Wow... historic election news with a "hum" moment...

[K Frame]

I was watching coverage of the 1980 election on Utoob for grins and giggles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsDe-8cOSYY

NBC had David Brinkley and Tom Brokow at election center, and they were coloring in states that Reagan had won.

Back then, Reagan was assigned blue (it apparently wasn't until 1984 that Republicans were given Red, or as Peter Jennings said, Red for Reagan and Republican, or something like that).

Anyway, Brinkley said "we're going to color in those states blue now, or light gray for black and white."

It's easy to forget that so many people still had B&W tvs, either as the main TV or smaller portable sets.

Do they even make B&W sets anymore?

[Perd Hapley]

We had a wood-cabinet color television "set" in 1980, but it shot craps at about that time. Years later, one of Dad's co-workers gave us a television, saying that he felt sorry for my sister and I. It was a 13" B&W, with two giant knobs for UHF and VHF. By cranking those knobs around, we could get a whole seven channels!!

[Ben]

We got our first color TV in I think 70-71. I had the same B&W TV as fistful in my bedroom when I was in High School in the late 70's. Being a rebellious teenager, I didn't want to watch Lawrence Welk reruns in the living room, and the B&W was all I could afford on my dishwasher's salary. 

[K Frame]

SEVEN channels?

You privledged person of paleness, you!

We had three network channels, the PBS channel, and when I was about 15 or 16, Fox 43 came on the air, even though it was pretty bad reception most of the time. The previous station had a lower-power transmitter and we couldn't get it at all.

Both of my Grandparents had color TV, but we soldiered on with black and white until probably 1985 when my great aunt died and left me her 27" color console that took up a huge chunk of floor space.

[KD5NRH]

Granddad had some connections, so I don't remember ever not having a color TV, but for plenty of my childhood, any other TVs in the house were B&W.  Also, one of those B&W ones seemed to have a much better receiver than any other TVs, so sometimes it was a process of checking the living room TV to see what colors things were through the static, then going and watching the show in his gun room on the B&W where it was much clearer.

A friend who didn't have that advantage went through his entire childhood thinking the General Lee was gray.

[Perd Hapley]

SEVEN channels?

You privledged person of paleness, you!

In St. Louis, they have this guy:



Who in addition to being a thorn in the side of the Solons of city government, with his homeless shelter, also runs channel 24. I don't know what their programming is like now, but when I was a kid, and they weren't airing the shelter's own religious services, or Davey & Goliath, or other religious shows, they ran shows like Lassie, and Fury.

[230RN]

In olden days, anyone who had a color TV was sure to mention it, as in "color TV."

A friend of ours had invited us over to watch the moon landing "on color TV," so we packed up diapers, spare bottles, and 3 month old son to go watch it.

I was amused to discover it was mostly in black and white anyhow.  Heh.

We had TV pretty early on, '48, '49, '50?, a Muntz "Madman Muntz" set.  Me fodder had connections, too, back from when he worked on the docks.  Me brudder and me used to watch the Bvooklyn Dodger games on it with a pint each of butter pecan ice cream.

We also had one of those Fresnel lens magnifiers for it.

Terry, 230RN

REF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_Muntz

[K Frame]

How the hell have I never heard of Madman Muntz?

Holy crap, it looks like he had a HUGE hand in creating the consumer electronics industry in the United States.

[Devonai]

In 1987, my sister had a bad fever so my dad carried our 13" B&W TV upstairs so she could watch in her bedroom.  When she got better, my dad attempted to carry the TV back downstairs.  The TV arrived before he did.  That's when my family got our first color TV.

[K Frame]

And the amazing thing is, that 13" B&W probably weighed nearly double what a 32" LCD weighs today.

[RoadKingLarry]

In the early '70s my maternal grandparents had a monster console color TV with a door you could close to cover the screen and included a turntable and reel to reel tape deck, it was STEREO!!!. Us kids weren't allowed to touch it, at all, ever!
I don't remember when we got our first color set, maybe '69-70-ish just a plain mid size COLOR TV, we got the 3 major networks and could almost get the PBS station most of the time.
We had no shortage of B&W sets at home, dad worked on TVs for the Air Force and managed to scrounge a few here and there.

[Perd Hapley]

In the early '70s my maternal grandparents had a monster console color TV with a door you could close to cover the screen and included a turntable and reel to reel tape deck, it was STEREO!!!.

Wow. Just add 4g, text, and voice, and that would almost be a smartphone.

