What are your earliest television viewing memories?

[hamster]

I was born in early 68.

I do remember sitting in our living room watching TV and a scene of a man all by himself on a boat smoking a cigarette and hearing something like "..NOW..You are NOT ALONE !!" and suddenly the boat was full of people smoking cigarettes. A few years ago online somehow I had found this ad. It was for TRUE filter cigarettes. Considering that such ads were banned in 1971..my memory of seeing this on TV had to had been from 1970 when I was two !!

In the early 70s for some reason I seem to recall seeing Jo Anne Worley on a kids show walking through an amusement park. The IMDB site does say she was on the kids show "Hot Dog" in 1970 but I don't think that was it. I also remember seeing some bizarre show around 1973 maybe 1974 where the ending was of a gravestone with a built in TV monitor of the deceased talking. I have NO idea what show this was but I do remember hearing the words " A Television Asylum" on it.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I seem to remember that Felix the Cat was on KCOP/13 ("a Chris Craft Station!").

It was, in the 1960s. Moved to KBSC in the 1970s after KCOP moved on to other things.

Similarly, Gigantor was on KTTV before KBSC and Kimba was on KHJ-TV. I think Tennessee Tuxedo was on KCOP too.

IIRC, KCOP was pretty pathetic in the 60s - just a bit worse than KHJ-TV (repeated the same movie every week-night), but way down the food chain form KTLA and KTTV.

It was usually a dead heat between the two to see which could be worse. KHJ-TV's nightly movie repeat was RKO policy (they did the same thing at WOR-TV) but KCOP had the worse news department. Their idea of "newsfilm" was to have the interviewee hold the microphone within the camera frame and answer the question posed by the cameraman (!), then have the news anchor (Charlie O'Donnell did a lot of their newscasts) say "when asked about the problem, Supervisor Schabarum said" and then roll the film with his answer.

KCOP also had terrible, low-budget local spots in the daytime, which were all generic film of the business with an equally generic radio-type announcer voiceover. But KHJ-TV ran lots of commercials for General Tire.

 

[K6JHU]

I am old enough that I remember going out with my parents to buy the first TV. I convinced them to buy the BIG 12" screen rather than the 4" screen.

My programming memories were of watching 'Captain Video' on the old DuMont network and the great old serials - Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon.

And I once sat in the local version of the 'Peanut Gallery' on the old Channel 13 out of Newark.

 

[gr8oldies]

Interesting topic! I have so slept since then. I was born in November 1956. We lived at the time between 2 UHF only markets, South Bend and Fort Wayne (the rotor was rusted and pointed to South Bend, but we could still get a snowy picture from Ft. Wayne. One thing that has remained a mystery was how WNDU (16) seemed to get NBC programming an hour before WKJG (33) in Fort Wayne. I know that wasn't actually possible unless Fort Wayne was delaying or 16 was getting an early feed---both unlikely in the 60s.

An early memory involved a commercial for Dash detergent that sent me running out of the room. It had a guy yelling "Dash! Dash! Dash!". Scared me to death. This was before the "makes your washer work like it's 10 feet tall" Dash commercials. Then I remember Dizzy Dean's baseball coverage where he'd say "a high fly ball". Program wise, Capt. Kangaroo, Bulwinkle. I watched the original network run of The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

Hearing Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass reminds me of his music being played along with a test pattern before regular programming.

 

[K.M. Richards]

One thing that has remained a mystery was how WNDU (16) seemed to get NBC programming an hour before WKJG (33) in Fort Wayne.

Well into the 1960's, NBC was still pre-feeding select affiliates with programs on film in advance of the network airing to cover situations where the affiliate needed to air "off-pattern". These usually had the network commercials spliced right into the print.

It's the most likely answer to the mystery.

 

[gr8oldies]

Very interesting! Thank you!

Well into the 1960's, NBC was still pre-feeding select affiliates with programs on film in advance of the network airing to cover situations where the affiliate needed to air "off-pattern". These usually had the network commercials spliced right into the print.

It's the most likely answer to the mystery.

 

[benale]

"Howdy Doody" I remember their last show in 1960, My sister andIi looked at each other saying "I can't believe Clarabell talked" Early memories include George Gobel and Eddie Fisher doing 15 minute shows and Julius LaRosa and Jimmy Durante with competing shows on Saturday night. The original 39 Honeymooners is one of my all time favorites and i can cite virtually every line of dialogue,but I don't remember watching the original run in 1955 and 1956. I was only six at the time. I literally grew up with television. Ed Sullivan and What's My Line are two shows I watched on Sunday nights since I was a kid.

 

[joebtsflk1]

Interesting topic! I have so slept since then. I was born in November 1956. We lived at the time between 2 UHF only markets, South Bend and Fort Wayne (the rotor was rusted and pointed to South Bend, but we could still get a snowy picture from Ft. Wayne.

