Hi fellow seniors, can you remember when you saw your first TV programme?

Question

I was about five years old and was transfixed to 'Watch With Mother' on an old antiquated box tv set back in the early fifties.

That's going back a fair few years, more than I'd like to admit to. So friends can you recall when and where you were and possibly recollect what you watched at the time?

Answer 1

The very first programme I saw on T.V. was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second. The T.V.had been bought specially for that. I was nine at the time. Normal programmes did not start until 6 p.m. if my memory serves me well and they ended at 11 p.m.



I'm not sure if there were lunchtime programmes for smaller children in those days. I don't remember there being but I'd have been in school at that time of day anyway.



Other than the Coronation I remember having tea as soon as I got in from school, having to do my homework and the the T.V. was turned on the for 6 p.m. news. In the evening there programmes about animals and other parts of the world (David Attenborough was popular) and some things were more educational (for adults) than entertaining for children.



It was a long time before afternoon T.V. began and much longer still before breakfast T.V. Eventually we had 24 hour news.

Answer 2

Hi Lily,

I suppose it was in the early '50's.

I don't remember for sure what the first show was. It might have been Zoro or the Lone Ranger.

Answer 3

I think the first programme I saw on TV was Muffin The Mule. I, too, loved Watch With Mother. I wasn't so keen on Picture Book but loved the rest - The Woodentops (with spotty dog), Rag, Tag & Bobtail, Bill & Ben The Flowerpot Men (with Weed) and Andy Pandy (with Teddy & Looby Loo)

Answer 4

Prudence Kitten! My younger (12 years younger)sister wanted to watch it.Though a few years before that I watched tv in a friends house,it was a sort of chinese farce,with one character due for beheading but proceedings were interrupted all the time.Don't know what happened in the end as the screen had more snow on it than we have had all winter!!

Answer 5

The 1948 World Series - all the neighbors came as we had the only tv on the street - a big 10 incher. Cleveland won, if you can believe it.

Answer 6

On my way home from school, in 1949, walking home with a classmate and he invited me in to watch a cricket match on TV. That was the very first time I ever saw TV. I was impressed, because his family was quite well-to-do, and had a TV in a huge wallnut cabinet and was an impressive piece of furniture itself.

Answer 7

I am not sure, we always had a tv set since I was born.

My parents were some of the first in our neighborhood to buy a set, neighbors would come over and watch the set at our home until my dad got tired of the house always being full of people he had to feed and water.

It might of been catching a glace before being sent up to bed when my dad watched the fights on tv with his co-worker or the time I saw Elvis on the set. I remember that because my mom was throwing a mini fit about all his shaking even though most of it was not aired on the tv, they seemed to cut out his hip shakes.

back in 1986 we once again packed up for a family 6 week long trip to then communist Hungary to stay with my in-laws.

They had their own tv set, a black and white model.

My husband wanted to bring them something very nice from the US so we looked all over L.A.,Calif. for a dual system color tv set to bring them.

That way they could use it in Europe with the different electric system.

It was at the time a super expensive tv set, over $850. we knew those models a Sony was even more pricey if we tried to pick it up in Germany before entering the iron curtain.

What a crazy thing to bring on an airline, our luggage arrived hours before we did in France, another one of those mixed up airline things. We were so afraid someone would pick it up before we got to Paris and walk off with it. Thankfully the airlines did collect all the luggage and place it in back in a storage area.

Then we drove in a tiny car from France to HU with that tv set taking up almost the whole backseat of the rental car. In Austria while driving at night, there was no signs that the road was being worked on, we were traveling at a good pace when all of a sudden the road was gone, just a dirt road no more paved road. The car jumped and buckled around and that tv set hit our son who was trying to rest in the backseat.

What allot of trouble that tv set was.Looking back on it, we should of just picked one up in Germany and saved so much hassle.

My In-laws were very happy with it and I was even using it over here in HU for a couple of years until it just died 2 years back.

It was hard to throw it out because of all the memories behind it.

Answer 8

I don't remember the actual program,but a heap of us watched it in a shop window when it first came to my area.

Answer 9

Yes in Kalgoorlie Western Australia when I was about 9.

Answer 10

I remember Muffin The Mule but we could not afford a Tv at the time So we all used to go to a Rich persons house ,and crowd around the TV .i was about 7years old .

Answer 11

More or less - watching through a screened door of a neighbor - think it was Coo- Co, Fran & Olie

Answer 12

1950, Howdy Doody Time. With Clarabel the clown and Buffalo Bob dressed in a cowboy vest. There was also a hand puppet show with the creator named Burt Tillstrom or something like that. One puppet was named Ollie. There was another named Kukla and a live woman named Fran. Sadly they are no longer with us.