[HankB]

I remember our console B&W TV, an RCA set that was crafted to look like a piece of wood furniture. It replaced, IIRC, an older Philco TV that was always being fixed. (TV repairmen routinely came to the house at the time.) I learned how to fix it while still in grammar school by pulling the tubes, taking them down (on my bicycle!) to the local Walgreen's which had a tube testing machine, and then identifying and replacing the defective tube. Easy.

Then it was a big thing when UHF broadcasts began - so we had channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, and now . . . 32! With channels 26 and 44 soon to follow. I remember a tech came out to retrofit our console with a UHF tuner.

UHF programming was interesting . . . one of the channels had bullfights from Mexico . . . without the bull's demise blacked out.

First color set in my house was a 17" Panasonic I bought in high school (early '70s) with my first paycheck from my first job.

[KD5NRH]

I remember our console B&W TV, an RCA set that was crafted to look like a piece of wood furniture.

We had a color console TV in really nice wood, but when it got taken out by a lightning strike, it got tossed as there wasn't much of the entrails unfried.  I think the console stereo is still in storage, and if I weren't upstairs, I'd be really tempted to dig it out, possibly update some of it, (the 8 track built in and the add-on cassette deck could easily be swapped with a USB/SD capable CD player) and enjoy some of that proper attention to aesthetics in entertainment design.

[grampster]

I resigned from the police department in 1969 to take a job with AAA Michigan.  I was vested in my police pension, so I could take the money.  It was $475.00.  We used the money to buy a color TV.  Iirc it was a table model with a 19" screen.  We had 3 channels and a PBS channel that didn't come in very well.

[Ben]

Then it was a big thing when UHF broadcasts began - so we had channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, and now . . . 32! With channels 26 and 44 soon to follow. I remember a tech came out to retrofit our console with a UHF tuner.

Funny - that jarred my memory on the channels we had. 2,4,5,7,9,11,13. 2,4 and 7 were CBS, NBC, and ABC. The others were "local" channels out of LA with news, reruns of shows like Gilligans Island, I love Lucy, etc., and the offbeat stuff like Elvira Mistress of the Dark.

The UHF channels I don't recall watching until the 70s, and I think it was 28(PBS), a local channel, 64, that was like "local cable" or whatever, and then another channel that showed up with those weirdo religious shows where the guy, sometimes accompanied by an over-made up wife, would "preach' and get really mad if he didn't get enough donation calls while he was on. Oh, and then some other channel that only played at night, but had, I think unintentionally, uncensored Benny Hill reruns, which were like the internet porn of the time.  

[K Frame]

In the early '70s my maternal grandparents had a monster console color TV with a door you could close to cover the screen and included a turntable and reel to reel tape deck, it was STEREO!!!. Us kids weren't allowed to touch it, at all, ever!
I don't remember when we got our first color set, maybe '69-70-ish just a plain mid size COLOR TV, we got the 3 major networks and could almost get the PBS station most of the time.
We had no shortage of B&W sets at home, dad worked on TVs for the Air Force and managed to scrounge a few here and there.

I remember units like that.

This is a Broyhill Brasillia, which apparently didn't sell very well and is now fairly rare.

The things were enormously heavy because of the state of the electronics.

My Grandparents had a big console stereo with record and 8 track player. The thing took up a large portion of the front entry hall.

[Pb]

The Red v Blue colors alternated every election for the Parties until the infamous Bush II election... then the Red=Republican was embedded in everyone's minds, so they just kept using it.

[230RN]

How the hell have I never heard of Madman Muntz?

Holy crap, it looks like he had a HUGE hand in creating the consumer electronics industry in the United States.

Well, not as much as "Across the Atlantic Marconi" or "Superheterodyne Armstrong" :), but:

https://youtu.be/r0eeAoBz1XI

I'll give you the "consumer" part, though, bearing in mind that tech advances almost always lead to consumer products.

He also built a farily advanced luxury automobile:

https://youtu.be/hJg89GCcqHY

Sold for $4500, cost $6500 to build.  That only went on for four years.

Um, well, "Madman," doncha know?

----

"The TV arrived before he did."    Thanks, Devonai  !

Terry

[Scout26]

The Red v Blue colors alternated every election for the Parties until the infamous Bush II election... then the Red=Republican was embedded in everyone's minds, so they just kept using it.

Every two general elections.  IIRC, in 1980 and 1982 the Republicans were "Blue", in 1984 and 1986 the Democrats were "Blue".  But yeah, after 2000 it became R=Red and D=Blue.

[K Frame]

I didn't realize it was that late.

I always thought Red = Republican

Blue = Bloviating Bolshevik Bullshit...

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