Saturday, February 20, 2016

The boob tube....


My parents were early adopters in the early 1950s: they bought a television set. How they rationalized that expenditure I do not know. I think it was a portable, maybe with a 7-inch screen.

They were among millions who were putting down the cash to acquire technology with rabbit ears.
TV in its infancy was the fastest blooming technology in the history of humankind.

At the end of World War II there were only a few tens of thousands of privately owned television sets. Within 10 years, two-thirds of American households had one. By the early 1960s more than 90 percent of homes had a boob tube.


In the early years, when few households had a set, the neighborhood tended to gather at the house with a TV for a social evening, watching whatever was on one of the (maximum 3) available channels. I was a kid when the family drove into Philadelphia to watch The Wizard of Oz on my uncle’s brand-new color TV.

I don’t watch TV now—stopped channel checking almost seven years ago. OK, I make exceptions for the Super Bowl and the State of the Union address and election returns in early November.

I’m bound to say I don’t think I’m missing much.

The news media industry, particularly TV, has become a beast with no scruples. I think it is deranging our society.

At least, in the old days, we had the Milton Berle Show







Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

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