Gilligan’s Island during it’s original run.
I remember being in bed in 1983 and my parents calling me and my brother down to watch the “Making of the Return of the Jedi” special on TV.
It’s also the first movie I can remember seeing in the theater, but I only remember Jabba The Hut, probably because for a little kid(4 1/2), he’s really memorable.
Hey, Kids, what time is it? It’s Howdy Doody Time!
I don’t know why but two sitcom episodes when I was 3 or 4 really stick in my head:
–a “Jeffersons” episodes where it’s explained how George bought his first laundry. It happened to be the day MLK was shot, and a scene closes out with angry ghetto dwellers starting to riot.
–on “Laverne and Shirley”, there was an episode where the landlady’s retarded daughter fell in love with Lenny. Sqiggy tells him “don’t you know she’s a dummy” and the girl runs off crying.
I haven’t seen either of these episodes in 30 years and they still stick in my mind.
Captain Z-ro, probably the source of my lifelong quest for an affordable time machine large enough to transport back a '38 Buick.
My Mother the Car. Sadly, I’m not kidding.
I was born in Canada in 62 so we only had the CBC and CTV. The earliest shows I remember were Romper Room with the lady and the mirror " I see Jimmy and I see Becky"… And the Uncle Bobby show with Bimbo the Birthday Clown
You think you had it rough. Why, when I was watching Captain Z-ro, we had only ONE channel, the CBC, and it broadcast half the day in French!
We also lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the street, and liked it.
The Watts riots. EIther that or my brother waking me to go stare at the test pattern each morning. He wanted his kiddie shows. I was too young to care but I distinctly remember the test patterns as well as I remember the pictures of the Watts riots.
Kid’s shows. Romper Room, Bozo, The Bugaloo’s (I didn’t know what accents were I didn’t get why they talked so weird) and Hobo Kelly (local Los Angeles thing.)
ETA: Thunderbirds are Go!
Also a memory of the guy installing our first tv. Late 1948. He asked me what I was gonna watch. I was 4. He mentioned Howdy Doody. It meant nothing(yet).
Probably watching Howdy Doody in the ensuing months would be my first memory.
I was watching it in the early seventies in SE Georgia, but I remember watching Romper Room and getting progressively more pissed each time, because that lady never saw me. At first, I figured it was because we lived so far away from the TV studio, so even a magic mirror might have a tough time spotting me on the horizon. But then she spotted my brother Bobby… and continued to ignore me! I quit watching. (Rachel was not as common a name in my generation as it is now. There were craploads of Jennifers and Tonias and such, but I never shared a class with another Rachel until college.)
I watched plenty of other kiddie shows - Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo - but the first thing I remember vividly was watching Walter Cronkite and coverage of the fall of Saigon.
Challenger Explosion.
The very earliest thing I remember was some live or taped (not filmed) broadcast of some guy climbing a tree. I have no idea what it was supposed to be, or where it’s from.
The first thing I saw on TV that I can identify is the film Son of Kong. It made a deep impression on me. I was already a big dinosaur fan, from my books From Then to Now and The Little Golden Book of Dinosaurs – this was the first time I saw them moving*. When I saw King Kong a little later, it made a much deeper impression.
I think it was I Love Lucy, closely followed by The Dick Van Dyke Show, Dobie Gillis, The Mickey Mouse Club, Captain Kangaroo, Perry Mason, and The Andy Griffith Show.
And while we’re on this topic, help me identify an old show that I liked even though I didn’t really understand it at the time(I was 5 or 6, maybe 7). I know it was in B&W, probably made 1955 to 1965. It appeared to be kind of futuristic, sort of an Orwellian society. I vividly remember that sometimes a big bubble/balloon would appear, fly through the air and then envelope and kill a person who was allegedly guilty of something. I got the impression this was a device used by the government to control people. The protagonist was a guy trying to buck the system and usually getting away with it somehow. I watched it when I was very young-- 1963 to 1966 maybe, so those are the only details I can articulate. The show might have been quite hokey, but it scared the shit out of me at the time.
You guys really remember what the first things you watch were? My parents didn’t believe in allowing kids to watch TV before the age of 3, so my first memories are probably from 1980. I really liked Julia Childs when I was small, and Mr. Rogers, and whatever that Wonderful World of Disney thing that was on the weekends. A little older than that, 4 maybe, I saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time and hated it. Still do.
Sounds like that could be The Prisoner (1967–1968)
Check YouTube for clips like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRPDO63rI1E
You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say this. Sure, some people like it more than others and a few people can take it or leave it. But I’ve never heard someone say they hate it. Tell me more about your impressions of this odd little planet we call Earth.
The earliest I can definitely pinpoint is a particular episode of Doctor Who. Checking the transmission date, it turns out it was broadcast on my 5th birthday.
OH HELL YES!!! That’s it! Thank you! I guess I was a little older than I thought (8 or 9) but it still spooked me big time. I’m surprised I didn’t become a conspiracy theorist as a result of that show. Come to think of it, I was kind of paranoid in my youth.