A New TV – Wherein The Author (Semi)Successfully Navigates The Modern World
Every so often, something happens that reminds me that I am truly living in that time we used to call “The Future”. I know I am living in “The Future” because I am now watching a 55-inch television. I know, some of you will read this and say “A 55 inch television? How quaint.” But for me this is the height of decadence. How far we have come. Although the process is so much more demanding.
From the start, television was a normal part of my life. The first childhood television I can remember was a black and white Admiral portable that sat on a wheeled cart. At that time, “portable” meant that it had a handle mounted on the top and did not require a furniture dolly and more than one muscular man to move. The diagonal screen measured 19 inches, and we watched that set until 1970. And then something amazing happened. My Uncle Bob took a job at the Magnavox company in Fort Wayne. Once that happened, Uncle Bob became the family’s source for new television sets.
It worked like this – Magnavox would pull random television sets from the production lines for quality control testing. Those sets, which would be switched on for an extended time, were then available to employees at steep discounts. One of those became my family’s first color TV in 1970. I still remember the first show we watched on it – a 1970 made-for-TV prison escape movie called “Breakout”. Which was fitting because I felt like we had broken out of our black-and-white television prison for the glorious life of full, living color. But it was still a 19 inch screen, so maybe we were just on parole or in a halfway house.
A 19 inch television was normal. Most everyone I knew at that time had a set of roughly the same size. It was huge for we kids who wanted to sit on the floor about 3 feet from the screen, at least until our parents barked at us to “Get back from that TV screen. Do you want to get cross-eyed?” For the record, I never became cross-eyed. But then maybe that was because I always backed up to maybe 4 feet from the TV after such a parental encounter.
I vividly remember the occasion 2 or 3 years after we got our color Magnavox when my grandma replaced her old 19 inch black and white set with another one from Uncle Bob. But Grandma went big and got the huge 25 inch screen. You must understand that in 1973 or so, that was just about the biggest television it was possible to get. That thing was luxuriously huge. Not only did Grandma get to experience watching Lawrence Welk in color, she got to see Lawrence Welk in his biggest possible version!
As an adult with my own family, I got bigger and bigger televisions for our main viewing room – first came the 27 inch (which seemed positively skimpy in the early 1990’s) and then the 32! By then it was possible to buy a television with a 36 inch picture tube, but that seemed a little too much for me (and for my wallet) at the time. Yes, it was possible to buy a new generation of big screen “projection” TVs, but I was enough of a picture quality snob that I wouldn’t bite. And I am glad I didn’t. Eventually disposing of the 32 inch tube TV was as much adventure as I needed in my life, and getting rid of it was both physically and financially taxing.
I finally splurged on the modern version of a big screen when I got a 50 inch plasma. I liked the picture quality more than the LCDs that were starting to become a thing then, and it is kind of amazing that this set still rules the basement family room where it was first placed more years ago than I care to remember. But life changes have moved our television viewing to a smaller room on the main floor of the house. I thought about moving the old plasma upstairs, but then remembered the rat’s nest of wires that connect the TV, the stereo, the DVD and VCR (yes, we still have one of those) together and lost interest in trying to penetrate that thicket. So the old plasma set shall remain in place, ready for a special retro viewing night that will probably never come. But it is good to be prepared in case it does. But being thus prepared required a new TV for upstairs.
The one thing I have noticed since Uncle Bob’s day is that the whole buying and setup process is completely different. Back then, the hard part was picking out what you wanted. Then, Uncle Bob would have that model sent to a nearby Magnavox dealer, who would have it delivered and set up. From that point, all we did was turn it on and watch our favorite shows in glorious color. Now? Picking out what to buy is still hard because there are so many choices. But that’s easier than the rest of it. Costco provides a handy cart to get my new TV out to the car, but that is where their role ends. And where I decided that my choice of a 55 inch set over the bigger 65 inch set was a great idea, as I hoisted and slid the box into my Mazda hatchback.
Once home, I attached the legs and set it atop the table. And then the fun began. Will my new “smart” TV accept all of the channels we like to watch? A problem on this front a few years ago is why we had to buy a ROKU unit through which our online platforms stream. Another ROKU for the new one? Sure, why not – “the devil you know”, and all that. And one more layer of setup is just what I needed. And then began the process of logging onto each and every streaming source. Life is hard, but I have to at least try to remain smarter than my TV.
