Eldergays, Tell Us About Life with 3 TV Channels

Unless you are ancient, there were at least one or two local channels. And then PBS channels in the 1960s started most places.

PBS is boring though! Was it always?

What was on ABC?

Try CBC, CTV and the local channel. All grainy AMD the bunny ears didn't ever help.

You would get the national anthem before the static.

All three were pretty similar. CBS was a little older more staid. ABC had more movies? NBC was the top in my mind for all the power house sitcoms of the 1980s.

this horserace video gives an idea of the most popular of the Big Three tv shows. Only starts in 1986 though unfortunately

And black and white!

In my hometown we didn't have around-the-clock TV until about 1976 or 1977, and then only on weekends.

As a kid, I thought the people on TV could see me like I could see them, so I would change my clothes in front of the living room TV until mother stopped me.

We had three main networks and no remote control, so whatever channel we landed on, we pretty much stayed with for the rest of the night.

We only had two: a local NBC affiliate, and Maryland Public Television (PBS) which was apparently better than WVPT. I watched more PBS than NBC, and it was because of MPT that I came to know Doctor Who, and all kinds of British comedy...everything from "The Good Life (or "Good Neighbors"), and "Keeping Up Appearances" to "The Last Of The Summer Wine", "The Vicar of Dibley", "Red Dwarf", and "Are You Being Served?".

The only time I resented not having better reception, was the one night a year "The Wizard Of Oz" played on CBS, which we typically couldn't get. All the way into college, friends and family would call to remind me that it was going to be on. I even had teachers in high school remind me ahead of time. It had been out on VHS for more than a decade, but it just wasn't as special.

I’ve always been partial to ABC which had the best programming. CBS was always grainy & snowy & I thought their shows were more adult-oriented.

Prime ABC: Soap, Three’s Company, Dynasty, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, all those after school &weekend specials (Miss Switch is a Witch was my fave). Oh, and Charlie’s Angels, Hart to Hart….

R7 It’s interesting how it went from nothing but family sitcoms to nothing but drama / crime by the 2000s.

I watched Fox, The WB and ABC the most frequently. I loved all of the silly WB shows.

R13 Oh no so CBS was grainy.

I totally forgot about grainy channels. As a kid in the 90’s I do remember some channels being grainy. It was more the channels towards the end. Like I think the remote could go to channel 99 and there were a few channels at the end in the 80’s or 90’s that were Pay Per View but after like the TV Guide channel, everything was just static. But the channels at the end were always snowy and grainy.

Totally forgot about that!

R12 Movie nights

NBC in the 70’s

When I was a kid, we had two channels, NBC and CBS. Fortunately, one of them aired Dark Shadows, even though DS was an ABC show.

I remember how excited I was for the fall season to see the new network shows, as well as the return of old favorites. And the theatrical movies the networks had purchased for airing on tv.

CBS had the best shows, like Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, and later it had All in the Family and all that.

We only had two channels as well until 1970 when an ABC affiliate signed on.

Our NBC and CBS channels ran popular ABC shows by special arrangement up until that time.

Commercials

There were many more channels than 3 in NYC in the 70s. & there was cable that never seemed to show anything very interesting.

I liked Channel 5.

These are awful!

Holmes & YoYo Mr. T & Tina Ball Four The Tony Randall Show Spencer’s Pilots

Lol

We watched Jesshica Shavitchhh.

I watched whatever I wanted as a kid but when Peyton Place came on, the tv belonged to my mother. It was not open to debate.

Once the stations stopped going dark after midnight, a lot of them just bought up old movie packages and ran them with names like "Movies Till Dawn."

They were presented atrociously, with breaks every 10 minutes or so even when a character was mid-sentence. Sometimes the broadcaster wouldn't even stop the film so after three minutes of commercials the movie itself had hopped ahead three minutes.

Almost all the advertisers were car dealers.

R1 is correct. There were also one or two UHF channels.

And yes,OP, many would go off the air at a certain time, very late at night. R5 is right, there would be a national anthem, then static or a test pattern like below,.

I was the channel changer.

I've said this here before: I only got a local NBC affiliate, & a PBS station. I was fine with that (PBS introduced me to British comedy and Dr. WHO), but when "The Wizard Of Oz" was broadcast once a year on CBS, I tried like heck to get the antenna to make it work.

Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes, I spent the night at the homes of friends or family to watch it.

Your question depends on what time period you're referring to--'50s? '60s? '70s? And how many channels you had access to and whether they went off the air at night also depended on the size of the TV market you lived in. Smaller markets may only have had two local stations. Sometimes they served as affiliates for two of the major networks.

PBS didn't exist until the late '60s. Before that there was National Educational Television. Large cities had one of their affiliates, as well as one or two independent stations. These were pretty much all VHF (2-13) channels until UHF expanded in the mid- to late '60s.

When I was a kid, commercials were on at fifteen minute intervals. Only four breaks in a one hour show and they were shorter.

In NY in the 70s we had the three major networks plus local stations WNEW 5 (now Fox), WOR 9 (now WB) and WPIX 11 plus two PBS channels from NYC and Long Island. Kids shows were on 5, 9, 11 in the early morning and late afternoon. ABC had the occasional After School Special and Monday Night Movie. I remember watching Saturday matinee movies but not sure which channel(s).

I don’t remember ever feeling like there was nothing to watch and didn’t have cable until 1984.

There wasn’t too much of a fight over the TV. father was too exhausted to watch TV except for Saturday and Sunday nights. Saturday night in the mid-1970s was generally MTM, etc. Sunday I think they watched Murder She Wrote. In the late 70s I would go to my friend’s house next door to mine on Saturday nights because they watched The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s my mother and I went to the movies almost every Monday night for a few years. Tuesday night was Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, Soap. Wednesday was Charlie’s Angels, then Dynasty appeared. Thursday Knots. Friday Dallas. We got HBO and the Movie Channel and MTV in the early 80s and the dynamic changed.

I watched more TV then then I do now!

It was the same as before computers, when stuff hasn't happened yet it's hard to miss it. As a kid I was horrified that my parents only had radio, but as an adult I find radio much preferable to TV. You can listen while doing other things, where TV demands all of your attention. The Radio programs where very creative with sound effects. I think I would have liked the old programs

See how this lovely lady was able to take a bath and do a crossword puzzle while electrocuting herself?

When did radio shows stop?

^ The day after this started...

We had more than 3, whippersnappers. WABC, WNBC, WCBS, WPIX, WNET, WWOR, WNEW, WCAU, WHYY, WFIL, WPVI, AND KYW.

Only the New York City area and the Los Angeles areas had SEVEN channels. I grew up in a suburb of NYC and we had the 7 channels . There was no mute button on our tv nor did we have a remote. It was a PAIN IN THE ASS to get up and walk all the way over to the tv to change the channel in the 1970's. Commercials were less TORTURE in those days so they were far less difficult to endure- which we did because there was no mute button because there was no remote control. In the 1970's there were televisions with remote controls but those were very expensive and few people had them.

r38 Radio shows (other than news/talk) started to peter out in the '50s and were pretty much gone by the end of the decade.

Things were very simple then.

Look at this TV and how it was on the floor level!

R28- "Once the stations stopped going dark after midnight, a lot of them just bought up old movie packages and ran them with names like "Movies Till Dawn."

Hammer horror movies! I lived for this!

@r41, My grandparents had a remote in the 60s

This is how it was in the '50s and '60s:

In San Francisco/Oakland we had KTVU-2 (independent), KRON-4 (NBC-owned by the SF Chronicle), KPIX-5 (Westinghouse), KGO-7 (ABC owned and operated), and KQED-9 (NET/PBS). There was also KNTV-11 in San Jose which you could pick up with the right antenna. It was also mostly an ABC affiliate.

In Sacramento we had KCRA-3 (NBC), KVIE-6 (NET/PBS), KXTV-10 (CBS), and KOVR-13 (ABC). I don't think there was an independent station until UHF channel 40 came online.

Notice how there's no duplication of channel numbers between the SF and Sacto stations? That's because they are close enough together that the signals would interfere with each other. Same goes for the DC and Baltimore markets: DC had 4, 7, and 9 as the three network affiliates; Baltimore had 2, 11, and 13.

