I have no idea; we didn’t have the television on during meals. We used to eat at 6:00 (considered ridiculously early these days) so my father could watch the 6:30 news. Oh, and the news was really news back then (no top story being about some footballer’s groin injury) and no ad breaks. They took their news seriously.
That’s going way back, to the early '60s. I remember all the Hanna–Barbera cartoons that were on after I got back from school—Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Magilla Gorilla, Augie Doggie and Doggy Daddy, Pixie and Dixie, et al. But my favorite was always Top Cat; I didn’t realize until many years later that it was essentially a cartoon version of Sgt Bilko. I also watched Rocky and Bullwinkle every afternoon on Grandma Lumpit’s Boarding House on WTCN 11.
Way, way back, I got into trouble for not doing my homework in first grade because I watched too much TV after school. I was a huge fan of The Adventures of Superman, especially with Noel Niell as Lois Lane and the episode where Supey “married” Joi Lansing (I was a very, uh, precocious child).
Very often, especially when I slept over at my dad’s place, I would eat a Swanson’s TV dinner while I watched these, even though it wasn’t six o’clock yet.
It would take an exceptional event in order to pull out the TV trays and eat downstairs. Otherwise, as a kid, I had no idea what was being broadcast at dinner time.
The Kennedy connection matches “early 60s”. Some of those don’t ring a bell with me – but Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, and Augie Doggie certainly do. As for Rocky and Bullwinkle, who could possibly forget moose and svirrrel, dahlink!
As long as we’re throwing around YouTube links, I assume everyone remembers the NBC color peacock used to introduce color programming. According to Wikipedia, this version ran from 1962 to 1975. We only had a black and white TV when I was a kid but there was relatively little color programming anyway, and color TVs were outrageously expensive and rare and had those odd round picture tubes. My childhood dream was to have a color TV and a gigantic antenna to get lots of channels … little did I know that in my adulthood I’d have more channels than I could imagine, all of them in color, and all of them utter crap! 
We watched the Vietnam and Mideast wars, brought to us by Uncle Walter. On Sunday we watched Marlin Perkins tell us about the dangerous animals he was wrestling. My dad would say they ought to let the animal bite him and then we’d see how good Mutual of Omaha’s insurance was.
It was Jim Fowler who did all the wrestling. Marlin would sit and watch from the Land Rover.
MARLIN: I’ll stay here, while Jim goes downrange to wrestle the fierce Bengal tiger.
JIM: Mind you, Bengal tigers are tricky beasts; you can’t take your eyes off 'em for a second!
(For some reason, I always think of Jim as having an Australian accent, but I see on Wiki that he’s from the US state of Georgia.)
Joi Lansing. Oh … my … God! :o
http://www.polarblairsden.com/actorsjoiglam01.jpg
I now look at the TV schedule not to see which shows are on in the evening, but which channels I should avoid at all costs! :mad:
This was us during supper - no TV, no books at the table. Admittedly we didn’t talk to each other so much as listen in silence while my dad bitched about his day or yelled at us. Awesome.
That said, he insisted on supper on the table no later than 5pm, because then he’d take a shower and sit his arse down in front of the 5.30pm news and watching TV all evening, every evening, until the 11.00pm news went off the air. Gah! What a waste.
Walter Cronkite. We ate promptly at 6PM, on TV trays in the family room.
I remember Barney Miller, MASH and Welcome back Kotter.
News. My dad taught journalism, among other things, so we watched four news shows a night.
We didn’t have a TV in the dining room.
We never had the TV on at dinner time. If we had, it’d be the news.
That was us. At my own house, we couldn’t have seen the television from either the kitchen table nor the dining room. However, books were allowed at the table. (Which was a good thing on those nights that my mother made me sit there until I ate all of my liver. I would read long enough for Ma to get bored, and then sneak the liver to my brother. I always returned the favor when he wouldn’t eat squash or cabbage or greens.)
At my grandparents’, the television was usually tuned to the CBS news with Walter Cronkite during supper time. I enjoyed eating with my grandparents - color tv, air conditioning, and Grandmother was a pretty darned good cook! (Oh, and Granddaddy had hooked up one of those automatic antenna tuners, so they got four TV channels! We only had three, and that depended on someone going outside to turn the aerial while the inside monitor yelled instructions.)
No TV during dinner, but I remember my sister and I begging to put off washing dishes on (I think) Thursday nights because of The Cosby Show, Perfect Strangers, and Growing Pains. It didn’t work, though. LOL. Taught me how to wash dishes fast…
On another night, stepdad would force us all to watch* Cops, Married with Children*, and *Simpsons *with him. I have irrational hatred for those shows.
At Grandma’s house we’d watch Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and *Law and Order *sometimes during dinner.
When I was a kid dinner was in the dinning room or in the kitchen - so no TV during the meal. However, the radio was on and that featured the local news out of Cincinnati followed by 15 minutes of national news sponsored by the Sunoco or Sohio oil companies followed by some very Republican opinion guy from WJR, Detroit (Fulton Lewis, Jr.?). As a concession to the children, the meal did not start until Howdy Doody Show was over at 6:00. As I remember the news was mostly the Korean War, Senator McCarthy’s various carryings on and the Sam Shepard case out of Cleveland, and, of course, Ohio State football.
When out kids were still at home we observed the same routine - no TV during meals. If we were going to be entertained we had to entertain ourselves. There were, however, some very quick meals.
Now that the kids are gone and self-supporting the kitchen TV is on. Local news followed by a half hour of network news followed by a repeat of local news. We want to see the weather report, don’t you know. Mrs. G. and I seem to eat slower now and fall asleep right after.
Growing up in the 70s in the UK - no TV in the kitchen. And that’s where we ate dinner.
I’m 53, and the TV shows I remember watching right before dinner as a kid were on New York’s WNEW (Channel 5) and WPIX (Channel 11).
WNEW had the Sandy Becker Show, featuring cartoons and Becker’s odd characters, like Norton Nork and a stereotypical Mexican named Que Lastima (Spanish for “What a shame!”).
WPIX had Officer Joe Bolton with old “Three Stooges” shorts.
Pretty much everything? I started watching TV at dinner in 1958, usually around 7-8. I’ve been watching TV at dinner almost my entire life. We really hit our stride when we could VCR one channel while watching another and with the DVR we hardly every miss anything at all.
All sorts of different shows. I particularly remember having to leave Buck Rogers to have dinner many times.
ETA: The 70’s Buck Rogers. With all the hot space chicks.