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Wednesday 1 February 2023

Too Much Television

New month old post, originally posted as part of a longer post on the 19th September 2014. The other part of which was used at the beginning of last month.

We weren’t the last, but late enough for others to exclaim in disbelief: “What! You really don’t have a television?”

Dad thought them a mindless waste of time. After hours talking at work, he was happy to settle down to a book, or poetry, or his bible readings from church, or the B.B.C. “Book at Bedtime”. Mum, when not finishing housework, would be knitting, reading novels from the library or learning lines for her twice-yearly parts with a local drama group. I got through two or three library books a week too, and still had time for other worthwhile activities, not to mention homework. No one needed a television. There was always plenty to do. We were one of the last to have an X- or H-shaped aerial on the chimney stack.

My first viewing memories are therefore all on other peoples’ sets: school friends, the neighbour who regularly invited Mum, with me in tow, to watch ‘Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, another relative who let me watch football cup finals on Saturday afternoons, and one of my Mum’s aunts where I went once a week after school for tea. I remember the now forgotten Don Arrol’s brief stint as Palladium compere when he stood in for the ill Bruce Forsyth in 1960, the 1958 FA cup final when Bolton Wanderers beat a tragically depleted Manchester United after the Munich air disaster, and seemingly no end of escapist adventure series on Granada Television which was then the newly-licenced commercial provider for the whole of the North of England.

How many can you remember? How many theme tunes can you still sing? There was ‘The Lone Ranger’, ‘Bonanza’, ‘Rawhide’, ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, ‘The Adventures of William Tell’, ‘The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin’, ‘The Adventures of Long John Silver’, and ‘The Buccaneers’, to name but a few. The only theme tune I can’t remember is ‘The Buccaneers’, despite it being one of my favourite series. The tune was simply unmemorable. But I can still sing you the standby music used by Granada Television before programmes started at five o’clock.

Dad eventually surrendered to the inevitable and bought a set around 1962. I watched the first Transatlantic transmissions over the Telstar satellite in July of that year at home.

But all the many “worthwhile activities” soon disappeared. A year later I was watching the indisputably inane quiz show ‘Take Your Pick’ (the one in which Michael Miles tried to trick contestants into using the word “No”) when news of President Kennedy’s assassination came through. Within a few years, some programmes had become part of the bedrock of British society watched by more than half the population, and activities outside the home gradually dwindled away. For me, homework took second place on Thursdays when ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ were on.

Dad remained a bastion of common sense. As soon as the television was turned on, he retired to his books, radio and other activities. I’m not quite that good, but I do try. Think of all the skills and knowledge lost to all that television. What goes around comes around. While I sit here trying desperately to improve my writing skills and perfect my pirate voice, my family sit the other room watching that embodiment of triviality, ‘The X factor’. 

originally posted as part of a longer post on the 19th September 2014

37 comments:

  1. Your post brings back many happy memories of the old TV programs we watched. I remember when it changed to "the wonderful world of color"!!
    I try not to turn on the TV until after dinner and then turn it off by 9 pm so I have time to read before bed...

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    1. The bigger distraction today is of course the internet and phones.

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  2. I haven't had one for many years. Had ut disconnected after my husband died. It had been his entertainment after he became quadriplegic, so I had to tolerate s lot of it gladly for his sake. But I have so much else to do!

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    1. Well done! We have one, but I watch very little.

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  3. I have had no television for at least 20 years. Too much other to do.

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    1. I find other things more satisfying. I could hate myself when I waste time watching silly programmes.

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  4. I was a fan of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." when I was a kid. Also, "Bonanza." Here in Canada, our CBC broadcast your British series "The Adventures of Robin Hood" after school on weekday afternoons, so I was a fan of that too!

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    1. The were great entertainment. Now we have loads of channels and they are neatly all rubbish.

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  5. I was born in 1968, and we had a small black & white TV when I was little. My Mum says I used to see colours where there weren't any - I distinctly remember a cartoon about a small fish that was "the odd one out" in the shoal because it was... red. It's impossible that it really was red in the cartoon shown on TV, but that is how I remember it to this day; I must have been around 3 or 4 years old.
    There was little TV deemed suitable for children when I grew up. Children's Hour literally WAS just the one hour, and more often than not, we would be playing outdoors when it was on, and not bother to come in. But we did enjoy many series in the 1970s and 80s, mostly in weekly (not daily) instalments.
    Nowadays, I watch the main news on TV at 8:00 pm when I'm home, and then usually switch to streaming. When I have found a series that interests me, I watch just one episode and then go to bed with my book.
    My Mum watches loads of telly, but she knits nearly all the time and says that she feels less like wasting time when she does that.

