How television has changed

[ramsey37]

Hmmm....

I miss asking my mom to adjust the rabbit ears, and then making her go back and hold them in a certain position so I could finish watching a scene, because whenever you let go of rabbit ears the reception would get worse.

And how did the rabbit feel about that?
George

[cjefferys]

I miss the old TV Guide Fall Preview issues....I hate the new magazine style format they use now.

Yeah, I always loved getting those to see what new Saturday morning cartoons were coming in the new season.

[The Toyroom]

I also miss the old "super station" shows like NYC's WOR, WNEW and WPIX before they became part of the media conglomerates like UPN,FOX and WB (respectively). With "duplication of programming" as the reason, our cable company dropped those stations year's ago. Boston's WSBK too is one I miss. From what I hear, these channels are all but shadows of their former selves anyway so I'm probably better off without them.

Still, I long for the days when I could find the Odd Couple on at 11pm, The Honeymooners at 11:30 pm...the Twilight Zone on a nightly basis (except when it was pre-empted by baseball game runovers...doh!)....The Magic Garden....great sit-coms like I Love Lucy, Make Room for Daddy, Love American Style, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, That Girl during the day...Chiller Theatre and monster movies on weekends...classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Magilla Gorilla, Courageous Cat, Mighty Mouse, Casper after school...

Sigh....

[HardyGirl]

Still, I long for the days when I could find the Odd Couple on at 11pm, The Honeymooners at 11:30 pm...the Twilight Zone on a nightly basis (except when it was pre-empted by baseball game runovers...doh!)....The Magic Garden....great sit-coms like I Love Lucy, Make Room for Daddy, Love American Style, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, That Girl during the day...Chiller Theatre and monster movies on weekends...classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Magilla Gorilla, Courageous Cat, Mighty Mouse, Casper after school...

Sigh....

Yeah, I grew up in NYC the same time you did and I remember all that stuff, too. Ahhh....memories.

[EmergencyIan]

We had a big DISH in the 80s and after. Anyhow, we could see WSBK on there and I once had a question read on "Ask The Manager". Remember that program, Toyroom? lol

When I was a young, all of the local stations would show old TV shows for the second half of the afternoon on weekdays. It was great! Now, the only thing on at that time on these stations are talk shows and judge/court shows. Terrible.

I also remember when we got cable around '79 (nothing like it is today...oh, we moved to the country in '86, so the option was a Dish.). Cable was even good back then. We had TBS and they ran a lot of great old tv series', for years. WGN was great in those days, too (the BOZO Show, etc.). We had the USA Network who ran "The Cartoon Express". That program had so many great old cartoon series' that you'd not see anywhere else, at that point! I also remember the USA Network airing a program called: Calliope. It's host's were Gene and Liza (the dog).

Here's a Calliope clip from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKvpggqr9nI When I used to watch this series, it was on weekdays..late afternoon. I guess they began airing it on Sundays, at some point.

- Ian

[The Toyroom]

We had a big DISH in the 80s and after. Anyhow, we could see WSBK on there and I once had a question read on "Ask The Manager". Remember that program, Toyroom? lol

Actually I do remember that! I used to watch that...for some reason I found it interesting.

[BlackKnight]

"How has television changed " ? ... Not sure, don't watch much of it. I just know a few things,.. It's not in Black & White anymore,.. however I am too young to have experienced it. They have a chanel or 2 for just cartoons now,.. all day long. Football looks great on TV,.. & so does 24.

[batmanmc]

the onlys stations i watch now are espn bbc for the comedy , dicover and the history channel. alos the local news. mike

[The Toyroom]

And game shows now (in their traditional format) seem to be almost non-existant, except for the Price Is Right (daytime) and Wheel of Fortune & Jeopardy (night). Even GSN (formerly Game Show Network) has gotten away from the true classic game shows.
I remember in the early 90s, USA Network used to have a daily block of game shows like $20,000 Pyramid, Press Your Luck, Card Sharks etc.

[DocDrako]

I'd like to be able to see TV the way it used to be. I watch more DVDs now than anything else. I watch DVDs of old shows that I grew up with, oddly enough.

I think it would be cool if they put out TV show seasons in DVD format with a special feature being commercial breaks with the commercials from the time. That would be fun. It could be like a commentary track, but it'd be a commercial track. Throw in some movie preview commercials, toy commercials, and all the stuff from the time. Maybe make the commercials a random thing. Even if you rewatched an episode of a show on DVD with the commercial feature, the commercials would be different each time. You'd never know what the commercial would be until it came on. I'd really enjoy that.

I need to write some letters and get this done. The more I talk about it, the more I want it. I have some videotapes from the 80's with shows recorded with commercials included. However, the commercials are from the 80's so I've got Teddy Ruxpin, Bubble Yum's Checkermint Gum, Lazer Tag, Zack the Lego Maniac, Crispy Critters cereal, etc. when I'd like to have Mego, Star Wars and Coca-Cola, etc commercials from the 70's. Those 80's commercials are wild. Not to say they aren't enjoyable, but they're not the ones I grew up with.

[SUPERUNDERDOGGIE]

I remember having to get up to change the channel every time. Remotes were a nice invention.

[palitoy]

[QUOTE=cjefferys;47006] I also miss the days of having a C-band satellite dish circa 1985, scanning the skies and not knowing what kind of interesting things you could find (and believe me, it was like the wild west in those days, absulutely facsinating having a dish back then). QUOTE]

YES! I used to love watching interview feeds where the person isn't on the air yet, tons of nose picking, swearing, off colour comments, it was addictive.

[Comic Book Geek]

Local TV stations once had self produced shows. In Indy we had Cowboy Bob, Popeye and Peggy, the Janie show and Sammy Terry

Also, shows like Heroes, The Bionic Woman, Lost etc... wouldn't have had all the adult content they have now. My kids can't watch any of these shows. I was hopefull the Bionic woman would be more family friendly, but the opening scene was covered in blood, dead bodys and ended with a bullet in the head. Heroes and Lost are two of my favorite shows and i don't really want them changed but shows like these would have been aimed at families back when we were kids.

[garagesale]

TV now is better than it has ever been... more sci fi, fantasy, good drama (Rome), truly funny comedy (like The Office Colbert, and Stewart), documentaries (amen to The History Channel, PBS, et al) than I've ever seen on TV in the past...

...With all that said, I really do not have time for TV... I mostly watch this stuff on DVDs, downloads, Netflix Instant Watching, what have you...

TV now is worse than it has ever been...

Too many commercials, total crap rules (Reality TV, super-bad comedies, reruns of bad movies on Comedy Central), the news is not objective nor mostly newsworthy...

TV is no longer TV, as far as I'm concerned. More and more I'm converging TV with the Internet. I have a VGA-to-NTSC setup, along with a dedicated computer, on my big screen. If it were not for the fact that I use Nickleodeon, Discovery, and Cartoon Network as babysitters for my kids, I would not even have cable.

It has changed massively for good and for ill.

JamesD

[VintageMike]

The funny thing is, outside of the wrestling, most of the things I watch are still on regular TV. What I miss is, if anything is older shows being rerun both regular shows and cartoons. Thank god for all the stuff being released on DVD now.