What are your earliest television viewing memories?

[skippercollector]

What are your earliest television viewing memories?
Mine would all have to be about 1965 or 1966, and they aren't of any one particular show. I remember watching morning reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies, The Funny Company, and Casper the Friendly Ghost. I also remember watching the Saturday morning Beatles cartoon, although I was too young (I was born in 1961) to know who the Beatles were.
I have only a few evening memories. One was that my younger sister and I had just gone to bed, and my parents were watching a program that ended early, and a cartoon came on. My parents got us back up to watch the cartoon, but I don't remember what the cartoon was! i just remember getting out of bed!

 

[MarcB]

I was born in 82. I remember Welcome to Pooh Corner and Dumbo's Circus on the Disney Channel. Then I remember my parents canceling our subscription to the Disney Channel because I misbehaved a lot.

 

[Bronx]

I was born in 1957 and these are three of my earliest TV memories.

Watching Dinah Shore sing on our B&W Admiral TV with the round picture tube.

Seeing Fred MacMurray riding on the back bumper of an old car. I later learned this was an episode of The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour.

Watching the Dick Van Dyke Show episode where Laura inflates a life boat in the living room.

Bronx

 

[LKellerIII]

Fun topic. I was born in 1952. My parents didn't purchase a TV until 1957, when I was 5. My earliest memory was of the day the TV man hooked it all up to the antenna, which brought in mostly ghosts and static. We lived in suburb of LA which was blocked from the Mt. Wilson transmitters by numerous high mountains, so even a roof antenna didn't help much. San Diego stations (90 or so miles away) actually came in better than the LA stations. I do recall being captivated by Howdy Doody, and the local kid-show hosts on KTLA and KTTV - Skipper Frank, Tom Hatten (who is still around, I understand), and Sheriff John.

I also remember Sunday afternoons and early evenings, starting with The 20th Century at 6:00 hosted by Walter Cronkite. Even though I was young, I loved that show, and all the footage from World War II, which was ancient history in my young mind, even though it had ended just a dozen years prior. Then it was Lassie at 7:00 through Ed Sullivan at 8:00. After that was my bedtime, so I missed The General Electric Theater at 9:00 - though I must have watched it during the summer, because I remember seeing Ronald Reagan as the host.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeSmNaKCjaw

I also recall that the morning host of Sun Up on one of the San Diego stations hosted by none-other than a young Regis Philbin. It was a very low-budget predecessor to those local "Good Morning <Name of City>" type shows. Mostly just Regis talking to the camera.

 

[NoDakObserver]

I was born in 1973, and my earliest memories are of daytime TV. Captain Kangaroo, Sanford and Son, Hollywood Squares, Wheel of Fortune with Chuck Woolery, Price is Right, All in the Family, Little Rascals, Yogi Bear and even Match Game 76. For some reason I distinctly remember the change from Match Game 76 to 77.

 

[landtuna]

We got our first TV set in 1954 but before that we used to go down to the neighbor's house and watch theirs. I remember seeing "Boston Blackie" and "I Led Three Lives" and some westerns down there. At home Saturday was my favorite day for TV as it was filled with early morning cartoons (the good Warner Bros. kind) and westerns of all types. Cisco Kid, Range Rider, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy were my favorites. I was fond of Little Rascals and The Three Stooges when they were shown during the after school kid's programs. I also used to watch The 20th Century (my all time favorite show as a kid), Silent Service - almost everything military.

 

[blackgold]

I have to say that my earliest TV memories are staying up late at night to see TV station sign-offs. I also have to say that Saturday morning cartoons like Bugs Bunny and the Jetsons are also part of my growing up. And there was a live action game called "Shinanegans" hosted by Stubby Kaye on ABC on Saturday mornings. I can also remember a TV show on Channel 56 here in Boston called "Nooney Cartooneys," which featured cartoons at the noon hour. And who can forget QT Hush & Shamus? "Will our heroes solve this problem?" What do you think? I also enjoyed Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Wow! That's gotta be a lot. Don't you agree?

