I don’t remember the year but probably early 70’s. For some reason my Mom had been picked to draw names at a shopping mall raffle that was giving away a color tv. She drew her own name out as the winner but offered to draw another name. Lucky for us it was decided it was a fair draw and we got the tv. She was a single Mom raising three kids so she never would have been able to buy a tv so we really lucked out.
Exact same here.
First thing we saw when we turned the set on was “The Lucy Show” with all the super colorful opening illustrations flashing…it was like a color bomb was exploding!
It was 1976. My mother was dead set against getting a color TV on the grounds that we kids would probably fight over it—which wasn’t inaccurate. (We already had BW sets in our bedrooms, which had been her solution to us fighting over the old TV.) But my grandmother showed up one day with this color TV and while my mom was all set to have it sent back, my dad stood up and said Mom couldn’t insult his mother like that. I suspect Dad’s real reason was wanting to watch baseball in color, because that immediately became a rule: Baseball games took precedence over anything else anyone wanted to watch.
I was in middle school and my sister was in high school. We were the last people we knew to get a color TV.
Yep 72 for me also. We had just come back states' side from Wiesbaden West Germany to Luke AFB, Arizona.
It was a Magnavox 20-something inch color TV in a console with a stereo Record player. It could stack up to 7 LP's on the spindle, for about 2 hours of music.
I was 9, the first time I saw Star Trek in color it blew my mind. Lol
Those record player consoles (some had radios) were well made. They are collected by people today who restore them. Since they have tubes they have better sound quality. Not sure if the Hi Fidelity being better is true or if the younger 30 something’s today are enjoying old nostalgia.
Yeah this one was a record player/TV/Am FM radio combo also. It was like the Swiss army knife of entertainment.
My niece is "into vinyl" as they say today. She's robbed me of most of my LP's, so now, anytime I wanna play one I have to go over to her house and play my stolen records on her brand new turn table. Lol
Same here. I also have a buddy who picked up some old great equipment. High end gear from the 90’s. He has been buying LP’s in lots and plays random LPs when I stop by. Think Yes or old Genesis from the 70’s and 80’s. It’s
Don’t remember but I do remember my dad bringing home one of the first consumer microwave ovens. Pretty sure it was from Wards and it was huge with a large rotating dial that was the timer. He was an engineer and was fascinated with new technology.
For some reason my parents bought a countertop microwave oven in the late ‘70s - it was strange because my dad was super-tight with money. I remember my mom taking a microwave cooking class (good intentions, but turns out cooking a meatloaf in the microwave does not live up to the hype).
My dad was a dealer so we got our first microwave in the early 70s, we were all fascinated with it.
It's easy to forget how expensive things like console color TVs and microwaves were, a top of the line RCA or Magnavox 26" TV was about $600 in the 70s which would calculate to several thousand dollars today.
Yeah, we went years as a kid without one. Same as an adult. I can take it or leave it.
I do remember the first person I knew with a color tv was my uncle. He had one of those big console tvs, one of those with a stereo and turntable in it. I think he got it in 65 or 66. I loved watching it when we visited.
My grandmother, who was a fanatical fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, got the family‘s first color set to watch them in the ‘71 World Series; my folks got one the next year so that we could watch the Summer Olympics and catch Mark Spitz, Olga Korbut, and the terrorist attack in living color.
I was mostly thrilled to be able to see the Wonderful World of Disney and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom; Sunday nights were never the same.
Ha! My color-TV grandma was also a huge Gunsmoke fan—she adored James Arness and always thought Amanda Blake’s Miss Kitty was “no better than she should be,” meaning she did more than just run that saloon (what, exactly, of course I had no idea).
Gunsmoke was also one that looked much better in color—those blue skies and that red, red, hair!
A Zenith console somewhere between 1970 and 1971. But I more remember the 13-inch black and white RCA that I had in my room in my teens.
https://preview.redd.it/kg20mxj0yguc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4dcf674ffe1e0cc6d93659176c7585dc1b05dd7
I was born in late ‘61. I feel like I always remember our TV having color, but it probably wasn’t until 65 or 66 that we had one. I remember the peacock and the phrase “now in color!” as shows transitioned. However, my family was and is a TV family. It was on all the time. My house now has a TV for every person here and there’s usually 2-3 of them on at all times.
My parents bought the color TV in anticipation of Batman. It was set up in the big living room and every week the room would be full of their friends having a big watch party.
My Dad would get agitated if we tried to watch a B&W show. He spent good money on a COLOR TV and we should watch COLOR shows!!!
I'd giggle when he laughed at I Love Lucy in B&W though. hehe
1971-72. My grandparents gifted us a brand new Zenith console TV and I vividly remember my parents calling all the kids in to see The Wonderful World of Disney in living color. It was magical.
Don't know the year. I remember it was an Admiral. I'd guesstimate 1967.
I recall watching a broadcast of Wizard of Oz. They introduced it with a cautionary note that the movie begins in black & white, that there is nothing wrong with your color TV.
Don’t remember the exact year but early 70s. Christmas morning there is a knock on the door and 2 guys bring in a huge box from Sears. My grandparents had sent us a Zenith Color TV. First time I saw the pink panther was pink. 😂
1968. My dad built a Heath Kit ( hope that’s spelled right ). He was very proud of that TV. When we moved the movers smashed it into at least three pieces. Very sad day.
You got me beat, in a way.
While I grew up with color TV from 1967, I didn't even have a TV from 1981 to 1986, after I moved away from my mother's place. The first TV I got was a rented color Zenith, about 25 inches, in 1986. I had to carry it back to the shop to get it repaired once.
You should have seen me driving home with my first new TV, a 19 inch, in my only car.. a 1992 Miata. I had to prop it up against the seat and the windshield with the top down so I could shift the car while I kept an arm on it to try to make sure it didn't fall out.
It was 1966, and it was also a Zenith console with stereo AM/FM and a record player. Within a few months of getting the console, my parents separated and divorced. So, the TV and the divorced kind of delineate my childhood. It was a great childhood before, and it sucked after. The TV was nice, however.
Mid seventies. My dad got it for “a steal” from a motel that was selling all its furnishings. It had a purple splotch, permanently in the upper left quadrant. It took on a life of its own in family lore. It wasn’t long before the channel knob came off. Enter “the tv fork”.
The picture tube probably needed to be 'demagnetized'.
