Mine is Crusader Rabbit. I mean, I saw other things before that, but they were grown-up things and not interesting enough to remember.
For the longest time there was no way to see any old CR episodes or clips. Then there was a specialty site and clips on Youtube. I had totally forgotten (or never realized) that the show was only partially animated. I’d also forgotten how repetative it was, due to the shortness of the installments and the recaps.
You have my sympathy. Although when I watched it, I was young enough to enjoy it.
I remember the first show I watched on colour TV. It was That’s My Mama in what must have been 1976. We had a housefire soon after, so we lost it as soon as we got it.
I also have a very early memory of seeing Monty Python, as the “Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days” sketch was in my nightmares repeatedly for about a year afterwards.
And I have very clear memories of the TV ritual we used to do every Sunday, where my Dad would get the local Community paper, buy us kids ice creams, and we’d eat them while watching Country Calendar, which was a New Zealand show about rural news and events. New Zealand is still a very rural-oriented culture.
But I think my earliest actual TV memory is of a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from around 1973 (though it would likely have been the episode from Christmas '72 or even earlier). I would’ve been four years old.
I can’t really say which was first. I remember shows like Romper Room and Wonderama. Various Saturday morning cartoon shows. No idea which came first. I do remember watching a moon landing. It could have been any between Apollo 14-17. I also remember watching the Munich Olympics and seeing the guys in ski masks. So I would have been 4-5 years old.
“Would YOU like to be QUEEN For A DAY??” Yup! Presented by Fab detergent, and the ladies in the audience all had pointy glasses and looked like Larson comic characters!
Either it was watching Felix The Cat, followed by bullfighting, when I lived in San Diego…or it was having my local children’s show preempted by news of the Kennedy assassination.
I have 2, from about the same time, I don’t knoe which one came first. My mom’s mom died when I was 3 years and 4 months, in 1963, and these were both while she was alive.
I remember watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Grandma & Grandpa’s house, and being afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West; I hid behind my Grandma’s chair, peeping out occasionally untill she was off the screen.
The other, my older cousin Sherry had spent the night with me, and we were coloring. My mother called to us to let us know Peggy Mitchell was about to come on, followed by Captain Kangaroo. I remember scrambling to pick up the crayons to go watch!
We got our first color TV somewhere about 1965-67… the first program we watched was Johnny Quest!
“Romper Room” was franchised and did indeed have various hostesses. Miss Nancy was the one I remember. But I used to watch "Ding Dong School every morning and never saw anyone except Miss Frances. I LOVED Miss Frances! The wiki article seems to bear out Miss Frances as the only host.
Even as a little kid, that show made me sad. Three women with horrible stories (son in wheelchair with polio, another with 9 kids and husband died in car wreck, and another with some horrible disease and no appliances at home) and only one would win and get the new fridge and a month’s supply of beans. The others were sent packing back to their misery. I think my mother stopped watching it when I was home because I would pester her with questions, “…so do the other kids have anything to eat tonight?!”
Rhomper Room (I think it was w/ Miss Sally at the time).
Bozo’s Circus (Chicago version).
Ray Rayner (also a Chicago thing).
Garfield Goose (ditto).
Beany and Cecil.
And of course all the Hanna-Barbera cartoons that were run endlessly at that time.
