I bought a portable B&W tv in 1974 for college. I bought a color 19" in 1982 and the portable B&W was relegated to the kitchen and died around 1985.
My parents bought a color tv around 1977. My grandmother had bought one for her room about 1972…using those social security checks to watch Lawrence Welk and his mannequin singers in glorious color.
On of the old B&W tvs ended up in my bedroom. I found that by fiddling around the “fine tuning” analog ring on the channel selector, I could get HBO which my parents dropped as a overpriced hype. Not a good picture, very shadowy but the price was right. The color tvs couldn’t do that.
Early 80’s. I remember my Mom bought a B&W TV for her room, then a week later bought a color one - she couldn’t stand to watch B&W TV any more. I got the B&W TV, but it didn’t get much use. Sometime in 1983 I got a small color TV to use with my Commodore-64 computer, and that was the end of B&W TV in our household, thank god.
My mom had a crappy black and white TV in the kitchen until, god, I don’t know, at least until they remodeled their kitchen - this century, at any rate. I remember her cooking dinner on 9/11 watching coverage in there on that TV when I was in grad school. It had dials. And it was really more like green and white.
I got my first color TV in 1988 (still have it). I then relegated the old Zenith B&W to the bedroom where it lived until the last time I moved - late 2004. I gave it to a neighbor with a small kid so that the rugrat have something to watch cartoons on. It still had a good picture.
My parents also got their first color TV in 1988. They kept the old black and white upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms until maybe a couple of years ago.
Black and white portables were sold until fairly recently; drug stores, discount stores, and department stores carried them into the 2000s, especially those sub-$50 off-brands meant for use while camping or traveling.
I had a b/w TV in my bedroom (with a coat hanger antenna) until probably 1987 when I moved, though we had a color TV in the den from the time I was born (1966). I have a still in the box battery operated b/w in my closet that my mother bought as a leader special for about $15 sometime in the 1990s which of course today would pick up nothing at all.
I had a B+W tv in my computer room until about the time of the digital conversion.
I though hooking a converter box to it was a bit silly (esp with no coax in)
I now use a 25 ish year old computer monitor.
When color TV came out in the 60s , few bought them. They were expensive and not many shows broadcast in color. In the late 60s the prices came down and enough shows were in color to lure the TV buyers. But it was a while before my dad would spring for a SONY. It was in the late 70s ,I think.
At that time most of the little screens were B&W.
Actually, RCA started manufacturing color TVs in the U.S. in 1954, a year after the FCC gave approval to their compatible color system. By compatible, it meant people with black-and-white TVs could still pick up a B&W picture off a color signal, therefore B&W sets were not rendered immediately obsolete. It is true that color broadcasting did not really break out intil the mid 60s. We got our first color TV in 1967. We still had a portable black-and-white TV that we used for about 11 more years, until we bought a second color set with a 19 inch screen. So I haven’t watched TV in black-and-white for over 30 years.
Shoot, I thought I was a late adopter (for color, anyway).
My family got a color TV in the late 60s.
When I moved to my first apartment, I didn’t have a TV. Later I got a friend’s old B&W which I used until I bought my own color TV around 1977. I kept that TV until last year when I bought an HDTV. (Coincidentally, in the few months before that, that old color TV began losing the picture occasionally. It looked like the CRT itself had lost power completely.)
My family got our first color set not too long after we moved into our new house in 1965, so it would have been 1965-66. I did have a small portable B&W set in my room for a few years more, maybe until, say 1969-70.