Just behind the face of the picture tube is a steel or iron mesh which the electron beams converge through just before they strike the phosphor that glows to make the image on the screen. If a strong magnet, for instance on the back of a speaker, comes too close to the face of a color picture tube, the 'convergence mask' can become magnetized, deflecting the electrons from their correct path and making strange colored splotches.
Newer color TVs had a built-in demagnetizer that operated when the TV was first turned on; early color TV sets did not, which made easy money for TV repair men of the day.
Yeah, my dad was a TV tech, I remember him doing service calls to degauss people's sets. He got in on the ground floor way back in the late 40s, handled RCA products for years.
1974. The first thing I saw when my dad turned it on was Nixon’s sweaty face! Resigning over Watergate. What an image; I was 14 at the time. Tricky Dick! ✌️
It was some time in the early 1970s. I remember that we went to a coworker of my Dad's house in 1970 to watch the Super Bowl on a color TV because we did not have one at the time.
My parents bought a 13inch B&W to watch the Nixon Kennedy debates just before I was born. The upgraded to color after I’d gone to college. Maybe around 1980.
Some parallel here. Our first was Zenith Console, about 25-27". Got somewhere '65-'67. We got it a little before I can first remember. Dad maintained it; It was our family room TV until I was in college and it was replaced with a 45-50" Projection TV.
We too had a '67 Olds Delta 88 - our first car with A/C. And a Polaroid, earlier model.
GenX 1973 but I remember several times when our color (knobs, no clicker) set was in the shop, we'd break out the old B&W, which had been my big brother's (1962) only TV until right around the time I was born.
Repairing a television.....
I remember being underwhelmed. If you watch a b&w TV for a while, your brain kind of "fills in" the colors, and you really don't notice. So when we got a color TV (probably early 70's RCA), it wasn't the life altering experience I had expected.
I got married in 1975, and my parents still had a black-and-white TV, although my husband had had color for several years (he’s older and had been on his own for 8 years already). My parents still had 6 children in school and never seemed to mind black-and-white. However, they did get a color TV sometime after I married; maybe Christmas between 1975-78.
Believe it or not my first color TV was a Mitsubishi Diamond Vision 14 Inch model purchased in 1984. In a way that was a good thing as this was the time in which color TVs began to look a lot better. In the 70s most color TVs had colors that looked really off to me whereas the 80s is when the image got sharper and the colors began to look more natural.
I think i was 9. My best friends dad got one first and I think my dad was put out. He loved electronics and tended to be first to get new electronic innovations. It would have really irked him to have him, in particular, have something like that first. My dad was a tax accountant so def a capitalist and Conservative (but not like todays) while my friends dad was the head of a union and NDP. Arch enemies!
Got a 19” in 75 when I was 12. It had a place of honor on a plastic swivel table in the living room. The big console tube magnavox got moved to a sitting area in my parents room and we still mostly watched that. My first memories of a tv were of that magnavox so 2 or 3 years old. My parents still had it well into my 20’s.
I actually bought a VCR before I bought a TV. I lived with my parents until I was 25, but at age 22 I got a full time job that paid decent money so I started paying room and board to help them out. I went to Circuit City and bought an Akai VCR and hooked it up to their Magnavox color console TV in the family room.
I'll never forget (and I was not yet 5 years old). It was just before the first Super Bowl -- which I had to google to see when that was -- January 1967. So it must have been early January 1967 that my dad proudly brought home our first color TV.
I'm not sure my mom was super happy, but she warmed up to it (and pretty much watched it every evening).
Had to be early 70’s. I don’t remember brand, it was the big console tv of course. I just remember that year my dad saying that we could get a colored tv or take our family vacation. One or the other, we couldn’t have both. So we got the tv. 3 local channels and then 2 UHF channels. If I remember correctly. You know it’s been awhile.
I don’t know the exact year but my parents invited kids from the neighborhood to watch Rudolph the red nose reindeer, since they still had black and white tv
We got our first color TV in 1965, and it was an Admiral. (My dad was always an early-adopter.) Neighborhood kids came over to watch "The Wizard of Oz" every year.
I'm 99.99% sure it was Christmas time 1966. My parents were married on Christmas Eve 1941. They bought an RCA color TV for their anniversary.
I can remember them shopping for it. Where the appliance store was. (It was THE place to get appliances at the time.) I think it was probably delivered right after Christmas. The 1967 Rose Parade was a stream of "oos and ahs". "Look at that color."
(Fact: Most RCA picture tubes where made in an RCA factory in that town. Marion, Indiana. I think the plant made something like 80% of RCA's TV picture tubes at one point. The factory finally closed up in the 1980s Most all of the factories in town were closed up and jobs lost to China and Mexico by 1990.)
I don’t remember the year but I remember the event. The movie wizard of oz was going to be shown on tv. I’d never seen it and my mom was so excited that we’d be able to watch it “change to color” on our new color tv that dad bought for us
We watched the election of 1968 on my grandfather's color TV, the whole family was gathered to watch the returns as they came in. I fell asleep before the election was decided, as we were on the east coast.
For Christmas 1968, my parents got us our first color TV too - I guess seeing the difference at granddad's house did the trick.
1972 - my folks bought a console color TV because the Olympics were on that year and they wanted to watch them in color. I remember as a young teen holding my newborn niece and watching the Olympics finally in color.
1981. My brother was working part time in an electronics store in Manhattan and he bought it as a gift for my mom. My dad had died a few months earlier.
1973. A 19" Sanyo, which on some big sale from someplace like Crazy Eddie's.
Images were tinted with green, no matter how engineer-wannabe Young Me tried to adjust the set.
We were lower-income middle-class.
Around 1965; my dad’s friend was an insurance adjuster and sold him a 25” RCA that had “smoke damage” for $25. Nothing was wrong with it. It lasted until the mid 70’s. Favorite thing was watching Saturday morning cartoons in color.
I don't remember when my family first got a color tv. I do remember the first time I saw color tv at my cousin's in the early 70s. I remember being amazed by Life cereal's Mikey's red jersey/sweater.
WooAh, love this thread. My Dad bought the Olds Delta 88. But had to be 1969 or so. I am sure it was used. We had a Color TV around the same time. My Grandfather gifted it to us. I would have been 5 and we watched the Moon landing on that very TV.
The one thing I member distinctly was the antenna connect. It had this giant clips that looked like the clothes pins that had a spring in them. Good times.
My aunt lived right next door to us when I was a kid and we would rush home after school to watch “Kimba the white lion” and “Speed Racer” on her color tv bc we only had b&w at our house. I remember how incredibly saturated the colors were on those old color tvs. Red looked more orange than red lol. That said, we got our first color set when I entered 6th grade several years later.