But now, we are FINALLY up and running and able to watch our glorious big, high definition screen. Oh my, but some of our favorite television personalities are looking much older than they did on our prior, lower quality set. One thing has not changed – watching the 1974 blockbuster movie “Earthquake” about 10 feet away from a 55 inch screen is every bit as fulfilling as watching it in the theater when it first came out. Except that we don’t have Sensurround, which made the theater floor vibrate back in the day.
The experience of sitting 10 feet from this big TV is also a lot like my childhood experience of watching the old 19 inch screen from 3 feet away. I hope we don’t get cross-eyed!
J. P.'s Blog 
Did your grandma go the furniture route and get a console TV or just a tabletop model? Back then a console color TV was quite the status symbol!
Our largest TV here is a 2009-vintage 50″ LG that we inherited from my in-laws. The picture’s still pretty good but I’m sure it’d pale miserably next to a current model.
There’s still a Toshiba CRT model in the living room but it rarely gets used anymore. And I also still have a couple of working VCRs, although they’re part of DVD/VCR combo units. But they do get used.
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Yes, Grandma’s was a console! The television-as-furniture thing was huge with that generation.
You will have an unpleasant time when your CRT television dies. At least in my area, no trash or donation center will take them, so a trip to an electronics recycling center (and a moderate recycling fee) will be required. I finally bit the bullet several years ago and toted 3 old CRT sets to one of those places.
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There’s always the discount alternative that involves a wooded area, cheap beer and somebody saying, “Hey y’all, watch this…”
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I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that Uncle Bob obtained his TVs through legal and ethical channels (pun intended). I was hoping you’d have a story or 2 about 2am meetings with unmarked vans in dark alleys. ;^)
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With Uncle Bob in the family, no dark alleys were necessary!
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Hi. The picture quality of today’s TVs is amazing. Like everything else, it’s easy to get totally used to it and take it for granted. And the number of shows/movies on networks/streaming services/etc. is completely unbelievable.
We’re fortunate to have all of this, that’s for sure.
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It is becoming hard to keep track of everything we want to watch! It is also amazing how well even old movies come across on modern television sets. (Wait – are they even called “television sets” anymore? Probably not.)
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A nice history on TV. We sure have come a long way, but like you said, still sitting close to the TV.
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One retro trend we will NOT be revisiting are the Swanson TV dinners that my mother used to serve us from time to time. 🙂
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LOL – that’s right!
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Not even the fried chicken? That was my favorite!
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I remember those days when 25 inch was the biggest TV available. I also fondly remember my grandma purchasing (well actually I’m sure my dad picked it out) a Quasar TV – the works in a drawer!
The wife and I have bought more TV’s than I really care to remember. Back in the late 80’s I recall the Picture in Picture fad that was absolutely amazing!
We foolishly bought a 75 inch TV 2 years ago. The TV doesn’t look so large when its in a 50,000 square foot warehouse. In our living room it is ridiculously large. Picture quality is amazing though. We probably should have gone with a 55 inch set.
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I really struggled over what size to buy. Like you say, they all look great in the huge store. We had been watching a 45 inch TV in that location, and I knew I wanted one bigger. But I also knew that going too big in our relatively small room would run the risk of making it look like a drive-in theater. 🙂
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Still using the 19 inch format. It seems larger, because the TV is now more rectangular than the old 4:3 sets used to be. When my last one blew, this flat screen was $65.00 at Best Buy! I carried it home under my arm, like an old portfolio case. It sits at the end of my desk. I’m not much of TV watcher, and I have zero cable services, so it’s all antenna TV for me. I’ve though about a bigger TV, they’re so damn cheap now, but I’m not done moving and don’t want to move a huge TV (or a couch either). I have a buddy in Northern California that owns a great property and likes to have people visit. He’s hit on the idea of putting a 19 inch TV in every bedroom, with cable split-out boxes, and people can just watch whatever they want in their bedrooms instead of getting into fights over what’s on the big TV. One of my buddies who was an early adopter of large TV’s before any of us, has a huge TV in his tiny condo, but says that 90% of the time, he lies in bed watching TV on an 11 inch iPad, go figger…
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It is truly amazing how little TVs cost these days. And I guess an 11 inch screen at 10 inches from your face looks pretty big.
