This is gonna age me but I remember two things very distinctly that must have happened before I was 5. I remember never, ever being “seen” on Romper Room. The host would hold up an imaginary looking glass and chant, 'I see Lisa and Bobby and John and Cindy. I see Mary and David and Peter, too!" But she never saw Michele. Even though I was RIGHT THERE up close to the TV, waving and everything.
I also remember getting into very big trouble for drawing on the TV with a crayon. It was a show that your parents bought some sort of kit for. Plastic went onto the screen and the kid could use special markers to draw in scenes. Only my parents did buy the kit. This didn’t stop me from drawing the scene, however.
My earliest TV memory that I have a date for is the 1984 Summer Games in LA. I have TV memories of watching cartoons and such (including Romper Room) on Saturday mornings when I was younger (Smurfs, etc), but I don’t have a specific time memory associated with them. I was born in Nov. 1977, if that gives you an idea.
I was born in 1963, and I distinctly remember sitting in this table thingy my parents fed me in. It wasn’t really a high chair, so I can’t call it that, but it had a square pink and blue checkered top with a little seat set in the middle.
I have a memory of that pink and blue diamond design spread out in front me and seeing and hearing a Woody Woodpecker cartoon on a black and white screen beyond.
I couldn’t have been more than two, but I know it is a memory, not something I was told about, because we only have black and white pictures of that feeding table, yet I know it was pink and blue in my mind’s eye, and I know Woody Woodpecker was black and white.
By chance, I can identify my first TV memory precisely. Between 5:40 and 6:05pm on Saturday the 11th of September 1965 (about two and a half weeks before my third birthday) I watched the first episode of the Doctor Who story “Galaxy 4”.
I don’t remember much about the story, but I do remember being very taken with the Chumblies, and pretending that I was one.
I don’t remember anything connected with my brother being born later that evening, either – clearly he wasn’t as important to me at the time as a cool robot.
I wasn’t interested at all as a kid in TV (why sit around when there is a world to explore?) but one moment I do remember: the grainy black and white pictures of “Rover”, the buggy on the moon. So, the 19th December of the year 1972 is my earliest TV-memory.
I remember my parents taping Johnny Carson and us watching it instead of prime time TV. This was in the mid to late 80’s.
I feel like I remember the buzz surrounding MASH’s finale in Feb. 1983, but it might be a false memory for me. I would have been 4 1/2, but I don’t think my parents really would have let me watch MASH at that point. I know they watched the finale, though.
“Your Hit Parade” on a neighbor’s TV in either 1951, 1952 or 1953. Can’t pin it down any closer. We didn’t get our own TV until 1955 after we had moved from the town where I saw that first show. For a little while between those dates we had use of my uncle’s set for some reason and I remember a few other shows from that time.
I’m going to bring a link from one of my earliest threads on this subject, just to see how it squares up with my memory today. Love the topic!
I remember looking at something on TV while visiting relatives in DC; don’t remember what we saw.
We got a TV when we moved to Texas; Howdy Doody, Miss Francis & Crusader Rabbit were favorites. But I remember thinking The Lone Ranger didn’t look right; I’d listened to the radio show in South Dakota (where there was no TV) & thought he’d look like a South Dakota cowboy. None of them wore silvery-gray outfits.
And I remember wondering why my mother sat for several days watching men in suits sit around desks & talk; it was awfully dull. Later, I realized we were watching the McCarthy hearings.
My earliest was a strip of shows broadcast on WNHC in Connecticut; the two I remember were "Rescue 8" (because it had the same number as the channel) and "The Buccaneers". I don’t remember the shows that much; I was probably about six – the date should be about 1958.
My earliest distinct memories of TV are watching It’s About Time and Popeye and Knish. Looking up the former indicates this had to be in 1966 when I was 4.
My ealriest clear memory was watching the old “The Adventures of Superman” TV series. This would have been around 1954. I know the series started prior to that, but we didn’t get our first television set until 1954.
For me, I can date it precisely. We didn’t have a TV, but we went to our neighbours’ house in Leeds, England, to watch the coronation on June 2nd, 1953.
My mom tells me that when I entered kindergarten, I was the only one who knew how to read going in, thanks to watching Sesame Street all the time. I have vague memories of watching it.
Growing up in northern Manitoba (lived in the small town of Gillam until I was almost 8, I’ll wait while you go grab your atlas, look it up, say “holy farking snap, that’s way the hell up there!” and go back to the post) we could only get one channel up there at the time (I hear it’s better now) and that was the CBC, so anything I watched was from there. I can remember Sesame Street and something called Nic and Pic (this page says it debuted when I was 3 and finished just after I turned 5) - I can remember the mice and the theme song (“Nic, Pic, Nic, Pic, high up in the sky!”) very clearly more than 30 years later (not bad for a show that wasn’t on the air for long)
Sitting on the hardwood floor in front of the TV console early one morning watching **Underdog **cartoons. This would have been about 1971, when I was about 3.
Winky Dink! I was never “seen” on Romper Room either.
Me, it was watching Calvin and the Colonel as a toddler. I actually don’t remember the show at all; I remember only the theme song. It was a jazz bass solo and my father could imitate it perfectly. Wikipedia says the show aired from Oct. 3, 1961 to June 9, 1962, so you couldn’t come any closer: I was 2 years old.
Clevelanders: I remember Captain Penny very well, and it wasn’t till 40 years later I learned the real name of the “Pooch Parade” song.