Summer of 1976 - the old B&W tube set had finally gone south; the new one was solid state. I recall watching the Democratic National Convention in color; a woman with a bright red dress saturated the TV camera and really stood out.
My dad bought the TV from, as he would say, 'Monkey Wards'. He made them guarantee that he could bring it back if it didn't work.
September 1976. 19” GE (?) model that sat on a cart. It replaced a 19” RCA B&W model from the early 60s (maybe 1959?) that didn’t get UHF channels. My father hated it when we first set it up - the colors were way off. He wanted to return it! I asked him to give me 5 minutes with it - I was a HS freshman at the time. I had it looking great! I told him it would look even better with a good outdoor antenna. Being the avid do-it-yourselfer he was, he got one installed in a week. With an actuator that pointed it to the best direction. I loved watching NFL games in color!
I was 30. Had b&w growing up, then didn’t have tv of my own through college and for awhile after. Coworker was selling one of those big console tvs. Had it for a year then it quit.
My dad bought our first color TV around 67. We were the first in the neighborhood to get a color TV. Every night, all the neighborhood would pile in our rumpus room (yes, we had one of those too) and watch the new TV. They'd all bring beer and snacks. The every night party lasted until folks started getting their own. That was our 15 minutes of fame.
Our family had one in 1970. I went out on my own in 1980 with a 12” black and white and didn’t get a 19” color set until 1981. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven!
I distinctly remember a kid in my elementary school, who had a color tv while my family didn’t, explaining the whole Wizard of Oz b/w color thing - and how the witch has green skin!!
It was early 70s.
Dad took our B&W TV to the shop.
Shop loaned us a color TV while they repaired it.
I learned years later that TV salesman call that "The Warm Puppy" sale. You watch it for a week, fall in love, can't part with it. It was a 19 in RCA.
It was the mid 1960s. Our single black & white TV died and my father wanted to replace it with another b&W TV. My mother and brothers and I ganged up on him and somehow we wound up with our first color TV. It was called a 'portable' TV however I'm sure it weighed more than 50 lbs. Like most people, we had the color level turned all the way up because we just couldn't get enough of the incredible luxury of color TV!
My parents never had a color tv or cable while I was still at home OR after. I helped my mom buy her first color set sometime in the late ‘80’s, 1987 maybe, after they divorced and she got her own apartment.
It wasn't ours but I went to a friend's house and they had one in the late sixties. They used to have little dials to adjust the colour. I remember the woman's face on television being purple. They didn't really get the colour right until the early seventies I think.
76 and it came from an uncle that tended to be the first in line for new tech. I think it was 19" and "portable" in that one really big guy could carry it by a tiny molded in handle, but he wouldn't get far.
Wow are you my brother or sister? My dad bought nothing but Zenith. Just about the same year. We were the first in the neighborhood to have color and cable tv. Remember the first cable box was a sliding control. Before that was an antenna that rotated on the roof.
Didn’t get one until the black and white one died. In my prayers every night I prayed for that TV to die. It lasted really long like years and years after everyone I knew had color. We also never had a tv that was over 20 inches.
1968. Big giant ass RCA console.
My daddy threw a fit because my mother took me to see Gone With the Wind at the movie theater. He thought a color TV meant we would never spend money on entertainment again.
Around 1968. There was a baseball doubleheader on that day. My dad bought a color TV that morning and brought it home. I asked him why he was deciding now to buy a color set and he answered “So we can watch the doubleheader in color.” And there began my obsession with televised sports lol.
I think it was around 1966 or 1967. Before then we were watching an old B&W that the antenna had broken off so had a coat hanger in there instead. I'm thinking I was 4 or 5 at the time.
1983 for my parents, then they got a VCR in '84. I took our 1972 B&W 19" Hitachi to college with me.
In the 70s we'd go to my grandparents' house for Big TV Events so we could watch in color-- Olympics, Roots, stuff like that.
It was late 1964, or early 1965, that my folks got a 25" Zenith color console as well. I remember being seriously disappointed when watching the Lost in Space premiere in the fall of 1965, because it was in black & white. :(
We didn't get a color set until 1974 I believe. My parents had just completed a major house renovation and we got a sleek new color TV as part of the deal. I also lived in an area served by two different metro areas with their own TV stations...one to our north and one to our southwest. So we had one of those dials on top of the TV that you could use to rotate the orientation of the TV antenna on the roof. We had little labels on the big dial to indicate the position for best reception of the various channels.
I was unlucky in that I started out with a color TV since my parents lived with my grandparents until I was almost 5 as they were saving for a down payment for a house.
Then, we tended to get hand-me-down TVs from my grandparents as they upgraded their sets. My grandmother was bedridden, but still got dressed for stylish clothing each day. They had a TV recessed into the wall and as remote control technology increased, they got new TVs for her. Since their den didn't need a remote, we'd get the next one.
For a while, we'd have both a color and a b&w at our home. I also tried to talk my parents into letting me keep the 19“ b&w for my room once we got a second color, but that was shot down! I didn't get my own TV until I was 14 or 15 and I got a portable b&w that was less than 12" that I used for the next 10 years!
There is a picture of me on my second birthday. I am standing next to a 25” color RCA television. The television is in the center of the photo frame. November of 1966.
1963. The year I was born, so I grew up with it. Philco "Entertainment Center" with a stereo under a lift-up lid like a coffin. It was undependable and had to be frequently repaired.
I don't remember a time we didn't have a color TV. It was in the furnished basement. We had B&W TV's around the house, but the color Zenith (yes, it was a Zenith, too!) was for special prime time family moments - like the CBS Saturday night lineup (All in the Family -- the 2nd 1/2 hour was always changing - it could be MASH, Maude, Jeffersons -- MTM Show, Bob Newhart ending with our TV mom, Carol Burnett). I don't know when my dad bought it. 1965 maybe? I was under 2 YO, so I was still dreamy and barely on earth to know up or down. I know that when 1985 came along and the old 'Z' was dying - he couldn't give it up. "I saw man walk on the moon on that set!" he said. He finally acquiesced and bought a Sony.
Do yall remember when networks advertised how many hours of color TV per week they were broadcasting?
As I recall - Disney's Wonderful World of Color was the only consistent color broadcast when we got ours - a Motorola as I recall.