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The TV of my earliest recollection was much like the Admiral in your ad, except we had a Motorola. I have fleeting memories of watching bits of JFK’s funeral on that (just flashes, and likely only memorable because what was really capturing my toddler attention was just how upset the grownups were), as well as the assassinations of 1968 and the moon landing the following year. That TV was older than me by the time my parents finally gave up on it and we bought 19″ color Philco somewhere around the summer of 1970. I remember watching Laugh In in the TV store while my parents negotiated the price on it. I think that back then, buying a TV (or really any major appliance) was not unlike buying a car. Lots of negotiation and haggling. Unless you had Uncle Bob, I guess.
The biggest thrill in those first months of the Philco was watching the annual broadcast of the Wizard of Oz and “discovering” the movie’s shift from black and white to color. I’d of course watched it before (on the Motorola) and had no idea. I had assumed that the whole thing was black and white. That was kind of mind-blowing.
I have no interest in devoting the space to a 75″ TV, the 20 year old 40something inch plasma set we have now is holding up just fine. What most entertains me about the current trend for ginormous TVs is how you can drive down streets at dusk and actually see from your car, going down the road, what people are watching in their homes.
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I have those same fleeting memories of that 1963 funeral procession, and the same long delay in getting a color TV. Yes, the Wizard of Oz was a revelation, but I had gotten some early exposure to Batman in color at the neighbor kid’s house. It was glorious!
I laughed at watching others watch TV. Maybe that’s why Marianne is so insistent on closing curtains at dusk.
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Admiral. Quasar. Philco.
I expect a “we had a Crosley when I was growing up” comment any time now.
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Nah – those were for old people. 😁
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Let’s not forget Madman Muntz!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_Muntz
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When I was very young, my grandmother’s television was the set she and my grandfather had purchased in 1953 to celebrate my father’s graduation from high school. It was still working in 1969…she wanted a color television so much, but her Depression-era mindset meant that she would never pitch an operating television set. It was thus a happy day in the spring of 1969 when that old set finally gave up the ghost, and she could finally buy her brand-new, console color television set without any guilt!
I had a small, black-and-white television in my bedroom during my teenage years. It’s interesting to watch old television shows and made-for-television movies on Youtube to catch what I missed on that grainy, black-and-white picture!
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When we got the new color TV, I exercised my right as eldest child to claim the old Admiral for my room, so I willingly gave up color for a dictator’s control of the tuning dial.
My grandma did the same thing and replaced a set from the mid 50s around 1973 or so. And wondered if it was possible to put the new TVs guts in the old one’s wooden cabinet. Which, of course, it was not.
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We have purchased 3 new TVs since moving in here last year. The 75 incher was far too large for either of our cars, and too heavy for us to lift, so we had it delivered. That still meant I had to unbox it and set it up myself. I miss the old days sometimes where setup was part of the service.
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This is one of the circumstances where I miss the days of having both a large van and two teenaged boys! Perhaps that delivery and set-up service is offered for those who buy higher end electronics than you and I do.
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And 75 inches! I bow to the king! 🏆😁
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My stepdad brought one of those enormous projection TVs to the marriage. On the other side, my stepmom brought another! She may still have hers, but I’m glad I was busy the day my stepdad’s was evicted.
When I worked in collections, I won three TV’s, once a month, three months straight. I sold one, gave one to my brother, and kept one. It’s been probably a decade since I fired it up, though, a 42″ in my room. Can’t tell you how long it’s been since I turned on the big one in the living room. Maybe never!
I have two 4k 32″ computer monitors that I use. One to write and research on as YouTube or whatever usually plays on the other. It’s a great setup, but my eyes are probably going crossed since I’m 18″ away.
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I won a TV in a drawing once too, a RCA 19 inch color unit with a built-in VCR. I remember the picture not being up to the standard I had become used to, so it went into the room where the kids used it. It died quite prematurely and ratified my prejudice in favor of Japanese electronics over US brand names.
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My computer has 2 27 inch monitors side-by-side. We haven’t owned a TV in over 38 years and never wanted one(people have offered to give us one several times over the years.). If I changed my mind on that tomorrow I would have no clue what to do. I do remember as a kid we had a b&w portable but I don’t know the size.
