I have no memories of fights over the TV. Over other things, yes, but not TV. Most of my memories are of the whole family peacefully watching what everyone wanted to watch.
That’s probably a false memory, because I’m sure I fought with my sister about The Love Boat.
It was always me and my sisters against my brother. My brother wanted to watch Bruce Lee and things like that. We always wanted to watch Too Close For Comfort or Mr. Belvedere. Haha! We used to ‘call’ the cable box, and whoever called it gets to keep it until they have to get up and go to the bathroom or whatever. Man, I would be sliding that button up and down the dial! Click, click, click, click…rapid fire quick, watching the orange light race over the numbers. Maybe finally settle on MTV for a while, hear some Cyndi Lauper or Pat Benetar.
When my dad was home, it was all bets are off. We watched what he watched, or nothing at all. That means my sisters and brothers were out of there. But I always stuck around and learned to love lots of nature shows on PBS, along with Benny Hill, David Letterman, Twilight Zone and all the other stuff that my dad liked. Ah, memories.
Oh, god yes.
The only show my sisters and I were ever able to agree on was Spenser: For Hire. Fortunately they were all in love with Avery Brooks.
My sister and I usually agreed on what we wanted to see, except when it came to figure skating. If figure skating was on, she had to watch figure skating, and would do whatever it took to make sure that our TV showed figure skating, regardless of what I might like to see. “Whatever it took” usually involved appeals to Mom (who liked figure skating herself, so that was an easy sell); but occasionally, Sis would resort to screeching and screaming about how unfair I was being, which usually resulted in Dad’s intervention to say, “Just let her watch her damn figure skating, Spoons, if it shuts her up.” So, she usually got her way. Heck, the Super Bowl could have been shown opposite figure skating, but I wouldn’t get to see the game; Sis would get to see her figure skating.
I never got to watch anything I wanted. It was so bad that I got a paper route and shoveled snow and cut grass and finally after a year and a half at age 9 (almost 10) I had saved enough to get a black and white portable. It cost me $121.00
I remember my mother was like “I can’t believe you’re wasting your money on that.” But she let me buy it.
It was a bad move 'cause from that day on anything really expensive I wanted my mother was like, “Well just go out and get some jobs and save up for that.”
I don’t remember fighting over the TV much; I was a latchkey kid and watched pretty much what I wanted from 4 to 6:30 or so each day. Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, etc.
I do remember watching stuff like Love Boat, Magnum PI, and Simon & Simon with my mom at night. About the only thing she watched that I couldn’t stand was Little House on the Prairie.
There were some fights, sure. But if our mom ever heard us the TV would be off, no more chances, no questions asked. We learned pretty quickly.
The only specific contention I remember is when I was too little for school but my sister was a worldly second grader. Sesame Street and Batman were on at the same time, right at 3:00 when she came home from school. The rule was basically “first come first served”. If I forgot to get down there and turn on Sesame Street she got to watch Batman. It didn’t take me too terribly long to not mind watching Batman. (Also Sesame Street also aired in the morning so most days I’d already seen it.)
I’m sure there were some disagreements in our teen years, but for the most part we watched TV in the evenings as a family and my mom got the final say anyway.
Also, my parents did have a TV in their room. We couldn’t go in there and watch our own shows, but I did hang out in there with my mom and watch soaps from a fairly young age.
Wait, what?
Anyway…grew up in the 80s, but for most of my childhood, there was only 1 TV (at least that the kids could use - my parents had one in their room, as did my grandparents)… Ironically, my brother and I didn’t fight over the TV until we got a second TV…
I remember one particular incident - I was watching a new episode of Punky Brewster, when my brother came in and turned on a repeat of Mister Boogedy, which we’d already watched, and I didn’t particularly like. Never DID see the episode I missed. I think I ended up going downstairs and watching TV with my mother rather than put up with my brother and his stupid movie.
(When we were teenagers, and down to one TV again, due to moving, I came to the conclusion he did this for no reason but to piss me off, when he turned off a movie I was watching to turn on an INFOMERCIAL.)
Saturday morning cartoons. Mom or somebody finally came up with the idea to rotate control of the color TV between the four youngest kids; she’d write our names on the calendar so there’d be no confusion as to who was in charge of the color TV each Saturday morning. The rest of the time we just deferred to Dad when he was home and not watching TV/listening to the radio/reading in the master bedroom.
OH GOD YES! Some of my earliest TV memories are fighting with my sisters about whether we’d watch *American Bandstand *on Channel 8 or cartoons on Channel 11. When my parents got home my sisters would argue with them over stuff like Perry Como vs. Hawaiian Eye.
Then my father, in a misguided attempt to end the fighting, bought a second TV and we argued over whose room to put it in.
In those days there were only five channels where we lived (and the public TV station ran instructional programming, so there were really only four). If we’d had cable we probably would have come to blows.
