What TV did you watch as a kid?

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Our first TV was in 1956 so I remember life before TV. We got one station and mostly it was a boring western...the Indian test pattern. Aluminum foil balled up on the rabbit ears helped until Dad & I put up a chimney mount antenna.
This 1956 Westinghouse B&W still works, and since I was a TV repairman have plenty of tubes and parts to keep it going for many more years. The plastic blue-red-green plastic picture tube overlay makes it look like color.
We liked the Alfred Hitchcock hour, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. That and Mad Magazine made me what I am today!

 

[MossRoad]

Speaking of TVs. How many do you have, not counting any in Rv! We have 2!

4
Living room
Bedroom
Kitchen
Basement

 

[goeduck]

4 TVs these-days, each internet streaming or over the air antenna. All selections over wifi via Roku sticks.

Growing up, just 1 B&W of course. Antenna picked up a Canadian station or two plus 3 US stations depending on the weather and if one of us kids stood on our left foot with one hand over our head and touching the antenna with the other hand. Tin foil on the head too.

 

[IndyJay]

This has the TV and other goodies from an era gone by...

https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/127/732/120/playable/0cde5be5a0efad46.mp4

 

[Oaktree]

What TV did I watch as a kid? Nothing because we had no TV. But we had a lot of other activities outside the house going on with other kids. Did I miss it? No, hard to miss something you never tried and we had too much fun going on playing outside and building and creating things

Heh. One year (I must have been maybe 10 or 11) the picture tube went out in our tv, and my parents didn't have the money to replace it right away. We just found other things to do in the evening (house rule: tv did not get turned on until after supper & the dishes were done, and on school nights any homework was done), even once it was fixed it was a few weeks before it occurred to turn it on.
Had a couple good friends growing up whose families were just the opposite...tv was on pretty much all day.

We had 3 channels. One was PBS. So we watched whatever seemed like the better show off the other two channels each night

We only got 2, both were ABC. If we turned the antenna we could get a CBS station, but it was snowy. Nothing else. One year we had a school assignment to watch the olympics. I got an incomplete on that because it was on a channel we didn't get.

Our first TV was in 1956 so I remember life before TV. We got one station and mostly it was a boring western...the Indian test pattern. Aluminum foil balled up on the rabbit ears helped until Dad & I put up a chimney mount antenna.
This 1956 Westinghouse B&W still works, and since I was a TV repairman have plenty of tubes and parts to keep it going for many more years. The plastic blue-red-green plastic picture tube overlay makes it look like color.

I remember reading about a gadget you could attach to a tv that had a tri-color spinning disc that you put in front of the picture tube to make it look like it was in color. Never actually saw one in action, I think they were passe by the time I was school age, didn't see the article until I was in Jr. High. Even the first actual color tvs weren't very good...a schoolmate's family had one and ISTR it mostly was shades of green.
My parents got our first tv more or less the same time as yours, maybe a year or two later.

 

[m7040]

With our 9 adopted kids they were fighting about what to watch on tv with the bigger kids dominating what to watch. So one day I cut the power cord to stop that. One morning discovered one of the kids had spliced the bare wires together with sparks going up the wall and tv was on again.Took the tv out and discovered them sitting in the couch looking at where the tv used to be. Took a while but the behaviors changed. Hooked it back up after a while but only to videos controlled by parents

 

[Hay Dude]

I loved the old Quaaaaasar…. dum-dum-dum-dummmmm!!!! TV commercials.
Man we used to make/have some cool stuff. I remember moon landings on my ’Murrican made TV in our family room when I was like 3-4 yrs old.

I live fairly close to Camden, NJ where the RCA corporation was located.

Really miss the powerful, industrial country we once were…..

So sad to see it all crumble.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Quasar...Works in a drawer.

 

[Dftodd]

Heh. One year (I must have been maybe 10 or 11) the picture tube went out in our tv, and my parents didn't have the money to replace it right away. We just found other things to do in the evening (house rule: tv did not get turned on until after supper & the dishes were done, and on school nights any homework was done), even once it was fixed it was a few weeks before it occurred to turn it on.
Had a couple good friends growing up whose families were just the opposite...tv was on pretty much all day.

We only got 2, both were ABC. If we turned the antenna we could get a CBS station, but it was snowy. Nothing else. One year we had a school assignment to watch the olympics. I got an incomplete on that because it was on a channel we didn't get.

I remember reading about a gadget you could attach to a tv that had a tri-color spinning disc that you put in front of the picture tube to make it look like it was in color. Never actually saw one in action, I think they were passe by the time I was school age, didn't see the article until I was in Jr. High. Even the first actual color tvs weren't very good...a schoolmate's family had one and ISTR it mostly was shades of green.
My parents got our first tv more or less the same time as yours, maybe a year or two later.

We got CBS, PBS, and ABC. Around 10 or 11 years old, we were able to receive FOX as well.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Our first TV was in 1956 so I remember life before TV. We got one station and mostly it was a boring western...the Indian test pattern. Aluminum foil balled up on the rabbit ears helped until Dad & I put up a chimney mount antenna.
This 1956 Westinghouse B&W still works, and since I was a TV repairman have plenty of tubes and parts to keep it going for many more years. The plastic blue-red-green plastic picture tube overlay makes it look like color.
We liked the Alfred Hitchcock hour, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. That and Mad Magazine made me what I am today! View attachment 784670

Our first TV was an Admiral, that worked until the flyback transformer fried. I could have fixed it, but didn't have time to watch TV so junked it instead.