Earliest TV Watching Memories

MODERATOR NOTE

> This may be off topic, but what was some stuff that freaked
> you out on TV as a kid?

Not only is it off-topic for this thread, it was already discussed in another thread on this board.

And someone even tried to start another thread duplicating that one. (Which I had to close.)

And you posted your message twice. (Which I had to delete.)

Just another Manic Monday.

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> Mine go back to around age 3-4 (1969-1970) including Romper
> Room and Bozo on the original WHDH in Boston, Major Mudd on
> the original WNAC (God I feel old just typing that!) and the
> syndicated version of Lassie (which came on just before Ed
> Sullivan.) Sesame Street is also in the mix somewhere. I
> also remember watching the Brady Bunch back when WNAC was
> still an ABC affiliate, so that places it pre March 1972.
> The other thing I remember is Smokey the Bear and Snuffy
> Smith cartoons on WTEV (now WLNE) from New Bedford.
>
I also remember an old KJR-AM(Seattle) TV spot from the early 70's promoting the station's sunshine sticker. If "Sunshine Sherry" spotted that sticker on a person's car or house even, that person would recieve a certain amount of cash. I don't remember how much cash was involved, though.<P ID="signature">______________
"I look out for me and mine."-Capt. Malcom "Mal" Reynolds in Serenity</P>

> I also remember watching the JFK news coverage in November
> 1963. I was too young to fully understand what was
> happening, but I knew that the President had been killed and
> that my family was very upset by it. I do recall watching
> the funeral on TV, and later drove my mother nuts as I would
> march around with my toy drum imitating the drummers in the
> cortege. (Needless to say, she did NOT want to be reminded
> of the funeral.....)

...this is also the earliest memory I can match up with a specific date -- most specifically, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on 24 November '63. I was only two years old, but I could tell the gravity of the event from how my mother and grandmother reacted. Past that, I can also recall watching "I've Got a Secret" from that general era because of the various logo designs -- starting with the "diamond" pattern -- that are now seen on the GSN late-night reruns...<P ID="signature">______________
King Daevid MacKenzie
WLSU Wisconsin Public Radio, La Crosse
heard weekly on http://www.radio4all.net/
"Kill Ugly Radio." FRANK ZAPPA</P>

One of the earliest TV memories I have (I'll be 45 this summer) is the Beatles' Saturday morning cartoon show on ABC. It got me believing that the Fab Four actually were fictional cartoon characters. I'll have more to say about that and other "first" shows I remember when I have more time but I wanted to throw that in.

ixnay

My earliest memories were from the late 60's, so I would have been about four to five years old. We had an old Motorola black-and-white set, which I believe did not even have a UHF tuner. I can distinctly remember watching Captain Kangaroo, the very first episode of Sesame Street, original network first-run episodes of Star Trek, Get Smart and Green Acres. Also the Smothers Brothers and Laugh-in, real mind-warping stuff for a preschooler in the late 60's! I remember my father dragging me out of bed and planting me in front of the set to watch Neil Armstrong step on the moon....he said that I would want to someday tell my grandchildren that I had seen it. I also have fond memories of a local Pittsburgh program called Paul Shannon's Adventure Time on Channel 4 in Pittsburgh. He would run a lot of Three Stooges, and Kimba the White Lion, and had a feature where at Christmas time you could send him your letters to Santa, which he would load into a rocket ship and blast direct to the North Pole. I would wait a whole year for that time when he was ready to load the rocket!

Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, a certain commercial for Dash detergent, Dizzy Dean (I think) saying "it's a high fly ball". Wondering how WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN got NBC programs an hour earlier than anyone else (still haven't figured that out). Sending for a "carnival kit" from a local children's show and actually expecting that someone would be setting up amusement rides in my backyard. (the kit contained papers describing how to make lemonade and games).

The aftermath of the JFK assasination (would have been the day before my 6th birthday.) <P ID="signature">______________
"Your right to know supersedes your right to exist"..Gary Burbank</P>

> Wondering how WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN
> got NBC programs an hour earlier than
> anyone else (still haven't figured that out).

Whoa! 'Splain further please--what year(s)
and time of year are you referring to, and
is this more than just WNDU running "early
prime" while on EST in the summer?