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    1. It is noticeable how empty of children the parks and playing fields have been for several decades compared to earlier times.

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  6. A brilliant post Tasker. You could be describing my childhood TV experiences here.
    PS.. I am glad that you are posting again and hope that your recovery is going well.

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    1. Don't know for how long it will be but glad to pleased to have sparked off good memories.

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  7. I remember sitting with my brother with our noses practically to the screen. Still remember singing Davy Crockett as well, think you could even buy the hat as well. So glad to see you back, hope everything is well.

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    1. He was all the rage at the time. I wanted a beaver-tailed hat too but never had one.

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  8. We have hundreds of tv channels and sometimes I can find nothing to watch. Perhaps it was always like that? Give me the Internet and YouTube any day.

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    1. I agree, and made a similar response above before I saw yours, although I don't watch online much either.

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  9. I suspect that your dad had the right idea. It is so easy to be distracted by television. The arrangement of furniture in British living rooms is now all about the presence of a television. One can get drawn into watching mindless crap like "The X Factor" and have you caught any of that dreadful show - "The Masked Singer"? "Take It Off!" they chant. I could recall all of the shows you mentioned apart from ‘The Buccaneers’.

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    1. Sometimes you see into someone's wondow and they have an enormous expensive set covering the whole of wall, just for wasting time. My view is that it was much more satisfying when we used to acquire deep skills and knowledge through and handicrafts.

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  10. I rather thnk we rented our first television but my first husband refused to have the commercial channel so we only had BBC, Now so many years later I rarely watch the commercial channels and am also very choosy with what I watch on BBC - have never watched any of the soaps. I prefer a good read,

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    1. These is very tittle I want to watch, but sometimes something silly like Ice Road Truckers will draw me in.

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  11. For anonymous read Weaver

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  12. NZ was a bit behind in the TV stakes anyway, but our family must have been much like yours until (strangely) some elderly uncles of my Mum pointed out to me parents that kids at school would be talking about stuff they had seen on TV and we would be social misfits. It seems a strange argument to come from elderly uncles, but they bought us our first TV when I was in my second or third year of school. For the most part, life outdoors after school was still more interesting than TV, and it was never turned on before Dad came in to see the 6pm news and eat 'tea' (before going out again to tend to animals - especially in the lambing season when we were all drafted into the shepherding tasks).

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    1. Both me and wife were late to tv and it was the schoolwork argument that did it.

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  13. I initially grew up in a TV-free house, my parents bought their first set the week that Dr Who started on BBC, although that wasn't the reason, it was so my elder brother could catch up on some of the schools broadcasts. I was familiar with some of the programs you mentioned from visiting school friends or relatives, but we didn't miss the programs when back home. Even after getting the TV, my brother and I still preferred to read after completing homework, and I was usually outdoors of an evening in summer.

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    1. about the same time and for the same reasons as me

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  14. I remember all those shows from long ago, TV these days simply doesn't compare well at all, all the silly "reality" shows and talent shows, not to mention "wall-to-wall" advertising segments which are often as long as the segments of shows divided by them.

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    1. It annoys me that they make at least 50% about celebrity resenters and "interesting" characters rather than the subject matter they are supposedly about.

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  15. We watch too much television right now. It is winter, and we are a bit cooped up at the moment. We always had a television as far back as I can remember. I remember being a child and loving Captain Kangaroo. I also remember watching a cowboy show on television, and I could not understand how someone would let themselves be shot and die. My mother explained 'acting' to me. I was not yet in school, but I remember being very relieved.

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    1. Reminds me of the story of the drama teacher who died. When the Head told the children one put up his hand and asked whether she might be acting.

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  16. Think of all the skills lost to television - too true.. But overall I think the pros outweigh the cons. And I too remember many of those theme tunes - and more from the Seventies.

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    1. It is indiscriminate watching that is not a good thing. It's all too tempting and I've wasted hours on "just watch the next programme".

