times

OK I remember sitting around the radio and listening to "The Shadow" and other things then one day my dad got a TV. As I recall the tube was round and it ran so hot that my Dad made a large box fan that he put behind the set to blow air over the tubes to make them last longer. We Had a magic box on that had a large dial on it and you could use it to point the antenna at different stations.When I was 9 we moved from Illinois to California and there the TV didn't need to have a box to turn the antenna so we got a few more stations. I also remember one of my chores was to go down to the local grocery store with the tubes and test them in order to keep the set working. Some how the knob broke for the channel changer but a pair of pliers worked just fine as long as you were careful. If you somehow missed the shaft the TV would give you a shock since the pliers didn't have an insulated handle. Yup I remember watching Buster Brown, Andy Devine, Roy Rodger, Sky King The Lone Rnger, later on Mickey Mouse Club. OK now you know I am old as dirt.

It looked like this one...