 

[K.M. Richards]

I do recall being captivated by Howdy Doody, and the local kid-show hosts on KTLA and KTTV - Skipper Frank, Tom Hatten (who is still around, I understand), and Sheriff John.

You understand correctly, Llew. I saw Tom at the last PPB luncheon in January and he is still pretty spry for an 88-year-old.

I also recall that the morning host of Sun Up on one of the San Diego stations hosted by none-other than a young Regis Philbin. It was a very low-budget predecessor to those local "Good Morning <Name of City>" type shows. Mostly just Regis talking to the camera.

That would have been on KFMB-TV/8. SunUp (they always said it as one word) is a piece of local broadcast history, lasting almost exactly 30 years on the air (1960 to 1990), all but its last few months pre-empting the 8:00am hour of CBS network programming.

 

[mississippi fan]

I was born in 1954 49 miles south of Jackson, Miss. Some of my earliest memories include a program 'Great Ghost Stories (or Tales?) that featured a coffin that opened up & a skeleton rising from it. And a Thriller episode of 'Pigeons from Hell' where the brown haired brother is walking up those stars right before we hear that scream. Locally, a Sunday afternoon movie called Shirley Temple Theatre with an instrumental lead in to 'Blue Velvet'. Great programs. Later there was the syndicated Astro Boy from Japan & Fireball X-L5 from Britian.

 

[ShawnHill1]

I just turned 36 a couple weeks ago, and in my formative years, my mother and I (and later two younger brothers) moved around quite a bit, from Rockford, IL (where I was born) to Los Angeles to Milwaukee, back to L.A., back to Rockford, and finally settling here in L.A. since the late 80s. With that, during my time in Rockford we lived with my grandmother the majority of the time, so Grandma and I bonded quite by a bit watching plenty of TV (especially on those "snow days"). I've mentioned many times that besides the four locals in town (WREX-13, WTVO-17, WIFR-23, WQRF-39), she picked up WGN-9 Chicago (sometimes snowy but a passable picture) and WISC-3 (CBS) from Madison.

She seemed to watch CBS most of the time, so my earliest memories come from watching the Eye's daytime game show lineup ("Pyramid", [insert show here], and "TPIR"), plus "The Young & the Restless", "Dallas", those couple CBS Norman Lear sitcoms still on the air by mid-80s (which was essentially just "The Jeffersons" and "One Day at a Time"), and some of the Saturday morning cartoons. In those days, Y&R aired a half-hour earlier (at 11am) on WISC than on WIFR, so she watched the WISC feed, and by noon time, she either watched the local noon news (which WREX was only one in those days in Rockford that did a midday newscast) or "Days of our Lives" on NBC, and then the rest of the ABC soap opera lineup. For some years until 1986, WREX didn't clear "All My Children", and when they did start airing it, they it put at 9am; I think previously, reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Happy Days" aired in that hour.

Since Rockford didn't (and still doesn't) have a PBS station of their own, and the fact that my grandma's TV could barely receive either WTTW from Chicago or WHA Madison, I didn't have much access to "Sesame Street", "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", or the other PBS kids shows of that era until our family moved back to Los Angeles. Even in the brief time we lived in Milwaukee, my mother never put on PBS...to her, I guess it might as well not even exist (and then again, my mother wasn't much of a TV watcher, compared to my grandma and I).

 

[K.M. Richards]

This doesn't count as "earliest memory" for me, but I'll toss it in anyway, just for old times' sake.

KBSC-TV/52 Corona-Los Angeles, when owned by Kaiser Broadcasting in the late 1960s and 1970s, was the "also-ran" station in the chain. While in other markets Kaiser was fortunate enough to have the second or third independent in town, with UHF therefore not being such a disadvantage, in L.A. they were up against four VHF indies, never mind UHF. That required some creative strategy on their part just to stay afloat.

