Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "The Don Lee Broadcasting System" video.

My grandmother's next-door neighbor bought the first color television in our town. I remember watching "Bonanza" on it in 1959 , complete with pink horses and a purple sky.
16
"They will live a long time, these men of broadcast television. They had an American quality. They, like their innovations, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of early radio, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until the terms CBS, NBC, and ABC sound distant on the ear, like roll film and LP." - With apologies to James Michener
15
@solarnaut Sol, I can actually top that. When my wife and I were first married we lived in a small house on my tree farm. All we got was UHF and VHF reception, and it was poor even with the aluminum foil I added to the rabbit ears (it didn't work on the UHF loop antenna). Even though this was in the mid to late 90s, I couldn't afford to add cable or satellite TV, so when we built a larger house, I installed a roof antenna for better reception. I had "cleverly" mounted it to a pole which itself was held in place by two extended brackets that I'd bolted to the outside wall of our second floor bedroom. We soon discovered that the best reception could only be achieved by "tuning" the antenna for each channel. The only way to do this was for me to rotate the antenna, but the only way to rotate it was for me to climb out the rear bedroom window onto the back deck roof, walk to the edge of the house, and carefully lean around the corner so I could just barely grab the pole and twist it. Meanwhile, my wife, who was in our downstairs living room checking the reception, had to repeatedly run up the stairs and shout to me the result of each minor twist. When a major change in antenna direction was required, my only option was to take a short ladder onto the deck roof and use it to climb onto the main roof of the house, then move to the edge of the roof where I could get a good grip on the antenna and rotate it as much as needed. In these situations my wife had to run up the stairs and into the bedroom, lean out the back window, shout the results to me, then dash back downstairs to check the progress before running back up again for the next report. Mind you, this feat was normally performed at night. Rainy nights were particularly challenging.
12
@k8zhd We didn't get a color set until 1970 and I remember the time spent fiddling with the controls. Did you ever have to walk around with the rabbit ears in your hand, searching for a sweet spot?
6
@MrJest2 My parents got cable around 1965. Suddenly we went from one and a half stations to seven, if you counted the weather channel. It consisted of a clock, barometer, thermometer, and wind gauge mounted on an oscillating table to allow the stationary camera to effectively pan back and forth.
5
@sanityassassin8161 Not anymore, thank you. I'm too old for such shenanigans. For over 16 years now we have lived in rural Montana where satellite reception is the only feasible way to get a TV signal. I bought one strictly for internet use, but switched to DSL a few years later. We had become to disillusioned and disgusted with the boob tube that we simply gave up television for good and never regretted this decision. This hasn't kept us from enjoying old movies and TV shows on DVD or YouTube which we watch either on a computer screen or cast to our 80" TV. I still complain about all the crap on the internet and likely will become even more frustrated and vocal as AI tries to mess with my mind and soul. Lord only knows what will become of mankind if holo-decks are ever invented.
1
@Gail1Marie Just shows you how poor we were back then. 🙂
1
@Gail1Marie Same here, but we said thrifty instead of cheap. In some ways I share that trait.
1