Being the youngest by 6 years meant that my older siblings were constantly hijacking the tv from me, absolutely refusing to watch any “baby” programs like Care Bears or Smurfs. The really sad thing is, my sister got a brain injury when she was 14, and though she is highly functioning, her entertainment choices are extremely juvenile. She will watch any animated film or television program regardless of quality, unless it is very adult anime (like Cowboy Bebop). Even now in our thirties, we have brief arguments concerning why I have absolutely no intention of watching “The Country Bears”. 
Yes. Although as a young person. I was typically outvoted.
I remember in particular, visiting my grandparents in Vermont. I wanted to watch the Smurf’s Christmas Special. But my grandfather wanted to watch some news show. I gave the argument that a Smurf special was once in a lifetime but some news show was rudimentary.
Grandpa, by power of oldness, won.
I cried many tears…
By the time i got to college, I had my own TV, and by the time I got out of college, I had a cable DVR and the point was more or less moot.
Nope, I know several households with one TV (both shared housing and families).
The Nephew has informed us of which of his friends have one TV in the house and which have more than one, he finds it a terribly fascinating topic. The last time it came up, he was investigating which of the families that have one TV and eat in that same room keep it switched off during meals.
Generally, if my dad was working days, evening TV was his choice. Sunday evenings were usually met with pleas from us kids to watch Disney when he wanted to watch 60 Minutes or Hee Haw. When he worked seconds, us kids usually duked it out.
If we were at his folks, they had a large tower and got stations from Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis as well as the usual ones from South Bend and Fort Wayne. Watching baseball with Grandpa wasn’t bad, but Saturday evening Lawrence Welk just sucked.
At Mom’s parent’s house, there was a big color console with fairly fuzzy reception. I watched the Porter Waggoner Show and lots of John Wayne movies with my grandfather and a lot of “rasslin” with my grandmother. I would have rather been watching something else most of the time.
Whatever household we happened to be in, TV programming was always the choice of the adults who were watching.
No. The one television was often off. If it was on because my parents wanted to watch something, well, no arguing with that. If my brother and I had it, we’d want to watch the same thing.
I loved the Bearcats!
We had 4 kids, we used to change channels, then hide the knobs so somebody couldn’t change the channel when you went to the bathroom.
Then we lost the knobs, so we used a pair of pliers.
Then we would hide the pliers!
Fun times.
No fights between my brother and me, usually. We got to watch our shows until my dad came home, at which point we were demoted to organic remote controls (“change the channel!” and “move the antenna!”)
We didn’t fight because my brother is 8 years older than me and I always thought anything he was doing was the cool thing to do. That’s why I was watching MAS*H when I was 6 and sneaking out of the bedroom to watch Letterman by the time I was 10. The only “traumatic” tv experience I remember is that my bedtime was 8:30 and Little House on the Prairie ran from 8-9, so my mom always made me miss the last half of the show.
We only have one tv in our house now. My kids don’t fight very often - they’re pretty much on the same page when it comes to television tastes. They do get a little stroppy when my husband commandeers the set to watch golf.
Oddly, no. We watched all those retro cartoons all weekend long when we were young. Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and Astro Boy! We LOVED Astro Boy, it was so unlike American cartoons. We kids were all on the same page as far as cartoons went. (I lost interest in cartoons when the afternoon block of Hanna Barbera cheap shit came on, though I still loved Warner Brothers cartoons.) When I was about 12, they bought me my own TV for my fortress of solitude, so I could watch Laugh In, or Here Come The Brides, The Outer Limits…whatever…in peace.
Saturday nights. I wanted Starsky & Hutch; my brother wanted the Professionals.
I hate to admit this, and I will NEVER tell him, but he was right.
and on the day that you do tell him, Huggy Bear will die a little more.
We had some big fights over the TV - in the early '70s there I had four siblings and 2 TVs - the big color one and the crappy 9 inch black and white. Of course there were only 5 channels (3 networks, PBS, and local independent) so there really weren’t that many choices - the real fight was over who got to use the good set.
I still clearly remember being 12 years old and being so pissed I had to watch the first episode of The Six Million Dollar Man on that little BW TV.
Don’t get me wrong - Starsky & Hutch rocked. But Bodie and Doyle were full of ass-kicking goodness.
One of those things is not like the others.
Naaa, there was no fighting over our sole TV. I was the youngest of four brothers (by 10 years), so there was sports-nut dad and my three sports-nut brothers vs. one adolescent who wanted to watch Batman. No fight there – I just learned to A) occupy myself with non-TV things, and B) hate all sports.
Of course, when I was in my 30’s I realized that football is a fricking awesome game, so it’s all worked out in the end.
That’s so wrong. :mad:
and I had to do that too.
I was an only child, so no real fights back then. I tended to watch whatever my mom watched during prime time, and I had control of the set during cartoon times-- Saturday mornings, and before/after school blocks. I eventually got my own color portable as a computer monitor for my Commodore 128, and shortly thereafter figured out how to add cable splitters to the incoming cable coax.
Now, at work, we still fight over the TV. Daytime associates fight over soaps and game shows, and nighttime associates fight over talk shows and who gets control of the DVD player. It’s typically first-come/first-served, but someone with bad or monotonous taste who is first in line over a period of time will sometimes get shouted down.
Oh yeah! I can’t remember any specific shows we fought over but it was always something. One time we hid one of the 2 remotes, and forgot where it was, and it was lost for years!
But, the matter was put to rest when I asked for, and received, my own personal TV from my uncle for my 13th birthday. My parent’s didn’t hook it up to cable, but growing up in NYC we got 7 strong aerial channels (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 - corresponding to ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, syndication, syndication, PBS). I can remember how on Mondays I would power through my homework, and curl up in bed with MY TV to watch “Northern Exposure.” Bliss.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember fighting over the TV with my siblings even though we always had only one TV. Considering that we fought over everything, I’m leaning towards memory loss here…