KBSC was the only Kaiser station that didn't sign on until 3:00 in the afternoon on weekdays. They simply couldn't get the market rights to enough decent programming to compete with the soaps and game shows plus the independents. But when they did sign on, it was a treasure trove of animation: Felix The Cat, Gigantor, Speed Racer, Tobor the 8th Man, Kimba the White Lion, Uncle Waldo and Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog! Then came the second treasure chest ... shorts from the Little Rascals and the Three Stooges. And to wrap up their late afternoon/early evening schedule, Doctor Who (during the Tom Baker years).

They weren't much to watch on weeknights: Prime-time featured "Hollywood Television Theater" with (mostly) the best of the mediocre "B" movies, mostly pre-1948. They made so little money at night, there would be no commercial breaks for 45 minutes to an hour at a time, and whenever the movie ended they'd run their sermonette (which I fuzzily recall being called "Meditations") and signed off, not even filling to the nearest hour or half-hour mark.

Eventually, they leased out the night hours to Korean and Japanese syndicators.

I remember little about their weekend schedule except that they ran a lot of paid religious programming on Sunday morning and they had Roller Derby on Saturday afternoons.

Eventually, when Kaiser got out of television, KBSC was sold to Oak Industries, which used it for their ON TV pay television service. That lasted a good seven or eight years before channel 52 became the flagship station (as KVEA) for the then-new Telemundo network.

 

[Bronx]

In its early days in the 70s WUTV channel 29 Buffalo used to show Japanese cartoons in the afternoon. One of them was Tobor, and when I first watched it I thought they were singing Tobor the Ape Man in the theme song. Wasn't he the super hero who would smoke a cigarette to get his strength?

Bronx

 

[LKellerIII]

You understand correctly, Llew. I saw Tom at the last PPB luncheon in January and he is still pretty spry for an 88-year-old.

That would have been on KFMB-TV/8. SunUp (they always said it as one word) is a piece of local broadcast history, lasting almost exactly 30 years on the air (1960 to 1990), all but its last few months pre-empting the 8:00am hour of CBS network programming.

Thanks, KM. Those are some pleasant memories. Most of those local kids shows ran cartoons, of course - but also had some gimmick, like Engineer Bill on KHJ-TV who had model trains. Hatten dressed as a seaman Sailor in that white cap and a T shirt, and had kids on the set who would compete in drawing a picture on an easel based on the same "squiggle" (I believe that's what he called it) that Hatten provided. He ran Popeye cartoons, Skipper Frank ran Warner Bros cartoons, etc. I left LA in the early 70s before I was aware of Tom doing anything else, but I guess he became a feature reporter on various local news and entertainment programs

 

[K.M. Richards]

Thanks, KM. Those are some pleasant memories. Most of those local kids shows ran cartoons, of course - but also had some gimmick, like Engineer Bill on KHJ-TV who had model trains.

I have the distinction of having been the "guest viewer" on the very last Engineer Bill "Cartoon Express" before KHJ-TV took out the train set and put him in front of a cheesy set called "Satellite Center" the following Monday. Many years later, Bill Stulla was at a public event with local personalities from various stations and I told him I still remembered that. It brought tears to his eyes ... not only for being remembered, but because he really missed those model trains. He passed away a few years afterwards but I still have my autographed photo of him from that event.

BTW, I inadvertently left two important cartoons off the KBSC list: Ultraman and Astro Boy! (How could I forget them?)

 

[K.M. Richards]

In its early days in the 70s WUTV channel 29 Buffalo used to show Japanese cartoons in the afternoon. One of them was Tobor, and when I first watched it I thought they were singing Tobor the Ape Man in the theme song. Wasn't he the super hero who would smoke a cigarette to get his strength?

No, and for one good reason. He wasn't human. (What does "Tobor" spell backwards?)