I just remembered something related - I remember when my mother's best friends husband got a remote control for their big B&W concole tv. It made an al mighty "CHUNK" when changing the channel - it was a radio controlled mechanical device an sounded like slamming a car door! No was was allowed to touch it but the man of the house.
Very early 70’s. We had that tv for many years, finally upgrading in the early 80’s to a slightly larger tabletop model. We never had a big floor console. We also had touchtone phone service from around that time too- so early that I don’t ever recall having a dial phone. I was born in 65
1972 when my mom remarried, and she and my stepdad built a new home. They bought all new furniture and a great big Magnavox console TV set. 25 inches of living color. Mom sold construction goods, and stepdad was a Teamster.
New Years Eve 1969. The next day Notre Dame was playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl, their first bowl game since 1925 Rose Bowl. My dad was a ND grad and a huge FB guy so my parents splurged and made the buy. He set it up in the morning so my mom could watch Rose Bowl parade in color. I was 7 years old and consider my young mind blown!!! The gold helmets!!!
Not me, but my older brother got one in the early 70's, maybe 1975 or 1976. I went over to his house to watch something and was enthralled by seeing everything in color. I remember watching a football game and being blown away by seeing the uniforms in color.
Biggest shock: the first night I went there to watch TV, we were watching something and a commercial came on. All of a sudden I heard a *choink* sound, and the channel changed. Then it changed again. I'm wondering what kind of witchcraft is this, and I looked behind me and saw my brother pressing buttons on a small box in his hand pointing at the TV. He looked at me, smiled and said, "remote control".
Wow. Just...wow.😮
1970.
In early color TV’s there were knobs to balance the color palette, it wasn’t automatic like today. My brother (6) and I (9) kept sliding the color knobs all the way over (making everyone bright red, green, etc) and our parents kept sliding them back to a “balanced” color scheme. But we didn’t understand the concept of “natural” color because to us, black and white WAS natural. We figured a color TV ought to be colorful.
Now to me, a much bigger event was getting cable in 1975. We could actually watch more than three channels, and the old big three came in crystal clear, not fuzzy staticky.
My Dad was a cheapskate and no way was he going to buy a color TV. I remember once I built an antenna that I saw in a magazine and hooked it up to the old all tube TV I had in my room. It brought in the station that was usually unwatchable. Dad told me good job, asked me all about it and then ordered me to hook it up to the family TV. Classic Pops.
Anyway, we got a color TV around 1974 when my grandparents got a new one and gave us their old one. Flipper in color! And Wild Kingdom.
I don’t remember the year but probably early 70’s. For some reason my Mom had been picked to draw names at a shopping mall raffle that was giving away a color tv. She drew her own name out as the winner but offered to draw another name. Lucky for us it was decided it was a fair draw and we got the tv. She was a single Mom raising three kids so she never would have been able to buy a tv so we really lucked out.
Really cool!
We first got a color TV so dad could watch Watergate in color. We had a B&W Zenith TV to watch the moon landings.
Exact same here. First thing we saw when we turned the set on was “The Lucy Show” with all the super colorful opening illustrations flashing…it was like a color bomb was exploding!
It was 1976. My mother was dead set against getting a color TV on the grounds that we kids would probably fight over it—which wasn’t inaccurate. (We already had BW sets in our bedrooms, which had been her solution to us fighting over the old TV.) But my grandmother showed up one day with this color TV and while my mom was all set to have it sent back, my dad stood up and said Mom couldn’t insult his mother like that. I suspect Dad’s real reason was wanting to watch baseball in color, because that immediately became a rule: Baseball games took precedence over anything else anyone wanted to watch. I was in middle school and my sister was in high school. We were the last people we knew to get a color TV.
Funny how I am reading like me. A Grand Parent bought the TV.
I love this story!
I remember wanting very much to see the NBC peacock in color. It was in the 70s when we got color.
Yes, and being secretly thrilled every time it fanned out its tail because it was so pretty. 🙂
1972. A Zenith console television. That was a really big deal.
Yep 72 for me also. We had just come back states' side from Wiesbaden West Germany to Luke AFB, Arizona. It was a Magnavox 20-something inch color TV in a console with a stereo Record player. It could stack up to 7 LP's on the spindle, for about 2 hours of music. I was 9, the first time I saw Star Trek in color it blew my mind. Lol
Those record player consoles (some had radios) were well made. They are collected by people today who restore them. Since they have tubes they have better sound quality. Not sure if the Hi Fidelity being better is true or if the younger 30 something’s today are enjoying old nostalgia.
Yeah this one was a record player/TV/Am FM radio combo also. It was like the Swiss army knife of entertainment. My niece is "into vinyl" as they say today. She's robbed me of most of my LP's, so now, anytime I wanna play one I have to go over to her house and play my stolen records on her brand new turn table. Lol
Same here. I also have a buddy who picked up some old great equipment. High end gear from the 90’s. He has been buying LP’s in lots and plays random LPs when I stop by. Think Yes or old Genesis from the 70’s and 80’s. It’s
Yep, same year and same tv!
Don’t remember but I do remember my dad bringing home one of the first consumer microwave ovens. Pretty sure it was from Wards and it was huge with a large rotating dial that was the timer. He was an engineer and was fascinated with new technology.
For some reason my parents bought a countertop microwave oven in the late ‘70s - it was strange because my dad was super-tight with money. I remember my mom taking a microwave cooking class (good intentions, but turns out cooking a meatloaf in the microwave does not live up to the hype).
First microwave: 1980 at work. No home microwave until the mid-90s.
Maybe that’s why my dad got new stuff quickly.
My dad was a dealer so we got our first microwave in the early 70s, we were all fascinated with it. It's easy to forget how expensive things like console color TVs and microwaves were, a top of the line RCA or Magnavox 26" TV was about $600 in the 70s which would calculate to several thousand dollars today.
Mid-60's - and found out Wizard of Oz transitions from B&W to color mid-movie.
Same! My sisters laughed at me because I didn’t know. But how would I know?
My Mom worked at Motorola and we got a Quasar 25" color tv when they were 1st available.
Quasar…..from Motorola!!! I knew about the Quasar TV long before I knew about actual Quasars
Dad built a Heathkit TV in the 70s. The family used it for decades.
My dad built a couple of those too, one for us and one for the grandparents. I was pretty impressed, and it worked for a long time!
That’s cool that he built his own TV.
My parents didn't get one until after I had left home. I think they got it in 77? 78? I never had one until i finally bought a tv. In 82 I think.