R17 I loved those days. I was born in '66 so the '70s were impressionable TV years. When we went to school, everyone watched the same stuff. Hey did you see "Bionic Man" or did you watch "Happy Days"? It felt like a shared experience. And the movies felt like special events in a way. No rewinding or pausing or second chances until maybe summer reruns. We made popcorn we were so excited about a TV movie. I miss that stuff.

I was a kid in 1970s Chicago. We had the main three and a couple uhf channels that didn't come in very well. The TV went off for the night with the national anthem around midnight . The uhf channels (on the top dial, TVs had number dials back then) would play all night but I can't remember what was on. Ours never came in well. My dad was cheap, raised during the depression, so we always had old Tvs . Fox didn't come out until I was hitting about 21 or so. I watched their Sunday night lineup faithfully in the 90s.

For as long as I can remember, we had the three networks and PBS on two stations due to being near two university stations. They played a lot of the same programs, but not all. When I was about 12 (1976) a UHF station powered up, and then another a few years later.

When I was 9 through 11 I went through a phase in which I was really into television from the business side, and studied the programming, followed what was going on by reading the LA papers and industry magazines at the local library, and researched specific people (Brandon Tartikoff, Fred Silverman and Warren Littlefield) and wanted to study television in college. I could cite the network schedules, ratings for each program, and was always predicting one show or another would be cancelled any minute. They held the network upfronts in Las Vegas one year, and I begged my parents to take me. They laughed at me and told me I should be more practical in a career choice (which I unfortunately did. I can't imagine what my life would have been like if I'd pursued television programming).

In many parts of the country, TV stations would sign off around midnight, but not before airing some lame version of The Star Spangled Banner. In bigger cities, stations would schedule late-night movies. And in fact, movies were a staple of prime time network schedules, especially on weekends, because there was no other way to watch old releases before the advent of the VCR.

In the 60s, sitcoms were king. The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Hogan's Heroes and The Beverly Hillbillies drew huge audiences. And ABC experimented with cartoons in prime time: The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

We had just a black and white set and that was fine because color TV, in its infancy, was expensive and the technology was primitive. (Decades later, I finally got to watch "The Wild, Wild West in color on disc and was blown away by the jewel tones of Jim West's outfits.)

CBS News produced some award-winning documentaries that aired in prime time. "Harvest of Shame" comes to mind. And Hallmark was the go-to company for prestige programming with its Hall of Fame offerings. A far cry from the often lame holiday movies it's known for today.

And speaking of holidays, the animated specials "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol," "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" were staples in our household.

Game shows like "Concentration," "Password" and "Let's Make a Deal" filled afternoon slots.

But maybe the signature TV show of my childhood was "I Love Lucy." I spent many days home with the flu or even a bad cold watching "Lucy" reruns.

I grew up in Dallas in the 70s. We had six channels then: KDFW 4 (CBS), WBAP/KXAS 5 (NBC), WFAA 8 (ABC), KTVT 11 (Ind), KERA 13 (PBS), and KXTX 39 (Ind). In the 80s, we got three more UHF channels: KTXA 21 (Ind), KDFI 27 (Ind), and KRLD/KDAF 33 (Ind).

As far as which channel was best, it depends. For the network channels, CBS had the better shows in the early 70s. Then in the late 70s, it was ABC. In the 80s, NBC had most of the hits. But as a kid, I probably watched our independent channel most because it had syndicated shows with a lot that were kid oriented (Flintstones, Gilligans' Island, Looney Tunes, I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke Show, Three Stooges, The Banana Splits).

We had one TV in the living room, so we all watched the same shows. When I was in high school (early 80s), I got a Panasonic 12-inch portable TV like the one in the picture so that I could watch whatever I wanted in my bedroom.

Yes, one TV in the living room or family room. Everyone shared and there was no remote. Thankfully, my dad preferred radio so my mom, brother and I had free rein. The youngest sibling was usually the remote. Dials, no buttons. Old rabbit ears antenna. We never felt like we were missing out.

The New York area had the three big networks, also Dumont (Channel 5) and the locals on 5, 9, and 11, which seemed to rerun old RKO films all the time, such as Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid and the Astaire-Rogers musicals.

There was also Million Dollar Movie, which I think showed one film over and over all week.

One of the networks had a Bil and Cora Baird show called The Whistling Wizard that I was absolutely in love with. I was so young that I didn't know puppets weren't real, live creatures. I thought they were just strange children.

I had a Whistling Wizard 78 that I played obsessively. The main song was called Practice Makes Perfect. The hero was a little boy called by initials, and his pal was a horse named Heathcliff. I've haunted eBay, trying to find that record, but it is never on offer.

I had my own marionette playhouse, and whenever the relatives came over for a birthday I would make them attend a performance. My cousin Ellis said I was the Eugene O'Neill of the family.

In rural Australia there was one TV channel, The ABC (Australian version of BBC). If you didn't like what was on then tough titties. We did get some great BBC shows like "I Claudius" and "Life on Earth". We'd also get some of the better US fare, like "Soap" and some of the local drama and comedy was great. You'd pretty much memorise the TV Guide on Sunday and know exactly what was worth watching for the week. On the bright side no advertising and The ABC scoured the world for cheap, but decent kids drama....So you'd be off to the South Pacific on "The Adventures of the Seaspray" watching a Japanese comedy adaptation of The Journey to the West with "Monkey" or roaming around the French countryside in the 14thc with Thierry la Fronde "The Kings Outlaw".

And no arguments about what to watch.

Life was simpler then. Three major networks; you chose what you wanted to watch from them. Now there are hundreds of channels to chose from. And most of them are garbage.

When your mom vaccumed the picture wouls go staticky. We had a giant antenna on the roof and a "roto-dialer" that would practically shake the house as it spun the antenna looking for a signal

ABC was the best it had Charlie's Angels, Eight Is Enough, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three's Company

Sunday night the family watched CBS though with All In The Family, The Jeffersons, One Day At A Time

Don't forget UHF!

^^^ Weird Al has entered the chat

Luckily I grew up in Los Angeles, one of the biggest media markets in the country. So there was always something to watch on television. We had the three networks, plus four local, independently-owned channels (one, KTLA, was owned by cowboy star Gene Autrey, who also owned one of our local baseball teams the Angels). On UHF, we had 3 PBS channels, and about 5 other local channels that came in clearly. There was the one UHF channel that aired all the public domain movies from the 20s and 30s, as well as the early-anime shows like Kimba, Speed Racer, and Astro Boy. It was also where you got the Little Rascals and Three Stooges, as well as Doctor Who.

I managed to get hold of an old TV Guide from the 70s, and there were movies on literally round the clock. Some channels would sign off at about 5am, but only for about an hour -- I guess to check equipment.

Best of all: no infomercials buying up all the airtime.

It was wonderful. Sometimes we just watched only one channel all day, whatever program that came on. No one bothered to change the channel.

[quote]We had a giant antenna on the roof and a "roto-dialer" that would practically shake the house as it spun the antenna looking for a signal

We had a free-standing antenna, a welded tapering tower of 55-feet, just outside the window next to the TV in the living room. And the "roto-dialer," too -- how much noise it made, "chunk, chunk, chunk" as it made its rotations.

I lived roughly equidistant by a couple hours to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, and a bit closer to a much weaker signal from a much smaller city. Philadelphia had far the stronger signal for me, and had more cultural and family associations; now and then there was something on one if the DC or Baltimore stations that I wanted to see, but meteorological conditions made all the difference as to whether that was even possible. Philadelphia stations were very much the base and the others a happy accident no and then because they took such fine tuning of the roto-tuner.

The roto-turner was so loud that I couldn't use it after my parents had gone to bed.

There were the three big networks, a PBS station, and some scattered other choices: the ghost stations from cities with weak transmission signals. By sometime in the 1970s we received about 30 over air signals, many of them of miserable quality either in specialty programming (old TV series, for instance), or reception quality. There were movie channels and these took my interest mostly.

