Reminiscing About Early Days of TV
- Thread starter jamesdeluxe
- Start date
There is a reason 6-7 month ski seasons have been routine for me while maintaining standards of quality. Unlike a certain famous member of this forum
, I'll extend to more months only if I don't have to lower those standards.
lizardqueen
New member
I said Marcia Marcia Marcia and Tony didn't recognize the famous quote
Tony couldn't be bothered with low-brow culture like The Brady Bunch -- even though it was set only five miles from where you live!
Very much so. My fave episode as a kid was when the Tarantula was on Peter’s bed in Hawaii.
My fave was when Greg ditched the rest of the family pop group (The Brady 6) and transformed into Johnny Bravo.
Video and pix following the 2023 renovation (with appearances by all six of the Brady kids). A shame that the new owner isn't allowed to rent it out as an Airbnb.
From James' link,
Those are my college years, during which I virtually never watched prime time TV shows except when I was home in the summers.
Well kids I think we all learned a lesson from this.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
Friday night TV....Brady Bunch, Partridge Family and Love American Style....I remember watching on a console TV...I missed the 70's
I think the Mary Tyler Moore show is thrown in there too
I think the Mary Tyler Moore show is thrown in there too
To the Bat Mobile Robin.I was guilty of watching Batman too.
I was never a Uni student so I don't know first hand but apparently The Bold and the Beautiful was and is a cult classic with University students here in Australia.
An Australian alternative rock band released this in 2002. If you've watched the show you will recognize the names in the lyrics.
An Australian alternative rock band released this in 2002. If you've watched the show you will recognize the names in the lyrics.
Skippy (The Bush Kangaroo) did not hop to our shores:
The expression "The Big Smoke" has likewise not migrated to the U.S. -- here's the explanation:
"The Big Smoke" is an informal UK and Australian slang term for a large city, often referring to London, Sydney, or Melbourne. It can also be used more generally to describe any major city. The term has historical roots, with some sources suggesting it originated in reference to the heavy smog and pollution that used to hang over London.
EMSC
Well-known member
I don't have the same nostalgia for many of the referenced shows since I was too young for many of them; only turning 10 a few months before the 80s started. I also lived very rural. We had a huge antenna on the roof which got us fuzzy ABC, NBC and PBS. I never saw a CBS show until I was in my late teens (so no Mash for example). It was in those late teens of mine that cable finally made it to my rural road and much to my surprise my dad actually signed up for it without a bunch of begging by us kids.
Interesting. I always assumed that L.A Metro was one of the last places to get widespread cable. Why? From as early as I remember (late 1950's) L.A. had 7 VHF stations and in the 1960's got PBS and a few others on UHF. The signals broadcast from 5,700 foot Mt. Wilson had a broad reach with excellent antenna reception, even with just rabbit ears on the TV.
There were a few places like where I live now that local mountains like the Verdugos rising half a block from my house blocked line of sight to Mt. Wilson. When I moved here in 1984 antenna reception was extremely marginal and we had to sign up for cable. I had the strong impression that the cable system for those of us within a mile or two of the Verdugos had been around for some time.
I knew that medium size metro areas like San Diego had 3 VHF stations for the big three networks. But on the Central Coast for example there was one station in Santa Barbara, one in Santa Maria and one in San Luis Obispo, and local mountains made it unlikely anyone got clear signals from all 3 of those. Like the Verdugo mountain shadow area, Santa Barbara had cable TV by the mid-1970's.
It makes sense that when population density gets really small, the cost per resident to install cable in the 1970's was not economic. It's the same issue as with broadband internet now. I would guess that Starlink is very popular in remote rural areas. I have a recollection that some people in rural areas had 10-foot TV satellite dishes in the 1980's.
TV had to be very limited in rural areas when there was only VHF with 12 channels available and you probably couldn't have two channel 4's for example within (I'm guessing) 200 miles of each other. New TV's were not required to have UHF receivers until 1964. But I would have assumed that after 1964 the 3 major networks would have gained fairly comprehensive U.S. coverage via the larger number of available UHF channels.
HBO was founded in 1972 as the first cable only network, but was not available in most of Metro L.A. that had no cable. So in 1977-78 two subscription networks ON-TV and SelecTV for commercial-free movies and selected sports events started up in L.A. using encrypted signals over UHF channels. ON-TV was rolled out in several other metro areas but never profitably. L.A. had over half the US total subscribers, and both channels were out of business by the mid-1980's as cable expanded.
ON-TV, SelecTV and HBO were used for a temporary fad of collecting movies on Beta or VHS tapes in the late 1970s/early 1980's. This fad was even more short-lived than its successor, Blockbuster rentals.
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