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Trivial observation in an "I Love Lucy" episode

S

Stanislav

Watching I Love Lucy on ME-TV. The episode in which Lucy and Ethel are mad at their hubbies for watching the fights on TV and ignoring them. At one point, they go up on the roof and try to cut the antenna lead-in so that the boys won't be able to watch TV.

Here's a "blooper" that only the sort of folks who hang out on this board would even notice. The antenna in the scene is clearly a UHF corner reflector. Given that NYC's first UHF (WNYC-TV) wouldn't sign-on until 1961, it's an anachronism.

Perhaps the antenna was chosen by the prop man due to the tight confines of the set. But it looks to me like there would have been plenty of room for a basic 1950's VHF conical! Probably more a case of nobody noticing or caring. But one also wonders how the prop department even came by the UHF antenna -- did even L.A. have any UHFs on the air then? Maybe the prop guy lived in an outlying area that did have UHF, but back that far, the closest active UHF market I can think of would be Bakersfield. (That would be a long commute.)

Maybe this will inspire a thread about incorrect/anachronistic/out-of-place TV antennas depicted in TV and film? ;)
 
or the people putting the show out were not concerned about wether or not the electronics were involved were accurate or not.
 
I spent a few weeks in Hell Livingston, CA (just south of Merced) the summer of 1960 and the house I stayed in had UHF channels. I don't remember how many but it was unusual to me because I hadn't known UHF existed before that. My home town didn't have UHF.
 
I would have never ever noticed something like that, and I'm a sort of antenna geek.

The only antenna-related thing I remember on classic TV right now is on an episode of "Dennis the Menace," where he was shown a drawing of a house (maybe by his dad).....Dennis said something like "There's something wrong with the drawing; there's no antenna!"

There was a classic "Laurel & Hardy" short, where L&H were appointed to erect an "aerial" (as they called it; a shortwave-style longwire), and of course everything seemed to go wrong. The short is called "Hog Wild" (1930).

cd
 
landtuna said:
I spent a few weeks in Hell Livingston, CA (just south of Merced) the summer of 1960 and the house I stayed in had UHF channels. I don't remember how many but it was unusual to me because I hadn't known UHF existed before that. My home town didn't have UHF.
Click to expand...

According to Wikipedia, there were "loads" of UHF stations in the 50's.

While the more-established broadcasters were operating profitably on VHF channels as affiliates of the largest TV networks (at the time, NBC and CBS), most of the original UHF local stations of the 1950s soon went bankrupt, limited by the range their signals could supposedly travel, the lack of UHF tuners in most TV sets, and difficulties in finding advertisers willing to spend money on them. UHF stations fell quickly behind the VHF stations. UHF station revenues in 1953 were recorded as having a loss of $10,500,000. More stations left the air than began broadcasting and 60 percent of the industry losses were by UHF stations from 1953 to 1956.[14]TV network affiliations were also difficult to get in many locations; the UHF stations with major-network affiliation would often lose these affiliations in favour of any viable new VHF TV station which entered the same market. Of the 82 new UHF-TV stations in the United States broadcasting as of June 1954, only 24 of them remained on the air a year later.The majority of the 165 UHF stations to begin telecasting between 1952 and 1959 did not survive.
 
I don't have the exact figures, but I'm very confident there were more than 24 UHF stations operating in 1954. Here in SC, there were three, and another three in NC (though the NC stations eventually called it quits). In all, I'd venture there were at least a 100 operating after the first shake-out. Regarding Lucy and Ethel--there was a Here's Lucy program in which they installed their own rooftop antenna in Danbury CT (Mr. Mooney wouldn't advance Lucy funds for a professional installation). Though Danbury was in range of 2 UHFs at the time (Hartford and Waterbury) it was a VHF only model.
 
I love the tech-geekiness of this thread, but it is quite apparent the producers/writers of I Love Lucy couldn't have cared less.
 
fortmill said:
Regarding Lucy and Ethel--there was a Here's Lucy program in which they installed their own rooftop antenna in Danbury CT (Mr. Mooney wouldn't advance Lucy funds for a professional installation). Though Danbury was in range of 2 UHFs at the time (Hartford and Waterbury) it was a VHF only model.
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to bet, that was "The Lucy Show" ... not "Here's Lucy".
 
Stanislav said:
Watching I Love Lucy on ME-TV. The episode in which Lucy and Ethel are mad at their hubbies for watching the fights on TV and ignoring them. At one point, they go up on the roof and try to cut the antenna lead-in so that the boys won't be able to watch TV.
Click to expand...

That's funny, I was watching the same episode on KVOS 12, which is a ME TV affiliate, not a sub channel (speaking of VHF) KVOS was the first TV station in the Vancouver market, having gone on the air in 1952. Vancouver didn't get a UHF channel until 1976.
 
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