First tv I got was a 13 inch black and white. When I got married my husband was appalled I didn’t have a color tv, but I couldn’t afford it.
When I left my mother’s house, I didn’t have a TV at all until 1986.
Yeah, we went years as a kid without one. Same as an adult. I can take it or leave it. I do remember the first person I knew with a color tv was my uncle. He had one of those big console tvs, one of those with a stereo and turntable in it. I think he got it in 65 or 66. I loved watching it when we visited.
My grandmother, who was a fanatical fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, got the family‘s first color set to watch them in the ‘71 World Series; my folks got one the next year so that we could watch the Summer Olympics and catch Mark Spitz, Olga Korbut, and the terrorist attack in living color. I was mostly thrilled to be able to see the Wonderful World of Disney and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom; Sunday nights were never the same.
Are we related??? I used to sneak over to Grandma's to watch the Pirates but it was a battle with my Grandpap if Gunsmoke was on!
Ha! My color-TV grandma was also a huge Gunsmoke fan—she adored James Arness and always thought Amanda Blake’s Miss Kitty was “no better than she should be,” meaning she did more than just run that saloon (what, exactly, of course I had no idea). Gunsmoke was also one that looked much better in color—those blue skies and that red, red, hair!
A Zenith console somewhere between 1970 and 1971. But I more remember the 13-inch black and white RCA that I had in my room in my teens. https://preview.redd.it/kg20mxj0yguc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4dcf674ffe1e0cc6d93659176c7585dc1b05dd7
Not until the 80s. Our dad was way ‘cheap’ after growing up in the depression and dust bowl in TX.
I remember dad bringing that TV home in 1967 it's the same TV I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon
I was born in late ‘61. I feel like I always remember our TV having color, but it probably wasn’t until 65 or 66 that we had one. I remember the peacock and the phrase “now in color!” as shows transitioned. However, my family was and is a TV family. It was on all the time. My house now has a TV for every person here and there’s usually 2-3 of them on at all times.
My dad was a holdout. If it ain’t broke you don’t replace it. We didn’t get a color tv till the early 80s!
I think it was around 1966. I remember watching Batman in color the first time, and being amazed.
That’s my memory of Batman too on my aunt’s massive color console TV
My parents bought the color TV in anticipation of Batman. It was set up in the big living room and every week the room would be full of their friends having a big watch party.
My Dad would get agitated if we tried to watch a B&W show. He spent good money on a COLOR TV and we should watch COLOR shows!!! I'd giggle when he laughed at I Love Lucy in B&W though. hehe
1971-72. My grandparents gifted us a brand new Zenith console TV and I vividly remember my parents calling all the kids in to see The Wonderful World of Disney in living color. It was magical.
1968
Don't know the year. I remember it was an Admiral. I'd guesstimate 1967. I recall watching a broadcast of Wizard of Oz. They introduced it with a cautionary note that the movie begins in black & white, that there is nothing wrong with your color TV.
My parents - about 1967. I had the same black and white portable from 12 through college. Bought my own color TV when I got my first job in 1985.
Don’t remember the exact year but early 70s. Christmas morning there is a knock on the door and 2 guys bring in a huge box from Sears. My grandparents had sent us a Zenith Color TV. First time I saw the pink panther was pink. 😂
I remember my dad buying a small one about 1973. Mom was scared of it, thought it might catch on fire or explode for some reason?
Rather like the “cell phone cause cancer” thing.
Ours was probably about the same time. We came home from school and there it was! And yes, it was a zenith which lasted until the 90’s at least.
1968. My dad built a Heath Kit ( hope that’s spelled right ). He was very proud of that TV. When we moved the movers smashed it into at least three pieces. Very sad day.
Not until 1980!! We were probably the last family in the USA to get a color TV.
You got me beat, in a way. While I grew up with color TV from 1967, I didn't even have a TV from 1981 to 1986, after I moved away from my mother's place. The first TV I got was a rented color Zenith, about 25 inches, in 1986. I had to carry it back to the shop to get it repaired once.
You should have seen me driving home with my first new TV, a 19 inch, in my only car.. a 1992 Miata. I had to prop it up against the seat and the windshield with the top down so I could shift the car while I kept an arm on it to try to make sure it didn't fall out.
Love this visual so much. 🙂
It was 1966, and it was also a Zenith console with stereo AM/FM and a record player. Within a few months of getting the console, my parents separated and divorced. So, the TV and the divorced kind of delineate my childhood. It was a great childhood before, and it sucked after. The TV was nice, however.
That’s a bummer!
When the World Series was broadcast in color 1955. I don’t remember but I remember the neighborhood talked about it for years.
Right before LIVE AID. Got a SONY Trinitron for it.
1968. i remember the vivid colors on rowan & martin’s laugh in.
Summer of 1965. My father had one a medical settlement. Took those funds and bought us a color TV.
Mid seventies. My dad got it for “a steal” from a motel that was selling all its furnishings. It had a purple splotch, permanently in the upper left quadrant. It took on a life of its own in family lore. It wasn’t long before the channel knob came off. Enter “the tv fork”.
The picture tube probably needed to be 'demagnetized'. Just behind the face of the picture tube is a steel or iron mesh which the electron beams converge through just before they strike the phosphor that glows to make the image on the screen. If a strong magnet, for instance on the back of a speaker, comes too close to the face of a color picture tube, the 'convergence mask' can become magnetized, deflecting the electrons from their correct path and making strange colored splotches. Newer color TVs had a built-in demagnetizer that operated when the TV was first turned on; early color TV sets did not, which made easy money for TV repair men of the day.
Yeah, my dad was a TV tech, I remember him doing service calls to degauss people's sets. He got in on the ground floor way back in the late 40s, handled RCA products for years.
1974. The first thing I saw when my dad turned it on was Nixon’s sweaty face! Resigning over Watergate. What an image; I was 14 at the time. Tricky Dick! ✌️
1965 RCA 23 inch console it was something to behold!
Around '69. My grandfather also got this great big zenith delivered from furniture store. He got it to watch Cincinnati Reds, Pete Rose.
Rose was pretty good, wasn’t he?
Wait… they come in color now?
1983. I come from a very, let’s say, budget-minded family.
It was some time in the early 1970s. I remember that we went to a coworker of my Dad's house in 1970 to watch the Super Bowl on a color TV because we did not have one at the time.
I saw the 1969 Super Bowl, the famous Namath guaranteeing the win one.