 

[retrotvfan]

I was born in 1973, so my earliest memories are from 1978(or possibly '77; I have a feeling I saw a rerun of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' on Christmas night at my grandparents' house, an episode featuring Bigfoot, in which he comes across two hunters, grabs a rifle from one of them, and throws it over a fence.)
As for 1978, about all I watched was old cartoons on KBHK, the Kaiser station in San Francisco, and on KTVU, the then-independent in Oakland. My favorite shows were Popeye, the Flintstones, and, at lunch hour, Underdog, followed by 'Huck and Yogi'. KBHK reran sitcoms like 'Leave it to Beaver' and Andy Griffith, but I only watched 'Beaver' because Popeye followed it. KTVU had stuff like Tom and Jerry, Spider-Man, the '60s Batman show, and 'Captain Cosmic', an iconic Bay Area kids' show.

 

[LKellerIII]

I was born in 1973, so my earliest memories are from 1978(or possibly '77; I have a feeling I saw a rerun of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' on Christmas night at my grandparents' house, an episode featuring Bigfoot, in which he comes across two hunters, grabs a rifle from one of them, and throws it over a fence.)
As for 1978, about all I watched was old cartoons on KBHK, the Kaiser station in San Francisco, and on KTVU, the then-independent in Oakland. My favorite shows were Popeye, the Flintstones, and, at lunch hour, Underdog, followed by 'Huck and Yogi'. KBHK reran sitcoms like 'Leave it to Beaver' and Andy Griffith, but I only watched 'Beaver' because Popeye followed it. KTVU had stuff like Tom and Jerry, Spider-Man, the '60s Batman show, and 'Captain Cosmic', an iconic Bay Area kids' show.

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.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

I was born in 1973, so my earliest memories are from 1978(or possibly '77; I have a feeling I saw a rerun of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' on Christmas night at my grandparents' house, an episode featuring Bigfoot, in which he comes across two hunters, grabs a rifle from one of them, and throws it over a fence.)

Could be the inspiration for those "Messin' With Sasquatch" Jack Link's Beef Jerky commercials...

 

[FreddyE1977]

The CBS weekday morning line-up (Captain Kangaroo, The Lucy Show, Beverly Hillbillies, etc.) and pre-Sesame Street PBS (then NET) shows (Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, The Friendly Giant, etc.).

On a 15 inch black-and-white television manufactured by Motorola.
I was probably around age 5.

 

[LKellerIII]

This doesn't count as "earliest memory" for me, but I'll toss it in anyway, just for old times' sake.

KBSC-TV/52 Corona-Los Angeles, when owned by Kaiser Broadcasting in the late 1960s and 1970s, was the "also-ran" station in the chain. While in other markets Kaiser was fortunate enough to have the second or third independent in town, with UHF therefore not being such a disadvantage, in L.A. they were up against four VHF indies, never mind UHF. That required some creative strategy on their part just to stay afloat.

KBSC was the only Kaiser station that didn't sign on until 3:00 in the afternoon on weekdays. They simply couldn't get the market rights to enough decent programming to compete with the soaps and game shows plus the independents. But when they did sign on, it was a treasure trove of animation: Felix The Cat, Gigantor, Speed Racer, Tobor the 8th Man, Kimba the White Lion, Uncle Waldo and Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog! Then came the second treasure chest ... shorts from the Little Rascals and the Three Stooges. And to wrap up their late afternoon/early evening schedule, Doctor Who (during the Tom Baker years).

They weren't much to watch on weeknights: Prime-time featured "Hollywood Television Theater" with (mostly) the best of the mediocre "B" movies, mostly pre-1948. They made so little money at night, there would be no commercial breaks for 45 minutes to an hour at a time, and whenever the movie ended they'd run their sermonette (which I fuzzily recall being called "Meditations") and signed off, not even filling to the nearest hour or half-hour mark.

Eventually, they leased out the night hours to Korean and Japanese syndicators.

I remember little about their weekend schedule except that they ran a lot of paid religious programming on Sunday morning and they had Roller Derby on Saturday afternoons.

Eventually, when Kaiser got out of television, KBSC was sold to Oak Industries, which used it for their ON TV pay television service. That lasted a good seven or eight years before channel 52 became the flagship station (as KVEA) for the then-new Telemundo network.

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