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  17. As a bookish fossil I possess no box, but I wish to make a case for television of the 1950s-60s, a time that brought us, thanks to John Logie Baird, satellite transmission, the Space Age, men on the moon, the first Labour government since 1945, coverage of the war in Vietnam, the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King's Civil Rights, Christine Keeler and tragic Stephen Ward, the Beatles & Merseysound.

    The term I would denote for our television world view is Wellsian.
    H.G. Wells was a great writer, non Bloomsbury, and without pretensions, except at the end when he wrote A Mind At the End of its Tether. He told J.B. Priestley he thought of himself as a journalist.

    BBC Television gave us Children's Hour, Blue Peter in black and white, Tales From Eastern Europe (The Singing Ringing Tree) and after tea Tomorrow's World. We had a future despite the Atom Bomb.

    The texture of those black & white transmissions gave a certain ghostly glamour to the Fab Four (Ready Steady Go may have been their first TV appearance) and the gritty realism of Z Cars, the Wednesday Play, Play For Today, and political discussions that brought Teddy Taylor and Norman Buchan (my father's great Labour hope) into our Scottish living rooms.
    Harold Wilson was in his element on TV and gigged with the Beatles.

    Thanks to YouTube we can see David Frost twice interviewing the unreconstructed fascist Oswald Mosley; Ken Tynan talking to Laurence Olivier; Kenneth Alsop speaking to Casals; Cilla Black performing with Dudley Moore; and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

    I doubt Wells met Logie Baird who was experimenting with the cathode tube from his ramshackle workshop in Yoker, Glasgow, not far from Clydebank where the great cruise ships of the world were built.
    Baird wished to transmit a moving image from one room to another.
    Some thought him mad.

    You can hear the theme tune from The Buccaneers on YouTube likewise Tombstone Territory, Gunsmoke, Sugarfoot, Laramie, Bonanza, The Fugitive, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Human Jungle the Wednesday Plays, Steptoe & Son, Tommy Cooper, Dave Allen
    and The Dick Powell Theatre (my mother's favourite) whose theme tune I can still whistle along with a dozen others.

    I remember the music of the London Palladium coming home on summer nights during the holidays and Mario Lanza & Gracie Fields as the guest stars.
    Paul McCartney sang (badly) A Taste of Honey at the Royal Command Performance on Sunday night.

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    1. Transmission error.
      Paul McCartney sang Till There Was You at the Royal Command Performance (YouTube) a song from The Music Man.
      Macca can't sing for toffee.
      What pop star could except for the girl in The Seekers ?
      Emily Linge has a bonny rendition of the Broadway hit YouTube with Simon Tonkins on guitar.

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    2. Apart from The Buccaneers all those themes are in my head. I don't have to look of Youtube. It's interesting to watch McCartney sing now. You can see the techniques he has learnt to compensate. Yes, the 60s and 70s were a golden age for television.

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    3. The Buccaneers theme has stayed in my head along with that of Panorama (the Window on the World with Richard Dimbleby) Wagon Train, I Married Joan, Doctor Who, Zoo Time, Z Cars, The Fugitive, This Week, The Human Jungle, Laramie, Bonanza, Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe & Son, Morecamble & Wise, Dick Van Dyke etc & The Dick Powell Theatre (YouTube) which opened with the curtain rising on a proscenium and the old movie star emerging with a warm smile.

      The episode of The Simon Dee Show, featuring George Lazenby naming the men who conspired to assassinate President Kennedy has been taken off YouTube.
      Lazenby, with brilliant timing, waited till the closing credits.

      This sci-fi atmosphere of early television is what brings to mind H.G. Wells and his prophetic romances such as The Shape pf Things to Come, The War of the Worlds, In the Days of the Comet, and The First Men on the Moon.
      It is fitting that the era ended with the transmission of the first Moon Walk, 1969, and the astonishment on everyone's face.
      J.G. Ballard thought this colossal event would change men and women for good, and lead to the end of all wars.

      For those of us living in housing schemes (ours had 40,000 people and no cinema and no swimming baths for the first years) television was a positive good.
      If anything television encouraged reading and stimulated interest in politics, world affairs, science, history, dance, theatre, cinema, pop & classical music.
      And who could forget Hughie Green who said, 'Once you learn to fake the sincerity the rest is easy.'

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I welcome comments and hope to respond within a day or two, but vision issues are making this increasingly difficult. Please note: comments on posts over a month old will not appear until they have been moderated.