Today in 1953 the FCC authorized color broadcasting in the U.S., with both NBC and CBS airing programs in color that night. Anyone remember your first color TV set? Were you one of the first or last families to get one? And any sets stand out in your mind?
We were among the last. I remember when my mom and step-dad brought it home. The first thing that we watched was The Muppet Show. It was sometime in the late 70’s.
We got our first color set in early 1967, when I was in first grade. I was excited because it meant I got to watch “Batman” and “Gilligan’s Island” in color. And Saturday morning cartoons, of course. I think we waited that long because the major networks started broadcasting all of their shows in color by that time. Otherwise, why pay for a color TV to watch black and white shows?
I remember when we got our first color TV.
I was watching cartoons, and the moving guys came in, turned off the old TV and carried it away, and then brought in the new one (a huge RCA console), plugged it in and turned it on.
MIGHTY MOUSE WAS IN COLOR!
It was awesome!
I found a photo of the TV, or one very similar to it.
Our neighbors were among the first. We were among the last. What I remember most about the neighbors’ early model was, where we got snow on the empty channels, they got really bright red, blue and green confetti!
Also, and I’m sure more knowledgable Dopers will be along shortly, in the early 50s, CBS and RCA were in competition to have their own color broadcast systems approved by the FCC and both were airing promotional color broadcasts, RCA on their own NBC network. CBS’s system was incompatible with existing black and white sets. RCA’s color broadcasts could also be viewed in black and white, so RCA won FCC approval for their system. CBS, being the loser, dragged their feet on broadcasting in color. Except for special events and some live broadcasts, CBS didn’t have a regular color lineup until 1965. ABC, the “third network” didn’t begin color broadcasts until 1962. NBC was quick to schedule color broadcasts as sales of color sets directly benefited their parent company, RCA.
And on a personal note, I was very excited the day our color set was to be delivered. I rushed home from school, only to be greeted with a new TV set showing a black and white picture. I asked my mother what happened to the color set. She told me the store was out of color sets. She let me off the hook a couple of minutes later. She was playing a joke on me and had turned down the chroma control so that the picture was in black and white.
Our first color set was in 1980 or 1981. We were not early adopters.
Speaking of color TV, when I was a kid, you had the choice of getting a B&W or color TV. As in, if you didn’t want to spend a lot of money, you could get a B&W as a cheaper option. At some point, due to technology, B&W TV effectively went away. But occasionally, you still hear people of a certain age referring to their “color TV” like a praying Janis Joplin. As if there were any other kind! I just think that’s funny, is all.
And speaking of THAT, I just caught myself about to refer to a TV as a “set”. Because when I was real little, you needed a tube AND an antenna, literally a “set” of equipment! And now you don’t need either of those things. Yet the expression lives on.
“Color TV” and “TV set” are certainly two persistent archaic expressions.
I grew up watching 12-inch black-and-white TVs. My father was too cheap to spring for anything better. In fact, he never bought a color television in his life. When I was in college we kids pooled out money and bought our parents a color TV. This was about 1990, more than 35 years after the networks started broadcasting in color.
Occasionally I drive past a motel in Vermont that still has a big sign out front advertising “Color TV,” as if that’s a big selling point. Next thing you know, they’ll have indoor privies and a cement pond.
My parents weren’t impressed with the early color tv’s. They had seen the odd color hue problems at friends homes. They waited until 1971 or 72 to get a color set. By then the color was a lot better.
It was '73 or ‘74 before we got a color TV. It was from my grandfather’s cousins’ estate auction. It didn’t work, but we got it for $35 and the TV repair guy from two doors down fixed it for another fifty or so. We were definitely behind the times.
Anyone else live near TV repair guys? There were three in our little town. Two Zenith, one RCA if I remember correctly. One was just a repair guy, while the other two were dealers and repair guys. All three operated out of their houses located in regular middle-class neighborhoods and used plain panel vans for deliveries and house calls. I earned a good bit of money helping the one two doors down deliver new sets.
Starting in the late '80s, I used to ask my (high school) students if they remembered ever having a television repaired. Some did. By the '90s, they looked at me as if I was nuts when I asked that question.