Answer 13

Yes - it was 1957 - I was 22 and just married.



We bought a new television - a first for me.



We watched American Bandstand - just after having it hooked up.



The other one I remember - was 77 Sunset Strip.



Wow! That takes me back to some good memories - life was great - newly married.



Too bad - that we had a snowy picture - but watched anyway.

DeeJay

Answer 14

As with others, our rented 9" b & w set (with magnifier increasing it to 12") arrived just in time for the Coronation in 1953, when I was aged 10.

Andy Pandy, Muffin the Mule etc were a bit young for me but the tv was still such a novelty I adnit watching most of the kids' stuff.

Best night was Friday when the Cisco Kid, Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy series were on.

From age 11 I went to a senior school some miles away - did some homework there and didn't get home until around 7-30/8 pm - usually to do even more homework. So evening tv wasn't much part of my daily routine but at weekends I recall enjoying various US shows such as Liberace, Jack Benny, I love Lucy, Amos 'n Andy, I married Joan, Burns & Allen, etc.

Kids of today can't understand how/why broadcasting was limited to set hours per day and for some years we only had a few channels - as against the dozens of 24/7 channels available today.

I certainly recall the excitement when ATV started and we watched the first commercials. Sunday night at the London Palladium - with Tommy Trinder - was a huge attraction, featuring top stars like Guy Mitchell, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Bob Hope et al.

Sigh...seems like the medieval ages - and yet not really that long ago.

Hmm...now what's on tonight.... : ))

Answer 15

It was back in1951, at my uncle's house. I can't remember want I was watching but I do remember wondering how they got all those people into such a little box. The first thing that I do remember seeing was the coronation of the Queen. That was something that I hope I never forget.

Answer 16

Lily, I don't remember because I was little, I think, when we got our first TV. But I do remember watching Dinah Shore blowing kisses and singing about seeing the "USA in your Chevrolet" and I thought that Perry Como was singing to me and me alone. Garrison Keillor wrote a funny essay about how he tried to talk his parents into buying a television set - he watched the Tournament of Roses parade at a friend's house in glorious black and white and set about trying to convince his mother "Oh, Mother, wouldn't you just LOVE to see THE ROSE PARADE??? All those lovely floats and the beautiful flowers??? Wouldn't you just LOVE to SEE that, Mother?" And gosh darned if he didn't talk her into talking his father into getting one by the time the next parade rolled around the next year.

Answer 17

My dad was an electrician and repaired radios on the West Texas Panhandle. He started selling TVs when they first came out in the late 40's, but we didn't have the money to buy one ourselves. We would set at his shop after work and watch it. Half of the show would be snow or 'test patterns' and listening to that familiar ooooooooooooooooh sound it made because they had a lot of trouble keeping TV on the air when it was new. Folks today don't know what a 'test pattern' is.

Answer 18

my nose pressed nose a shop window,watching a show relayed from Alexandra Palace in Haringay London in 1938.,I was 10. It was the first transmitting station in Britain,still there.

Answer 19

It was 1953 when we first got a TV station in our town and the next year when we got a TV set. I think the first show I saw was at a neighbors. I was eleven years old. I son;t have a clue what show was on.

Answer 20

at my aunties house it was watch with mother Bill and Ben i was about 3

Answer 21

It would have to be the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth

for me Lily. Cannot remember where I saw it though.

As for watching a tv programme regularly, I used to pop

round to my Aunt Agnes when I was living in Horsforth

and watch Robin Hood played by Richard Greene.



I remember we had our own first television around 1956

or so.

Answer 22

I was about seven and in a Bruener's Furniture store I saw a Magnavox TV set. A year latter we bought one and I think it may have been Howdy Doodie or the Friday Night Fights that I remember seeing first.

Answer 23

It was in 1953 when I was 8 & we watched the Coronation of our Queen.The tv was at the house of family friends though,we didn't have one at all until I was about 13 in1958 & even then we weren't allowed to watch anything until after our school homework was done.



Mind you,programmes didn't run all day like they do now & news announcers wore evening dress.



We weren't particularly "hooked" on any one programme at all

Answer 24

My first memory I was also five years old. We lived in an upstairs apartment in East Chicago, Indiana. Our set had a wooden cabinet and a small screen. Wow! What a treat!

Answer 25

watch with mother and the Queens coronation , and then we didnt have TV until the 1960s

Answer 26

Not sure but I think I saw the Queens Coronation on the only TV down our street. Needless to say the place was bursting at the seems. God - how long ago was that?

Answer 27

i think it was either the lone ranger or the cisco kid, i was about 5 or 6, back in the 1950s!

Answer 28

Howdy Doody in 1950