When you were a kid, how many TV stations do you remember??
So I'm pretty sure I am correct that circa 1950 there were three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS.
My question concerns the very first local stations you remember. I lived in NW Ohio kinda sorta between Toledo, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana. I can remember when Toledo only had channel, channel 13 and Fort Wayne only had channel 33. That was it folks!! Those two small cities had one channel apiece. Which means, in my home town we had two channels to choose from. Two! Can you imagine trying to explain this to a 20 something?? đ€Ł
My Great Grampa Pete had the first TV in Bryan, Ohio located in a home. There was one TV that came before GG Pete's in Bryan but that TV was in a bar.
I can well remember when each small city added channels, one each!! Channel 11 and channel 21. So when I was around 10 years old I had 4 channels to choose from covering all three networks. Since we lived quite a ways from each city our TV picture was primarily snow, remember snow??? đ
So what are your early memories of the infancy of television???
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WSAZ, Charleston/Huntington Wv and WOAY, Oak Hill, Wv
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Varian, did you watch Saturday night wrestling on WOAY? Remember the announcerâs name?
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I remember dad thinking it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when he got an electric rotator so he didn't have to climb
up on the roof to rotate the antenna for a different station. We only got 2 or three stations and they were all in different
directions.
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Didnât have a TV until I was in High School. When we got one, there was the big three, PBS, and one UHF channel.
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Channels 8 and 13 both came out of Grand Rapids, MI. Channel 3 came from Kalamazoo. We had to use an antenna rotor to watch channel 3. Three channels; that was all. Sometimes there would be a late night movie, otherwise they went off the air sometime around midnight.
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We had about 5. I remember having to switch the alligator clip in the back from UHF to VHF. The good old days.
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I believe we got our broadcasts out of Albert Lea, Mason City, and Fort Dodge.
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3 Networks on 2 4 and 5 and I think one PBS that was not very clear on 7.
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There were 8 channels in our area:
Channel 2-CBS
Channel 4-NBC
Channel 5- independent
Channel 6- PBS (always hard to tune that one in).
Channel 7-ABC
Channel 9-idependent
Channel 11-independent (later become the Fox network).
Channel-13-independent
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We got 4 on a regular basis. 5,7,9,&11. If the weather was good you could pick up 12 and 6 . One pbs station that was all educational school programs . The above was with someone manually rotating the antenna . Remote control was my father sayingâ boy get up and change channels and see what else is on !â
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4
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My Dad had Remote Control for Changing Stations and/or Volume, as well as adjusting the antenna to mitigate the aforementioned "Snow." It was called David or Ken, and required no batteries. Easy to locate. Just yell "David" or "Ken come in here."
Remember hanging all kind of aluminum foil configurations to improve reception? The National anthem being played when the channels went off air?
I distinctly remember the 1st Moon Landing and the house full of people watching it. Smallish rounded type B&W Screen.
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Mark, that's really good you can remember all those.
All I can remember is about eight (but can't remember what they were) in North Hollywood, CA in 1950.
We moved to Reno that year, where TV didn't arrive 'til 1953.
On a good day, we could get a very "snowy" picture but no sound from Sacramento.
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We had three, all in St Louis, so we didn't have to rotate the antenna. If you're REALLY old, you can remember when the manual channel dial had a Channel 1. (That didn't last long because the VHF frequency it used gave terrible reception, and #1 was dropped very early. #2 is as low as they go ever since.)
It was all B&W, but you could apply an acetate sheet that had a band of green at the bottom and blue at the top to mimic grass and sky: and you had "color" TV!
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WFBC-Greenville SC- NBC
WSPA-Spartanburg SC- CBS
WLOS-Ashville NC- ABC
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A fact not usually recognized by folks is that all radio and TV station call letters start with "W" east of the Mississippi River, and all those west start with "K".
