Television Sets
As today’s televisions become better and cheaper, the memory of yesterday’s boob tubes fades into a snowy test pattern. There is no excuse for not having a nice television picture these days. With cable or satellite options, a pristine picture is the norm. Televisions are cheap too. I saw a 27” at Wal-Mart the other day for $169. For those enthusiasts who have more money than they know what to do with, it is possible to spend thousands of dollars on the latest plasma, DLP, or LCD set.
Do you remember the old televisions? In the 50’s and 60’s a television was a major purchase. One of the jokes in the Michael J. Fox movie “Back To The Future,” was when he told a little girl he had three televisions. The father told the girl that Michael was pulling her leg because nobody has three TV’s.
A TV was a piece of furniture. They usually came in a big cabinet, sometimes with a record player and radio. Eventually portables came out; they only weighed 150 lbs. with their 19” screen. We once had a console that got sound but no picture and we had a “portable” that got picture but no sound. You guessed it. By setting the portable atop the console, we had a whole television. It was a bit of a pain, because we had to change the channel on both sets and tune them in to watch a program.
There was no instant on luxury in those days either. You could turn on the TV, go in the kitchen to fix a sandwich and return before the TV was on. The sound usually emerged first, then the picture would fade in. It was like watching a Polaroid photo develop.
Tuning is something no longer necessary. In the old days, folks had an antenna on the set or atop their house. In Kansas City, we had four stations for most of my early years. ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. No one ever watched PBS – sort of like today. Some days one channel would come in pretty well and other days other channels came in, but none of the channels ever tuned in great. There could be all sorts of reception problems: Static in the sound, good picture with poor sound, snowy picture, ghosts or double-images in the picture, and if you were lucky, all of the above. The remedy was moving the rabbit ears all over the top of the set. The best reception was usually only possible when you held the antenna in an awkward position, say standing on one foot while extending one arm with one of the rabbit ears in your mouth. It was not uncommon to see pieces of aluminum foil on the ends of an antenna. Some felt that improved reception.
Television reception was more magic and superstition in those days. Today, the channel is either perfect or it is not on at all. There is no control to play with like we had. Part of the channel knob in those days was a tuning dial. I would turn to channel 9 for instance, move the rabbit ears to get the best picture, then adjust the tuning knob. The best result of that procedure was what you got on that day. Do not expect it to stay put either. The reception would fade in and out or someone would walk by and bump the antenna and the process would have to be repeated.
We had more than one TV that tuned in better if it were hit in the right spot. Later on when we had a color set, the color would sometimes go out. I could hit the bottom of the TV and get it to come back on. In those days, walking down the street, it was not uncommon to hear banging in a home and know someone was pounding on their uncooperative television set.
We finally got an antenna on top of the house. No more adjusting rabbit ears, but sometimes my dad would have to get on the house and move the antenna. This required a voice relay chain. Dad would yell, “How’s that,” after moving the antenna. We would yell back, “Better . . .no worse . . .move it the other way.”
Then if the TV was broken, we would take the back off of the set, pull out all of the tubes and go down to Van’s Grocery Store and make use of their tube tester. This was a big technical looking machine with about 100 tube sockets on the top. You simply found the right socket for your tube, flip a switch, and a meter tells you if the tube is OK. This rarely worked, but I do remember purchasing a sound tube once which corrected our no sound problem.
The next resort was calling the TV repair man. He came out to the house and had all sorts of magical things in his black box. We would sit on the edge of our seats awaiting his diagnosis like a Marcus Welby, MD episode. The dreaded words would be, “I am going to have to take it to the shop.” This meant no TV for a while.
As technology improved, remote controls were invented. The first remotes were the size of car batteries. One would point this box at the set and press one of several buttons causing the lights to dim in the house and something as lethal as an X-ray would beam toward the set. The set would make a cur-chunk sound and the channel would change. I never saw any studies on the early remotes, but I would wager anyone walking in the path of the beam wound up with some dreaded radiation disease.
It is all taken for granted today as things are. It is truly amazing how televisions are cheap and 100 times better than those early sets. Hundreds of channels are but a click away. Tivo has made VCR’s obsolete and they are not that old themselves. I love technology, but still have a soft spot in my heart for the older things, because of the memories I have when they were around.
As for programming, that will be the topic of another post. One thing has not changed in those regards. Even though we have 100’s of channels from which to choose compared to the 3 or 4 in the old days, we still frequently say, “There’s nothing on TV.”
Until the next time
John Strain
Monday, May 2, 2005 at 12:01AM 
We are dog sitting this week for our friends Brian and Faye. I am not used to little dogs. Buttons is getting up in age. He is blind in one eye and he has allergies that cause him to scratch a lot. It is strange to be able to pick him up or have him sitting next to you on the couch. Hobo was a big dog and the couch was not big enough for him.