I recall the major networks worked at having a tone: stentorian Cronkite type voices of network announcers laying out the facts of programming and upcoming shows ("Tonight at 8..."); smoother, more seductive, sometimes one cocktail into the evening voices making a more sultry pitch; and then traces of Hollywood glamor in announcements of special made for TV films, realizing emphasizing the once in a lifetime chance to watch some shitty TV film starring Ruth Gordon or some other fossil.

The promotion for an ABC movie, "Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole" always comes to mind for its sappiness and the way the stars names were announced in such a then old-fashioned way, "A widowed doctor played by Susan Hayward joins a colleague's Chicago slum clinic and befriends a dying girl. With Darren McGavin and Michael Constantine, produced by Aaron Spelling and with a commissioned song from Dusty Springfield.. (It was awful, the whole thing, but the network was si very proud of it.)

It was allí there was. There were a few bright spots on PBS, some antique shows in black-&-white that erre curiously foreign and old-fashioned, with different s viewpoints and humor. The best thing was Fing classic films or just old films of whatever quality.

For my nostalgic recollection above, I certainly don't think that life or TV or cheesy sitcoms were better then, rather the opposite. I went off to university in 1977 and barely watched TV for years. On a visit to my parents', I saw that they had cable, and also that they had not two TVs but 4 or so, small, one sitting stop my mother's favorite big dead TV kept for it's fine Early American style cabinetry (the size of a small boat) and TV remotes everywhere.

With smaller TVs, the big networks shrunk as well. No longer a few all-important fish in a pond, who cared about cheesy Movies of the Week anymore?

The sky line looked like this.

^ Ha! And now our houses look like this... Progress

My grandma had that giant rotating antenna too r57. It really did shake the house. It was pretty high up there.

Three channels.

No commercials for law firms or pharmaceuticals.

I sat on the floor in front of the t.v. and was the designated "channel changer".

My teen years were during the 80s. As kids, we were NOT in charge of the tv programs, that was our parents domain. The only special occasion might be Charlie Brown or Dr. Seuss specials, GWTW, or Wizard of Oz. And unlike other kids, there was no after-school watching or Saturday cartoons either.

During my teen years, we lived in East San Diego county, and we too also had the huge roto-antenna you had to go out on the porch to turn. We got the 3 majors, a PBS channel that wasn't very clear often, a Spanish language station out of Tijuana and on very rare occasions, KTLA. Unlike almost everybody else under the sun, we never got cable (we were poors and my parents had strong opinions about tv watching) and never got a satellite antenna either.

Our cable watching was reserved for when we would visit either friends or my Grandma, whose house we'd visit for a week each summer. During our visits, my brother and I would hole up in her "den" and watch tv all day and night because she didn't really care about our watching habits and we were easy to handle if we were zoned out in front of the tv. I can recall the 3 major stations signing off at midnight earlier in the 80s but i really couldn't tell you what time or when that changed because bedtimes were strict too and the latest we got to stay up was 10pm.

I loved the UHF channels. Horror Theater on Saturday's with the classic horror films from Universal and Hammer all afternoon. Then on Sundays we got Abbott and Costello, Shirley Temple, the Best of Bogie, and a big 5:00 movie, which was always a classic like The Adventures of Robin Hood or Little Women. Those were.the days!

In the dog days of summer on Long Island sometimes the picture would get wonky, especially CBS. People said it was Sun Spots, that the sun was keeping the signal from getting thru.

I didn't grow up in a TV obsessed household in the 60s and 70s. Even though we had 2 TVs which was unusual, in the 60s, and then in the 70s we kids all had TVs of our own in our bedrooms. There were plenty of channels in the Metro NYC era. But we kids and our parents had very active lives. All my life to this day I've only rarely sat still and stared at a TV show with all my attention. Exceptionally for a movie I suppose and if I am with company. I need to be doing other stuff. I have no problem going to movies in theaters and paying attention, however.

When I read these wonderfully evocative memories I feel so much love for you all. Then l catch myself and remember what bitches you all grew up to be 😂❤️

@r71, Interesting, seems that life without TV also made you insufferable 😏

Life was so much simpler back then...though we did have our wars, civil rights unrest, crises and political upheavals. Having only 3 network TV channels kept us informed, but was less in the way of platforms, and the news was strictly about news without propaganda and bias. We didn't know about every horror in this country and the world, that we really didn't need to know. The internet is wide open for everyone and anyone to spew hate, lies and is a very strong influence to millions worldwide in an instant. Not having that then...the world was a little saner.

^ Simple? Did you ever try and get your little brother to hold the rabbit ears just right so that you could see Saturday morning cartoons clearly? Between the aluminum foil and the outstretched arms it was a technological marvel

Lol!^ Well...technology wasn't simple..

Grew up north of Boston so the three main networks, NET/PBS, and a couple UHF stations. I don’t remember a lot of arguments about what to watch. My parents were usually sitting in the kitchen or out on the porch talking. The time slot fillers were old b/w movies so I grew up watching those and it seems natural to keep watching TCM or streaming them.

I don’t think younger generations are interested in old movies. When my niece was 8 or 9, we were watching a dvd of the Nancy Drew serial from the 40s and she got very upset and complained that the actress “talked funny” ie, had a trained mid-Atlantic accent. My nephew just flatly refused to watch anything in b&w.

In NYC in the 60s we had 2, 4, 7, and the local stations, 5, 9, 11, and also 13 (pbs). There was plenty to watch and no endless news and related blather-

^^ 3 was another PBS station.

I wanted to watch American Bandstand on Saturday mornings but my dad was always in charge of the channel so it would be on sports.

Everything stopped for Lawerence Welk on Sunday.

[quote]Everything stopped for Lawerence Welk on Sunday.

With that punctuation mark in the week, it's but small surprise that a couple generations at least we're taught to hate Sundays.

"Everything stopped for Lawerence Welk on Sunday."

Yep, at the nursing home it was hearts, pulses, breathing. All stopped dead

Yup.. In many ways it was a part of my grandmother's catholicism. Mass on Sunday, big meal mid-afternoon, then EVERYBODY settle so we can watch Lawrence together. It somehow made up for us kids skipping mass. My only solace was the dance routines.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Top shows in our household at various points in this era:

Monday: Little House on the Prairie, MASH, House Calls, Kate & Allie, Newhart, Lou Grant, Cagney & Lacey

Tuesday: Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, Too Close for Comfort, Hart to Hart

Wednesday: Eight Is Enough, Charlie's Angels, Dynasty, Hotel, St. Elsewhere

Thursday: Welcome Backer, Kotter, Mork & Mindy, Waltons, Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, Cheers, Knots Landing,

Friday: Dukes of Hazard, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Incredible Hulk

Saturday: Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Mama's Family, Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Carol Burnett

Sunday: Archie Bunker's Place, One Day at a Time, Jeffersons, Alice, Trapper John, M.D.

Grandpa tell me about sex with the milkman

I grew up in southern Maine in the sixties, and we had ABC, CBS and NBC, and the local public channel. There was very little public TV programming, so that was mostly cheap-ass local content until later in the decade. The ABC station broadcast from the top of a mountain in NH, so their signal covered a wide area, but it was always "snowy." We’d be up at the crack of dawn watching the test pattern until the shows started.

The commercial stations showed news like the Today show and then game shows until noon (Jeopardy was on at noon), followed by the soaps and more game shows. Late afternoon was sometimes an old movie put on by the local station, then the local news at 6. Evening was sit coms like Dick Van Dyke (very good) and Gilligan's Island (tripe). I don’t remember if there was late news, but for a while CBS showed an old movie at 11:30, before going off the air for the night. ABC had Dick Cavett for a few years, and of course NBC had Johnny Carson (the Tonight Show) from 11:30 to 1:00), followed by Tom Snyder (the Tomorrow Show), though I wasn’t allowed to stay up that late.

We just had a 19-inch B&W tv until the early seventies.

R87 probably got an old TV guide out from inside his condemned house

When I was in college and often stayed up late, this was one local station's sign-video (they didn't use the Star-Spangled Banner.)

I remember going with my parents on a special trip to the big city (Springfield MO, ha ha) in the late 1970s to Sears to get a new, bigger, better antenna for the roof. That thing was huge. Dad would get on the roof and adjust it while we checked all four channels to see if we were getting good reception. They all were broadcasting out of Springfield so, generally speaking, we could get all three networks plus PBS at once, without having to move the antenna.

