I never had a telly in my bedroom. None of my friends did in the late Sixties/ Seventies.
Up till 1970 our family TV was black and white.
All the great kids TV like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet was black and white too!
It only went colour at our house for the Mexico 1970 World Cup!
What are your telly memories readers?
I did, a b&w portable, from sometime in the 70's. I asked for one for Christmas, aiming higher than I actually thought possible and got it! It was great. I had a VCR by 1981.
ReplyDeleteYou lucky boy. What did you watch on it Kev?
DeleteSpace 1999, Star Trek, Outer Limits, Blake's 7. I could get the Welsh channels as well as the North West ones, so there was more choice than on the living room tv. It was my world up there.
DeleteNew Zealand did not get television until 1960, the year before I was born. Colour TV arrived in late 1973, just in time for the Christchurch Commonwealth Games in 1974. But we had black and white television until at least the late 1970s or early 1980s. Colour TVs were much more expensive than black and white sets, and so was the TV license.
ReplyDeleteNo TV in my room until the early 1990s. First VCR was in 1991.
Did you rent videos for your VCR or record TV Paul?
DeleteI didnt have a tv in my room, and my parents didn't have a colour TV 'til I left home to go to polytechnic in1980.
ReplyDeleteI used to go to other kids homes sometimes to watch programmes like Dr Who or UFO in colour.
I eventually got my own colour TV and VCR in 1988.
What was your go-to TV programme in 1988 then Mish?
DeleteWhen Father got our first color TV in 1966, I inherited our old black and white set, which went in my bedroom, and I would stay up late at night with the sound very low so as to not wake the parents, and watch amazing films at 1 am like Attack of the Mushroom People, The Giant Behemoth and The Atomic Submarine! SFZ
ReplyDeleteWhat a childhood Zigg! Monsters, monsters, Monsters! We could have been twins!
DeleteYes, looking back, it was a hell of a childhood, although I would have never admitted it at the time. If only there had been no school... !!! SFZ
DeleteAfter a couple of tiffs as to who was going to watch what, my dad broke down and bought me a B&W TV for my room (the main TV was a color console type - a behemoth with record player, record storage, and a huge cabinet). After that - no more tiff's! haha
ReplyDeleteHa ha, what did you watch Ed?
DeleteI can remember trying to rush home after school to catch the beginning of Star Trek, which by this time was airing reruns at 4PM. On the weekends it was a mix of cartoons (to start the day off) followed by Westerns (Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Wild Bill Hickock, The Cisco Kid, Rin Tin Tin, etc), detective stories (Sherlock Holmes & Charlie Chan were the two biggies), The Bowery Boys (aka Dead End Kids), whatever serials might be on the tubes (Commando Cody, Buck Rogers), and any movies (my favorites were comedy's and musicals).
DeleteMy family had only one TV, a B&W, until the 1970s. We got a big color console in the early 1970s, and by 1975 my parents had another one in their bedroom. I've never had a TV in my own bedroom, to this day.
ReplyDeleteNo, we don't either Baron. No bedroom TV. It's clear to me everything happened earlier in the US though!
DeleteI remember seeing black and white promo adverts for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. So my parents must have got that first TV set for that purpose. In 1969 we had a colour set to view the moon landings ( in B&W HaHa!)
ReplyDeleteIn Australia in the late 70s, I had a small B&W set in my bedroom as a late teen.
Wow, colour in 69! Ha ha, yes, the monochrome moon landings, those inconsiderate people at NASA!
DeleteMy parents bought a 12" B/W TV set in 1953 in order to watch the Coronation. While the adults sat around watching the service my cousin and I played under the dining room table with our Dinky Toys. The memorable part of the day was one of the adults saying they were sorry for Charles as he had to wait for his mother to die to have a job. In the end the Queen outlived the adults in the room by a decade.
ReplyDeleteBedrooms are for reading or being woken by the radio. Not a place for TV's
That TV set died conveniently two years later to be replaced by a PYE TV in a lovely wooden case that had a knob to choose from 13 stations. However there were only two. The BBC on Channel One and ATV on Channel Nine. That TV lasts a few years after which my parents rented rather than purchased new sets. Colour didn't enter the home until the mid 70's by which time I had moved to the US, and a 12" portable B/W set which was all we could afford at first.
Great vivid memories Terran! And Charles has the job now! What did you watch in the US?
DeleteWe didn't watch much TV, mostly the non network stations that filled their time between sports with old B/W movies. It was 14 years before we bought a colour TV and VCR. The first thing we watched was the annual Easter broadcast of the movie The Wizard of Oz.
DeleteI was going to turn the set off after the B/W beginning switched to colour but my three year old daughter was enthralled by the story and we ended up having to watch a VCR tape of the movie over and over again.
While the novelty of a colour set was new I daily tried to catch reruns of the original Star Trek as I had never seen it in colour and this was 20 years after it was first broadcast.
Did you get to see them all Terran, the Star Trek originals?
DeleteAll the episodes that were syndicated. There was one with a planet of Nazis that I think had been banned. A pity because my memory of it was it was filmed on the NYC street in the studio backlot.
DeleteMy go to programme in 1988 was still Dr Who, but by then I was working on it at the BBC.
ReplyDeleteI used the VCR to record shows I had worked on, to make a showreel, which I edited together on a VHS editing machine in my department.
Wow, how cool Mish. Did you get to show your showreel to others?
DeleteSure. I showed it to my bosses at the Beeb to get promoted from Visual Effects Design Assistant up to Designer.
ReplyDeleteI made a better one, when I left the BBC, to show to prospective employers.