I was an only child, so no, there were generally no fights. I was a big TV watcher, but my parents, not so much.
I do remember one incident though, very clearly in fact.
It was during All in the Family, and not just any episode. It was the episode where Edith had just died. For me, this was a BIG DEAL.
So I was watching just as Archie paid for a bible that Edith supposedly had bought before she died. (The whole set up reeked of a Paper Moon scam, but never mind.) Anyway Archie’s whole syliloquy about his love for Edith was about to begin.
It was just then that my landlord decided to show up.
This, in itself, was not a problem for me. My mom was caretaker of the building, and she went to talk to him about some bonobos disguised as workmen that the landlord had hired for some job. Apparently, they had cut down some clotheslines just for laughs, tying them into hangman’s nooses and stuff.
Fine. Only my mom was really pissed about the clotheslines. And as she spoke with the landlord, her voice got louder and louder. So, I turned the TV up. And she talked louder to speak over the TV. So I turned the set louder, and she talked louder. Soon it was Archie wailing into Edith’s bedroom slipper, and my mom hollering about the clotheslines.
So one of the pinnacles of television history was ruined for me. After the landlord left, I let Mom know this, as calmly as I could, because my mom was pissed off enough already, and she would have torn my head off if I had started screaming. She looked surprised that I would care so much about a TV show when her clotheslines were at stake.
I’ve seen the Edith’s death episode several times since then. But it’s not the same. Plus I always think about the stupid clotheslines.
This was life before the VCR. We shall not see its like again.
P.S. Yes, I know this episode is really from Archie Bunker’s Place. Shut-up.
No exactly answering the OP, but here’s my contribution. I was working my first job, a teenager still in high school, working the snack bar at a local mall movie theater. I asked a co-worker to swap shifts with me on one Saturday night and her response was, “No way. American Gigolo is on TV.”
Boy, do I feel old. The VCR seemed to be the “big” development in my younger years, and now I’ve out-lived it. 
I know we had a few with four children but in general there was an unofficial “take turns” system. Our grandmother had a TV in her room so sometimes one of us would watch “The Munsters” with her while the rest of us watched the far superior “Addams Family”.
I saw two nasty arguments over tv when I was an adult. One was in college when the dorm tv was on a rebroadcast of the Mary Martin version of “Peter Pan” which hadn’t been see for several years (supposedly because of smoking the peace pipe and do you believe in fairies. One of the science geeks with the shirt pocket plastic container objected and was shouted down, he left mumbling in disgust about childish college college. Yes, we all clapped to revive Tinkerbell.
Another was several years later in the military when an E-6 wanted the TV for watchstanders for the baseball game. Other people objected and he eventually called the OOD complaining as senior enlisted he determined what we watched. The OOD told everybody not to bother him about such childish behavior and threatened to remove the Tv if we didn’t settle it in 30 seconds. The E 6 left in anger.
I have a brother that’s 2 years older. I’m a girl. I only remember watching The A-Team, Knight Rider, The Dukes of Hazard, The Love Boat and G.I. Joe.
So, I suppose there was no fighting, just submission on my part.
There was some fighting, but the evening showings were always my parents’ choice. We watched what Dad wanted to watch and if he didn’t care then it was what Mom wanted. There wasn’t anything on in the afternoon to fight over. Occasionally there was a discussion and the older kid always won.
Which wasn’t bad considering there were seven kids and one tv.
My children are being raised deprived. We have one tv and it will stay one tv as long as it’s my home. Lucky for them we don’t pay for cable and we only get one network channel–PBS ha!–so there’s not much to fight about anyway. They do occasionally argue over Wii or Netflix downloads, but that one is easy to solve because both can be done at anytime.
Bearcats, was that the one with two guys in the white car?
No real fighting because we kids in the early 70s had our own old black and white GE 19’ TV with a coat hanger for an antenna, so we could watch what we wanted.
When we had one TV, my brother and I rarely fought over it. We only had two channels, anyway (CTV and CBC) and our tastes were close enough.
Yes, there were two TV sets; one black & white, one color. My brother and I would fight over whether he would watch Batman or I would watch Lost in Space on the color set. My parents usually sided with my brother because he was younger than me.
My family home still has only one television. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the last household in the Western world with only one.
I am the youngest of 6, and my nearest sibling is 4 years older, so when I was young, I had no say whatsoever. Along around 5th grade, however, my older siblings moved out, leaving me and 2 brothers. Both my brothers had recently gotten paper routes and cut a deal with our parents that the first $100.00 they earned could be used completely selfishly (and any money earned thereafter had to be tithed and saved and only a small percentage used for fun money).
Both my brothers purchased Zenith 13-inch black and white tvs which they kept in their rooms. After that, I was king of the living room television!