The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    TELEVISION

    By cmaukonen on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 10:53pm |



    My first memory of television was this big box with a small picture that sat up on a big table. I would watch Ding Dong School with Miss Frances (Dr. Frances Horwich) and The Little Rascals on it. May parents would sometimes watch in the evenings but generally listen to the radio instead. Shows like Gun Smoke and Ozzie and Harriet were still on the radio. This was in the 1950s. For a while we could only get two stations as there was not CBS affiliate in Cleveland until 1956.

    After we move to a new house in the same area we got a much newer (but not bran new) TV and my parents would watch more in the evenings.  Shows like Burns and Allen, The Big Picture, Death Valley Days, Playhouse 90, Ed Sullivan, Leave it to Beaver,  Kraft Television Theater. And the News shows like Huntley-Brinkley Report.  Late sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show.

    I would get to watch Roy Rogers and The Cisco Kid and The Mickey Mouse Club and Howdy Doody as well as local kiddie shows. I grew out of these fairly quickly. I remember in the summer I could stay up with my parents and watch some of Jack Parr sometimes. A new TV in 1956 cost around 200 dollars. That's 1700 bucks in today's money. TV sets were expensive so people would have only one and treated it with care.

    And here is my point, if there is one. Television was more intelligent and educational back in the 1950s and early 1960s because only those with the kind of jobs that required an advanced education could afford to have one. Only 60 percent of the homes had a television in the middle 1950s and by 1958 75 percent had them. There were only 3 networks and unless you live outside of a major metropolitan area, you generally could only pick up 2 stations at most. Even with a good antenna. So the networks programmed to this demographic.

    By the late 1960s everyone had at least one television and cable TV was bringing signals to those who would be to far from a metro area to receive them themselves. And the networks changed their programming accordingly.  Gone or going away were the High Brow intellectual programs in favor of those appealing to a more general mass market. And TV prices also began to drop with the Japan imports.  Even color television got affordable.

    With cable and then satellite TV competing for viewership along with video tape and then DVD this competition has become even more fierce. So sure people like Beck and his ilk would never have gotten on TV in the 50s and 60s or even early 70s. But then never would Mad men or Dancing with the Stars or All news channels either.


    Comments

    WMFE selling its Orlando TV station  PBS lineup will be found on two other Central Florida stations

    After more than 45 years of providing public television programming in Central Florida, WMFE is selling its Orlando station, Channel 24, to concentrate on radio.

    That means viewers will have to find shows such as "Sesame Street," "Masterpiece" and "PBS NewsHour" on the two other local public television stations -- WDSC in Daytona and WBCC in Cocoa. Both stations are available to customers of Bright House Networks, the largest cable provider in Central Florida.

    Jose Fajardo, president and CEO of WMFE, said he won't be able to confirm the buyer and price until the information becomes public through FCC filings. The WMFE board voted unanimously Monday night to accept the offer for the TV station.

    "We've been talking about it the last eight to nine months," Fajardo said. "We've looking at every single alternative."

     


    by cmaukonen on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 11:14pm

    I swear my first memory of TV was when Grandmama picked me up and set me infront of one with finger paints.

    And the lady was teaching finger painting.

    I was literally lifted up and put into a different dimmension.

    To this day, I still cannot draw!


    by Richard Day on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 11:42pm

    I was generally shocked when I entered 1st grad and my teacher was the antithesis of Ms. Francis of Ding Dong School.


    by cmaukonen on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 11:56pm

    The television and radio programming of the 50s, 60s and 70s made us Boomers the most homogenized generation in history.   We are an historical anomaly and yet are often quite certain our way is the only way anything was ever done.  :)

    From memory:  "Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care".  That must have been every other commercial in the 60s. 

    Ah, nostalgia.


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 1:15am

    Philo Farnsworth, (1906-1971) the self taught farm boy born in a log cabin in Beaver, Utah was an electronic genius who held 162 patents related to TV and electronic imaging.  He invented the first TV camera.  As TV went commercial he was so disappointed by the content (in the 1950's!) that his son said his Dad's judgment on TV could be summarized as:

    "There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet."

    Farnsworth said he developed his idea of rendering a TV image from the furrows in a farm's plowed field.


    by NCD on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 6:52pm

    I remember watching cartoons. Lots of animals type characters doing crazy things...rube goldberg stuff...nothing I can remember, but it was all done to classical music...no voices It's the only thing I remember. Oddly, when I hear certain pieces of classical music, sometimes I have a flashback to one of those cartoons. In many cases, I can't remember precisely which which cartoon was mated with a specific piece of music, but I do remember when I first heard it. Peer Gynt was definitely one used.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 7:02pm