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Sounds very similar to my setup, Herb!
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You can probably do with your computer anything a modern TV can do, at least for streaming. You remind me about the big old antenna in my attic that used to be great for picking up local channels over the air. I am told I can buy some hardware to make it compatible with modern digital broadcast signals, but it’s easier to stream local channels.
I applaud you for your ability to avoid the TV habit.
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Kudos to you JP – I admit I would be clueless how to do this having not watched TV at home in 16 years, (only streaming PBS shows or using Amazon Prime). I remember the B&W TV which was in a console from my youth and watching cartoons and the Disney specials on it. We had the same 19-inch color TV on a rolling stand and it came with an outside antenna that never worked well for some stations. I have two Curtis Mathes 19-inch TVs purchased in the late 80s/early 90s, each with the bulbous back on them. I remember when you cleaned out your home office I mentioned the TVs and you said they had to be disposed of properly, not put out in the trash, so alas – they are still here. I am sure they are heavy. With the death of Robert Duvall earlier this week, I remembered how much I enjoyed the miniseries “Lonesome Dove”. I’m not usually into cowboys-and-Indians shows, but I had enjoyed the book. I watched the miniseries live, then again on cable years later and my mom bought me the videotape as I raved about it. I was just thinking this week that I wouldn’t mind seeing it again, though I’m doubtful everything would still work once I plugged it in.
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I’m the same way about our old VCR. Will it still work? And will the old tapes still play without breaking? As long as I don’t use it, it is a perfectly functional part of the JP Obsolete Media Collection that includes a pre WWII Bendix console phonograph (78 rpm only) with an AM/Short Wave radio. It worked last time I fired it up, but that’s probably been 15 years ago. I really ought to find new homes for a lot of this stuff.
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I would have a lot of room if I only put my mind to decluttering. Your equipment may be functional and someone out there may want the phonograph and short-wave radio and give it many more years of use.
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Curtis Mathes – another blast from the past!
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Interesting history! We have a 55″ TV at the Canadian house. We don’t have cable where we live and Satellite is quite expensive, so we just get Over the Air free TV channels. With an indoor antenna, the picture is excellent!
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I have one of those in-attic antennas, but understand that it needs some more hardware to work with modern digital signals. We had cable until it priced me out and I switched to a fiber internet connection for streaming everything.
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My roof antenna is probably at least 20 years old and works just fine for digital. When it became the standard back in 2009(?) I did have to purchase signal converter boxes in order to keep using analog devices like VCRs and DVD recorders (which I still use today).
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When we moved into our house we bought a 36.in tube tv. It went to the tv room in the basement. It’s 30 years later and still the only tv I’ve ever owned. 🤣😎🙃
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I always kind of wished I had splurged on a 36 inch unit. Until the day I got rid of my big 32 incher. I would have needed a burly helper!
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And you are truly a magician for keeping one of those things going so long!!
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True and guess what? It’s a magnovox
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Yay!
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I remember the first TV my parents (or, rather, my father) bought in my lifetime. The not-so-old Zenith console had horrible picture quality so, rather than fix it, my father went TV shopping…at a motel. It was a sale of televisions rounded up from umpteen motels and he thought it was the best TV sale ever. He bought an ancient, cruddy looking old black-and-white unit of some brand and that got us through until Christmas 1982 when a new color 27 inch Magnavox showed up. He also bought two new cars in the timeframe of having that crapomatic old b/w set, so it wasn’t an issue of financial embarrassment.
We have two TVs, both 32″. The older one is a Magnavox still in daily use, purchased in early 2012. The other is a cheapie WalMart sourced smart TV. That unit was purchased to aid with my recovery from a major surgery in 2020. The “smart” part of it is rather dim, so it’s more often been used as a computer monitor when I work from home rather than as a TV set.
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Ooh, lots of Magnavox action here today! They were once a major employer in Fort Wayne, and I still think of them as the home team.
My first attempt at dealing with a “smart” TV that couldn’t get all of the streaming channels we wanted resulted in buying a Roku and bypassing the TVs not-so-impressive intellect.