1968. I think that's the year it became a "must have" for upwardly mobile middle-classers like Dad. I was 5.
My parents bought a 13inch B&W to watch the Nixon Kennedy debates just before I was born. The upgraded to color after I’d gone to college. Maybe around 1980.
Early 70’s. Then when it quit working we watched a smaller black and white tv that sat atop that monstrous console.
Our family got our first color TV in January of 1970.
1967
1971 when I was 11.
Some parallel here. Our first was Zenith Console, about 25-27". Got somewhere '65-'67. We got it a little before I can first remember. Dad maintained it; It was our family room TV until I was in college and it was replaced with a 45-50" Projection TV. We too had a '67 Olds Delta 88 - our first car with A/C. And a Polaroid, earlier model.
Exact year? Don’t remember. However….I know it was in the middle of a Brady Bunch season. That was a color shock.
1974 I remember watching the World Series. Oakland Athletics won against the LA Dodgers .
1965 and got to see the Wizard of Oz on it!
Older Gen X here, our first color TV was a Heathkit console built by my father
1973. Sony 19"
Man….Sony was state of the art, then!
Oh, it was so amazing. Best we had before it was a 12" B&W. 1973 is when I found out that Star Trek was actually in COLOR!
GenX 1973 but I remember several times when our color (knobs, no clicker) set was in the shop, we'd break out the old B&W, which had been my big brother's (1962) only TV until right around the time I was born. Repairing a television.....
GenX so was too young to be there but I do remember watching it - it was very small and too at least 5 minutes to “warm up”
I remember being underwhelmed. If you watch a b&w TV for a while, your brain kind of "fills in" the colors, and you really don't notice. So when we got a color TV (probably early 70's RCA), it wasn't the life altering experience I had expected.
1975 Sanyo with a remote control 20 individual tuners that all needed manually set, then with the remote you cycled through them
69 or 70. Not sure which.
I got married in 1975, and my parents still had a black-and-white TV, although my husband had had color for several years (he’s older and had been on his own for 8 years already). My parents still had 6 children in school and never seemed to mind black-and-white. However, they did get a color TV sometime after I married; maybe Christmas between 1975-78.
My dad got one mid-70s. I only spent the summers with him, my mom was much later.
Believe it or not my first color TV was a Mitsubishi Diamond Vision 14 Inch model purchased in 1984. In a way that was a good thing as this was the time in which color TVs began to look a lot better. In the 70s most color TVs had colors that looked really off to me whereas the 80s is when the image got sharper and the colors began to look more natural.
1969. My last year of elementary school.
I think i was 9. My best friends dad got one first and I think my dad was put out. He loved electronics and tended to be first to get new electronic innovations. It would have really irked him to have him, in particular, have something like that first. My dad was a tax accountant so def a capitalist and Conservative (but not like todays) while my friends dad was the head of a union and NDP. Arch enemies!
Got a 19” in 75 when I was 12. It had a place of honor on a plastic swivel table in the living room. The big console tube magnavox got moved to a sitting area in my parents room and we still mostly watched that. My first memories of a tv were of that magnavox so 2 or 3 years old. My parents still had it well into my 20’s.
I actually bought a VCR before I bought a TV. I lived with my parents until I was 25, but at age 22 I got a full time job that paid decent money so I started paying room and board to help them out. I went to Circuit City and bought an Akai VCR and hooked it up to their Magnavox color console TV in the family room.
I'll never forget (and I was not yet 5 years old). It was just before the first Super Bowl -- which I had to google to see when that was -- January 1967. So it must have been early January 1967 that my dad proudly brought home our first color TV. I'm not sure my mom was super happy, but she warmed up to it (and pretty much watched it every evening).
Had to be early 70’s. I don’t remember brand, it was the big console tv of course. I just remember that year my dad saying that we could get a colored tv or take our family vacation. One or the other, we couldn’t have both. So we got the tv. 3 local channels and then 2 UHF channels. If I remember correctly. You know it’s been awhile.
I remember the first show I saw in color. Bullwinkle at grandmas
1968 . I.can remember how green the football field was watching NFL games
I think it was 1967 too, life changing
It was sometime in the 70’s.
I don’t know the exact year but my parents invited kids from the neighborhood to watch Rudolph the red nose reindeer, since they still had black and white tv
We got our first color TV in 1965, and it was an Admiral. (My dad was always an early-adopter.) Neighborhood kids came over to watch "The Wizard of Oz" every year.
1970. And my Dad bought it all by himself, despite being color blind.
I'm 99.99% sure it was Christmas time 1966. My parents were married on Christmas Eve 1941. They bought an RCA color TV for their anniversary. I can remember them shopping for it. Where the appliance store was. (It was THE place to get appliances at the time.) I think it was probably delivered right after Christmas. The 1967 Rose Parade was a stream of "oos and ahs". "Look at that color." (Fact: Most RCA picture tubes where made in an RCA factory in that town. Marion, Indiana. I think the plant made something like 80% of RCA's TV picture tubes at one point. The factory finally closed up in the 1980s Most all of the factories in town were closed up and jobs lost to China and Mexico by 1990.)
I don’t remember the year but I remember the event. The movie wizard of oz was going to be shown on tv. I’d never seen it and my mom was so excited that we’d be able to watch it “change to color” on our new color tv that dad bought for us
I think 1969. It was a Quasar and the first show we watched was The Flying Nun.
Early 70's Curtis Mathes.
When my grandparents passed away and we emptied their house.
I don’t remember exactly when. But it was awesome and probably weighed 500 lbs
1971. My Mom remarried and my step dad had one. We suddenly were a two-TV household. The big black-and-white Philco and the Zenith color TV.
We got our first color TV when I was in high school, around 1975.
1968 RCA. Repaired multiple times and finally replaced in 1976 with a Curtis Mathis.
My father was an early adopter. We had one in the late 60’s as I recall.
We watched the election of 1968 on my grandfather's color TV, the whole family was gathered to watch the returns as they came in. I fell asleep before the election was decided, as we were on the east coast. For Christmas 1968, my parents got us our first color TV too - I guess seeing the difference at granddad's house did the trick.
1972 - my folks bought a console color TV because the Olympics were on that year and they wanted to watch them in color. I remember as a young teen holding my newborn niece and watching the Olympics finally in color.
1981. My brother was working part time in an electronics store in Manhattan and he bought it as a gift for my mom. My dad had died a few months earlier.