I also remember that this antenna was so powerful we could kind of halfway pick up a station out of Little Rock, KARK. It was Channel 4 while Springfield's NBC channel was Channel 3.

Losers! I had cable.

Well done, R91 . Tomorrow we'll try colors.

I don't recall watching NBC that much in the 60's or 70's, they didn't really have any classic sitcoms, did they? CBS owned the 60's (and 70s, with MASH and MTM). ABC had the Tuesday/Wednesday night movies, and also tons of popular sitcoms before the movies.

The TV was furniture and some had a radio and record player too.

For some reason, the stations in western Michigan were oddly distributed, so our ABC and NBC were in town, but our CBS was far away. But if we fiddled with the antennas and dials we might be able to get a different CBS or NBC from another nearby city. And at our summer cottage we could never get the ABC station though we could the CBS station 60 miles away and sometimes if the weather was right could get stations from across Lake Michigan in Green Bay and Escanaba.

Something similar with FM rock radio stations back then too. Late at night we could get ?? WLS Chicago, KOMA, Oklahoma City, and a station out of Little Rock. These were the stations that actually played what was then cutting edge rock- however you needed to constantly fiddle with the dial to keep tuned in.

^ WLS was damn strong. You could get that station all the way to Georgia

WLS is a 50,000 watt AM station, and at night can be heard in a good chunk of the lower 48 states. Unfortunately, it’s now right wing talk radio.

If you lived close to the TV Stations antenna you could get by with just rabbit ears for an antenna.

^ That's the one I made my little brother hold the rabbit ears so I could watch the Mighty Mouse Playhouse clearly. The secret was the aluminum foil hat I made him wear. Cleared the picture right up

Not true about Carson's popularity. First of all you could watch Nightline -a news show- or the CBS late movie. Also, there WERE a long series of challengers who rose up against Carson -Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke, Joan Rivers, Pat Sajack and Arsenio Hall. (DId I forget someone?) Some were on other networks and some were syndicated on independent stations. He crushed all of them except Arsenio, who did not outlast him by much. Yes, he was carefully middle-of-the-road (his political views were mostly hidden) in many ways, but he did face periodic competition, so it's not just because there were fewer channels.

The reason WLS and other northern radio stations were so strong was to be able to broadcast to the south to counter any right-wing propaganda that might be going on. There even used to be a law that all southern radio stations had to dial back their wattage at night so that the northern stations could get through

Interesting old post-Civil War laws

r99 And we're back to those days for getting local stations. But they're all digital now.

r101 Nightline didn't start until the Iran hostage crisis in 1980. Same with several of the other shows you mentioned. I'm assuming OP is asking about pre-1980 stuff, but who knows?

In the '60s, there was the Tonight Show (Paar, then Carson). Joey Bishop tried a show (with Regis as his sidekick.) Merv as well. But Carson reigned supreme.

We had the three plus PBS growing up in the 70s in Louisville, Kentucky. When I visited my Grandma in the country she could only get a very grainy ABC and PBS.

Anybody else put aluminum foil on the rabbit ears to get a better signal?

[quote]There was also Million Dollar Movie, which I think showed one film over and over all week.

I loved the Million Dollar Movie. It aired in primetime on independent stations as counterprogramming to the network shows. Imagine — a movie that cost a MILLION DOLLARS to make!

If it was a war film or a western, I'd skip that week. Other than that, I'd give it a try. "Lifeboat" with Tallulah Bankhead was a favorite MDM. But the best of all was "The Nanny" with Bette Davis. It cropped up as the MDM twice a year and I would watch it five nights in a row. I think they trimmed the scene where Bette's daughter gets a botched abortion for TV; I only saw the full scene much later.

"Mahstah Joey: it's time for your BAHTH."

You watched whatever shows you liked on the channel that aired them, so sometimes you had to get off the couch and change the channel..

Then there were particular nights when you never changed the channel.

CBS Monday nights in the 80s and 90s was 'Must See TV." In various combinations, there was a full night of TV showing such shows as:

‘Kate and Allie'

'Designing Women’

'Newhart'

’'Murphy Brown’

'Cagney and Lacey'

A very gay night. Many stayed in just to watch this lineup. 'Appointment TV' I think they also called it.

And the pre-Civil War radio laws, R102?

R107 most had cable like my family when those series aired. We still watched those network shows.

^ I knew you'd make that comment. Congrats, you win 🙄

I didn't care much. I liked very few things on TV anyway. If I did watch I'd turn on stuff like "Rocket to Stardom", with real people trying to show off their talents... and lack of... I was busy outside riding my bike, swimming, and having fun in the sun. TV meant little to me. It still means little to me. I'd rather read.

^^You backwards bastard

R106 must be 100 yrs old

As much as people rightly complained that TV was "the boob tube," there was more social cohesion then. Everyone had the same channels and watched the same shows if they watched anything. The news was much less sensationalist and more middle-of-the-road. We weren't bombarded with politics from all sides in every show.

The birth of 24-hour news was also the birth of sensationalist, doom-laden, hyperbolic -- and then hyper-partisan -- news.

Now people don't watch the same shows, subscribe to the same services, or get the same news. Everyone has their own little bubble of entertainment and information. It's good in some ways, but overall I think it's been harmful.

I stopped watching TV many years ago, it appears I haven't missed a thing. I just got tired of everything being aimed at 12 year olds. Especially all the loser commercials aimed at sick, unemployed or people recovering from a car wreck

^^Mentally ill and ancient

I stopped watching TV many years ago. I think after fox and CNN and just before 9/11.

^^god what a self sacrificing piece of shit you must be!

Sunday nights were Ed Sullivan and Bonanza. We never missed Ed Sullivan.

I'm not r115. I was just agreeing with him about not watching tv. R118 I don't know who you are calling a self sacrificing shit - r115, me, both, or anyone who does not watch TV.

So you have to remember TV signals came through an antenna like a radio.

My father had a very small personal TV (black and white) that was powered by batteries that he used to bring to my tennis matches. He would sit quietly off to the side of the stands and watch football (the Dolphins), or when he had to go shopping with my mom, he would sit in the car and watch football while waiting.

We had one large color tv, and two small black and white ones.

I found it. Photo attached.

The Saturday night schedule on CBS in 1973 was said to be "the greatest tv line-up ever." Beginning at 8:00, it consisted of "All In The Family", "MASH", "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "The Bob Newhart Show", and "The Carol Burnett Show." Each of them appeared in TV Guide's 60 Best Series of All Time" list, three of them placing in the Top 10.

I love this thread! I was NYC 70's as well. My contribution would be Friday Nights, ABC circa 1972...

8:00 The Brady Bunch 8:30 The Partridge Family 9:00 Room 222 9:30 The Odd Couple 10:00 Love, American Style (which I was never allowed to stay up and watch.....AW. MOM!)

It was a whole lotta Velveeta cheese, but we had fun.

Saturday nights in the 70s had the big hit shows. All In The Family...Mary Tyler Moore...Bob Newhart Show....then Carol Burnett...followed by 11 pm news...11:30 was SNL (the best original cast).

All CBS shows...except SNL, which was NBC..^^

lol R122...You beat me to it, but I echoed your lineup anyway... :)

Try living in Eugene, Oregon in the 1950s where they only had ONE broadcast channel (KVAL) that was mainly NBC, but would alternate with some CBS and ABC shows. Then, it lost that ability when KEZI came in (ca. 1960) and was an ABC station. CBS didn't return until around 1978. NBC was not doing well, so KVAL started broadcastiung mostly CBS. Finally, KMTR came in around 1982 and was a dedicated NBC station.

r122 r123 r124 And now Friday and Saturday nights are essentially a dead zone for network television.

[quote]So you have to remember TV signals came through an antenna like a radio.

Umm ... they still do, sweetie.

Life in Los Angeles was pretty good. We had all three networks on 2, 4, and 7 as well as local channels, 5, 9, 11, and 13. We also got PBS on 28 (and a few other UHF channels).

