My 1st TV memory is looking for Ed Sullivan’s “Really Big Shoe.”
I never did see any huge footwear. Always somewhat disappointed me.
Hey, I was a child! I didn’t catch on to certain accents.
My first television memories are from when I was two or three years old. We were living in London at the time, and I loved watching the girls’ Irish dancing shows.
Mine’s a episode of Doctor Who, too: the first episode of “Galaxy 4” (I remember being particularly keen on the chumblies).
For years I wondered why I should remember so clearly watching that particular episode (I don’t have any other memories of the Hartnell years at all). Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I’ve since found out that it was broadcast on the day my brother was born, shortly before my own third birthday.
Popeye cartoons. Probably the Captain Tug show on in the afternoon in the DC area.
Dr. Who. On a 14" black and white TV.
Oooooo, Weeeeee, Oooooooo…
Scared the shit out of me. And then the Daleks! “Exterminate! Exterminate!” I didn’t want to sleep for days…
Scary fucking stuff to a 5 year old…
I’d forgotten about Popeye. Yeah, that’s a very early TV memory for me, too-- perhaps the earliest.
This. I can’t say which one it was, but we were over at some friend’s house in the neighborhhod and the adults were all excited about it, so it may have been Apollo 11. I would’ve been just over 2 y/o at the time if it was 11.
You know, I think the demographics of this board might skew a tad bit to the older side.
Ya reckon? I’ll have you know I grew up with the best coal-fired TV in the neighborhood.
I remember when I realized that cartoons on TV weren’t representations of real people or things- I was watching a “Beetle Bailey” cartoon. Must have been '64 or '65, and I was born in October 1960. I do have memories of TV before then- just can’t reliably date them.
Howdy Doody, Winky Dink, and Offy Offy (Arthur Godfrey).
This is embarrassing – I remember being crushed when the Donnie and Marie Show was cancelled. I don’t even really remember watching it, but I remember sitting down to watch it and being really upset that it wasn’t on. I asked my mom why it wasn’t on and she told me that not enough people liked to watch it so it wasn’t on anymore.
That’s “Offy GOFFY”!
I forgot about Howdy Doody. That show terrified me during the in-show commercial for Puffed Wheat, where Claribel the Clown was going to climb into the cannon that shot out the puffed wheat. I had to run out of the room, I was afraid Claribel was going to be shot out in an explosion of bloody bits! I was 4 or 5, and no one ever noticed how that bothered me.
Either Mister Ed or {gasp} Psycho.
First sporting event I can remember is Vikings/Chiefs Superbow. I said to my parents that I thought Kansas blew away in a tornado. So apparently I watched the Wizard of Oz sometime prior to that Superbowl.
I remember seeing episodes of Doctor Who, featuring the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), on their first broadcast in NZ. That would have been around 1968; the scenes I recall were from The Abominable Snowmen and The Wheel in Space.
Ironically, both episodes from which I recall scenes are episodes that are now lost. So I’ll never see them again… 
Huntley and Brinkley were on every night in my house, and I have memories of that.
I recently called up a song for a parody I was writing, and found a version by Shari Lewis. Seeing her with her puppets recalled a memory of a memory of watching her at about 6 and remembering how, at perhaps 2, I’d believed the puppets to be real. So even though it’s before a time I’d probably have remembered, the memory about the memory has perfectly preserved me delighting in what I genuinely believed to be cute animals who could speak English.
I remember being sent to my room as punishment for something, right when Popeye was coming on. I remember crying and pounding on the door to be let out to watch it when I realized that if I just SHUT THE HELL UP I could at least listen to it through the door. Based on where we lived, and the fact that one brother wasn’t even walking yet, I couldn’t have been older than 4.
These people hate it too 
TV made me a man.
It’s not my first TV memory, but it’s the clearest — I was nine years old, watching the Red Skelton show (1963, as I found after just now looking it up), and Jayne Mansfield, wearing a tight black dress, came on and sang “The Glory of Love.” And I got the funniest feeling in my crotch. At the time, I had no idea what it was. I now realize that it was all the proof I need that sexual orientation is innate.