The TV event I best remember was in 1979 when Begin and Sadat signed a treaty. Our civics teacher brought the TV in so we 9th graders could watch, and being around 14 years old at that time we all hoped that Begin and Sadat would get into a fistfight and that Carter would get punched in the nose trying to break it up.
Other than that, Gone With the Wind, the Christmas Specials, and Wizard of Oz. And the Watergate hearings, which annoyed me because they sometimes pre-empted Josie and the Pussycats.
Most of my “nominations” have been mentioned, but I didn’t see the Challenger disaster mentioned. I was almost past being a “kid,” at 16, but I honestly felt like that explosion was my generation’s “media moment.” (Like “Where were you when you heard JFK was shot/John Lennon was shot/MLK was shot/You heard about the Pearl Harbor Bombing/World Trade Center?”) I will never forget seeing that launch in the high school library, as it happened, and having those moments of “That simply could. not. have. just. happened.”
I remember watching the Berlin Wall come down in my grandmother’s living room at age 4. I didn’t really understand what was going one, but all the adults were estatic and I remember my great-grandmother singing something in German.
Definitely the Christmas stuff. It’s still a big deal–we just watch it on DVD when it’s coming on on the cable we don’t have. Sports were never any big deal in our house, and I can’t think of much else that was both a big deal and somewhat rare.
I do remember getting excited when Carman was going to be on TV, though. (First result on Google, too. He’s a big deal 'round here.)
Wizard of Oz
Sound of Music
Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang
All of the Hanna-Barbera holiday specials.
The withholding of any of the first three could be used as disciplinary threats with great effect.
And since people are mentioning live/news events as well, I’ll toss in Carter’s fireside speeches. I loved those.
Oh, and I recall getting up at 4 a.m. to watch McEnroe at Wimbledon.
[ul]
[li]Roots[/li][li]Helter Skelter (everybody was talking about it at school, reenacting the murders at recess. My parents didn’t let me watch it. To this day I’ve never seen it)[/li][li]TV premiere of Gone With The Wind.[/li][li]Ten Commandments, when ABC still spread it over 2 nights.[/li][li]Network TV premiere of “Earthquake”, with a local FM station simulcast to simulate Sensurrond in your own home.[/li][li]The Day After[/li][li]My older sister and her friends were gushing over “The Thorn Birds” but it looked too chick flick/soap-operaish to me.[/li][li]In the pre-VCR days any big feature film. CBS made a big deal about how The Exorcist was being shown without any visual edits, just overdubs for language.[/li][li]Any Charlie Brown holiday special, although Christmas and Great Pumpkin were the only must-see classics. Easter and Thanksgiving were OK. By the time they got around to Arbor Day they were running on fumes.[/li][li]Evel Kneivel’s jumps.[/li][/ul]
Even as recently as the late 1990s (as in, '98-'99 or so) in NZ when I was finishing high school, I remember often having to reorganise plans for evenings with friends because something like The X-Files was on and they didn’t want to miss it.
The interesting thing is that VCRs were ubiquitous and everyone I knew had one, but not everyone knew how to programme them effectively (as countless late '80s/early '90s comedians will remind you) so most people I knew used them for taping stuff they were already watching and would want to see again, rather than taping stuff that was going to be on when they were out or airing on a different channel at the same time.
Wide World of Sports was usually on in the background every week, but if they had Evel Knievel or the Globetrotters on, you dropped everything and watched.
I remember about 1980ish, channel 32 in Chicago aired The Deer Hunter uncut, and it was unbelievable hearing “fuck” coming out of the TV.
The Ten Commandments, every year, without fail. Ditto The Wizard of Oz. My parents would let me stay up to whatever ungodly hour they were on until.
I remember being stoked for months to see V, and then having it end in a cliffhanger, and having to wait another year to see the conclusion. It was almost too much for my 14 year old self to handle.
When I was a kid, must have been about '88, it was a huge deal when the first ever American’s Funniest Home Videos aired. My friends came over to watch it and everything. I think it was a Sunday night.
And, of course there was TGIF in the early 90s.
And the bombings during the Gulf War in or around '91. Those were a big deal on TV.
My guess is that anybody under age 9 will think of it the way anybody under 47 thinks of the JFK Weekend: just some old news that old folks think is important.