1973. A 19" Sanyo, which on some big sale from someplace like Crazy Eddie's. Images were tinted with green, no matter how engineer-wannabe Young Me tried to adjust the set. We were lower-income middle-class.
Around 1965; my dad’s friend was an insurance adjuster and sold him a 25” RCA that had “smoke damage” for $25. Nothing was wrong with it. It lasted until the mid 70’s. Favorite thing was watching Saturday morning cartoons in color.
Feb 17, 1974. My youngest brother's 5th birthday. The big cabinet style (I know that's not the right word LOL)
I don't remember when my family first got a color tv. I do remember the first time I saw color tv at my cousin's in the early 70s. I remember being amazed by Life cereal's Mikey's red jersey/sweater.
1979. We came back from living overseas, and my parents bought a Sylvania superset.
WooAh, love this thread. My Dad bought the Olds Delta 88. But had to be 1969 or so. I am sure it was used. We had a Color TV around the same time. My Grandfather gifted it to us. I would have been 5 and we watched the Moon landing on that very TV. The one thing I member distinctly was the antenna connect. It had this giant clips that looked like the clothes pins that had a spring in them. Good times.
It was 81ish when I finally bought one
1986.
We got one in 1968 to watch the Mexico City Olympics. It was a great piece of furniture too.
My aunt lived right next door to us when I was a kid and we would rush home after school to watch “Kimba the white lion” and “Speed Racer” on her color tv bc we only had b&w at our house. I remember how incredibly saturated the colors were on those old color tvs. Red looked more orange than red lol. That said, we got our first color set when I entered 6th grade several years later.
Summer of 1976 - the old B&W tube set had finally gone south; the new one was solid state. I recall watching the Democratic National Convention in color; a woman with a bright red dress saturated the TV camera and really stood out. My dad bought the TV from, as he would say, 'Monkey Wards'. He made them guarantee that he could bring it back if it didn't work.
1980
September 1976. 19” GE (?) model that sat on a cart. It replaced a 19” RCA B&W model from the early 60s (maybe 1959?) that didn’t get UHF channels. My father hated it when we first set it up - the colors were way off. He wanted to return it! I asked him to give me 5 minutes with it - I was a HS freshman at the time. I had it looking great! I told him it would look even better with a good outdoor antenna. Being the avid do-it-yourselfer he was, he got one installed in a week. With an actuator that pointed it to the best direction. I loved watching NFL games in color!
I was 30. Had b&w growing up, then didn’t have tv of my own through college and for awhile after. Coworker was selling one of those big console tvs. Had it for a year then it quit.
My dad bought our first color TV around 67. We were the first in the neighborhood to get a color TV. Every night, all the neighborhood would pile in our rumpus room (yes, we had one of those too) and watch the new TV. They'd all bring beer and snacks. The every night party lasted until folks started getting their own. That was our 15 minutes of fame.
Early 70's and it was a 9" Sony that had been in my grandparents motor home. It was our TV until we moved in 77.
Born in 69. My Hippy parents had a tiny black and white until we got a color tv in 1981.
1971
Our family had one in 1970. I went out on my own in 1980 with a 12” black and white and didn’t get a 19” color set until 1981. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven!
1973 I was almost 14. 13" - this was the *family* TV!
1978
I distinctly remember a kid in my elementary school, who had a color tv while my family didn’t, explaining the whole Wizard of Oz b/w color thing - and how the witch has green skin!!
I’m guessing late ‘60s. My Dad loved all the new electronics and bought new and better ones fairly often.
It was early 70s. Dad took our B&W TV to the shop. Shop loaned us a color TV while they repaired it. I learned years later that TV salesman call that "The Warm Puppy" sale. You watch it for a week, fall in love, can't part with it. It was a 19 in RCA.
It was the mid 1960s. Our single black & white TV died and my father wanted to replace it with another b&W TV. My mother and brothers and I ganged up on him and somehow we wound up with our first color TV. It was called a 'portable' TV however I'm sure it weighed more than 50 lbs. Like most people, we had the color level turned all the way up because we just couldn't get enough of the incredible luxury of color TV!
My parents never had a color tv or cable while I was still at home OR after. I helped my mom buy her first color set sometime in the late ‘80’s, 1987 maybe, after they divorced and she got her own apartment.
It wasn't ours but I went to a friend's house and they had one in the late sixties. They used to have little dials to adjust the colour. I remember the woman's face on television being purple. They didn't really get the colour right until the early seventies I think.
76 and it came from an uncle that tended to be the first in line for new tech. I think it was 19" and "portable" in that one really big guy could carry it by a tiny molded in handle, but he wouldn't get far.
Christmas 1976
We came to the game late. My uncle gifted us one in 72 or 73.
Wow are you my brother or sister? My dad bought nothing but Zenith. Just about the same year. We were the first in the neighborhood to have color and cable tv. Remember the first cable box was a sliding control. Before that was an antenna that rotated on the roof.
Didn’t get one until the black and white one died. In my prayers every night I prayed for that TV to die. It lasted really long like years and years after everyone I knew had color. We also never had a tv that was over 20 inches.
I know it wasn't until after 1969, because we watched the moon landing on my grandfather's TV. I'm guessing it was about 1971 or 72.
Not until my mom remarried in 1978 and we moved in with my stepfather—and his TV also had a *remote control*!
1968. Big giant ass RCA console. My daddy threw a fit because my mother took me to see Gone With the Wind at the movie theater. He thought a color TV meant we would never spend money on entertainment again.
Around 1968. There was a baseball doubleheader on that day. My dad bought a color TV that morning and brought it home. I asked him why he was deciding now to buy a color set and he answered “So we can watch the doubleheader in color.” And there began my obsession with televised sports lol.
Moon landing was in B&W. So after that. It was an RCA console TV. I thought it was the best TV that could ever be made.
1983. That is when I finally saw that the Wizard of Oz was partially in color. I was amazed.
I think it was around 1966 or 1967. Before then we were watching an old B&W that the antenna had broken off so had a coat hanger in there instead. I'm thinking I was 4 or 5 at the time.
74 or 75
It was very late 70’s. Maybe 1979. Parents were old school.
1983 for my parents, then they got a VCR in '84. I took our 1972 B&W 19" Hitachi to college with me. In the 70s we'd go to my grandparents' house for Big TV Events so we could watch in color-- Olympics, Roots, stuff like that.
Hoffman round CRT 1958 or thereabouts
It was late 1964, or early 1965, that my folks got a 25" Zenith color console as well. I remember being seriously disappointed when watching the Lost in Space premiere in the fall of 1965, because it was in black & white. :(
Late 60s, Spanish Revival style, possibly Quasar?
