A look back at TV history
Vernon Heckman spotted me on Cherry Street and peremptorily
said,
”
Follow me.
”
He didn’t reply when I asked what was so important but knew my
curiosity would compel me to follow.
A look back at TV history
Vernon Heckman spotted me on Cherry Street and peremptorily said, “Follow me.”
He didn’t reply when I asked what was so important but knew my curiosity would compel me to follow.
At the corner of Bancroft and Cherry streets, Vernon gestured grandly at the knot of spectators peering into the windows of a furniture store. I looked and found the focus of their attention: a televised baseball game.
In June of 1947 most Americans had never seen a television set, let alone a show, and here we were – two awestruck teenagers in the vanguard of history.
Sixty years. Over that time transmitted images have become a dominant factor in our lives rather than a breath-taking novelty, whether we would have it so or not. Back then the idea that we were seeing the movements of someone far away as they were actually happening was breath taking.
That summer television sets sprang up all over Toledo, including some in our neighborhood. Bars were the first businesses to use television to attract more customers than their competitors. Sweet shops soon followed, and it became a matter of discernment on how long one could nurse a nickel cherry phosphate to retain one’s place before buying another.
Then a few neighborhood families bought sets. We got ours in the summer of 1948, just in time to be among the premier audiences of two early classics, The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night, and the Milton Berle Show on Tuesday evening.
The rush of the first few years of television was exciting. Hopalong Cassidy movies from the 1930s delighted a new generation of youngsters, and the buxom Dagmar on Broadway Open House became video’s first female star.
Like all pioneers we had it much more difficult than did later viewers. If we wanted to change a channel we had to get up, walk over to the set and do it manually; none of the effete remote control units of today. Constant re-adjustment of the rabbit ear-antenna and horizontal and vertical corrections were necessary to control rolling of the picture. We also had to decide for ourselves what was funny because the laugh track did not make its appearance until the 1950s.
Also we had a shorter viewing time. Most programming went off the air at midnight or shortly after and did not resume until 2 p.m. the following day. Movies shown on television had to be at least seven years old.
All this was in the pre-“I Love Lucy” era by whose time much of our viewing habits were fixed. When popular radio comedians – Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Bob Hope – made the transition to television their audiences faithfully followed.
Looking back from the vantage point of 60 years, it is easy to understand how the new medium swept the nation. We had no way of knowing then what a force it would become in our everyday life and the changes it would work in family and societal values. Nor would we have wanted to know.