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If the conditions was just right and with the antenna pointing in the right direction we could get the ABC station out of St. Louis but it was really fuzzy. We had to go to neighbor house on top of the hill to watch KPLR channel 11 which had all the cartoons and Gilligan's island
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There were 5 basic channels in our area. But we didn't have a TV to receive UHF so we only had 2 available to us.
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Best entertainment was going up to the roof with Lawn Chairs, when we got back from 6 years in Europe, and moved to El Paso TX. in about 1967. There was a Drive-In theatre about a mi. or so away. No sound, but who needs sound in a Godzilla movie.
Good times for us neighborhood kids.
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If memory serves ours went like this:
4 - ABC (KOMO)
5 - NBC (KING)
7 - CBS (KIRO)
9 - PBS (KCTS)
11- Local ( KSTW) which was mostly kids programming
13 - Local (KCPQ) which started as independent and became known for broadcasting uncut movies (edited for TV) with limited commercial breaks, then became a Fox affiliate (KCPQ). Before it was Fox, I used to record movies onto VHS a lot and still have many of them. It was difficult because we didn't get the channel very well and it took a lot of finagling with the rabbit ears to get the signal to come in clear. My folks never put up an aerial antenna and I know not why. Money, I guess.
Later (in 1985) they added some sort of independent station on channel 22 (KTZZ), which was UHF.
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We had 3 channels for a very short time and then our ABC affiliate station burnt down and we went with just CBS and NBC for several years.
The NBC channel came from the Paul Bunyon Broadcasting company WPBN Traverse City MI, channel 7 and the CBS was WWTV out of Cadillac MI on channel 9.
All of the old 50's and 60's reruns that were on ABC back then are quite new to me today and I watch many for the first time!
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Rocky Raab: 31515846413211/comments/31515847010203
A fact not usually recognized by folks is that all radio and TV station call letters start with "W" east of the Mississippi River, and all those west start with "K".
KDKA TV and Radio Pittsburgh, Pa.
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Channels 3, 5 and 8 out of the Cleveland Ohio area. We got UHF channel 32 which had Svengoolie and the lady in black showing black and white scary movies.
We kids were the clicker for dad back then.
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During the 70's we got to watch "The Ghoul" "Overday" who presented silly horror movies and liked to torcher froggie (a frog puppet).
We also watched "Sir Graves Ghastly" and had a local fellow on our hometown station as "Count Zappula" his real name was Don Melvoin and I knew him pretty well. These were all Saturday night spook movies.
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First TV program I saw was from my grandparents home in Indy in the late '40's when mom and I were visiting. Channel 4 (WTTV I think) was the only station in town. I remember watching Dragnet. A few years later Peoria got it's first - WEEK (I think) channel 43. They picked from all the networks and I couldn't understand why when our second station started they were able to steal programs from WEEK. Dad was one of the first TV dealers in Peoria we had a big antenna and got TV before we had our local station from Chicago & St. Louis.
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For us real old timers. Beside the big three, there was also the Dumont Network. The Dumont Network went belly up in 1956.
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Dallas TX circa 1957-9 Only 4
4 CBS
5 NBC
8 ABC
11 Independent mostly older genre
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Heck...I can't remember my name!!!
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Where I grew up we could get 2 channels 8 and 13. Probably NBC and CBS.
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In Atlanta I think there were 6. ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR and some other channel. One the UHF side was had 2 but I only remember Ch 17.
I loved channel 17 Ted turners channel, it had rassling and roller-derby. That was back in the day with Ga Championship rassling and Gordon Solie. "We have a Pier 6 brawl going on in the ring" or how about he could 3 falls against a chainsaw and win 2 of them. Those were the days of real TV.
Ted would take anyone's money and there was guy who ran for Governor and other offices named J.B Stoner. He was a raycist and his commercials were awesome. You could not get away with that today. We had just moved to GA fromCalifornia and seeing this on TV was a shock. They also flimed the KK rallies at Stone Mountain...............crazy times, now its just the opposite.
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