In 1980 I visited a college boyfriend’s family in Indiana, and we settled in for a movie. They turned on the TV and changed to a local channel. I was really surprised by the quality of their local channel and the impressive graphics! Big spinning H, big spinning B, big spinning O.
“Our UHF channels in Missouri all start with W,” I said.
No, this is Home Box Office, they explained, and then they told me about cable. (“So, they send movies to your house through a wire? Why not just go to the movie theater?”)
My family in Missouri had cable as soon as it was available to us. You know how old I am? I remember when there was a news network that just presented the news, 24-7. (No, really. Objectively stated the news, every half hour, all day and all night. CNN, it was called.)
Just tonight, the tiVo served up a show about Paul Simon and Lorne Michaels. I thought, “Oh, Paul Simon was on the first episode of SNL I ever saw.” Which was the second episode of SNL ever.
I remember people talking about how this new show Cheers was going to be really good. I remember when Nightline was 20 minutes long and was only there to tell us about the hostages in Iran. I remember David Letterman’s daytime talk show.
I think this was provoked by Larry King’s 25th anniversary. Larry, your interview isn’t historical if I remember it, that’s how I feel. Find me someone who’s been on TV longer than I’ve been alive, that’s history. It looks like it’s Mike Wallace, and that’s it. We may be old, Mike and I, but we’re feisty.
9 responses to “And, Kids, I Had a Transistor Radio Too”
See, it pays to live in a country that for so long was way behind the times: we’ve just marked the 50th anniversary of television in NZ, so although I can remember life without TV (my father was not an early adoper), IT REALLY WASN’T THAT LONG AGO. And we only got colour in 1972 – why, that was just yesterday!
…early adopTer, of course – although, given the trance I sink into every evening as I settle in before the box, maybe there’s truth in the typo.
Big Dot – it’s okay, I read adopter anyway. I don’t think we had a tv when I was a kid in Houston, but Dad had a tv when we got to StL in ’68.
I loved Dave’s daytime tv show. I watched it in the TV lounge in the dorm, because the (black and white) tv I had in my dorm room only got one channel. In the LOUNGE we got 3 or 4. Now the same dorm has cable tv access and wireless internet in every room. Spoiled rotten babies.And once, when I was a small child, my dad brought home a piece of fancy rainbow plastic, taped it onto the front of the tv, and tried to covince us that we now had a “color tv!!!”. I kid you not.
I was stunned when I saw that the Oz part of “The Wizard of Oz” was in color! I think I saw that…sometime around 1980.
And I still don’t understand how pay-for radio works. Not that I would get it, anyway. But how does the cable stretch so long?
Me, too, on the Wizard of Oz thing – we never had color growing up. No remote, either. and my parents were half-convinced the FBI was spying on them through the cable box.
I remember the first cable TV we had had a 5×7 remote actually wired to a cable box and we had to be careful to not trip on it.suburban: I worked for a cable company in 2001-2002. You would not believe the number of calls that came in asking why we were spying on them through the little red light on the digital receiver. Uh, it’s a message indicator. Read the message. It’s just an advertisement for yet another expensive boxing/wrestling/blood drawing sport. Delete the message and we’ll quit spying, I promise.
When I was growing up we had a remote for our black and white TV. Me.
Kristie – Dave’s show was so unusual. I sat there thinking, dude, you’re funny, but I am the only person watching now who gets you.Becs – I never thought about that. That’s so sad. But it must have been great to see the great color shift. I know I always watch that part if I can.Suburbanetc. – What about the phone company? They didn’t choose the paranoid’s target of choice, the phone company? (It’s so cliche!) Good for them for branching out to the cable box.Caroline – I thought the red light was telling me I needed to pay my cable bill.Zayrina – Did you have to turn the dial-click-click-click or could you just wrench it around? We couldn’t wrench. We had to click.