I was born in '62, and my parents were militantly anti-television. Or at least militantly no-decent-television. It was 13" and black and white, period, since I could remember, from when I was a tyke to a teenager. I didn’t live with a color TV until 1978, after my parents had divorced and I lived with my father, and that old BW TV finally died. My father bought a color TV to replace it, a 19". I was 16, and at first it was amazing to have that set in our living room, if you can believe it, 25 years after color TV broadcasting had begun in the US. Of course I’d seen color television before, but only on family trips staying in hotels. I had no idea the Wizard of Oz wasn’t partially in black in white and the rest in color.
We got our first colour TV in 1976, just a few weeks before the house burned down and we lost everything. So as soon as we had a new place to live, one of the first things my Dad did was rent a new colour TV.
I guess in the way you would describe “WideScreen” and HD over “Standard” and NTSC/PAL today.
Next it’s going to be 2D versus 3D, which has already started I guess.
Of course, technology seems to advance so fast that new technologies are replaced faster and faster.
I’d guess immersive TV is next where you wear goggle screens one for each eye to make it 3D and you feel like you are actually there.
Only thing that would be missing would be touch, smell and taste, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that would be next.
Is it true that in the earliest years of color, the technology was unstable?
Did you have to buy a service contract when you bought the TV set, because you needed regular visits from a technician to keep it functioning properly?
Yes, it was in the days before solid state circuits were used. In fact critics used to say that NTSC stood for “Never Twice the Same Color.”
Our neighbors were the first in our hometown to own a black and white TV (before my time, but my parents told me about it.)
Thus it came as no surprise that they were one of the first in the hometown to own a color TV. Now normally, that would be interesting and chalk it up to having the money and desire to see shows in color. However, the husband was color blind. I mean, fully color blind.
When you went to see shows there, often the faces on the screen were green, or sometimes blue. The wife would fiddle with it a bit to try to get the colors correct, but it never fully worked right.
We had one about two years later - still a rarity in the hometown - and my father told us three boys not to mention it to anyone as he didn’t want to appear to be one of “those” kinds of people who just bought things to brag about. Dad liked his TV shows and the idea of seeing Bonanza and a few of his other favorites in color made him spend the bucks to buy it.
So, even though we boys were told not to tell anyone, “coincidentally” all of our friends happened to stop by the house within about two days to watch TV.
BTW, I think my father was also one of the first five people in town to sign up for cable TV back then - he hated the horrible reception from the antenna that would crap out half way through shows or in bad weather or whatever. I can still remember standing there, one foot in the air, one arm pointed north and leaning my head against the wall so the reception was good enough to determine whodunnit on Perry Mason…
I didn’t get a color TV until I got married… in 1990. So I guess I was one of the latest adopters. My parents bought their first set the year after I start college so I never had one growing up.
I was aware of them, of course, I’d seen color TV’s and watched them, I just didn’t own one myself for a long, long time. Just wasn’t a priority for me.
Here is an interesting article:
Note the watershed moment was when the networks switched their entire schedule (not just a few shows) to color. NBC (owned by RCA) did all but 2 shows at the start of the 1965-66 season. CBS and ABC followed a year later.
Well, the tube was just part of the thing, not separate, and you do still need an antenna, unless you have a cable or satellite box (or a roku, or one of those thingamabobers from google, etc). But I’ve always just use “set” as a word for the TV itself, not TV + everything else needed to get shows.
I’ve also never not had color. We did have some secondary/portables that were B&W, but the main set in the family room was always color in my lifetime (born in the 70’s).
Dad’s always had a color set in the bedroom as well. Used to be he had a small one but since the 90’s they’ve been getting bigger and bigger, much to Mom’s chagrin. At the smallest he once had a… I’m not sure 12"?.. CRT in the 80’s, but wow, that thing had a great picture. Now he’s up to a 40" plasma he got early this year.
Sometimes Mom will talk about not when they first got a color TV, but when her dad first brought home a TV. Period. I just cannot fathom that. I imagine we’re at the point now where brats are that way with internet and cellphones, though.