Theta Cable came into our area, and they were installing their system for FREE. We didn't really need it, since the antenna worked well, but they offered their "Z channel" real cheap. It was great!

I seem to remember the sitcom between Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Burnett on Saturday nights in the early 1970s was Melinda Married Abie, or whatever it was called, about the mixed marriage. My family watched those three shows together.

Melinda M Abie was really about their parents. His mother was Bibi Osterwald, who kept turning up in the flop stage musicals I was seeing then. I don't recall the other actors' names, but I'd recognize them if I saw them.

I think Melinda and Abie were married IRL, too.

It may be that we changed the channel at 9:30 for Melinda M Abie. Or maybe Bob Newhart replaced it; Melinda M A wasn't very funny, so it must have flopped.

R131

Are you thinking of 'Bridget Loves Bernie'?

It starred Meredith Baxter and David Birney, who were married to each other at the time.

David Birney was rumored to be abusive, and he may have been so bad that it turned Meredith into a late stage lesbian.

Bridget Loves Bernie was on between All in the Family and MTM. It lasted only one year I think.

Yes, that' s it, R132. I don't remember why we enjoyed it, as it was SO corny. But I loved TV sitcoms with actors I had seen on Broadway, and I saw Bibi Osterwald even in Hello, Dolly!, in between two of the many strs that replaced Carol Channing.

I loved Oz for that reason, too, much later on, because so many Broadway types were in it, even just guesting. Elaine Stritch played a judge, for instance (who came to the prison on a special assignment).

David Birney played a cop on some TV show long after Bridget L B, and he and a partner sneaked into a bad guy's apt. He was there, in bed and obviously fucking. But when the covers were pulled off, he was with A GUY!

Does anyone remember this show? I've used IMDB, but I can't locate it.

@r120, Probably me. I've had r118 blocked for a long time, apparently for good reason. He drinks and shitposts on here all the time 🙄

- r115

Love American Style ... even as a teen I knew it was such a lame tease but there was so little even remotely 'hip' or 'naughty' on TV. It also seemed to had more commercials per minute than any other show. Monty Python on PBS was a revelation, like something from another world

In Santa Barbara in about 1975, my parents subscribed to the first cable channel, "Channel 100". I remember everyone in the neighborhood coming over to watch "Man of La Mancha" one night.

We were lucky in getting all the LA channels - they showed a ton of old movies and kids' shows.

David Birney always skeeved me out as a kid

^ That's why "Bridgett Loves Bernie" didn't fly, nobody loves Birney

ABC! I loved their promos with the star cameos.

I loved Ed Sullivan except when he had the ballet dancers and opera singers. Pure torture. Now I don't want to see or hear anything else.

[quote]The reason WLS and other northern radio stations were so strong was to be able to broadcast to the south to counter any right-wing propaganda that might be going on. There even used to be a law that all southern radio stations had to dial back their wattage at night so that the northern stations could get through.

Not true. You're talking about clear-channel stations and they had nothing to do with the south, civil rights or counter-propaganda. In 1941 the FCC set aside specific frequencies for use by a limited set of broadcasters. They are referred to as clear-channel stations and are allowed to transmit at 50,000 watts at night. Other stations are not allowed to broadcast on those frequencies at night so as to not interfere with the clear-channel signals.

And they aren't just in the north. There are many clear-channel stations in the south: WSB in Atlanta, WBT in Charlotte, KRLD in Dallas, WBAP in Fort Worth, KAAY in Little Rock, WHAS in Louisville, WSM in Nashville, WWL in New Orleans, KOKC in Oklahoma City, WRVA in Richmond, WOAI in San Antonio, KWKH in Shreveport, and KTSB in Tulsa,

Growing up in New Jersey, with New York and Philadelphia stations, imagine my horror when moving to Tempe for college and seeing this shit. I actually thought was a joke.

When I was a teen I used to stay up late on Saturday nights and watch the late late show on cbs. I think it ended around 3am then CBS went off the air until 6am-ish.

R1, omg you know what the OP means. And OP to answer one question, households didn't take turns everybody watched everything together.

Also, we had an actual clicker (that clicked!) by the early 80s. I believe the tv was gifted to us by my Grandma.

"James at 15" on ABC.

ABC after school specials!

Those were the days.

[quote]And now Friday and Saturday nights are essentially a dead zone for network television.

Network TV has been dead for more than 20 years. Like Bob Barker, it's technically alive, generates income, even, but hadn't entertained anyone or been anything but a race to the bottom.

R134, he played cops a LOT on TV, so it could be almost any show, but I think you're talking about the TV series "Serpico." I have a vague memory of the episode you're talking about and we watched "Serpico" for the brief time it was on.

Sounds like Bridget and Bernie?^^ They were married IRL...Meredith Baxter and David Birney. That show didn't last long.

No, r150, the cop show that David Birney was in long after Bridget Loves Bernie was cancelled does not "sound like Bridget and Bernie."

The threads don't reload...have to refresh many times. I see a comment...thinking it's the last one, then the top shows 19 unread comments. I meant Bridget Loves Bernie....responding to R131.

R150..^^

Got it r152, thanks for clarifying, I thought you were replying to the question at r134 and not his first reply at r131.

Sorry for the confusion. I wish the comments would load automatically. It's a PITA...lol.

After school us gaylings had the choice from 4:30pm until the news at 6:00pm, of "The MIke Douglas Show" with his week long guest host on CBS channel 2 or "The ABC 4:30 Movie" on Channel 7. Depending on how long the movie, it was always two parts or for something like "Gypsy" they could stretch it to three days

We were early cable subscribers in a rural town which only had channels 2-6: ABC CBS NBC an independent channel and a 5th. channel that had NET (now PBS) part-time sharing the channel with our local WeatherScan machine with weather dials and schmaltzy background music. Everything signed off around midnight, except for the weather dials. Imagine our delight when the cable system expanded to add a few more channels including KTTV and KTLA via a fancy microwave link from Los Angeles. 24/7 cheezy car lot commercials and great movies!

All I remember is having one TV and nobody in my family wanting to watch the shows I wanted to see. I was reduced to seeing occasional summer reruns of Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Maude, The Jeffersons, Carol Burnett, MASH, One Day at a Time, etc. until I finally got a small black and white TV for Xmas one year. Reception for CBS was pretty bad without an antenna but I at least got to see most of the stuff I wanted, alone in my room.

I was a radio nerd when I was a kid and I used to listen to the radio at night and log in the stations I could pick up in my Southern Indiana bedroom. I remember the ones listed by r142 (except Shreveport). I’d add WABC New York, WLS Chicago (I’m old enough to remember these as top 40 stations), WSB Atlanta, WBAP Dallas, WLS Cincinnati and KOA Denver. When I moved out west there were a different batch from the Western cities. In Indiana the furthest station I picked up was KFI from Los Angeles.

There was a lot of anticipation when cable came to town, neighborhood by neighborhood. We got 12 stations (the VHS ideal) initially (the 4 locals, CNN, TBS, WGN, USA, ESPN, CBN Pat Robertson’s network- gross, and HBO if you subscribed to it, otherwise scrambled, and a channel which was text of local announcements). Before that my experience of cable was relatives that lived in Frankfort, KY where they got all the affiliates from Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati in the days before cable-only channels existed. Cable was initially for areas with no or bad TV reception, and they’d fill up the dial with distant stations if they could.

I also remember an afternoon movie on the local NBC station that was interrupted mid-movie for “Dialing for Dollars” where they’d call up a person (randomly out of the phone book - imagine doing that now) and they could when a prize like a free dinner somewhere or $50 or something. God, I’m old.

R149: I think you're right at that. I just did some sleuthing online to try to isolate the episode; no luck. The descriptions of each ep are too skinny.

But isn't Serpico's 1975-1976 too early for the networks to feature gay sex, even momentarily? I vividly recall that we saw "activity" in the bed from about fifteen feet back, and while it was all under the blanket, there was no question what was going on.

And then the cops closed in and it turned out to be two males. In the mid-seventies? Even though the show showed little or no skin and the scene was over immediately, this still seems awfully advanced for the mid-seventies.

I also think I saw this in something like the 1980s or even later.

