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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/27/2007 : 04:37:43 [Permalink]
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We got our first TV around 1950, when I was about five. Howdy Doody (heh-heh, he said, "doody!") and Buffalo Bob were among my faves, along with hundreds of old cartoons, often spoofing celebs who'd died in the 30's. (My parents would have to explain when they noticed my blank stare.) The Buster Brown Show. Hundreds of WWII movies, mostly propagandistic (my Dad explained the principle), but exciting. The best were the big "propumementaries": Victory at Sea (Navy), The Big Picture (Army), and The Silent Service (subs). Young Queen Elizabeth II's coronation was lush, but boring to a kid.
Later: Dragnet. Gunsmoke.
A great deal of programming was fluff; on the other hand, all the networks carried political conventions gavel to gavel. (I got so excited about politics from watching the conventions, I campaigned for Adlai Stevenson on his second try against Ike, a precinct captain as a preteen.) There was Joe McCarthy's fall from fake grace at the Army-McCarthy hearings. And there was the great Edgar R. Murrow.
The screen was round, with about 8 inches in the middle blocked out for the image. All tubes, in those days; poor and cheapskate families would take tubes into a store and find out which were bad on a sort of public tube tester.
Wrestling shows (Gorgeous George and Mr. Moto), boxing, and roller derby were the serious adult fare that were my parent's favorites. Sometimes when watching LA stations (from Sandy Eggo), the ghosting, snow, and interference from local stations made the picture pretty much guesswork. But we still listened to the radio, and the Golden Age of that medium was going strong, though about to expire. Inner Sanctum, The Whistler, and some good space-opera sci-fi. Often the mental pictures on the radio were better than what appeared on TV.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/27/2007 04:47:00 |
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