> > Wondering how WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN
> > got NBC programs an hour earlier than
> > anyone else (still haven't figured that out).
>
> Whoa! 'Splain further please--what year(s)
> and time of year are you referring to, and
> is this more than just WNDU running "early
> prime" while on EST in the summer?
>
I'm old too, so many of the shows you are talking about seem like recent history to me. My parents got their first TV just a few months before I was born in1948. I was told that I enjoyed anything that had music. so they thought I was going tobe musically inclined. THat didn't work out. THe first programs I remember seeing on a regular basis was Miss Francis' Ding Dong School--I think that was a local show on a Baltimore station. I was in Richmond, but we had a big antenna that would pick up a few Baltimore, DC, and Norfolk stations until Hurricane Hazel knocked it down when I was in the first grade. About that time, Richmond had all three networks on separate stations, so from then on, it was rabbit ears. I was allowed to watch TV in the afternoon after school. I watched Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes, Superman, and Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody (my father also loved that show) every afternoon. I think in about 1956 I saw my first color show. My father took me to a local appliance store one night to see the Milton Burle show in color. I remember most of the lights in the store were turned off, but there was a big crowd of people to see the demonstration. But my parents did not pop for a color set until 1968. I was in college and had just gotten home for summer break. I was excited to have a color set in the house, and woke up early on a Sat morning and turned the 18 inch GE on. I was shocked to find coverage of RFK's assasination----all in living color. What a downer that was. I had already gone through the coverage of JFK's and MLK's assasinations in black and white. But perhaps the most memorable news coverage I remember was the extensive coverage of the first civil rights march on Washington and MLK's wonderful speech there. I also remember the march from Selma to Montgomery--very impressive. Of course, I had to watch these on the sly, since my parents did not approve. Don't even get my started on the Viet Nam coverage....

> Here's one to stir up the cobwebs in yer brain
> cells.....what's the earliest memory you have of watching
> TV? How far back can you go to recall watching a specific
> show at a very young age?

Ahh, sweet childhood memories...at age 2, I caught the premiere of the original Mickey Mouse Club show back in the fall of 1955. It immediately became appointment television every afternoon (in my town, Rochester, NY, it played at 5 PM every weekday on Channel 10). Didn't miss a single episode all during the four year original run.

> Here's one to stir up the cobwebs in yer brain
> cells.....what's the earliest memory you have of watching
> TV? How far back can you go to recall watching a specific
> show at a very young age?


I would've been four years old: I can remember watching Munsters when it was on CBS; I remember watching Addams Family on Friday night; I remember watching Tennessee Ernie Ford's daytime show on ABC; Hugh Downs hosting Concentration in B & W (while we had a color set)...And local programming in Syracuse when it was still transmitted in B & W, like Baron deMoan (Mike Price dressed as a cheesy Dracula) on ch. 9 WNYS hosting Our Gang shorts; Salty Sam (Bill Lape, God Rest His Soul) hosting Popeye cartoons on Ch. 3 WSYR...Getting up way early (as little kids do) and watching western movies really early on saturday mornings on WSYR....All this would've been mid-60's.

My earliest TV memory was of a baseball game on NBC in prime time, the Yankees and White Sox in 1985. What I remember about that game was two things; at one point Connie Chung from the NBC network interrupting with a bulletin about a passenger plane crash in Dallas(the one where a microburst was the culprit) and the other notable moment was when Carlton Fisk tagged out 2 runners at the plate on the same play late in the game. Padres at Astros was the backup game that night, and the Padres made it a close game with a grand slam either in the 7th or 8th inning. Crazy, if you ask me.

I was born in 1954. The first image I remember on tv (which terrorized me) was the character Reddy Kilowatt. I don't know why but I remember getting out of the room when he came on. Some of my fonder memories of early TV was Sky King, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Superman, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers & Shirley Temple Theater on Sunday afternoons on NBC affiliate WLBT 3.The show's theme was a lovely instrumental of Blue Velvet. It was great being a little kid back then.

My grandfather will tell you, he used to watched the baseball games with Dizzy Dean doing pbp. One week, the game was so bad, Old Diz said something to the effect of "I don't know why they're calling this the Game of the Week. There's a much better game, Dodgers and Giants, over on NBC." My grandfather did just that, switching the knob to NBC to watch the Dodgers-Giants game instead.