Just had a flashback: Saturday afternoon wrestling Verne Gagne and company.

R148 Fuck off, American Idol debuted in 2002.

[quote]After school us gaylings had the choice from 4:30pm until the news at 6:00pm, of "The MIke Douglas Show" with his week long guest host on CBS channel 2 or "The ABC 4:30 Movie" on Channel 7. Depending on how long the movie, it was always two parts or for something like "Gypsy" they could stretch it to three days

"The Channel 7 3:30 (in Los Angeles) Movie" was where I first saw the Liz Taylor "Cleopatra", in all its pan-and-scan glory. It was presented in two parts at 90 minutes each, which meant they edited the shit out of it.

^ Also because CinemaScope you'd be looking at blank air when two people were talking both out of frame

TV, back then...in the early 60s or 50s, didn't broadcast shows all night. Late at night...maybe around midnight?....shows were over and a test pattern came on. Broadcasting resumed the following morning. There was no 24/7 televisions then.

....24/7 *television then....^^

When 'Earthquake" made it's NBC network debut in '76, NBC cut it into two parts, had Universal add scenes to pad it out and radio stations thru out the country simulcast the audio and turned up the rumbling effects like a poor man's Sensurround. Scroll down for broadcast ad.

[quote]When 'Earthquake" made it's NBC network debut in '76, NBC cut it into two parts, had Universal add scenes to pad it out and radio stations thru out the country simulcast the audio and turned up the rumbling effects like a poor man's Sensurround.

NBC also padded out the Pia Zadora vehicle "The Lonely Lady" by about 40 minutes so it could be aired in a special three-hour time slot with commercials (why?). The only known copy was taped by a viewer. It was cleaned up a bit and included on the Blu-Ray release for those who can't get enough of "The Lonely Lady" (like me). Pia's line, "Mother, I've had an abortion" was badly redubbed "Mother, I've had a miscarriage" for TV.

You didn't take turns watching TV so much as you weren't watching TV as a default. It just never occurred to anyone in the end-70s or 80s to watch TV during the day, and even at night, it wasn't the only option to pass the time. We often played board games and/or invited friends. When I was little, I watched The Pink Panther and The Muppets with my mum - this was a weekly occurrence. My parents watched the news at night and we sometimes watched some concerts on Sunday or a documentary. Sometimes, we watched a game show like "Dalli Dalli" (I was born in and grew up in Germany.) Later on, there was private TV but it still didn't broadcast all night. For the private TV channels, there were infomercials at night - sometimes American ones, sloppily dubbed. Only many years later (in the mid-90s), we got Sky 1 and could, for the first time, watch some series in English (like star trek TNG) and later yet, MTV came along.

When we got our first color tv. Mom would yell at us to back up. Watching too close would burn our eyes. My mother was very intelligent. I don't know where she got that information.

^ Our color TV was built into the wall. When it finally broke my parents didn't know what to do with the hole so they bought a new TV on a cart and just wheeled in front of the old TV. They sold that house with that old broken RCA still stuck in the wall

My grandmother, a late adopter, finally bought a color set, then continued to sit 18 inches away from the TV. Took it back after a week.

r172 that's hilarious.

R172 - was this your house?

Damn--it's like the 70s version of the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

r175 good find! i tried for about 2 mins to find a pic of a tv built into the wall because i was so curious!

Ha! No, there was a big bar next to the TV... More like this with the TV in the wall to the left

^^I LOVE that house!

Today's generation will never know the torture of falling asleep in front of the television only to have the channel sign-off with the Incessantly-Beeping Color Bars From Hell. That shit would invade your dreams to pierce your brain. It was never loud enough to actually wake you, so it went on seemingly for hours.

We had a black and white TV - got a color one in the early 70's. I remember we had 3 channels - the major network affiliates NBC, CBS and NBC. On UHF we had 38, 56 and 36 which was PBS. All TV went off at midnight with a test pattern for a few minutes, then just snow. In the morning at 6, the national anthem played, and then they signed on. The National news was on at 5 and the International was 530. We had two additions of the paper - morning and evening - that's why I think we read a lot - there wasn't the 24 hour entertainment like there is now. Channel 56 was out of Boston and had Creature Double Feature on Saturday afternoons - I looked forward to that every week.

We also had PBS, KQED, God bless it. I've been a lifelong fan. I was about eight when I learned how to paint chrysanthemums in the Japanese style, Sumi-E, with ink sticks and blocks. My parents bought me the tools. You used to be able to buy original paintings on their televised fundraising auctions, along with other great stuff. One year my parents bid on a large painting and won. It was a giant head with the hinged skull sitting open with little people spilling out. Hung in the hall upstairs for years.

PBS enriched my life and continues to do so. We had a great time watching all the limited number of channels available. So much great programming then.

I remember there were some good reruns early in the evening before the network shows came on, in the 60s. I would watch them with my dad - like You Bet Your Life, with Groucho, and Ozzie and Harriet (which also still ran once a week at night).

I really liked morning netwrok TV when I was akid - Captain Kangaroo (CBS), Concentration (sort of like Jeopardy) with Hugh Downs - who also did the Today show, I think - both on NBC. Then I Love Lucy reruns in the morning on CBS, followed by (or preceded by?) December Bride. Father Knows Best and The Loretta Young Show reruns around noon. Password and To Tell The Truth and The Match Game (original version) in the afternoon. Queen For A Day. Steve Allen was also on in the mornings (syndicated show, I think). Jeopardy with Art Fleming was on around lunch time I think. Not that different from what it is now, but cheaper set, less money.

Daytime network TV was geared to housewives and there were all these ads for coffee, tea, soap, aspirin, washing machines, domestic type things. It was all very pleasant and wholesome programming. Nightly news was Walter Cronkite (CBS), Huntley and Brinkley (NBC). The ABC news had Frank Reynolds.

I remember sharing a room with my older sister and she always had to have the TV set to channel 7 overnight. I think it was snow. I remember the late movies though. Good times. TV shows were events.

R44 It was a console set and my parents took buying them VERY seriously. The same consideration they would give to replacing the sofa or when they bought our piano. It’s very funny to think about now. They were heavy as tanks and it took two men to deliver and install it. I remember we had one that was very ornate with carved claw foot legs and I loved it but my mom exchanged it because the “red was too orange.” That was another thing: the color adjustment. It was quite the process and once it was settled I was forbidden to change it.

We had one of those big console sets, too. It had a red reset button on the back which my dad had forbidden us to press. So, as a little kid, sometimes I just control myself and would have to tell dad that I had "accidentally" pressed it. Then he had to take the back off the TV and spend half-an-hour fixing it.

We got the usual channels from Phoenix, but then a wonderful UHF channel started in Prescott and it showed a different old '30s or '40s movie every night at 7. So I would hurry up and get my homework done and then watch the movie. I saw so many throughout high school because of that great channel.

The big console sets used vacuum tubes. If your dad didn't want to spring for a repairman, he would take out all the tubes and bring them to the supermarket where there was a "tube tester" machine.

Then he had all the fun of replacing them in the right places.

Forgot about that when you bought the new newfangled color TV, It was delivered by two guys, and a guy would come the next day to set the picture and colors, like tuning a piano.

My grandparents had a big wooden Magnavox console from the early 60s (the screen was kid of roundish on the sides). Apparently one of the tubes caught fire when the thing was new, but they kept it. It would give you a mild electric when you touched the dial, which was inside the top of cabinet under a sliding door where there was also an AM/FM. When it finally conked out some time in the 80s they bought another set and set it on top, because it was la nice piece of furniture”.

We didn’t have a console, I think they were passé by the early 80s. We had a 19 inch Sony in the family room as our main TV. So small by todays standards..

We never had a console TV. The TV usually did come in a cabinet, though, with a speaker on the side or under the tube. We also had a hi-fi (not stereo) in a separate cabinet. My mom always kept the big TV in the den. Then we got another TV, a portable, that was in the living room. So my parents could watch separate TV shows. I got the old TV, for my room.

We got a color TV in the 60s. All of a sudden you discovered which shows were in color and which were still in b&w, as well as movies.