Hearing Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass reminds me of his music being played along with a test pattern before regular programming.

In mid 60's southeast Iowa, you HAD to have a rotor. ABC and CBS from Cedar Rapids was within range, but NBC from Waterloo wasn't. We got NBC from WHO-TV when channel 13 used the WHO AM tower near Mitchellville, 15 miles east of Des Moines. The other two Des Moines stations with their shrimpy towers were too far away. And you couldn't help but get CBS from KTVO 3 from Ottumwa, usually off the back of the antenna. (KTVO switched to ABC in 1968)

Test patterns...the first rotor controller we had, featured a test pattern direction indicator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quBwehy4lRw By 1966 this controller was replaced by the more stylish...https://s1.yzimg.com/0003i7siipq3j1vq.640x480

Test pattern music: when I was 5 or 6, I thought Ottumwa's KTVO played music with their test pattern because they couldn't afford a tone generator like the bigger city stations in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. Among KTVO's test pattern playlist, Bert Kaempfert's "That Happy Feeling", The Lemon Pipers "Green Tamborine", The Hollies "Bus Stop" and I'm sure there had to be some Tijuana Brass songs in there. Knowing what I know now, I suspect KTVO had a cart deck that played the big 15 minute carts, for the songs were in the same order every morning.

KTVO in the 60's still had their "main" studio in Ottumwa along with co-owned KBIZ radio. But we knew there was the Missouri connection, as they would periodically roll their camera out to the front yard of their Lancaster MO transmitter building which was the legal "main" studio. Sunday mornings featured bluegrass gospel from The Guffey Family, shot in single camera glory from Lancaster. And around 1968, there was a short-lived 6:15 am live program of bluegrass and country, "The Sally Mountain Show" which other than the name didn't make much impression on me as a kid, but I'd later learn The Sally Mountain Show was the Vincent family band, where bluegrass legend Rhonda Vincent played and sang. I probably changed the channel before she came on, preferring the test patterns with tone from the "big city" stations.

And of course when the mid-morning shows got dull, a kid could make his own video art using the vertical and horizontal hold controls, a truly lost art form.

 

[retrotvfan]

You young whipper-snapper! By the time I hit the Bay Area in the early 70s, I was too old for afternoon cartoons, but from the history I know, the Bay Area's equivalent to Sherriff John in LA (kid show host/all around station talent) was Pat McCormick...not the Johnny Carson Pat McCormick...different guy. I understand that during the 60s, Pat did kids shows on KTVU, including the still celebrated Charlie & Humphrey (puppets) . By the late 70s, he was the weatherman on the 10 O'clock news, and actually went back to college to become a meteorologist. He also hosted the Dialing for Dollars Movie in the afternoon for many years.

Pat retired happily about a decade ago to Northern California, but was recently heard from when he responded to news articles that he had died. Rumors of his death were highly exaggerated...as the joke goes.

McCormick also hosted a version of 'TV POWWWW!' in the afternoons, around 1979-80(in between Tom & Jerry or Woody Woodpecker cartoons).

 

[KML0224]

I live in New Britain, CT, about 10 miles southwest of downtown Hartford. I remember being fascinated when a TV in my brother's 3rd floor bedroom picked up WBZ-TV channel 4 of Boston. This was on an early morning near sunrise. It had to be the early 1980s, possibly my first experience with a distant signal. Channel 20 of Waterbury/Hartford left the air as NBC and came back as independent WTXX-TV. There was no channel 61 of Hartford, channel 59 of New Haven or channel 26 of New London yet. I would have better luck with channel 8 of New Haven over channel 3 of Hartford sometimes.

I then lived in Old Orchard Beach, ME from September 1985 to June 1987. The second school year there was like night and day when WPXT-TV channel 51 of Portland signed on. I finally got to see WWF/E wrestling for the first time in over a year. Despite only using a simple indoor antenna, I'd get a weak signal of channel 4 and 5 from Boston 2 or 3 nights a week. I remember getting the old channel 21 from Concord, NH a time or two in their pre-CBS experiment days. This was with a 13" Curtis Mathes TV my late grandfather had bought.

 

[davect]

I vaguely recall watching the original network broadcasts of Batman and The Flying Nun on our B&W TV. I more vividly recall watching The Wonderful World Of Disney at my aunt's house because she had a COLOR TV! 😁 My mother recently told me that if we behaved, we would stay and watch Bonanza after Disney.

 

[davect]

Also recall Perry Mason reruns right after local news on channel 7 in Boston (WHDH at the time?)

 

[K.M. Richards]

Also recall Perry Mason reruns right after local news on channel 7 in Boston (WHDH at the time?)

I remember Perry Mason being on at noon weekdays on KTTV/11 for years and years and years. And when they finally dropped it, KDOC/56 picked up the series and ran it ... at noon weekdays, for years and years and years.

Come to think of it, 12:05pm ET was when SuperStation WTBS ran it ... for years and years and ...

