Armchair Goddess
New member
I'm old enough to remember when the black and white television first came out. Not every home had one, so it was a big deal when our dad brought one home. The family would gather around for the Ed Sullivan show, Walt Disney, and Mitch Miller's singalong each week (our family actually followed the bouncing ball for the lyrics and did sing along), and sometimes after school we could watch "After School Theater" as long as we did our homework. George Burns and George Gobel were the comedians to watch, and of course there was Ozzie and Harriet (Ricky Nelson's family---he was the heartthrob singer of the day). I recall ads like "You'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent" and Alka-seltzer's "Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is"...but there weren't nearly as many commercials in the 1950s as there are today. Our family was Air Force, so we got to travel a lot, but most families around us didn't, so the family TV was their chance to escape or learn about faraway places.
Before television, the radio was a big deal for many households. At dinner time, you'd hear "The Lone Ranger" while the family was sitting down to supper, or "The Green Shadow" (a saying was "...the Shadow knows"...spoken in a deep slightly spooky voice). Like radio, the TV became a family-night get together tool. Pop liked watching the news a lot, and he also liked tinkering with the "horizontal and vertical" and making color adjustments right in the middle of our shows...lol. (His field in the military was electronics.) When ironing was my assigned chore back when we dipped cleaned clothes in liquid starch, let them dry, then moistened them and carefully pressed out each wrinkle, I'd set the ironing board up in front of the TV to make the work seem to go faster...a distraction from the mundane (an escape). The shows would be interrupted by someone saying, "And now a word from our sponsor" and a single ad for one product would run for close to 2 minutes, and then back to the show. Nowadays, the ads are back to back and seem unending and some of these ads should be censored for violence and viciousness in my opinion. Whenever a President came on TV for a "fireside chat" every station carried it live because it was a really big deal, as it should be. Now, however, some stations see such an interruption as lost ad revenue (the almighty dollar and "ratings" has now become more important to some network CEOs than what our elected leader has to say to the people who voted him into office and who are all effected by his policy initiatives---greed greed greed! I hope this gives you a first-hand perspective from an oldie...lol.
Before television, the radio was a big deal for many households. At dinner time, you'd hear "The Lone Ranger" while the family was sitting down to supper, or "The Green Shadow" (a saying was "...the Shadow knows"...spoken in a deep slightly spooky voice). Like radio, the TV became a family-night get together tool. Pop liked watching the news a lot, and he also liked tinkering with the "horizontal and vertical" and making color adjustments right in the middle of our shows...lol. (His field in the military was electronics.) When ironing was my assigned chore back when we dipped cleaned clothes in liquid starch, let them dry, then moistened them and carefully pressed out each wrinkle, I'd set the ironing board up in front of the TV to make the work seem to go faster...a distraction from the mundane (an escape). The shows would be interrupted by someone saying, "And now a word from our sponsor" and a single ad for one product would run for close to 2 minutes, and then back to the show. Nowadays, the ads are back to back and seem unending and some of these ads should be censored for violence and viciousness in my opinion. Whenever a President came on TV for a "fireside chat" every station carried it live because it was a really big deal, as it should be. Now, however, some stations see such an interruption as lost ad revenue (the almighty dollar and "ratings" has now become more important to some network CEOs than what our elected leader has to say to the people who voted him into office and who are all effected by his policy initiatives---greed greed greed! I hope this gives you a first-hand perspective from an oldie...lol.