When TVs had tubes, they were warm. Our cat used to love to sleep on top of the TV, it was like a hearth, to her.

TVs didn't come on immediately. when you turned them on. They had to warm up. Maybe a minute. half a minute? I forget how long. And when you turned the TV off, the picture would shrink down, sort of, until it was a white dot in the middle of the screen, before going off.

[quote]We got a color TV in the 60s. All of a sudden you discovered which shows were in color and which were still in b&w, as well as movies.

My Mother told the story of how my older brother was bouncing off the walls with the new color TV. All he wanted was to see "Superman" in color. It was already a decade into syndication and the afternoon came and boom, they showed a black and white episode. Being young he didn't get it and was crushed but they eventually ran the color ones.

My other grandma, the one who was a tight bitch and left me zero, had 4 channels. I hated being forced to stay with her while my mom and dad went to dinner without me. I was forced to watch stupid boring shit like Matlock, In The Heat of The Night, Father Downing Mysteries.

I grew up with the three networks, PBS and the local station.

Color TVs used to be adjustable so the faces could go from magenta to green, and the intensity could be turned way up to psychedelic levels. We hadn't gotten a color TV yet. My friend's Italian grandmother had the only color TV in the neighborhood, when I was around 9 or 10. The kids would go to her house to watch Batman. But she had the color adjusted wrong so the faces were all bright green. If you tried to adjust the color or touch the TV in any way, she would scream at you.

It was fun at holidays, because pre-multimedia there was such a concentration of special programming and almost every program having holiday episodes. Then the local "UHF" stations often aired seldom-seen older oddities and rarities that you'd thought you would never see again. And stuff like the once-annual airing of "The Wizard Of Oz," where at the closing credits -- that was it; unless MGM decided to issue a special theaters release, you were not going to see that on network TV again until it aired around the same time the following year. Ditto the holiday specials throughout each broadcasting season.

I remember on weekends watching "The Family Film Festival," hosted by Tom Hatten, on KTLA. For some reason, "Pippi Longstocking" was a constant on the lineup.

I got the LA stations, too, and they always showed rare foreign kids' films on the weekend mornings, like Pippi Longstocking. One favorite was "Paw - Boy of Two Worlds" which they showed all the time. A Danish movie dubbed into English about a little bi-racial boy in Denmark who has problems with racism so he gathers a bunch of little animals together as his friends. I loved that movie!

I don't know if it was the first cable channel but LA had the Z Channel that had uncut movies without commercials, and even letterboxed films.

Back in the day all films on TV were shown full screen. It was especially bad for CinemaScope films of the 50s because they were often shot with action spread out across the wide screen for full effect. I remember seeing How To Marry A Millionaire and all you could see in a scene with Lauren Bacall and William Powell across a table were their noses and their hands.

Sometimes black and white prints of color movies were shown.

Yes R197...Tom Hatten! Lots of Little Rascals, and I want to say, Lassie & Rin Tin Tin movies, too? I was particularly drawn to Rin Tin Tin movies as a kid because we had a GSD and remember seeing a bunch of them on t.v. Might have been on another channel, but I think it was the Family Film Festival.

The other thing I loved watching on Saturday afternoons was Roller Derby on Channel 52 (UHF)! Featuring the L.A. Thunderbirds, from the less-than-fabulous Olympic Auditorium. I was maybe 10-11...and thought it looked insanely fun!

Channel 52 (out of Corona) was also cool because it was the home of Speed Racer, Kimba, and (most importantly) The Addams Family, on weekday afternoons.

Speaking of KTLA's Family Film Festival, it was the program that broke the news of Natalie Wood's death to me. The movie they were showing that afternoon just happened to be Miracle on 34th Street, and a disclaimer was added mid-program (!), "Today's episode was recorded before the death this morning of the film's star Natalie Wood, as well as that of Jack Albertson" (he died four days earlier).

Well, shit.

By the way, I believe it was KTLA that started the Twilight Zone Marathon back in the late-70s. They originally aired the marathon on Independence Day.

There were more than just 3 TV channels.

Most of my elderly relatives are still alive, they're now in their 80s and 90s and even they remember more than 3 TV channels.

In NYC, besides CBS, NBC and ABC, there were channels 5, 9 and 11. As well as PBS, there were also UHF channels, one of the most watched UHF shows was Disc-O-Teen hosted by horror host John Zacherly, it was a dance show, much like Clay Cole's Discotheque.

When I was a little kid there was no UHF. TVs didn't even have a UHF dial. I think it became a thing in the late 60s? Not sure. Not talking about when it was invented but when it was in general use.

We never had an outdoor TV antenna. Not sure why, but all we had was rabbit ears. Maybe because we were close to the city and the reception was good. But weather could affect reception. During storms the picture could get snowy or go in and out of clarity. You could put aluminum foil on the antellas to make reception better.

In Boston we got the NET station, now PBS (2), NBC (4), CBS (7), ABC (5). We were able to get (with snow) channel 9 from New Hampshire. There was a kid show I liked to watch on that, around dinner time, because it showed the animated series, Hercules. If it was very clear you could get a Rhode Island station on channel 6, but that was usually too snowy. Unitl we got UHF we didn't get any other stations than those.

*antennas

[quote]CBS was always grainy & snowy

Please tell me you understand that this was due to some problem with your reception, not any problem with the transmission.

[quote]I totally forgot about grainy channels. As a kid in the 90’s I do remember some channels being grainy. It was more the channels towards the end. Like I think the remote could go to channel 99 and there were a few channels at the end in the 80’s or 90’s that were Pay Per View but after like the TV Guide channel, everything was just static. But the channels at the end were always snowy and grainy.

ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

TV lamps

69 is the highest UHF channel number. If you had the TV tuned to channel 88 or something there wouldn’t be anything but static.

Early on, like the start of the 50s, there may have been only three stations in NYC. By the 60s there were stations on channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. But NY and LA and some others are huge media markets so of course there are more stations. Out in the smaller markets there were only the three networks, plus maybe PBS.

Elder Eldergays remember the 4th Channel. The DuMont Television Network, where Jackie Gleason got his start and featured Ed Norton's favorite show, "Captain Video."

Brought to you on the DuMont network...

[quote]As a kid, I thought the people on TV could see me like I could see them, so I would change my clothes in front of the living room TV until mother stopped me.

Did you get that idea from the boring kid's show Romper Room by chance? Were you a "Do-Bee"?

Miss so-in-so (they kept changing them) would take out her Magic Mirror (a handheld mirror with no glass) at the end of the show and "see" all of the kids watching and call them out by name. "I see Billy, I see Susie, I see Jane..." never my name of course. So one day I dropped my pants and swear she reacted. I only watched that damned show because they also ran Three Stooges and Little Rascals shorts.

- WNEW-TV, New York, channel 5, 1960s.

[quote]I sat on the floor in front of the t.v. and was the designated "channel changer".

Do you realize, R67, that "television" is one word? Therefore, the abbreviation is TV, not T.V.

My favorite DuMont show as "Magic Cottage" with Pat Meikle. Her husband, Hal Cooper wrote the show and later went on to direct many sitcoms including "Maude".

R210 "Romper Room" was a franchise. Each city had their own "Miss ......"

Outside of major markets, some stations carried more than one network in the 1950s.

[quote]I recall the major networks worked at having a tone: stentorian Cronkite type voices of network announcers laying out the facts of programming and upcoming shows ("Tonight at 8..."); smoother, more seductive, sometimes one cocktail into the evening voices making a more sultry pitch; and then traces of Hollywood glamor in announcements of special made for TV films, realizing emphasizing the once in a lifetime chance to watch some shitty TV film starring Ruth Gordon or some other fossil.

WWL 4, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, used to have two news announcers with the smarmy "anchorman voice": Bill Elder and Ron Hunter (the latter was the inspiration for Ron Burgundy in [italic]Anchorman[/italic]).

Ours was Miss Jeannie, r213.

Miss Pat Gray, the longtime "weather girl" at WBRC in Birmingham, was a local camp icon. Fannie Flagg, who used to work with her on the morning broadcast in the '60s, used to joke that her hair never moved. When I was a kid in the '70s, there was an urban legend that she worked as a high-priced call girl.