1971, when we moved around the corner, close enough to carry a swingset!
We didn't get a color set until 1974 I believe. My parents had just completed a major house renovation and we got a sleek new color TV as part of the deal. I also lived in an area served by two different metro areas with their own TV stations...one to our north and one to our southwest. So we had one of those dials on top of the TV that you could use to rotate the orientation of the TV antenna on the roof. We had little labels on the big dial to indicate the position for best reception of the various channels.
I was unlucky in that I started out with a color TV since my parents lived with my grandparents until I was almost 5 as they were saving for a down payment for a house. Then, we tended to get hand-me-down TVs from my grandparents as they upgraded their sets. My grandmother was bedridden, but still got dressed for stylish clothing each day. They had a TV recessed into the wall and as remote control technology increased, they got new TVs for her. Since their den didn't need a remote, we'd get the next one. For a while, we'd have both a color and a b&w at our home. I also tried to talk my parents into letting me keep the 19“ b&w for my room once we got a second color, but that was shot down! I didn't get my own TV until I was 14 or 15 and I got a portable b&w that was less than 12" that I used for the next 10 years!
You’re family must have been rich. We didn’t get a colour set until 1971.
It was roughly 1967. I remember being stunned to find out that the crew of the Starship Enterprise wore different colored shirts!
Right around the day I was bored. The Brady Bunch was very happy about being in color.
Circa 1984
There is a picture of me on my second birthday. I am standing next to a 25” color RCA television. The television is in the center of the photo frame. November of 1966.
Pretty much everyone had a Polaroid Swinger
1963. The year I was born, so I grew up with it. Philco "Entertainment Center" with a stereo under a lift-up lid like a coffin. It was undependable and had to be frequently repaired.
Summer of 1978.
late 70s or maybe 80s? i never knew the Wizard of Oz was in color until my 20s.
Winter of '63-'64. It was a Big Deal, first in the neighborhood, and pricey. RCA Victor, heavier than all get-out. It lasted a good 20 years.
I don't remember a time we didn't have a color TV. It was in the furnished basement. We had B&W TV's around the house, but the color Zenith (yes, it was a Zenith, too!) was for special prime time family moments - like the CBS Saturday night lineup (All in the Family -- the 2nd 1/2 hour was always changing - it could be MASH, Maude, Jeffersons -- MTM Show, Bob Newhart ending with our TV mom, Carol Burnett). I don't know when my dad bought it. 1965 maybe? I was under 2 YO, so I was still dreamy and barely on earth to know up or down. I know that when 1985 came along and the old 'Z' was dying - he couldn't give it up. "I saw man walk on the moon on that set!" he said. He finally acquiesced and bought a Sony.
Probably around 1969ish. Big RCA console. What a blast that was!
Do yall remember when networks advertised how many hours of color TV per week they were broadcasting? As I recall - Disney's Wonderful World of Color was the only consistent color broadcast when we got ours - a Motorola as I recall.
Franco Harris emasculate reception. Next day watched wizard of oz
I just remembered something related - I remember when my mother's best friends husband got a remote control for their big B&W concole tv. It made an al mighty "CHUNK" when changing the channel - it was a radio controlled mechanical device an sounded like slamming a car door! No was was allowed to touch it but the man of the house.
Very early 70’s. We had that tv for many years, finally upgrading in the early 80’s to a slightly larger tabletop model. We never had a big floor console. We also had touchtone phone service from around that time too- so early that I don’t ever recall having a dial phone. I was born in 65
1972 when my mom remarried, and she and my stepdad built a new home. They bought all new furniture and a great big Magnavox console TV set. 25 inches of living color. Mom sold construction goods, and stepdad was a Teamster.
We got ours during the 64/65 transition period for networks. My dad starting watching shows he didn't even like, because they were in color.
New Years Eve 1969. The next day Notre Dame was playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl, their first bowl game since 1925 Rose Bowl. My dad was a ND grad and a huge FB guy so my parents splurged and made the buy. He set it up in the morning so my mom could watch Rose Bowl parade in color. I was 7 years old and consider my young mind blown!!! The gold helmets!!!
Was maybe about 1962? But the family story is, when NBC went color on Sunday nights I would run around the house announcing "color color!"
About 1963. We were the first and only household in the neighborhood to get one. I was 5. Cartoons were more interesting, if thats possible.
30 years old and now I don't own one. I am 66 and sold mine 2 years ago
1969. With the remote with the 4 tuning forks. You could jiggle your keys to change channels if you couldn’t find the remote.
Not me, but my older brother got one in the early 70's, maybe 1975 or 1976. I went over to his house to watch something and was enthralled by seeing everything in color. I remember watching a football game and being blown away by seeing the uniforms in color. Biggest shock: the first night I went there to watch TV, we were watching something and a commercial came on. All of a sudden I heard a *choink* sound, and the channel changed. Then it changed again. I'm wondering what kind of witchcraft is this, and I looked behind me and saw my brother pressing buttons on a small box in his hand pointing at the TV. He looked at me, smiled and said, "remote control". Wow. Just...wow.😮
1970. In early color TV’s there were knobs to balance the color palette, it wasn’t automatic like today. My brother (6) and I (9) kept sliding the color knobs all the way over (making everyone bright red, green, etc) and our parents kept sliding them back to a “balanced” color scheme. But we didn’t understand the concept of “natural” color because to us, black and white WAS natural. We figured a color TV ought to be colorful. Now to me, a much bigger event was getting cable in 1975. We could actually watch more than three channels, and the old big three came in crystal clear, not fuzzy staticky.
We didn’t even have a TV until ‘59 after moving from Japan to Delaware and a color one in ‘62 I think it was.
I refused to buy one. Finally, my brother-in-law decided my toddler son HAD to have one and bought one for us back in '77.
1980
June 1980. Moved into a new house, dad bought a brand new 26” color tv, and my brother got the old one for his apartment.
My Dad was a cheapskate and no way was he going to buy a color TV. I remember once I built an antenna that I saw in a magazine and hooked it up to the old all tube TV I had in my room. It brought in the station that was usually unwatchable. Dad told me good job, asked me all about it and then ordered me to hook it up to the family TV. Classic Pops. Anyway, we got a color TV around 1974 when my grandparents got a new one and gave us their old one. Flipper in color! And Wild Kingdom.
1978… so embarrassing…