I may have mentioned this before. This is also my first memory in general.
Watching the Watergate hearings on TV. My mother was hooked. I had no idea what was going on, except that Mr. Nixon had done A Very Bad Thing.
This was '74, I think? I would have been 3.
Watching Captain Kangaroo while waiting for my mom to take to kindergarten. That show was like crack to me.
Watching what, in retrospect, was probably the “Huntley / Brinkley Report” (what would later be known as “NBC Nightly News”). Well, not really watching it, but being in the room when it was on.
Given that it was in my parents’ house in Western Springs, IL, this would have been late 1967 or early 1968. I would have been just under 3.
When I was about 2, and terrible, my parents waged war on my tendency to stay up. They wanted me IN BED and were not going to brook any argument about it.
I think bedtime was 8 PM, and Perry Mason would come on in the evenings at that time. For years after, I would feel dread at the sound of the Perry Mason TV series theme music without clearly remembering why, but after being told by an aunt about the bedtime battles some of it came back to me.
Delores Reborn:
I remember watching Kiterik, too. For all the wrong reasons, and I was around 7 or so. I have a feeling that show may have been popular with a couple of dads, too.
Boston Globe reports the death of one of mine today: Don Kent http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/03/03/don_kent_dean_of_area_weather_broadcasters_at_92/?page=2
Mine was specifically the Democratic convention. I remember Stevenson speaking. I must have been four at the time. I was at my Grandmother’s house in Montana we lived in Arizona at the time and we didn’t have one. I remember my neighbors had one and I vaguely remember watching boxing with them, but the clearest memory from that time was the Dem. convention.
Mister Roigers ran that. It is from the Crayola factory in Easton, PA. I’ve been on the tour, great fun!
Dammit, I remember him too. He was great.
Who was his broadcast partner at WBZ TV? Jack Clark?
Jack Chase and Shelby Scott.
Ah, that’s right. At least I was close.
Thanks, Vern.
another vote for crusader rabbit. about 1957.
Either of these could be the first.
The Friendly Giant
Kukla, Fran and Ollie
The Ruff & Reddy Show
Captain Scarlet
If not the earliest, one of them was some weird show about a guy trapped in a room made of tiles. For years I thought maybe I had just dreamed the whole thing. Then a few years ago I found that it was real! It was called The Cube and, it was written & directed by none other than muppet maker Jim Henson!
What was really cool was every comment I read about it was from people of my generation who also all thought they had dreamt the whole thing!
I remember a news flash, that Robert Kennedy had been shot.
I toddled over to Mom’s bedroom, where she was sleeping in that day (2 kids, 1 a baby, much tired), & told her “Mommy? The TV says Mr Kennedy is dead.”
“Yes sweetie, years ago. Let Mommy sleep.”
I went back to the TV, got more info, & woke her with the news that it was the other Mr Kennedy that was dead.
Not a nice wake up call. But I was 3? 4 ? And I knew a whole lot of grown-ups were very upset.
Oh, another very early memory-- in between shows, like during station id breaks-- I remember a graphic of a dove carring a twig and thinking it must be time for birds to start building their nests. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I found out it signified the end of the Viet Nam war.
This is the only first-hand sorta memory I have of the war since I do not remember news reports or anything like that. And I should because I was school age at the time.
There are a few shows I can remember watching and thinking about when I was very young. For example, I’m sure I watched Play School and Sesame Street and other pre-school shows. There were also NZ kids shows like Spot On that I know I watched. And comedy variety shows, like Morecambe and Wise, Dave Allen, and Dick Emery. But I have no specific memory associated with them I can bring to mind.
The earliest specific television related memory I can recall is when we got our first colour TV, in what must have been 1975, and the first show I can recall was That’s My Mama where they specified a colour in one of the lines of dialogue, and for the first time that colour didn’t appear as a pasty shade of grey.
My clearest memories of TV were of peeking through the lounge room door when I was supposed to be in bed, where I had nightmares after glimpsing the Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And then when we moved into a new house (after the old one burned down in a fire) I have strong memories of teh shows aimed at 7-12 year olds, like Gizago, with Stu Dennison, and Here’s Andy, and Stingray and Doctor Who.
Jack Kennedy’s funeral
I also remember JFKs funeral. But I remember watching TV and a text block quickly flashed along the bottom of the screen that he had died. I looked at my dad and he at me and hesaid “did you see that?” He didn’t die until much later than that flash of text.