Estelle Parsons...Weather Girl

It was never three channels. For me, anyway, having grown up in the tri-state area in the '70s and '80s. We had network affiliates WNBC, WCBS, and WABC. Then, we had three independent channels. WNEW, channel 5, which had I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, The Flintstones, Bewitched, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, Three's Company, and Loony Tunes.

Then, WPIX, channel 11. They had Batman, Superman, The Lone Ranger, the barely animated Marvel cartoons, The Jeffersons, Rhoda, Little House, Tom and Jerry, Dick Van Dyke Show, Mothers in Law, The Lucy Show, The Odd Couple, The Honeymooners, and Gilligan's Island.

WOR channel 9 SUCKED. That's right, you heard me, they SUCKED. The only syndicated show I remember on that was Life of Reilly. Can you even BEGIN to imagine? They also had Bowling for Dollars, and the Million Dollar Movie. And they showed Godzilla movies on Thanksgiving.

Then channel 13 was the PBS station- Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, ect.

WNBC actually aired reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and Here's Lucy at 4pm. And WNBC ran a block of 2 hours of Mary Tyler Moore at 2am. It was heaven.

So, really 7 stations. It was fine. If there was nothing on, you'd just be bored. Boredom doesn't exist anymore, at least in the way that it did before the internet.

Unlike CBS, NBC, and ABC, DuMont did not start out as a radio network, and therefore, lacked the built in audiences of its competitors and could not call upon a roster of star radio personalities to appear on their shows. Instead, DuMont relied on local Broadway talent, who weren't really well-known outside the theater world. This meant that in smaller markets, DuMont was often frozen out in favor of CBS and NBC programming.

In Detroit we had WXYZ -Channel 7(ABC), WWJ Channel 4(NBC) and WJBK Channel 2 ( CBS. We also had CKLW which was an independent station at that time but showed Canadian programming after 8:00 PM . We also had WKBD which was Channel 50. That station had reruns all day and then sports programming at night . Mostly Red Wings and Pistons . The Tigers were onWWJ and the Lions I want to say were on WJBK . This might have been due to league contracts but I’m not sure .

Then about 1972 we got WXON Channel 20. They showed sci fi returns at first . There was WGPR after 1975 …. Channel 62 . This was mostly black Programming but some reruns too. They had A dance show on after school … the scene .

Channel 7 had a movie hosted by Rita Bell in the morning and then a movie at 4:00 . They would stretch an epic like Ben Hur out over a week and have themes like Elvis week and such . Channel 9 had Bill Kennedy , a pompous old drunk , who hosted an afternoon movie. After CKLW was taken over by CBC full time in1975 , Bill Kennedy moved to Channel 50 .

Channel 50 had a news show on Saturday nights called the Lou Gordon show . It was a precursor of shows like Larry King . The two big Sports guys were Ray Lane and Van Patrick . We had PBS on Channel 56 but I remember when it only ran sporadically during the day for educational programs like Sesame Street and Mr Rogers. CKLW ran Friendly Giant and Mr .Dressup.

The big newscaster was Bill Bonds who was having an affair with Marilyn Turner the weather girl. Both married to other people . They moved Bill to SF for a year and Marilyn moved to another station . Than she ended up divorcing her husband and marrying John Kelly . Then Bonds comes back to town and all three we’re working the 6:00 news together . This was mid 70’s . Eventually things came to a head and Turner and Kelly got their own morning show so they didn’t have to work with Bill Bonds .

Programming was more local in those days . Until the early 70’s the network news was only 15 minutes on some of the channels . Now it’s all network content . The soap operas were 15-30 Minutes each and my mom and her friends watched all of them . They would start about 12:30 with Search for Tomorrow and run until 4PM when Dark Shadows ended.

I remember the big scandal in 1962 (I was around 10 at the time) around the Arizona Romper Room hostess, Miss Sherri, who had an ABORTION rather than risk having a thalidomide baby. It was national news. (I lived in Northern California and had never heard of her before this. We had our own RR hostess.) This was the first time I'd heard about such a thing.

EWTN, Hallmark and CSPAN. I’m real fun at parties….

Though I'm a tad younger (not much) than the three-channel situation , I'll posit that we wacky kidz didn't rely on screens to guide our lives. That's a weird thing that many young people don't get today. Screens were things you watched with your parents when Mary Hartman and Johnny Carson we're on. Life had nothing to do with TV and involved heading out to actual venues -- for disappointment, devastation,, exhilaration, or heaven.

*were 🙄

For a while in Boston in the 80s or 90s we had WOR and WPIX from New York. I guess it had to do with cable. It was kind of interesting. I used to watch Dragnet on one of thoese stations. And Joe Franklin, I think.

I remember when Fox debuted, it specialized in base, lowbrow programming.

There were a few so-called superstations that were carried on cable around the country, WOR, WPIX and WGN Chicago (with local commercials and news). WTBS Atlanta may have been the first, and it was more of a local Atlanta station that was carried all over the South and beyond (it started as WTCG - Channel 17 in the very early days). WOR at some point switched from calling itself a New York station and identified as WOR Secaucus, NJ, which is pretty ridiculous. It’s news had was Jersey-centric back then. I have no idea if channel 9 has a news department now.

The FABULOUS Million Dollar Movie!

I grew up in the sticks in the 60s where we only had access to CBS and ABC affiliates on UHF stations until the early 70s, when an NBC station suddenly appeared. We lived between two markets, so depending on the weather and which way the roof antenna was pointing, we could pull in stations from either city. We were in heaven when we got PBS back when "Six Wives of Henry the 8th," "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "I, Claudius" first ran.

I was fourth in a large family, so to save arguments, my Mom decided each child would get a "week" when they could watch what they wanted in primetime. There wasn't much on during the day until she watched Art Linkletter (she didn't watch soaps), then we got home from school to watch movies with Dialing or Bowling for Dollars as promotions. One of us would hold aluminum foil around the wire that went up to the antenna so the picture would be clear. We took turns doing this because if you were sitting at the back of the tv doing this, you could only listen.

Back to our "weeks," I generally liked what my sisters watched ("Beverly Hillbillies, "Hullaballoo!", etc.) and a few of the shows my brother did (like "Batman") so there wasn't much conflict until it came to special presentations. I remember one particularly tense negotiation with my brother because I wanted to watch "Once Upon a Mattress" with Carol Burnett during his week.....I had to give up my several slots on my week so he could watch "Rat Patrol" and other shows I didn't watch. The next year he wouldn't negotiate at all, and my Mom refused to interfere! I was stuck! Dad was a busy farmer, so the only show he always watched was "Gunsmoke," which he had been hooked on since it was on the radio. It was on late Monday night, so way past my 8 p.m. bedtime. I believe he also watched "Burke's Law."

Only a few years ago one of my older sisters spilled that they loved my "week" because I went to bed so early, they got to watch anything they wanted without too much conflict!

Saturday afternoons. after we all watched "American Bandstand," the local stations showed Westerns that my sisters and brother watched (I couldn't care less for Audie Murphy or Randolph Scott). But then one of the local stations started showing "Thriller" reruns, which my brother and I watched. It scared me so much that Mom banned me from watching.

CBS TV's The Late Show theme, "Syncopated Clock" by Leroy Anderson.

R230 I forgot about Art Linkletter! That was a show I watched with my mom, the segment with the kids was great.

I was an only child and I went to bed pretty early, I don't remember having any problems watching what I wanted. We didn't partularly have a lot of money but my grandfather lived with us and had a TV in his room, also. When my parents went out on Saturday nights I usually watched Lawrence Welk, Jackie Gleason, and the other shows. The networks' nightly programming used to start at 7 in those days. The Welk show was at 7.

There was some pretty good sports programming on in those days, especially The Wide World Of Sports which was a network show on ABC I think and had a real panorama of sports and events from all over the world.

Later there was the great Saturday night lineup on CBS: All In The Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and Carol Burnett.

Randolph Scott was so handsome.

[quote] especially The Wide World Of Sports which was a network show on ABC I think and had a real panorama of sports and events from all over the world.

"The thrill of victory....and the agony of defeat."