 

[FreddyE1977]

Another program I specifically recall watching was the Star Trek episode where that group of space hippies was searching for the Planet Eden. My parents had gone out and left my uncle and his girlfriend there to babysit. They let me stay up late. That would have pegged me at around age five, as it was on NBC during its original run. Those characters were so weird I remembered them even from that time.

We were fortunate in that we lived high enough on a hill that we could get a couple of Ohio stations in addition to the local Pittsburgh ones. My dad would turn on WSTV (now WTOV) in Steubenville, and let me watch the cartoons that ran before the CBS Morning News came on.

 

[Silkie]

Sea Hunt and Perry Mason on our Muntz TV which looked more like a fishbowl (the TV, not the shows). The family all kind of sat with their heads in the middle of the couch so that the screen could be viewed directly. There was also that incident one Christmas when Santa Claus got stuck in a North Pole avalanche on or about December 23. It was high anxiety until we saw the blip under a snow drift and learned that Santa Claus would be able to get out after all, right around bedtime on Christmas Eve.

 

[ShawnHill1]

Well into the 1960's, NBC was still pre-feeding select affiliates with programs on film in advance of the network airing to cover situations where the affiliate needed to air "off-pattern". These usually had the network commercials spliced right into the print.

It's the most likely answer to the mystery.

I've noticed too, just by reading the old schedules here as well as my own research, that many NBC stations (whether they were the flagship or an affiliate) back in the '60s, 70s, and into the '80s were bumping network programming for baseball. As example, WKJG was a Cubs TV affiliate at least back in the 70s (I think I think they even picked up some Tigers games also), and of course, several big NBC stations held the broadcast rights to their local baseball team once upon a time--KSD(K) with the Cardinals, WWJ/WDIV with the Tigers, WLWT with the Reds, WTMJ with the Brewers, and so on.

 

[mvcg66b3r]

...several big NBC stations held the broadcast rights to their local baseball team once upon a time--KSD(K) with the Cardinals, WWJ/WDIV with the Tigers, WLWT with the Reds, WTMJ with the Brewers, and so on.

Don't forget WKYC with the Indians.

 

[hamster]

I live in New Britain, CT, about 10 miles southwest of downtown Hartford. I remember being fascinated when a TV in my brother's 3rd floor bedroom picked up WBZ-TV channel 4 of Boston. This was on an early morning near sunrise. It had to be the early 1980s, possibly my first experience with a distant signal. Channel 20 of Waterbury/Hartford left the air as NBC and came back as independent WTXX-TV. There was no channel 61 of Hartford, channel 59 of New Haven or channel 26 of New London yet. I would have better luck with channel 8 of New Haven over channel 3 of Hartford sometimes.

I then lived in Old Orchard Beach, ME from September 1985 to June 1987. The second school year there was like night and day when WPXT-TV channel 51 of Portland signed on. I finally got to see WWF/E wrestling for the first time in over a year. Despite only using a simple indoor antenna, I'd get a weak signal of channel 4 and 5 from Boston 2 or 3 nights a week. I remember getting the old channel 21 from Concord, NH a time or two in their pre-CBS experiment days. This was with a 13" Curtis Mathes TV my late grandfather had bought.

Your experience sounds a bit like mine in the late 1970s whenever I would visit my aunt. In those days she lived on the top of a big hill not far from Leesburg, Virginia. One afternoon I noticed she could pick up WGAL channel 8 out of Lancaster, PA and it came in very clear. I was fascinated in that so I checked out the other channels she could pick up and I swear she got something on every channel on the VHF band though channel 3 as I can remember was a mess probably due to the reception from three different channel 3's ( Harrisonburg & Norfolk in Virginia and of course Philly ). I also seem to remember her getting WAVY and the Maryland eastern shore stations ( WBOC & WMDT ) just before thunderstorms however due to being so close to Baltimore's WJZ I doubt she could had picked up WVEC from Hampton Roads but my dad had once told me that he had seen Pittsburgh's WTAE one night at her place when DC's WRC was off the air though.

Unfortunately sometime in the early 80s when my aunt got a big screen TV she decided to get cable so that more/less had put an end to her getting so many out of town TV stations.

 

[seatownmedia]

I was born in July 1959, and I do have vague memories of my parents watching JFK coverage in November of '63, which would have put me at 4 years and just under 4 months. I certainly didn't understand it, but I did have some realization it was important. I remember watching LBJ addressing the press at Love Field, (this would have been before my bedtime pacific time), and that is about it. I'm sure bedtime was soon after, and I probably never realized what had happened until 1-2 years later.

 

[BD Sullivan]

WKYC only started showing a smattering of games in 2006. Until the early 1990's?(?), the station was NBC-owned, which meant there was no way they would allow multiple preemptions for baseball. They did allow it for a few Browns exhibition games every year, but that was in the dead of summer.