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I remember those used TV sales at hotels/motels! Even back then, I recall thinking that buying a TV that had seen use in a hotel room was akin to buying a used car from a taxi company. You don’t get more used up than that.
Your comment also reminds me that in all of this discussion about old-style TVs, no one has mentioned that one of the main things we (at least those of us with digital televisions) don’t need to deal with any more are the “vertical and horizontal hold” controls…which seemed to always go out of whack on the old CRT sets. You could adjust them with the proper controls for a while (either with an actual knob on really old sets like that Admiral…you can see the knobs on the side of the image in JP’s ad) or later by sticking a small screw driver in the back of the set and turning the hidden control. Of course, I was all about sticking screw drivers inside of the family TV (but that’s a different story). Nevertheless, eventually the horizontal or vertical control would just give up and the only way to kinda regain control over a picture rolling either up/down or side to side was to WHACK the set hard on either side or top of the console.
No one needs to whack their flat screen TVs any longer.
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Not to mention the warm-up time.
Now you remind me of an old B&W set of my roommate in college. We opened it up, diagrammed where all the tubes belonged and took the box of tubes to the drug store’s machine for testing. A couple were bad and a bunch were marginal. We were going to replace all but the really good ones. Then we saw how much tubes cost and only replaced the really bad ones. It worked better after we were done, and we were quite proud of ourselves.
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One of the fond memories of my childhood is walking down to the corner drug store in Chicago on Wilson and Clark, with my Dad and a shoebox of tubes, to test in the tube tester at the store: the replacements were stored under the tester in a cabinet. They kept a black and white TV running for a long time, well into the early 70’s. My parents were big newspaper readers too, and kitty-corner from the drug store was an outdoor paper and magazine kiosk. We used to walk down there on Saturday nights about 8pm to buy the “bulldog” edition of all three city papers, so my Mom could check out the estate sales, and see if she needed to get a “jump” on anything…
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“Sensurround” – oh my, I’d forgotten that term. I wonder if it was utilized for any other film besides “Earthquake”? Honestly, I love that I have the memory of a single B&W cabinet-encased television in the small den (referred to as the “tv room” in our house), with memories of the dial to change the channel (“Remote”? What’s that?), Walter Cronkite bringing the news, and the Star-Spangled Banner followed by the original screensaver when the broadcasts shut down for the night (also an annoying hum if I recall, intended to get you to turn off your set). Now that I think about it, “den” may be as antiquated a “black-and-white television”. Does anyone have a “den” in their house anymore? Home office maybe.
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We have a room we call “The Den”! It sounds so much better than “The TV Room”. It has a desk and some bookshelves in addition to recliners and a TV, so it works for us.
I remember some neighbors had an old TV in their rec room. It was the oldest TV I had ever seen with a remote, probably from the late 50s. It only changed channels, as I recall, with an “up” and a “down” button. When you pushed one, a mechanical device in the TV issued a loud “Ka Chunka Ka Chunka Ka Chunka” until it hit the next station. Crude, but effective.
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The early Zenith sets with the optional remote control (that did the ka chunka ka chunka sound) called the feature the “Zenith Space Command”. I always thought that was a tremendously cool name.
It worked through sending ultra-sonic sounds between the remote and the TV, unlike modern remotes which either operate via radio frequency or infrared light. https://zenith.com/heritage/remote-background/
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You know, this entry has made me reflect about how we actually use TV. When I was a kid, the TV seemed to be a distinct evening entertainment vehicle. Maybe it would get turned on after dinner IF there was something of interest, easy to figure out by the three stations, and one to two independent stations we had to watch. My enjoyment of vintage radio programming today, made me realize that some of those radio programs (Suspense, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar) were still being broadcast into the 1960’s, not to mention my family were consistently library users with lots of things to read (as well as getting all the daily papers delivered). Over the years, it seems like the TV has migrated to become a constantly “ON” companion. My younger sister and her husband don’t even own a TV, they consider a TV to be your “false friend”, who keeps you from doing other things, and anything they need to watch, including foreign films and PBS programming, can be found and streamed online and watched on their computers.
