" TV or NOT TV"

     TV  or  NOT  TV

   With so much 'heavy' news, I opted for a bit of 'nostalgia' today.  Do you remember the first time you saw a television program ? Did your parents already own tv set(s) when you were born ?Did you grow up with black and white or color ?  Then there was the time that practically every house had a tv antenna on the roof. Did you ever use "rabbit ears" with strips of aluminum foil to enhance reception ? When did "TV Repairman" become an obsolete occupation ?

    Though tv was invented in 1927, many years passed before becoming a 'household word". I first saw "television" in the early 1950's when delivering dry cleaning with Dad. He called to me from Gene Robertson's house.  Mr. R operated a local appliance store. They were watching a test pattern from WFMY in Greensboro ! That was it ! We must have stared for several minutes like it was the next 'wonder of the world'. I do not remember when or where I first saw a 'real' program. 

    For several years our family's entertainment center had remained the old reliable Philco radio.  Standing at least three feet tall, it was a piece of furniture as well. Sometime around 1955, soon after moving to our new house, our parents purchased their first t.v. set. Like the old Philco, their first model resembled a substantial piece of furniture.Vintage sets today sometimes fetch prices in the thousands of dollars. My 'research' indicated that by 1955 half  the homes in the United States had a tv set, up from 1% in 1948. 

    TV quickly began to impact movie attendance and radio listenership ( is that a word ?).  Radio, once the home of a wide variety of programming, devolved primarily into a medium for news, music and talk shows.

    Not everyone in our parents' neighborhood had their own set. Almost every night after dinner (we called it supper), with regularity, our doorbell rang, announcing that mom's distant cousin, Jessie Lee, had arrived for her evening 'visit'. She took her seat directly in from of the set, said little, and remained there for much of the evening.

    Programs diversified rapidly after those test patterns.  In 1954, area college basketball games were shown without sound and the play by play came via a radio. All that had changed by 1957 when UNC won the national championship by defeating Wilt Chamberlain and the University of Kansas team. A friend of a college friend had a television set and she invited several us to watch the game at her home.

    To watch Major League baseball now is commonplace.  Not so in the early years when there was the "Game of the Week", featuring former stars "Dizzy" Dean and "PeeWee" Reese. Whether his natural parlance or contrived, Dean often murdered the language by exclaiming that a player had slud into a base. My wife remembers her cousins coming to watch the games, especially when the BROOKLYN Dodgers were playing.

   Among the early programs that I remember our watching were The Ed Sullivan Show; Gunsmoke; The Walt Disney Program and The 64 Thousand Dollar Question. Although Dr. Joyce Brothers won the Big prize, Charles Van Doren was later disgraced by the revelation that he had received the answers in advance.  In his later years, Dad enjoyed The Price is Right and Red Skelton. After their retirements, he and Mom enjoyed the daily 'soaps'.

    When I have seen lists of favorite programs from  past years, I have realized that I never watched most of them.  Those I did enjoy included Hill Street Blues, All in the Family, Jeopardy, Hee-Haw and my all-time favorite M-A-S-H. "Uncle" Walter Cronkite and his predecessor, Edward R. Murrow became my trusted sources of news. Probably like many Americans in 1963, I was watching when Cronkite announced the death of President John F. Kennedy. And I was watching when Jack Ruby walked out of the crowd and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. "Saw some real people die on t.v.", the Statler Brothers sang of that era.

    A few years ago, we gave ourselves an anniversary gift of a wall mounted 'big screen'. We watched area college basketball games during the season and in March Madness tournaments, along with occasional movies.  The basics of 'streaming'  without digital channel indentifiers continue to elude me. Nor do I understandd the transition of a few years ago when all t.v. models became obsolete, including the midget-size model in my office.

    "What'll they think of next ?"

         Satchel