I think of my parents’ experiences with television growing up as being extremely groundbreaking and out of this world. I imagine that the progression they have seen of TV throughout their lifetime is similar to what I have seen of phones and tablets thus far in my life. However, when I asked my mom about her childhood memories of TV, she didn’t describe TV as being as much of an incredible and revolutionary technology as I expected.
My mom always had a TV growing up, despite moving three times times before she was ten and having a single mom who was raising two kids. And much to my surprise, my mom always had a color TV, not black and white as I expected. However, my mom explained that, unlike in many households today, the TV wasn’t on all the time. She smiled and said,
“I don’t remember there being many limits on how much we could watch TV, but we definitely watched much less than kids today. We actually played outside growing up.”
Her family only ever owned one TV at a time, and rather than having a remote to change the channel from the couch, they had to go up to the TV and use the dial to change the channel. Also, there were only seven channels to choose from, channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, further limiting the amount of TV that she could watch compared to today. No matter what house she was living in, the TV was always kept in the living room, on a stand next to the stereo.
Once her mom got remarried when she was in fifth grade, the TV was on more though. Before then, when her family watched TV, it was usually in the evening after dinner. But once they moved in with her step-dad, they started watching TV more often, including during dinner. The adults sat on the couch, and the kids usually sat on the floor and sometimes with their mom on the couch.
In addition to evenings (although she couldn’t remember if they watched TV every night of the week), she watched TV Friday nights and Sunday mornings and nights.Sunday was the day that she remembered having the most TV shows. The Brady Bunch was on every Friday night, and on Sundays, she remembers waking up to her mom watching CBS Sunday Morning and going to bed after her mom watched 60 Minutes.
Her two favorite shows growing up were Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. I have included clips of the intros to both of these shows below. I find the comparison to be fascinating between these shows and the kids’ TV shows today. The quality of the videography animation is obviously much higher today, and the music and voices in these clips unsurprisingly remind me of old movies. In my opinion, the kids’ shows from my mom’s childhood are also much more realistic than the shows I grew up watching.
Video sourced from here.
Video sourced from here.
My mom’s most fond memory of watching TV is one time when she was watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show with her mom, and her mom turned to her during the theme song, “Love Is All Around,” and said, “Karen that’s you.” It was a very sweet moment in her relationship with her mom, one that is a great example of the love her mom will always have for her.
Although she has memories of watching her favorite TV shows with her mom growing up, my mom doesn’t have many memories of watching TV during breaking news. This is because there wasn’t 24-hour news like CNN and other news channels today. Therefore, big news of the time, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was announced on the radio instead.
TV was a very normal and common part of my mom’s life as a child, contrary to my beliefs before I interviewed her about her experiences with TV growing up. Although she remembers always enjoying watching TV and it being a strictly pleasure activity, she doesn’t remember getting very excited or really having many strong emotions when she got to watch TV. And my mom doesn’t remember watching TV being a privilege because it was just always there as a part of her everyday life.
charlotterose 
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