To that idea, I remember distinctly when my college pals, who mostly went on to study film and video after I concentrated on still photography work, landed large market jobs working as videographers for TV and TV production companies. When I would go and visit them, their TV’s were always “ON”. I remarked on how weird it was, that their TV usage was more like we used to use radio. They would turn them on when they got home, and they went around their houses doing whatever, cleaning, cooking, etc., with the TV running in the background, and not particularly watching the visual part of it; just having it on and filling the dead space. To this day, as a retired single person, I find it difficult to not come home and just flip on the TV.
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I had a friend who would turn on the TV upon walking into the house. I am the opposite and turn it on only when I want to sit and watch something.
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Another thing that’s interesting in this entry, is people talking about having those TV’s that were “furniture”: big consoles with side speakers in the cabinets. Wood panels to cover up the screen when not in use. I’ve noticed over the last ten years, that there is a sub group of audiophiles that are looking for and restoring those console style stereo set-ups that were “furniture” in long cabinets! Big Magnavoxes, Sylvanias, Zeniths, and European Grundigs and Telefunkens! I basically used my parents Magnavox cabinet stereo until I moved out of the house. More than one restorer has said that these were a lot better built than most people give them credit for, with the weak link being the turn-table. Most of the old paper cone speakers if they’re not functional, can be easily replaced by buying the same size and ohm speakers from Simply Speakers and bolting them right in, with a simple wiring hook-up…
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My grandfather had one of the first tv’s in the early 1950’s, and it was 12 inches. I have a photo of it somewhere, at Christmas when we were very small. He was the first in the neighbourhood to have a tv, but they soon became popular.
I still have my ten year old 55 inch, which I thought about replacing last year with a larger model 65, but it wouldn’t fit the stand or the space and the Bestbuy sales guy (kid) told me to keep the old one as long as it works, as the new ones, like everything else these days, only last a few years. I bought it at a store that ONLY sold tv’s, and they did the setup, and connecting, but they went out of business during covid, although they still sell one brand online. Because it is so old now, I had to get a firestick for streaming, as it wouldn’t handle the updates anymore. I don’t watch that much tv anyway, news, Olympics, the occasional movie, one or two PBS shows etc. I know you can watch youtube and Prime and all that stuff, but so much of it is garbage. And there’s way too much choice, when we only had a few channels the shows seemed to be better? Or maybe that is just nostalgia?
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We did without cable for years when the kids were young. It took awhile for our oldest kid to learn that PBS wasn’t the only channel on the air! But on-air programming got worse and worse, and the kids chose cable channels that were far more kid-friendly than broadcast TV.
Yes, there are so many choices, but when I sit down to watch something, I want something good to be available.
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Yes I can see having the Disney channel and programs for kids, but so much of the adult geared stuff is just garbage. I still have a basic cable package, about 30 channels, but it is bundled in with my internet and phone. I’d rather read…..
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Speaking of reading…..did you read the book, The Count of Monte Crisco? PBS has a mini-series on the book this Sunday. I have not read it.
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I have not, but it’s probably one I should dive into at some point.
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Interesting comments here. I have a buddy that during college and shortly after, sold cable services. He said a lot of people that did not want cable would say: “…I’m watching too much TV now…” to which they were supposed to respond: “…it’s not about watching more TV, but about having the selection to watch better TV…”. Which for the era was true. What’s happened in the ensuing 40 years, is the “great unwashed” of America are watching the most TV and the most crap. Multiple cable channels have then all gone after the same demographic to get the most viewers, and there are rarely any “narrow casting” stations carrying upper end programming. That’s why you have 80 channels and they all seem to be filled with the same crap. It didn’t start out that way… I’ve never paid for programming, and just use over the air broadcasting, and I have 5 PBS stations, an old movies channel, a western movies channel, a sci-fi channel, 2-3 true crime channels, and 2-3 vintage TV program channels. For as much TV as I want to watch, that’s plenty and I don’t pay for any of it.
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I am old enough to remember when our household did not have a television. My brother and I went to Ricky’s house to watch. At some point when I was in grade school in the 1950’s, we finally got one but my parents put it in their bedroom. We could watch Bishop Sheen with them but we continued to sneak over to Ricky’s place! My wife and I used hand-me-down black and white sets until 1977 when we purchased our first color television because our two-year-old could not see the munchkins turn into color in a showing of the Wizard of Oz. We thought we might be stunting his growth.
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Yes a black and white TV in 1977 was borderline child abuse. 😁
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